D-Day Paratrooper Tom Rice (Full Interview)

welcome to veterans Chronicles I'm Greg Carabas honored to be joined today by mr. Tom Rice he is a veteran of the Screaming Eagles the 101st Airborne Division of the US Army and he is also a veteran of World War two and jumped parachuted into Normandy on d-day 75 years ago Tom thank you very much for your time today sir thank you for taking me remember will where were you born and raised I was born in Coronado California and raised in the same place still live in the same house the same property wow you're a lifer oh yes excellent when did you join the service when Norda why when when in around 1943 I joined the service I volunteer ever during my serial number was 1916 48:59 and the first digit indicates a volunteer if it was a three then you're a draftee so why did you choose the Army no because I was a risk taker and my father was killed in a Naval Air crashed in 1934 so I wandered as I wandered and for the most part made my own way and took all the risks that were possible so after you joined the service you were at both Camp Toccoa and Fort Benning what was that training like well we originally started at Camp Toccoa Georgia a small CCC camp deep in the northeastern woods for the most part it was closed but was reactivated and kept quiet that we were not to be seen or known for 13 weeks as we trained and everything that was experimental we did such experiments that you would just wouldn't believe and it was a it was tough going a resume ttle Colonel wanted at elites and college kids and I qualified for both they had two years of college before it went in and I was an athlete running a mile in the two miles did being a paratrooper come naturally to you that was easy enough because I was in good physical condition then the the colonel regimental colonel property went through four thousand individuals to get two thousand so we were a large group that was the first time well when we came in there in Camp Toccoa Georgia on Thanksgiving Day we grouped at a old c-47 body that was just to make construction climb the ladder to 36 feet and they strapped on a harness and a harness was connected to a cable on the other side of the c-47 and they gave us the d-ring and a reserve parachute and we were told to jump out not to look down but to look out and transfer the d-ring from one hand to the other if you fail that and you're in deep trouble Wow no pressure so when did you go to England when did you get deployed to England we we after after our training on three or four different levels for efficiency in coordination with other regiments and a division we went to camp miles Standish in Boston and were there for several days being processed and we left for England and the William G Goethals steel reinforced concrete the Liberty ship was bunks 18 high two feet wide and a six feet long very specific there was a convoy were travelling about 10 knots on our rent and we landed in Glasgow Scotland around January 1 1944 something I had the mumps on board ship so I got special treatment in isolation how long did it take you to recover ten days ten days plus another ten days in a hospital in Scotland to make sure that things were correct and proper and Hilty Wow I was going to say you had about five months between the time you got there in d-day but about half of the first month was taking care of the mumps so what did you do for the next four and a half months stand ready we were all cleared lumpless and when we ended up in camp lamb born in England and we started our training most of us revolves around activities that we would be doing in Normandy not knowing that we were going to Normandy but somewhere on the coast of France for sure so there was Operation Eagle beaver and one other final one that brought us jumping from gi trucks instead of the aircraft because the German bombers were overhead so those lasted each about a week and so that youth that puts much at the time when did you learn what exactly your mission would be my the mission I was unaware of the mission I was assigned to a lieutenant-colonel Carol I had to know what he's doing why he's doing it where he was and had to be able to make contact with immediately he was the executive officer of the regiment so most of the fellows in the regiment saw the area in which they were going to jump in a fabricated ramaa that depicted at 3,000 feet I didn't get to see that because I had to work with the colonel right right so talk about the nights that you embarks several things happened we moved from our barracks our tent our shanties in Lambourn to present ourselves in good physical shape with the regimental colonel who stood on a jeep covered with a camouflage parachute and they gave us a speech like a Knute Rockne football game a speech he was a knife thrower and had a large bowie knife on his leg and he had a four foot by eight foot piece of plywood 3/4 of an inch thick was told you on one side and Hitler on the other side he'd stand at about 50 feet and throw that bowie knife that there in the beginning of his speech we we called it the knife speech after we heard it and whatever amounts of speaking he could get through to us because it was a laughable situation he reached down to pulled out his bowie knife and it wouldn't come out so everybody starts laughing and he reached for his m1 trench knife and through that and it hit the target so we all clapped and he wanted to shake hands with every one of us so we lined up and then he gave us his admonitions and we went on four dinners we had steak and peas that I remember and then from there a shower and then we walked over to our aircraft or jump action with lieutenant ed Jensen he was about a 15% Cherokee Indian so he knew what he was doing and how to fight and he didn't carry a tomahawk or a bow and arrow but he had a carbine an inside arm so I've worked with him and one of the fellows in the squad Marvin Van Buskirk after taking a shower left his dog tags hanging in the shower and he notified me halfway to the aircraft but that's what had happened he didn't have them so I said okay we'll take your equipment from Marvin to go back to the shower and see if you can find him if you can't then catch up with us and beat us at the aircraft he couldn't find him so we tore up two pieces of canvas and printed his name on here the best dog tags in the history of the military because they didn't Clank when you ran and rattled in the mess kit so from there we packed and repacked our bundles the equipment we could not carry on our bodies personally such as machine guns and the heavy ammunition of mortar bombs for the mortar etc so for a lot of latter from a military knick knacks that for the most part were just too heavy including radio equipment so everything we did at that point and up to an including combat was experimental so let's talk about the Orion you're on the planes now now we're in the you know we're in the aircraft we we practice dropping the bombs a read of the bundles twice to see that everything was working I never met the pilot and the copilot and the crew chief but we saw him wandering around some of the fellas Oh wiped her finger through the exhaust pipes of the engine and put smeared exhaust on her face that's mixed with a little bit of oil from the crankcase and made Indian fashion out of it for the most part and then we boarded I was the last man to board cause I always jump number one and we loaded a bundled inside the aircraft which would be a place than the door just before I jumped so after all of this repetitive activity that was going on we bordered at 8:41 English double summertime and I think the take-off was at Merrifield airdrome it was 11 there and it was in a shape of a V of yz6 to section 16 and 45 aircraft all c-47s and it was in that section 16 were three aircraft in a shape of a V I was on the right forward one on V of these it takes nine planes to carry a load of 128 jumpers so we took off at the proper speed and and the the engines and the end of material started a rattle bang and I thought the whole machine where he was going to come apart on us but it didn't I think I slightly remembered General Eisenhower on the field to give us a visit and he stepped forward from his entourage of the people and it gave us a salute as we passed life so I was in the door for the most of most of the time and the rest of guys were sitting sideways the best they could was looking out the window trying to discover where we're going in and how and of where we were so we were in that area for about a week and the getting orientation and the take-off was smooth we assembled at five thousand feet the entire Armada was two hundred miles long ten miles wide was approximately 982 C forty sevens and it took about two hours to bring us in and unload us on the continent of Europe on the eastern coast or western coast of the Cotton's and peninsula so from check from 5,000 feet we moved down to the codenamed Portsmouth and its codename was Portsmouth bill we passed over that and then dropped a 1500 feet to get it under German radar about the middle of the English Channel as they give us up marine he gave us a signal that we were on target and moving properly and that we flew up to be a bit ski what the cut was the Brittany Peninsula on our right and our left to continent Peninsula that was a really a smart move because we could have turned right and gone into Brittany and or lifts and gone to the content Peninsula we turned left at another submarine it was in the Bay of Biscay gave us a signal and we entered a continent Peninsula I don't know exactly the time it was but the lights start flashing over the door there was a white light what were in flight a green light and a red light and as we looked at I looked out the door of the c-47 and the red light went on that gives us approximately eight minutes to get organized and ready to jump so the jump master gave a visual and verbal signals you couldn't hear much in the aircraft anyway because they did we didn't have a door that was open we didn't even have a door and we had a bundle that was standing right next to me as I stood in the door the loop it of Janssen went to number 18 jumper and checked him and made sure that he was okay after he gave the signal to stand up and hook up now there's a steel cable that runs from the pilots cabin to the after the aircraft and we hook up on that and that had to be done correctly otherwise you could get your arm wrapped around the webbing and you're going to lose it for sure so it lieutenant Johnson checks number 18 and pass him on the derriere and and the 18 says all okay seventeen does the same thing was and so goes on up to me to number two and number three man they had a special responsibility of turning on electrical switches and pulling toggles come drop the bundles underneath the aircraft there was six of them and they weighed 300 pounds each so that's 1,800 pounds plus the one on the door at the signal of the red light well we all stood up hooked up and checked equipment and closed up tight so with all the equipment we had it was a pretty tight squeeze in there for 18 men standing though we were traveling at 100 276 miles an hour and and no self-sealing gas tanks the there's a good possibility that machine-gun fire was coming up from the bottom of the aircraft but I wasn't positive about that because I didn't feel any bullets changing my plumbing and after they command stayed in the door I put my left whole outside of the aircraft at the arch and the two hands on either side of the door and squatted just a little bit so 276 miles an hour prop blast at excessive speed we can't jump at that excessive speed we jump between 90 and 100 miles an hour we're doing nearly twice that so lieutenant Jensen make communication with the pilot and asked him to slow the thing down that didn't happen and about that time I was viewing a rectangular corridor of anti-aircraft fire exploding at about a thousand feet so it looks like we're going right through it now you know about the crickets yes okay good we need to explain anything there each person had a cricket and you clicked it once and the response had to be two clicks to be the response would be one click oh it's two things first yeah we click it once we'd listen another click then we'd move toward that click with two clicks I can move again to three clicks by the time we got to fourth and fifth clicks we were might have been standing within 10 yards of one another and as I as the read green light went on and a red light goes out and the white light is out I stepped outside the door and I was in a crouched position and the aircraft went up about 50 feet because the 1,800 pounds of load underneath the aircraft was a good release sport and I was in a squatting position so what I stepped out my left arm got caught in the lower left-hand corner of the door because I was squeezed tight brought my shoulder blades together and assumed the right position so I swung out from the from that point on back he and he hit the side of the aircraft swung out again and back in again and I turn just enough to get my arm loose and I got a $285 Hamilton wristwatch which was a real prize then in those days and it got ripped off so probably something for a good Frenchman found it and kept it as a souvenir had my name printed on it also so I made about two or three oscillations and hit the ground rolling and a pretty good position rolling forward and and all the equipment I had on immunes that bag came up in front of me the reserve parachute was in the way and I couldn't see where I was or what I was doing but I knew extinct early what to do I tried to hit the safety piece of equipment that released all the metal clasps to release a twig and step right out of it that didn't work so I opened up my double zipper under my chin and pulled out my switchblade knife and started cutting through it and number two and three men came up and and we all we we Cherie got together and they had a mortar we crossed a little small canal and they got on the decomposed granite Road my clicker for the most part fell out of my zippered pouch and I never did find it so we used the other guys we heard a few clicks and waited and it was about five or six minutes about 60 guys came up from our left now they were jumped number one through 9:00 in the direction of the flight of the aircraft number 10 through 18 would jump properly and then reverse their direction of flight and return to a particular midpoint that never did happen we were spread over a couple hundred square miles and you know the company never got together for an entire week I didn't see the company commander for a week and I have so we played cat mouse and we had a lot of fun destroying communications as best we could everywhere we could and our major objective was to take sainte-marie to mount preventing a German tanks from coming in and disperse all of the German 6th and 1st parachute infantry regiments now one of them was in carriage on one battalion wasn't carry on one was another one was in ferry air and the other one was moving away from the beach heads that didn't find what they wanted and probably reestablished a strong point w5 with Lou and German lieutenant weren't janki in there they had what we called Goliath a radio operated in four wheeled vehicle with 200 pounds of explosive limit when the beach forces came in they were surprised on that date you shot it up and explosions went off oh they got rid of those in a hurry mmm what kind of resistance did you run into immediately nothing I landed for the most part on drop zone D the northernmost section of drop zone D in dry ground and I cut my way out number two and three men came up and then after we grouped together marching down the roads in good formation I saw a farmhouse about 50 yards off the side of the road and I said we shouldn't investigate that we had more hand grenades we had German so I took Floyd Martin that after the front door of the house and I told him if Floyd don't beat on the door like American just just knock on it like a gentleman and sent the rest of them around to the rear of the house in case we're Germans he pounded on it and you could hear that noise from Karen countess and Mira gliese and a Frenchman within 30 seconds very blase about everything cuz they'd been occupied for four or five years I came to the door and he was dressed in a long white nightgown from shoulder to floor he had a nightcap with a little puff ball of cotton on the end of it dangling over one side of his face and he had a dish with a lighted candle in it now what does that remind you of going to sleep the initials in a play or CD Charles xeu author Charles Dickens yeah what's the name of the play Christmas Carol yeah right you got it Christmas Carol and I saw that and I started to laugh and I suddenly realized that I was making a mistake because my mind was carried away from a joyous situation I'm sitting in a in a theater watching a Christmas carol well I'm actually in enforcing of course my way into combat so I immediately brought myself back into realization of a situation rightly understood so we pushed him aside and then to put the maps on the floor and said Quran Thailand about five times and he pointed it in several directions and and in the meantime his wife came in dressed the same way we they indicated we're not going to harm him and do anything we want to know where care in town is and we can get out of here so he left in about 30 seconds returned with eight rounds of ammunition gave us six and a cap to and so off we went and assembled and there the other story is where we went and what we did and how we did it but that takes a long time because we played Halloween that night well there's so much to your story I wish we had more time and we do have quite a more time but tell the story briefly about how you help the men from the engineering battalion deal with the German sniper do they begin the German sniper oh yeah and and you help the engineering battalion that was pinned down by the sniper well there's two thirty things come to mind I'm not sure which one referred to it still in Normandy yeah this was yeah this is shortly after you dealt with the farmer okay well we can move on that's fine so at what point did you realize that the Allies had secured the beachheads well my second lieutenant as a platoon officer was had volunteered to lead a a platoon to protect general Taylor and after it landed general Taylor gave him the strict order of moving to causeway four which was a raised roadway that led to the English Channel parallel to the doob River and make contact with the beach force that's coming in he did that and the point of contact by timewise was 11:05 a.m. June 6th and that has been miss recorded or circled several times so I would reaffirm then from his words it was 11:05 and he made contact and the rejoined us a little bit later but we fought for 37 days playing cat-and-mouse and destroying communications everywhere we could and organizing our our group so we had three 26th three 27th the glider infantry people with us we had 506 people and probably one or two 502 regimental of paratroopers so it was a mixed bunch and we did what we were supposed to do and we did it in a hurry how long did it take you to find your unit about a week a week - a week and a half they were spread to some 90 miles away the company commander jump was five or six guys and was able to pull them together as a as a squad here's the captain - company commander Kathleen squadron five or six men and so they moved during need at night and settled in and in hiding in the day and before we jumped general Eisenhower's I mentioned came to us and then don't want to know how creative we were he wants creativity and he wander off how much dog there isn't a fight - how much fight there isn't a dog so we told him not to worry about it though we're here to do what we're supposed to do here the indicator well he was worried about 80% of you guys being killed the actual number was 38 that for the most part didn't make it and after he left to take off etc and to jump and then we maneuvered around leaving the little farmhouse and and soft part for 37 37 days doing all the kinds of things that we wanted some individually some collectively but we move move fast and the creativity was important because there were not many vehicles in Normandy mostly carts carrying ammunition so to plant a mind in the center of the road with the vehicle if a driver saw it he'd stop and investigate but moving with the cart blood with ammunition and he saw it covered with horse manure he'd pay no attention to it and then drive right over the net explosion occurred and that cart and the soldiers would be destroyed so that kind of hit and run activity the the French farmer for the most part were very appreciative of what we were doing and they gave us milk and cheese and and bread and we hid out as we could so we could move during the night so it took about a week to who we can have to assemble so and I've read from Stephen Ambrose and others that the ingenuity the adaptability the improvisation of the American soldier was what really won the day and Norway we did we did things from from our organization up to including and beyond combat experimental innovative creativity was the key factor and it carried right on that fact of our battalion officers in training in Camp Toccoa and from Fort Benning on put chaos in front of us almost every other day and the idea was to get us tuned in to get frightened to brother get frightened and then grab ahold of your courage from your fright take fright apart and then put it back together again see what Frank made out of you and then bundle the continuous fright based on all the chaos that's thrown but to store that in the back convoluted areas of your mind and when you need it you grab it and if you get into chaos again you reduce the chaos to danger and you reduce the danger to some inconvenience and then forget it and get on with your combat mission so that was a lightness that he would like to hear about and we told him we have a few minutes each for two more stories so I want to talk about because he mentioned the 37 days of cat-and-mouse in Normandy then you went back to England for a little bit and then you were part of Operation Market Garden in the Netherlands yes talk a little bit about that the format for the play it was pretty much the same the 82nd airborne took the northern route into Brabant or the Holland area we took the southern route objective was to secure what was so typically known as hell's highway all the way up to Arnhem under Operation Market Garden and we accomplished our mission most part from time to time to secure that highway was very difficult my company jumped in at vagal which was about 30 miles north of the border line of Belgium and and Holland where the British 30th court was waiting to last off they had to use the highways because the polders for the most part were were marshy and and pretty wet you can't run tanks over those kinds of terrains so we did to jump on drop zone a1 we miss drop zone a and we might finally meet her jump about 8 to 10 seconds later from drop zone a 1 so the jump there was 1,250 feet and as I jump made a clean jump on Sunday September 17th at about 1:30 p.m. nice sunny day I went up another 50 feet because I got caught in a thermal from all the other aircraft so I was floating around up there not knowing what the dude is had to sweat it out about 500 feet I couldn't locate a house that I might land on and end up in the kitchen I was able to maneuver away from that and landed in a of pets an area that I would call a cabbage patch that was surrounded by steel picket fence and I was quite concerned about being a mounted on one of those pointed stanchions but I missed that one made a good standing landing then went to my knees and my submachine gun got jammed into thee the muzzle got jammed into the dirt in the mud and it was not usable for a couple days but that was the jump that took place and then the order since we were not on the proper drop zone was to move toward bagel vgat ale as quickly as we could never supposed to be an established order company a company C Company B and iron or whatever else after that so we all were random as fast as we could to get organized into bagel and in route we passed through a little village called reeled and the citizens of bridging the debt says the route get heavy and passing us gingerbread one by one by 12 inches long and Calvados and some champagne so things were rough for the most part a kind of happy and lurkers as we moved on towards our objective we've got into the center city and it was excellent pandemonium the entire city of bagel was out in the net patio and Marsha armed center city so we had some fun doing there enjoying them forbidden show that happened that that was about a two-hour stent just in the environment so we had to get organized and in so doing the citizens had to move out of the way and so we did and we outpost of the city as best we could all right so let's move to the Bulge that's where you were injured yeah I was I didn't get hit with us with any German ammunition in Holland but I really got taken out in the Battle of the Bulge so that's a strange story but you're related if you want weights yes yeah I have taken out many patrols not to set up at a combat situation but to just allocate where the enemy is and what he might be doing so from there the German position of a main line of resistance they had out posted in front of that main line resistance snipers and we had good military formation coming down the long sloping hill toward a little village called Nephi and we were walking and trying to climb over barbed wire fencing and that slowed up the process of the squad so there were about five or six of us and I didn't know who the last two were but we had to move out real quickly and lieutenant Pennell gave me 18 Cerreta morphine in case any difficulty occurred and somebody was injured or someone might have been maimed and in a lot of pain but as we came down the highway we were walking perpendicular to it a decomposed granite road and on my left was a junction though I had next to me architects the Ararat Scout number two and scout number one was John Thomas I sent him up to the left Fork of the road into little village called Nephi any FFP and he was cracking through ice and snow and I'm sure the Germans saw him but he was not the best of their targets I saw machine gun firing ahead of him about 50 yards and I knew just exactly what the Germans were waiting for that an entire squad to get into that ditch and then sweep it I also assumed and I wasn't I can't prove it that they were firing tracers will over our head so we'd stand up and then tell each other they're firing over our head so let's keep moving I not don't think that happened but that crossed my mind I knew what their technique was and if they get us up walking then they fire low and then they got us so I told tech Sierra to bring back number one Scout because of the machine gun fire hitting 50 yards ahead of him he did so Scout number one came back and took the right fork of the of the road and he went on in I guess but he wasn't instructed to go in but just to take it and lead us lead us in another direction that gave the sniper who was in a building about 4 or 50 yards away standing back from the 3rd or 5th floor a good sighting of us now he is after the leader of the squad and that's me and his objective is to hit me between the lower part of the neck and the top part of the shoulder the obbligato and once the bullet strikes that you're through that is if you're lost control of everything so as I moved away from the center of the road and the crossroad area I saw a haystack and I thought that might be a good place if we got in trouble to to hide out and really make our plans the sniper saw me for sure and he fired evidently he thought my knee was my head and he hit me in the left knee just above the knee now I don't I didn't know whether it was broken or not because I could feel the blood running into my boob do we just nicked the artery and not a full tear of it but Justin just nicked it announced it that I could feel the warm warmth of my leg in the boot and I told take Sierra I'm hit and give me a shot of morphine he gave me a shot of morphine and I told him they're gonna go on in take the patrol in it's over so what happened to the other guys behind him probably was given instructions by texture and he took him on in and so I was out there had to check that right leg or rather left leg to see if it was okay I don't know whether it was broken or not though like as I got up from the center of the road and swung my right arm up in front of me I got shot in the right radius it took about six inches of bone out of there and I didn't even feel it because I'm under morphine and it was not broken so I don't or the haystack and and it was so old and rotten to that that just fell apart and they made sure the sniper couldn't see me at all so the rest of guys went in I'm out here three or four hours and for the most part I was I was frightened that they might send a patrol out to try and get me or they would set the haystack on fire by machine-gun tracers going over our heads and lower them and and fire would begin but neither those happened so we followed from the squad Jhansi wealth came up from behind me and Brenda in moving through the ditches and cracking through the ice and I saw him in the center of the road and I told him to give me a bread butter your rifle you take the Muslim we'll work our way back in so we did and took about an hour to get back up to top of Mont Marvin Hill and they were on I was put on a jeep and taken to the nunnery and put on us to put on a gurney and wheeled in on the operating table Ike told the surgeon I'm hungry sir he ordered the medic to get me a peanut butter sandwich so while he was running a stick through my forearm I was eating a peanut butter sandwich you checking the lake they took my boots off and I objected that but they needed him so after a General Patton broke through him about a week my womb my wounds occurred on December 22nd at 2 p.m. on AB night nice beautiful terrific Sunday afternoon at 2 p.m. I have proof of that on a daily report that someone researched but much later and I was sent to the 121st shield hospital in Belgium and I was there a week while a nurse her name was lieutenant Janice van hees she was about six feet one or weigh 265 pounds and and she order a German prisoner to take me to the bathroom and back and and so when that was done several times and when I left the 121st Hospital she tried a great big red rip and ribbon around my neck and that stayed with me until I got to the American Embassy and while olive Jolie a Frenchman and judgment were laughing their heads off with that how crazy I looked with this thing around my neck and then from there I was sent to England for probably about a half a month and recovered there and the bed I was in you had to lie at attention with the sheets underneath your armpits while their surgeon came by and checked the x-rays and I wasn't there when I was supposed to I was in another room ironing my my shirt with an Old World War one flat iron you know what it might look like so Louie she's given me some questions what are you doing here soldier well I filled the air with sulfuric fumes of unknown words and he stepped back from that after checking me out he said I'll have you out of here in three days where you gonna send me Zi me Zi means zone of interior's out of interior back to the United States I thought I won't go so I fill the air again with sulfuric fumes and and so he he made originals to get me out of here in three days and so I went through the rip Oh dimples and caught up with the regiment that had now settled in birches garden right so you're able to reach on your unit and get to the eagle's nest I didn't see too much of it because the 506 beat us through birches garden and they were occupying the main part of the city so when we came in they had plans for organizing a track team the 101st Airborne Division track team I ran the 5000 meters for him and we just traveled for you throughout Europe for a month's a month and a half of running track meets in velodromes and we had fun doing that and we lived in the Salem zi area whether were plenty of cold icy swimming areas and and fields where we could play softball and volleyball then we started orderly drilled and Class A uniforms and we objected to that here you are you officers you're running US combat veterans through all this preliminary step again this is ridiculous so they beat us to the chicks and DeWine and we just had fun for about a month they decided to deactivate the 501 parachute infantry regiment because we normally were attached to it to bring ours our American strengths up to the equivalency of the Germans the Germans had three thousand and a regiment we had two thousand so in the early history of airborne activity the 501 made up the difference between 2,000 and 3,000 sir were are an equal man-to-man basis with the Germans though they're going to deactivate the 501 and other they have instigated a quench system where if you were married you got 10 points the child every child another 10 points then he medals 5 to 10 points and then he was linked he I'm spent in the combat zone five points or Hershey bars on your on your jacket so the my beliefs the minimum was 72 to get out and go home I had 98 as a most of us veterans did after 38 percent occasionally from Normandy at Holloman we chose not to jump and from the most part we were sent to Marseilles and on wait a day an old ship and and went back to Norfolk Virginia and Sam home discharged with 300 dollars in her pockets we just have a minute or two left but I have to ask you because you made headlines this year by jumping again into Normandy at nearly the age of 98 years old now you are 98 why was it so important to you to do that again the importance was a point of the sword really because we led the way and the operation could have failed without the airborne operating wind in the interior when we first jumped in Normandy we realized that and we moved in that direction of indicating to the people of the world that we were one of the best and we wanted to remain as such and we were supported by the finest military organization in history of the world had brought us back to Normandy and allowed us to jump the French passed a law that only people under 80 could jump they found a way around it so I was able to jump at 97 so that occurred two times then one time in Holland way to take a physical exam before we could jump and and Dave neighbors they were satisfied with that so what we went there's a second part of your question was what just why it was important you answered it you sure yes sir yes so we were supported by our Grand Army of the United States and everything they did to bring us here in joining a team Tom who were very fine people who knew the battle history of the United States from the early wars up to the present and we were just a great group of people and they were responsible for me being here today outstanding mr. rice our time is gone but thank you for being with us today and thank you so much for your service to our country I hope I got everything you wanted absolutely sir yeah Tom rice US Army veteran of the 101st Airborne Division the Screaming Eagles served at d-day also part of Operation Market Garden and at the Battle of the Bulge I'm Greg Caramba this is Veterans Chronicles you

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Length: 49min 11sec (2951 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 10 2020