WWII 101st Airborne Paratrooper Vincent Speranza’s Story of Combat and his Famed Bastogne Beer Run

when they got to the 400-yard mark the lieutenant said now now and we opened up with everything we had and it it was a slaughter my name is vincent j speranza and this is my story i was born in new york city in 1925. you don't have to do the math i'm 95 years old and counting and grew up in a big uh italian neighborhood uh where we did the usual little boy things and uh but i'm never in any serious trouble with the law my parents were immigrants from italian from italy and uh we grew up as normal as people could during the great depression i was a pretty good student in school and uh getting into the usual troubles of uh putting frogs down uh the girls blouses and uh we got our usual punishment from the teachers at any rate uh it was uneventful i graduated from uh public school 22 went to high school and fast forward to 1941 i was a 16 year old boy in high school and i was a sunday i was riding my bike and when i went into the store everything was quiet and i said hey and they said shut up president roosevelt is speaking he's saying something about the japanese and pearl harbor i jumped on my bicycle quickly ran home and told my father quickly put the radio on he put the radio on in time for us to hear president franklin d roosevelt saying a state of war exists between the empire of japan and the united states of america at that moment my father turned around he called his four sons i was the middle boy he said boys he said they won't take me because i'm too old but i expect my sons we said we know papa they won't take us till we're 18. and he said i know he said but i just want you boys to know how i feel about it no place in this entire world can you come to a place with nothing except a willingness to work and look at us today a family a children we have a home and a car and he said boys this country must not fail and the next day we started saying how in the health can we get into this fight and and uh we let the few hairs that we had grow on our cheeks and put on our father's fedoras and we went down to the recruiting office we said we want to join the army we're 18. the recruiting sergeant looked at us and said go home one kid come back when you're really 18. i had to wait two more years before i finally turned 18 and it was on march 23rd 1943 before i could apply for the for the for the army and at that time you could not volunteer they they uh had porters for each city and when your city got the quota to uh send so many men to the to the services uh it was october before i was finally called and sent to fort benning georgia the infantry school i loved it a big sergeant comes out and he lines us up we're all 18 year old kids and he says my name is mastorelli you got it and we said yes sir he said don't give me that sir [ __ ] that saved that for the officers he said master sergeant mastorelli and when i say jump you say how far and how high you got it he's scared the hell out of it he said now get into those barracks and come out looking like soldiers that began our 19 weeks of infantry training and we left it up we couldn't wait to get our guns and our training and because we wanted better it looked bad you know germany had taken all of europe and and uh and uh the ukraine was on her way to russia the japanese had taken everything all the way down almost to australia and and uh the united states was uh really in danger and we said okay now uh we're going to get into the fight right after the 19 weeks of no you got to come back for four more weeks of advanced temperature training okay so we come back for four more weeks of advanced infantry training now we're going to get into the fight right no i you got to come back for two more weeks of heavy weapons training when the hell are we going to get into this fight and the the two weeks heavy weapons finally they sent us to infantry line infantry outfits and i was sent to the 87th infantry division the acorn division at fort jackson south carolina and we said all right now we're going to get maneuvers in tennessee uh jungle training in florida we said well one day they took us out to a big field they said it's gonna be a demonstration today we said what kind of demonstration shut up and sit down that we sit down three c-47s come out of the sky fly out in front of us in the field and then we see the doors open and we see guys throwing themselves out of their doors and little white things open up and they come floating down to the ground you know paratroops were brand new in world war ii they're just getting started and we see these guys get on the ground roll up their shoots come double timing across the field they line up in front of us and the captain advises i this is the united states parachute corps we're looking for a few good men you have to be a graduate of the infantry school and have all your advanced infantry training who wants a volunteer and we said but um throw yourself out of an airplane and he said and there's 50 bucks extra month jumped that's how i ended up volunteering for the paratroops back to fort benning to jump training now and the most magnificent training you ever saw they turned us into human dynamos they they not only taught us all the different ways to kill somebody but how to defend yourself but also to have that aggressive spirit that that that that thing in here that when you think you can't do anymore you can and and that's what comes back to you in in combat you know when things get so bad you say jeez i can't the hell you can't you remember in training when you positive you couldn't do it anymore those sons came around get those arms up get that thing moving and you did it and and that that stood us in good stead you know whenever i talk to the troops i tell them if you don't want to take any advice from a pfc uh pay attention to your training don't ever take it for granted your training is what is going to save your life or at least make you one of the better soldiers fighting for the country first of all you're well trained on the ground and you're toughened up physically but also mentally they keep reminding you that a paratrooper gets into the battle in a very unique way he jumps out of an airplane and gets interrupted now if you pay attention to the instruction if you listen to the teacher you won't have any trouble you learn how to how to maneuver your shoot just a little bit in those days you couldn't today you can maneuver them but back then you couldn't you just a little bit of pull on the risers but um the physical training gets you ready for any kind of uh landing you learn to roll it's called a parachute landing fall a plf and you're trained very well on the ground but then of course you know the moment of truth is and and uh another anxiety is in those days part of your training is also parachute packing you learn how to pack a parachute and they tell you to pay attention because you're going to jump your first jump in the parachute that you packed and you never saw more 10 of class in your whole life and we paid attention so on but then you packed the parachute on friday the jump is monday so you got nice all weekend to where you did did i do it right this is the sergeant can i go nah [Music] you did your thing that's it and that day uh the first jump you uh you're looking all around and ever there's always bravado hey piece of cake you saw you threw yourself out of anything talking but you know there's the anxiety i guess but uh you're supposed to be tough and you don't show it so everybody calmed then the moment buzzy was like first quad bird you get on the airplane and you're sitting there wheeling you can't checking all your connections and and uh as soon as the plane takes off the the sergeant says uh i had the smoking lamps lit now i didn't smoke and i was virginal when i got dessert i didn't smoke i didn't drink i didn't didn't know anything about women and and uh i see all these guys put a cigarette it seemed to do something i said hey give me one of those so i took one and i lit it and i choked and i spit and i coughed and i pruned it i was hacking away and so on and so on stand up hook up stand in the door and now you know the the choking spins all of a sudden disappears and now you're looking at the door and you remember your father my father was the one who took me to the train and i was looking for the service he told everybody you said goodbye to vinnie here at home i'm going to take him to the train station by myself and i expected that the reason he said that is he wanted to talk to me on the way he didn't say a word all the walk to the to the train station he didn't say anything the train came in he still hadn't said anything i get on the train i'm looking at him and looking at him and before the trample that he said you look mania which in english means son just don't do anything to make me hang my head in shame i i barely choked out i won't pop and when you're making your first jump or when you get your first combat what comes back to you your father saying hey make sure you don't do anything to shame the family understand and your answer is and when that moment came and i describe it in the book when you read the book go i was number three in atlanta first guys out second guy not a moment's hesitation and and and you you terrified that the first part that you go out there there's nothing holding you touching nothing and then suddenly the static line starts pulling your chute out and you feel something and and at the end of the 30 feet you know the parachute and is 32 feet in the static line it's 30 feet you're 60 feet down and the prop blast and the shoot opens and your first uh your when you're training they check your canopy you look up the shoot is out there big beautiful thing there and you're swinging it is the most beautiful thing in the world whatever scary sensations you had before disappearing to the companies like somebody just took you in the cradle you know and they're actually dying and then all of a sudden the floor the ground's coming up pretty fast but your training kicks in you need to feed together when you land you can't believe it you're on the ground and you're looking up like this and you said i jump i need to [ __ ] my pants no peed my my boots i'm a paratrooper and then you say but wait you got four more to go so but but hey that first experience you know you have complete confidence the second third fourth day the only one you worried a little bit about was the the friday night jump and and uh that that jump you know at night time everything's different first of all the air is thinner you come down faster and and uh bushes and trees look uh different at night and uh in fact in in my class in jump school two guys mistook a concrete highway for the chattahoochee river which was alongside our camp and in the moonlight they thought the the highway was the river now what you're taught to do if you're going to land in water is loosen your harness hold on to the parachute with just your hands and about 10 15 feet above the water let go of the parachute so that when you hit the parachute will cover you and smother you in the water these guys and it's hard to judge what's 10 or 15 feet they let go to pass you to and they splattered themselves and gone and it put a damper on that day but hey the next man morning is when you were graduating you're going to get your wings and you're going to be authorized to blouse your pants over the jump booths only paratroopers were allowed to do that and the only paratroopers who had completed their training and and their their jump and so you felt bad about what happened but hey tomorrow i'm getting the silver wings and uh that next day you never saw by the way right after that they give you a week's furlough home and you can't believe walking down the neighborhood with your wings and jump boots pants bloused and the girls pirate troops were you know the special forces of the day and uh they had made such a reputation in normandy that let's say we were very popular with the ladies graduated from from jump school and uh in jump school no fooling around they uh immediately send you to uh uh fort shanks in new york and ready to go overseas uh i went overseas on the queen mary the uh [ __ ] man had been converted to a troop ship and uh it got us over there in about five days six days we landed off scotland you know the only place the queen mary could land was uh southampton but southampton was in the channel where the germans had control and so they they uh docked outside of scotland and then in smaller boats took us ashore put us on trains down into england and into a barracks waiting to be sent to france to get into the fight in the meantime the 101st airborne division had taken a real beating in holland uh the market garden operation was a complete failure the 101st the 82nd and uh the polish brigade and the british red devils and the canadian paratroopers all went in to holland on decem on september 17th and the germans caught them flat-footed and and cut off the roads that the armor was supposed to come up to support the paratroops the army never got there the paratroops got beat and had to come back out so here's the 101st airborne division now in northern france camp moore malone they had lost 3 000 men they had left most of their equipment and so on in holland they were in bad spirits as you could understand you know in in normandy tremendous victory in holland and they they got beat and and uh we were the replacements now for the guys that got killed and it was december and everybody thought as usual wars wind down in the wintertime and and the time was to be to train the new men and help them get some combat experience and the division was planning all kinds of things we were going to have sports programs and so on and and passes to paris and so on december 16th nobody knew it nobody realized it not even the allied high command the germans had saved up 25 divisions there's 18 000 men in each division they had they had nine of those 25 division panzer divisions with the newest tanks the mark iv the tiger royals and so on and december 16th they hit the allied lines in the ardennes hitler's plan was to move from the ardennes through belgium and capture the port of antwerp on the ocean there antwerp was our port of entry where all our supplies came in and all the equipment and so on that they were going to take for themselves that move had they captured antwerp would have separated the british and canadian armies in the north from the american armies in the south i'm going to change the war their problem was to get to the ardennes to get to antwerp there was a little town here called bastogne it had it was a transportation hub it had five roads it was just a small village but it had two railroads going through it and five roads and so on and they had to capture that if they're going to get to antwerp and eisenhower sent word out to the 101st airborne division get up there and hold it now of course we private we don't know what's going on all we know is four o'clock in the morning the sergeant comes out banging on all right drop you and grab your socks we're moving up and we're also growing oh come on now you're crazy we'll all break our legs he said you're not jumping you're going to go up in trucks and then from all over the barracks sarge i don't have a helmet i don't have a rifle i was a machine gunner i didn't have a machine gun well all i had was a trench knife and some of them didn't have helmets and the sergeant said stop bitching make a list we're going to stop and get what you need along the way and we believed it we said oh okay we made it i need a machine gun and he released ten belts of ammunition and i would like a car being beside the back of that what stop all day and all night on those trucks you cannot believe that ride we will madder at each other than we were at the germans when we got to best on the the the problem was no stops and uh you know nature's calls cannot be ignored and so his guys all over the place trying to pour pointed all over the men the guys would pee off the side of the truck the window would blow it right on the guys in the back and so on everybody's hollering and young and we were also freezing we had no wind to close what we had when we got to available not in the mood to do anything we got off the trucks and the sergeants threw a little gasoline on the road we lit it and tried to warm our hands a little bit we were freezing and shivering and so on but we were still then later on they gave us the number 10 of us were unarmed what saved us was when the germans first hit there were four american divisions the fourth the 28th 128th and the 9th on it which the germans destroyed completely they just walked over them and one day the stragglers from those four divisions were ordered to the rear they had to go through bastion so we get off the trucks we walk into the into the town of town is a mess things going crazy in all direction as the regular troops there were being retreating to victoria and we were moving in and we would just go up to the guys and say hey you're going back you're only right we took the rifle right off the shoulder hey uh listen uh you go let me let me have you i found a guy with a nice light 30 caliber of a sea god and i thought would that look so heavy for you but let me help you carry it and i i took the gun and at least for the first fight i had a gun and i had two belts of ammunition and we get uh finally get pushed through the mess the 501 my regiment was the first one out of town and able to go out and and no nobody knows what's coming all they could tell us was the germans are out there in force and the 501 by the way is right in the past we were started to the the longville road that went through belgium that the german armies were coming through where it hit bastogne we were here right in front uh and but still nobody knows what's going on my regimental commander um uh cat mule uh colonel ewell is told to go out there and develop the situation while we try to get set up in the town and colonel you will did just that and they say later on that that man's actions that day uh saved bastogne because what he did but when he only had his first battalion with him the second and third battalion was still in town struggling to get out he runs into the germans instead of pulling back he attacks he attacked and it stunned him and stopped them they didn't know what was going on in time for us the second three battalion to get out of town set up a defense perimeter which for the rest of that battle never got breached they never got past that first line he set up and we took the first hit we hadn't had any food or water since we got off the truck we were exhausted and it does a hole now and the ground's frozen you bang it with the shoulder bounces back in your face and you bang and you bang and you bang and finally we we gotta pass the the uh frozen part and you know machine guns have to dig a two-man hole uh a machine gun an assistant gunner and and we finally got through and then there's the roots of the the trees and so on it took us hours and hours to to to just get a whole dug and it was about three four o'clock in the morning we flopped into the whole end sudden comes around all right we're moving out oh god we have to dig in over there so you pick up the gun and the equipment and you walk over there like you're in a daze and now dig in here well we whacked and whacked and we got a little shallow thing done and then we couldn't do anymore so we just flopped in the little shallow hole we dug and the sergeant comes around again we're moving out that's all got to dig in over there the last place we went we just scraped the snow and started to lay on the ground the hell would we we were spent we couldn't do anything though no matter how young and strong you are there's only so much that morning the fog was all the way down to the ground you couldn't see anything as daylight comes the fog starts to lift a little bit and uh the the the more time went on the more the fog lifted but it lifted in like a bank a whole as it lifted you could see underneath it all the way through that uh what was in front of us was a sort of tapering open field with the heavy woods on both sides and the noise we heard it looked like the germans were going to attack across an open field we said boy they must be cocky you know but they were cocky they had just smashed four american divisions and they expected to do the same thing they didn't know it was the 101st airborne division there in in um bathstone so they uh the as the fog lifted higher and higher then you hear the tanks wind up and you could you could see across that still open snow field the the grinding of the 88s as they swing around and then the whole world sounded like it exploded everything you could imagine there's rockets artillery later on the luftwaffe came in and bonded mortars all around it and you you can't do anything except stick your nose down to the bottom of the foxhole and and hope that you curse yourself for not digging it deeper and the the ground shakes and and and sometimes the concussion makes you feel like your helmet's going to come up that's when they they told us by the way don't fasten your your helmet buckle because if you get a near concussion it's going to pull your head right off at any rate we we could do nothing but wait till the artillery barrage lifted and when it did and we looked across the field here comes a row of tanks and behind them a german infantry now the tanks are firing point blank into the foxhole when when they hit the guy disappears his rifle goes floating around up in the air and so on and so on and and the german infantry is is acting like they were they were you know uh animated they were pumped up because they had just uh smashed four american divisions and they were expecting to do the same thing here and the ground slope from where we were dog in the ground sloped about 400 yards down and and and then then it started up again to where they were and the lieutenant said set your gun for 400 yards he wanted to catch them on the way up so he set the machine gun 400 yards the tanks now are coming on top of us and and uh the german infantry is behind them when they got to the 400 yard mark the lieutenant said now now and we opened up with everything we had and it it was a slaughter day the snow turned red dude they were falling by the numbers and so on and and we hit them so bad that they weren't expecting that uh they had to turn around and go back what was left of them the tanks now when the infantry's not behind them they got to turn around and go back so the tanks turned around to go back our artillery opened up and mcauliffe uh you know the the general the the uh commanding officer the commanding general uh hello uh was in the states making speeches you know they thought the war was going to wind down in december the assistant commander was in england making speeches the only general officer on the on the post there when we were called up was uh mcauliffe and he was the artillery commander but he's not in command of the whole division and it's now we say it was a damn good thing because i don't know if the other generals would have been able to do with the our artillery what mcauliffe did he set the guns up so that they not only fired at the perimeter but he set them on ground where they could also turn around and fire across town to any spot which meant all the guns could be concentrated on one spot whatever the germans tried to attack and he played hell with their new tanks at any rate they uh the first day they they were stopped and and uh went back into the woods and uh we finally got some k rations to eat and a little water and so on and so on and we're waiting for the next day's attack the next day they slipped around on both sides and surrounded us they didn't attack they just surrounded us and uh doing that they captured our field hospital all of the beds and blankets and equipment and medicine morphine and so on and they shot the american personnel except the doctors they kept five of our doctors to serve in their army one doctor and one belgian nurse escaped and were in town for that whole battle by the way for the next eight days that was our medical team one doctor and one belgian nurse and no medical equipment and and in surrounding us they now began you know daily attacks and so on and and uh the second day after the they surrounded us my friend joe willis got hit and the only place in town to put the wounded was uh the the floor of the church and the seminary across the street from the church they they were the only buildings that still had stone you know walls and everything else was smashed and flattened and and uh they put the guys on it was it was a pitiful sight when i saw it guys laying all over the place on the floor we we had gone through the houses and and uh pulled all the drapes and curtains uh bedspread whatever we could find to wrap the the wounded end and warm to keep them those of us that had two blankets donated one to the to the uh wounded and uh i see my friend joe willis on the florida church and i said joe how you doing he said ah nothing i got a couple pieces of shrapnel in the legs he said i'll be out of here tomorrow i said you'll be out here tomorrow well tomorrow the next day or so on he said i've been here long it's a couple pieces of shrapnel in the legs so i said well that's good joe come on you know i need you you're an assistant gunner and and i i uh you know just kind of shaking my head when i saw him laying there i didn't think he looked like he was going to be any shape to come back tomorrow but uh before i left i said listen joe i got to go back uh anything i can do to help you he said yeah go find me something to drink i said where the hell am i gonna find you something to drink we're surrounded and cut off there's no supplies coming in here he said go look in the taverns joe the taverns are all bomb this [ __ ] go look in the taverns you might get lucky now it's snowing hard it's cold the wind is blowing like hell artillery is dropping in all around the church and i go slopping down the road looking for a tavern and the first one uh i went into all broken glass i shattered there was nothing i went down the road a little further slipping and sliding all over the place the second tavern i went into still had a bar and when i pulled the the beer handle beer came out i said so i look around for a jug a bottle or something to put the beer in there was nothing he took off my helmet the same helmet you use in the foxhole you know yeah i switched to the snow on it i filled it up with beer i went back to the church i said joe i got some beer he said holy [ __ ] he sits up and i'm free to bear from there oh man hey give me some of that hey give me some of that you know i was like an old mother cow there feeding all these guys a mouthful of beer i ran out joe says go get some more jesus christ go get some more i go slopping down the room fill up the helmet again as i stepped out the door to tavern a shell landed nearby knocked me down and i spilled half of the beer but i didn't get hurt i got up and i went back to the church this time standing in a doorway like this is the regimental surgeon major walkman i'm i'm private by the psc he says what the hell do you think you're doing soldier [Music] sir bringing aid and comfort to the wounded he said listen smartass don't you know i've got chest cases and stomach cases and you even be you'll kill him yeah therefore i have you shut yes sir and put that helmet on i was not only freezing i was now cold and wet and but i slopped back quick to the foxhole before he changed his mind and as far as i was concerned hey an incident that happened during the war there was a lot of incidents like that 65 years after the war was over and i went back to bastogne for the first time it was like a miracle you know what you know when i came home from the war i was 20 years old i was a different person from the 18 year old kid that went into the battle and uh i remember as a kid reading and seeing movies about the world war one guys when they came home uh the battle shock and the nightmares and the shivers and personalities beating their wives and all that when i came home i looked in the mirror in my mother's house i said listen i talked to myself i said listen you are not going to be one of these guys who comes home and has uh nightmares and flashbacks and so on you're going to take all that crap cutting people in half of the machine gun and put it back here and lock the door you can't forget it but you can isolate it you can and i was very successful when i after i got home they want i met a nice woman i got married i became a schoolteacher and i had kids grandkids and everything for 65 years i did not touch any military organization i didn't join anything i didn't even know the celebrations were going on in france and belgium i i i said to myself you're not a soldier anymore you're an educator and i dedicated my life to education what happened was an incident and again i think the last part of my life has been a series of coincidences that that changed my whole life around from from an 85 year old man sitting around waiting to die to today i'm a playboy running around the world going to europe at any rate what happened was uh my wife my wife's uh alzheimer's got worse and i i had to put her permanently in a nursing home i was 85 years old at the time and and uh for me that's it and you know you know i had been married to that woman all together when she passed away 70 years but at that point at 65 years and she was my whole thing is now she's gone and i just i went into it like a funk you know but i was in the store one day and i said and i meet a woman who's got an accent i said madame do i denote a french accent and she said no belgique i said oh belgium she said yes she said well do you know belgium i said yeah bombs bullets and snow that's what i know about belgium and she said oh you were there during the war i said yeah she said with the hundred first day one day i said yeah she said oh miss you i'm from boston she said uh you have not been back i said no sure you must go back she said the people of bastogne have never forgotten the 101st airborne division there are monuments to you all over town there are statues they have celebrations every year they reenact the battle that she said you must go and i said what to myself what the hell for and i've spent a lifetime forgetting about all the stuff why do i want to go to rwanda and and she said and she said and all the american dead from the battle are in a beautiful cemetery right now and that's when i said you know if nothing else i need to go back at least one time to pay my respects some cousin buried there so i i i announced to the family i'm i'm going to you yeah everybody starts holding me pop you're 85 right he's gonna do running around the bus store i said well then you come with me one of you you could take my daughter came with me we went to bed the plan was we were going to spend three days in best on and then i was going to take my daughter to paris you know she'd never been three days past and come home and that's the end of it again one coincidental thing after another that changed my life the first day we were there in invest on the no you know we know nobody we know that we have no connections nobody's meeting us nobody we just decided we were going to rent a taxi cab and go out of town and see if i could remember anything and uh on the way to the bank to change our money to euros my daughter sees a a a a mannequin in a window with an american paratrooper's uniform on on the first airborne patch and she says look pop and i said yeah well okay now if i had prevailed everything would be different today i'd probably not be around but she insisted oh papa let's go look you know it might be something interesting so i said okay we go in there we look around you know we're on our way out and i see a a case with german belt buckles and so on so now i stopped for a minute to look at that and this big i later found out he was a dutch paratroop officer he come around perfectly and they said may i help you i said nah i was i'm just looking i was here during the war he said you were here during the war i said yeah he come around there i thought he was going to attack me i went to a defense mode he picked me up with a sir where have you been there are so few of you left we we will not honor you we you sir who are you with and i said h company 501. he said you know he said we studied the war we studied the war and we knew where everybody was where the attacks came first and then he said come with me he said i am going to show you where each company was dug in uh at mont i said really he said yeah so my daughter and i get in the car and a friend of his johnny boner belgian tank commander gets in the car with him and the four of us drive out a little ways out of the town now i recognize nothing you know during the war was all snow excuse me big snow fields i could but he takes us out to a place near the ridge and again i i don't recognize a thing and he said now look he said h company was dug in here here here here and on the ridge and then he looks me in the air and he says and that was your foxhole i said hey stop checking me off how the hell do you know that was my foxhole i can understand you knowing where age company was dug in he said because your company commander captain stanley when he turned in his after action reports that day on a piece of cardboard from a k ration he had put a little diagram where he placed the automatic weapons he said you were the only machine gun in the third platoon right i said yeah the other guy got killed he said look mg you now you have to picture this you're 85 years old and somebody is saying to you where you're standing right now 72 years ago you were a 19 year old kid with a machine gun waiting for the first german attack you know when you're 85 you don't have the same control i fell apart then my daughter pulled me such a democracy my father said no and we'll come back tomorrow so he said okay we got in the car on the way back to town i asked the two guys if i could take them to lunch and they said yeah and so at lunch i we i ordered three bottles of wine and uh i said i gotta change the mood here i don't like the way well you know you put three soldiers and three bottles of wine together and you know what's gonna happen we started getting loud and making noise and everybody's looking and we embarrassed the hell out of my daughter and as we as we uh get a little more uh loose tongue from the white they start telling stories johnny boner told a story about belgian tanks and marco told about fighting in bosnia and afghanistan and so on and i told them that be a story i told you before while i'm telling the story they're going you you were the gi who brought beer into the helmet i said yeah so you you you went in the church and you gave beer to the wounded guys laying on the floor i said yeah they said man i said don't you know you're famous in europe i said what the hell are you talking about i said wait come here bring us four bottles of airborne beer and the waiter comes back and on a tray he's got four bottles of beer and four little ceramic bowls in the shape of a gi helmet that they serve it in and the label on the bottle of beer shows a paratrooper with a helmet full of beer going like this they said nobody thought that was a true story everybody thought that was just a bull story from world war ii was it a belgian brewer about 20 years ago just decided to honor this mythical gi and he produced airborne bees and we can't believe it the guy is a true story and the guy who did it was really here i said yeah maybe i should get a cut on the beer right but at any rate when i came home they gave me four bottles of beer to bring home and and uh i don't know how but the general register called me yeah from springfield you know the new newspaper and they said uh listen we heard a story about you can we come over and interview you you know i said yeah and we sat there and i told them the story and you know they came with a photographer and uh if you got a cell phone just google airborne beer and there'll be a picture of me behind the counter there with the bottles of beer lined up and so on and so on and the story the next day they put that picture in in the newspaper somebody from the from the newspaper from the family put it on the internet today this day i am better known what i did with a helmet full of beer than what i did with my machine gun the whole wall i i'm i'm a decorated combat veteran i got two purple hearts two bronze stars the french legend of honor the dutch order of this is 15 medals what does everybody want to hear when they hey then tell us the best story uh the thing went well it's all over the internet now if you google youtube and my name uh there's video clips it at any rate uh i started getting invitations from uh you know fort bragg and for yeah and uh they liked the way i speak and so they asked me to talk to the troops here and talk to me there and at age 89 i wrote a book now who the hell writes a book at age 89. i don't know my family had been after me for years pop you should write a book i said hey what makes you think i can write a book you've got to be talented to write a book people that go to college four years to learn how to write to read write a book and so on and so on you've got to be able to create dialogue and create themes and this and characters and so on i said i i can't do that my daughter said to me listen pop when you tell stories to people they all sit around fascinated listening to the story just tell the story and you know that clicked up here even at age 89 well of course i can do that you don't have to make anything up you just sit down and at that time there's uh this um uh computer program called dragon naturally speaking you talk into a microphone the computer prints it you know if i had to type that thing it would have never got written i don't know how to type but all i had to do was sit there and tell the story and that my book and i'm going to give you a copy before you leave the story my letter people like it it came out in 2015. it's uh we're past the 5000 mark and and it's still selling on amazon and a lot of people ordered from me i've had books here so at any rate uh my life since then has been uh you know in age 85 you should you should be going down i i i'm living the life of raleigh i i got every year i go to europe three times normandy holland and bastogne and i have all kinds of friends there and so on we go to ceremonies and so we also have fun and drink and some some of the things you'll see on youtube but not the ceremonies they're sitting in the body drinking beer and smoking cigars and so but at any rate my future hey i'm 95. but whatever the story is while i'm still able to do things i'm gonna keep going that's all and that's the end of my story a toast to all the good people in the world

Channel: American Veterans Center

Views: 214,928

Rating: 4.9262233 out of 5

Keywords: AVC, American Veterans Center, veteran, veterans, history, army, navy, air force, marines, coast guard, military, navy seal

Id: lDHp9-kWd2g

Length: 56min 15sec (3375 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 13 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/TheDongerNeedsFood]

This guy is incredible, a true member of the greatest generation. I saw a much shorter video of him telling the airborne beer story about 10 years ago, I’m so glad to see that he was still alive as of 2020 (and I hope he’s still alive today, he looks great!)

[u/chipthecrip]

Great story! I’m going to order some of that beer!