D-Day vet Russell Pickett — the last survivor of "suicide wave" at Omaha Beach

there we go so start off by telling me about yourself are you born and raised saudi daisy or did you just end up here after the war i think i read or i was i was born right up here in dayton it was daisy then you know yeah and right up here on what's called church street now it was called red rosin because my father was a kill foreman for the hurdy brick and tile company and i was born there of course 1925 and 25 top market fell in 29 and we moved down as far as falling water so there's basically where i was raised around falling water and except for my being gone off to the service i don't there's not been not been many years they'll oppose that i didn't live here so dave so born born and raised kind of daisy but then you moved to falling water went off to the service ended up in back inside daisy when you came back yeah and now how many kids did you your parents have or brothers and sisters did you have well my father had three sons and then three daughters before he died he died in 1936 i was 11 here at home was it an accident at work or no it was uh i don't know from the symptoms he had i would say it was either lung cancer platform on the other back then we didn't know anything about cancer you know so yeah the medical technologies but he was down and out he took his bed in february and died late for also he was a very strong man prior to that now your two brothers were you the only one who uh was in the service no my oldest brother went in the first draft and but he served in the south pacific in the marines and uh my other brother was crippled he had a crippled leg and they wouldn't take him in so uh was your oldest brother in the marines or the navy he was in the army army yeah and uh we kind of left he hadn't been in about two weeks when he was a coral they moved him up but to help reopen count pick it and i was against the name had some effect about it so they reopened the count picket virginia then they then he went into another well it was actually an infantry house 77th century division so him getting drafted first probably 42 was it right at the beginning there no i'm not sure so your family was impacted pretty early from us involvement oh yes in the war and you guys were probably you know it'd be hard not to be nervous i think yeah in those circumstances oh yeah what year or what kind of was do you remember the feeling among your family in the community at the time about the you know first the uprising in europe and then pearl harbor what was kind of the do you remember your feeling at the time before you were in the service well yes of course when he went in i kindly idolized him since his oldest brother's younger father gone so my my big desire was to get on in see and of course my brother and my other brother couldn't go and mom wouldn't sign for me to get in at 17. see so when so and of course we was all just upset like it when pearl harbor and things like that happens you see really i i didn't know a whole lot about uh germany or anything like that you know we've been raised back out here in the states you know now pearl harbor you know a lot of people and i of course know where i was during 9 11. do you remember where you were here in the news about pearl harbor well yeah i don't know where i lived i had we had moved up into the saudi section for two or three years and that's where i live and and when my brother went in while we we left that place and went back to the old home place and followed water so you don't remember maybe uh specifically where you were like hearing it on the radio or i think it was on a sunday so maybe some folks were at church and um you know it's a long time ago so it's a long time to to remember exactly where it was because you know uh radios and television television or televisions especially so i i don't and really i didn't fully understand you know because you would have been let's see 20 you have been only 16. so it's hard to understand geopolitical wartime politics you know when you're only 16. yeah but uh i did i did realize that it was bad you know but that's about as far as he said to go with it now do you remember well obviously you would remember this you you were drafted or did you enlist or well as i say mom wouldn't let me enlist so i had found a took a job and downtown in some cheap metals work and downtown chattanooga yeah yeah and i i've been living down there and so when my draft notice came i put on it i was unemployed so i knew they'd take me right away so you would have turned 18 by then obviously well when i turned 18 in uh in april of 43 but then i sworn in in june 43. so you were drafted pretty quick after you turned 11 unemployed so they would have drafted me oh so okay so you're filling out probably your draft form before you were drafted you said unemployed so hoping that they would draft you in next thing you know yeah they sent out the questionnaires you know and that's what put on my question there unemployment on purpose uh i knew and reason they would do it i felt like they would do it so they took me right on now i'll be gone yeah now okay so officially in the army june 43 uh where did you go from chattanooga where was your basic well of course i went in at fort os where i was sworn in and then i went to fort mcclellan alabama pretty basic yeah see well i didn't have full education i didn't get into high school even because of last death and that eating was necessary then and it was hard to do so you went instead of high school you were working yeah before the sheet metal what was it do you remember well it wasn't anything but just more or less picked up jobs until the war started you know so just handiwork around town around farms or coal mines or any place like that that i could get a few hours cut timbers for coal mines there's saudi and voila boy and so just stuff like that it was not a regular job and you were providing for a big family because like you said your brother was unfortunately had to deal with his condition and then you're you you had three sisters and a mom and yeah so you were you were kind of man of the household uh you and your older brother maybe the oldest brother for older brothers out of the million dollars so that was well that's just what i chose to do you know and so end up in alabama for basic and from my understanding is that basic at that time was very expedited you weren't in basic for very long but i think was about 13 weeks and basically and that was of course the uh let's see how they initiated that anyway it was training for infantry training and that's what they do you want cause your glasses do you mind if i shut these because the light the lights reflecting off your glasses oh do you mind if i just maybe this first this first feature okay yeah that's perfect so you go to alabama for basic and it's 13 weeks does that include your mos training your specific job training or that 13 weeks or was that after basic well all it was was the uh information yeah well it's the infantry training center so that was basically all they give us was just infantry training first steps in infantry training you see and so you knew from the get-go that you were going to go infantry as your job well of course i didn't even think anything about it i was just in the army and wherever they sent me i'd go and as far as having a preference i i did at one time try to get into the paratroopers but at that time they had a weight limit and i thought it wasn't heavy was it uh it was 50 more paycheck wasn't it it was about 50 more paycheck i think if you're a paratrooper yeah but so you were infantry that's what you trained um and it sounds like probably working timber uh working sheet metal army infantry boot camp was probably not too grueling compared to the work you were already used to yeah actually they tried their best to get me to go into the navy because of that little bit of sheet metal work that i had done say but i refused i just followed my brother so yeah i won't be in the army and yeah because i know in the navy they they had a uh on each crew had a kind of a workshop where there was metal workers you know to work on the ships and stuff but so you were pretty skilled in some things now do you remember any kind of tough challenges when you were in boot camp climbing under barbed wire while there's live rounds or reciting the creed why there's gas going on all of it i was put through all of that now um so did you know when you were drafted and you're going through infantry boot camp and so on did you know that this was for did you know you would be heading towards europe or were you didn't know if you would go pacific uh east asia europe didn't know where you would go we got no choices they just wherever they took us that's where we went so still 43 when you were in alabama training do you remember when and where you went after alabama well i come by home for seven seven days and we met back in fort meade maryland and we stayed there was just uh might as well say a week too and then sent on down to poe and said oh i went out i arrived with my outfit 29th division 29th century division somewhere about the 1st of january 44. i don't know if i tried to always believe that it was between christmas and january but i'm not positive it could have been somewhere around the turn of the year right at the first of january i'm sure it was right at the first of january and january anyway okay um so you're kind of moving around east coast when did you find out and obviously if you're on the east coast you know you're going to europe probably by that point yeah were you doing training drills up along the east coast doing amphibious landings maybe or no nothing like that all we've done was just more or less exercising sorry about that [Music] these telemarketing also just said good it's so recording it was just more or less exercised and staying in condition though now at the end of that 13 weeks we had pretty good conditions that was pretty strong and uh matter of fact they had a sergeant up here in fort meade that tried to run us boys to death dungeon on purpose because and he said he could run all day well about three or four of us said well we would go away you met his challenge he stayed right with him he finally just said i understood his foolish would with killers were you getting promoted at this time too probably not as quickly as your brother but uh no no no no such thing as a promotion for me my education the patients i was going to and of course that was the thing with a place to prepare us it gets equipped and all of this stuff to go overseas and when we went from there to the port of marquez you can see just a few weeks being on the east coast were you ever scared of or maybe even aware of the possible german uh submarine attacks and uh maybe plane or even land invasions there was probably at least a little talk of that right they talked about all the time and trying to support to do if it was this that comes down after hell is ready so they kept that just going to mid time all the time you see until we got a lordship we got aboard ship traveling out but they said about almost a third of the time we was headed back toward the united states dodging the u-boats that was in the atlantic you're talking about when you were moving over towards europe when i was going overseas yeah took six days to get over there from new york probably would have been what march april may 44 somewhere in there uh maybe even may i don't know it was it was right across christmas time you see that oh so 43 yeah 43 you got over to europe and were there for a while well six months well well for the rest of the war but before the d-day invasion about well i was i was interested i joined the 29th division which was in practice then for the invasion you see it and in the states are in europe and you're in england yeah and so we landed in scotland rode a train all the way down to uh sort of weld lower end uh names excuse escapists or of the towns there yeah but we went all the way down there to where the headquarters was at division was you know 29th yeah and uh they just run us through and put sylvia in one place told me the other place and all this kind of stuff because it was a national guard outfit ours was out of virginia well it actually was nice to go to washington really the state 175th infantry regiment was right in washington and then the other two was out down in virginia ways so yeah so so you were kind of getting rea you were probably in something stateside but you were getting reassigned once you arrived over into england well we did we trained interest in uh our our regiment was stationed just outside of uh oh that airport down right bottom end and i know the name it was heathrow or gatwick heathrow no gatwick those are the only two i don't know not plymouth okay so it was plymouth we searched out of plymouth in a small village place type route called uh ivy bridge and that's the where our basis was of course we went out from maneuvers all opening my doors for weeks or two at the time and then go out to sea and go back on landings and stuff like that practicing on amphibious training so this is when you're really getting ready when you're in those six months in england you're doing amphibious landings uh now i know there was some kind of last-ditch effort by the german air force to do some bombings in this period do you remember any oh sure they bombed us the whole time they weren't plymouth and we're just out there we were just far enough out that we didn't get a whole lot on our account but now and then one where the bombs would hang and we'd get it out there so we had their bomb track trenches and everything to get in when they did you ever have any close calls that you remember well the only they only hit real close to us about one time but they were doing an awful lot of bombing and from where we was if we we could stay out and watch the lights that they shined on the planes as it went by with the r2 i mean the anti-aircrafts of foreign adam and all that kind of stuff so we was it was pretty well under far enough to enough to be quieter to what was going on would you just uh whatever you're doing drop everything run and jump in the was it a split trench they called it if it gets so close you know well you can lose that so you could see the german fighters and bombers at some points flying over because they had huge lights that you trained on on yourself and followed the airplane around and they didn't you could see that it was all nighttime bombing see the flag of around there when the shells bursted around them and all that kind of stuff so it was boy what a sight that must have been to see did you ever get see one get shot down or hit by the flag oh yeah yeah they it was a while they'd tear one out course and uh sometimes they seal those paul planes up after him too usually did you ever see a german uh maybe parachute out and be taken prisoner or well no not particularly as i would remember i never seen one of them parachute out but did you ever parachute out i know you said you weren't a paratrooper but they wouldn't they wouldn't take me in because it's too late so i have to stay with what i was training to do so you know we did take infant replacement training and then we took we took some ranger training commando training and jiu-jitsu and stuff like this we was we was busy 24 hours a day if they took an ocean take us on a 20-mile run at 2 o'clock in the morning all we could do is go the kind of training this sounds rougher than boot camp it's the most unreal to to believe it unless she is there now i guess the worst thing that they've done to us that i feel was overdoing we put on full field equipment now you know what that is about 70 60 70 pounds and do a 20 mile fourth march no breaks continue to walk it they would come along and have us a sandwich out at dinner time smoking eating ranks do the 20 miles before we stopped and i thought that was kind of punishment of course your feet might get to hurting you might get a skin place inside your shoes or anything you see there's no stopping you kept going you didn't have the opportunity to fall out of line so that sounds worse than you can well it is forced you see that was that was making us train for what was going to reach in combat infantry didn't have any breaks at all in combat you know we just we just started to live or die and so that i feel was what they was doing was forcing us to stand stuff that really was actually too hard to stand i bet you were in the best shape of your life though i could i could do my part you believe me and so uh your your training your training obviously you know the purpose is for the mainland invasion of europe when did you know kind of okay d-day is imminent you know i know they kept it under wraps but when did you kind of feel that okay they're positioning us moving us getting us ready for we're about to hit every time we went out and come back in we caught them problems now when we wrote a two-week amphibious run every time we went out they told us then that was it it was going to combat it so they would do kind of these test runs keep you on your feet make us make us try to believe it you know of course we finally picked up on it for because of the equipment we had and all the difference in equipment not not armed you see i've never had two rifles and things with no alvin issues so we knew that we went when they gave ammo so then even so well the last problem cause it's a problem that we were on uh they we did it with survival an issue and that was for d-day uh that was for d-day yeah before last last one we run before we try so one last practice run with indeed with a lot of ammunition and so eisenhower and montgomery and all of them was a speech thing he's usually just passing around through us there but did you shake his hand we was aboard ship on the way to france when he done that great talking you might trust was it over radio or over over the speaker's show and uh so um you know okay so you knew d-day is coming because last trial live ammo one more time live ammo that's the one yeah uh tell me about that uh maybe writing a letter to your uh i know that and especially for the company you were in they were expecting very high casualty numbers yeah oh yeah hell it was but we didn't consider that and anything we wrote home was was also processed they wouldn't they'd take out any part that you mentioned anything it shouldn't be don't you write a letter just in case you don't make it out to your parents or i didn't want to worry my mother or anything like that you see just i just always literally my time i don't know okay um do you remember your meal i think they fed you pretty hardy that uh right before board two yeah that's like yeah a matter of fact they they give us one and then we pull it out of ways and have to stop about the second one see see they were supposed to land on the field bad weather so we was ready to go now what we did after we'd done all this training some of us got hurt so i got hurt on training because i was tearing flamethrower c and i was actually a smaller guy but i had the biggest load yeah those will be tanks let me just drop a point until you might be asked yeah national guard outfit comes in regular armies are replaced in a nice regard outside if there's any upgrading it goes to these not to these okay so we had no chance at all of any kind of rank or anything like that we were just to fill in in other words so i was carrying a flying sword and i got knocked unconscious and when i come back to pretty quickly the training bangalore tarpon if you have any idea what the pipes the five foot long packs of tnt okay scope them together and make as many of these yards the guys that was in that portion of our boat section we had three three guys in the portion there and two guys on the flamethrower certain amounts of old stuff so in the duck boats right he was supposed to blow five sections of bangalore torpedo under the wall we could make a little ditch and throw the water back okay i'm supposed to be the second one in there into the end of that ditch and when he blew that instead of lord he's five people 10. i'm in 40 yards of that and when that explosion went off i'm laying down looking out for one of the helmet like i was supposed to seem like a little ripple from on the ground hit me under the chin and i was was it rock some kind of shrapnel yeah well no it wasn't just just concussion is what it was but uh so when i come to the front of the lieutenant was hard where's my flying throne so i managed to get into the end of the ditch and over the other end of it i couldn't get out my strength was gone for some reason so they saying i was hurting stopped so you were still trying to push on even after taking that blast you automatically done what you trained especially at that age you know you don't even kind of consider breaking an order you just done it no matter who said it and because when i got out i was uh i got away with enough to do anything on my nose bleeding whatever so they they still told me there was talk and said this is awfully important we can take you out and send you back i said well i think i could make the rest of it so i wanted to train and see on the first i've been under a live car so you weren't put out at all no i went on with them anyway and so i made it well right as far as that part is concerned but that's you my first problem is in that and so uh you loaded up june 5 ready for d-day started bad weather we came back we loaded up on the floors to land on the fifth and in the port now they took us when they had everything settled they took us put us in a staging area as they called it and we stayed a a little bit over two weeks studying the beaches over there and sand tables and all of this kind of stuff so we would know what we was going to look at when we got there so we was well trained and well ready to go and so our captain about two days before our company commander captain he set us down to give us a talk and he said he got in the front talking to us give us a little speech and then he said now now we're on our this on the fourth yeah and he said uh of course we was under guard because nobody could talk to us at all except we could talk about each other and he said some of you going to come back without legs some without arms some without eyesight said and a lot of it is not going to come back then he walked back and forth a few times let us let that all soak in our record and he said turn around and said if there's any man in this country that don't want to go get up out of here see we're sitting on the bank on the ground he said get up and come down here there'll never be nothing said to you you'll be no nothing rude said to you you just won't go from here that'll be all there is to it it won't be a sign this was company a didn't have one go up none of us went because we was all enthused excited and i don't know how to tell you what we felt like we wanted to get gold what's the company commander's name do you remember the company commander's name oh yeah captain fillers fellers yeah he didn't get out of the water on d-day they got help now uh company refreshed my memory how many men strong was company a a t-o for a amphibious company was about 85 million plus your officers see now they informed us that that we would be a little over 200 because they was taking others along knowing that's gonna have casualties they knew that you were gonna be the first to hit omaha beach and yeah yeah we knew we were we stood on that because we practiced that in training in the city so you knew you were the very first wave to take yeah yeah we you was going well well there was supposed to be some engineers ahead of us this this in our training down in that account the engineers are supposed to get in there and knock out some pathways like was through the defenses to where we wouldn't have running over mines have certain ways certain ways to go you know as they went in and done this they would hang a little supposed to hang a little flight if we seen a little flight we needed to go that way and all this kind of stuff was set up was the perfect way of doing it you know yeah but it didn't turn out that way well no we we punched him on the way in because the water was too rough see we went in in the center of a storm the place where it gets better in the middle of storm so that's what was the condition when the water was bad terribly about eight to twelve feet right do you remember your troop transport boat name i know they just probably had numbers maybe the smallest landing crowd well uh first the one that took you across the channel yeah it was uh hms imperial javelin imperial javelin okay yeah okay now that was a british ship british crew running it british landed company a we landed company a and the little boats that went in was lca's which was the friend or the english equivalent of the lcvp interesting so it wasn't exactly how you had maybe trained for there was little differences that's the first time we've seen an lca when we landed all our training in the lcdp now you don't know the difference that was the lcvp the whole front dropped out okay lca had a little wireframe going around here and a place about that wide dropped out and we was equipped to drag on both sides of it just about so that was the difference in the boats and that's the first trip we've made in those so you can imagine there was a boo-boo to begin with now i you know it's it's probably tough to recall but do you remember just leading up to the invasion you know your company commander's speech traveling on the british ship do you remember what was kind of going through your mind or maybe what you were kind of emotions or mentally thinking and well when we pulled out and stopped and had to sit there overnight to make the trip we're all coming to cutting up yeah they said dry another dry run rather dry run and all this kind of stuff so we debated that on on up as even after we started it was halfway over there when eisenhower made his speech when he did that we knew where we were going from there i know no questions about no turning back once the eisenhower speech was the final giveaway that this is the yeah and then kind of the the joking about just being a dry run kind of stops and that's when it could quiet them down well it might climb down because if you look at the hollywood recreation saving private ryan included people are pretty stone-faced at that point that outfits the first 20 minutes of it it's not exactly right there's just many things in it but he didn't get across the point of what it was leonardo said so i think that oh what was his name that doesn't hilbert yeah i think he got the point across the dc because of the rough water matter of fact i didn't see but two of them that ever got in one of them opened one shot and they knocked him out and another there was a farther leg the second one you saw these tanks that were there yeah when they tried to get out but because they wasn't too far behind us because our captain was a hard at some of them back and forth and you know they got going close to him going by and they was trying to get him to hold up till they could get on in what fuel would still float but he i remember he hollered come on in and that we just went on through and then your uh they had uh ships back there with a uh shot overhead you know what i'm talking about i know what we're supposed to say but that losing it in other words all the all the three shot over our heads just rained down in the harbor so you're seeing little shells go over your head well yeah actually it's uh i will [ __ ] thank the name is a simple but anyway they fought over our heads to land on the beach to kind of hold back the defense you see and give us places and things but uh they dropped in the water right in front of us we they just barely missed us so they didn't get on the beach at all our and you're seeing this splash probably and you're probably getting hit with the mist them popping those rockets is what i was trying to say rockets right somewhere ahead so they dropped a lot of them right in front of us and uh but there was nothing else in front of us then you see we were very first in omaha beach and uh so uh um were people maybe up chucking over the side or into the waiting in it in the boat someone would have their helmet off of their head you know they had it in a lander liner in the steel helmet they tore the steel part off trying to bale water because the boats pumps wouldn't uh sump pumps wouldn't keep the water out it was coming over the sides and everybody's out busy throwing waiting from the splash coming over wading in the vomit and everything too you know so it wasn't very pleasant so there was a lot of vomit in your in your landing craft yeah oh yeah i was sick but you know i can't say yes i did vomit no it didn't i don't remember you might have because when we got so close then everybody had to be in in their jackets and everything ready to fight so i had to be hooked up in my flight thrower scene and now do you remember your exact position in the landing craft well sure yeah yeah i remember it right well boats had a on the inside of it had a bench down each side and one down the middle that's what we lined up uh now most of these guys are well i won't say all most of them a lot of them were standing up into the back trying to get the nose up where we get as dry as we could you see but i couldn't stand up because i had the flying probe about one bullet would have took us all outside and so i was sitting down under this little ramp on that lca which i wasn't used to being there you see and i was kind of backed up in there about to oh force from here to the refrigerator there from the front corner and then when my boat blew it blew right into the side of me here i i remember seeing that part you see the exit yeah right in the side of the boat i don't know if we hit a mine or they hit us i don't know which it was i do know that i can remember the sound of it was a muffle roar sound so so your boat got hit on the approach yeah right jerry yeah we're almost touched down and that put everyone in there out of commission or well i i can't say what happened oh you were knocked out well virtually i was knocked out but and all of it and it's a wonder you didn't drowned her i had an assistant flying through her we made up the flamethrower group and after he made it i know and well i know some of it because we met together up in in virginia every year on d-day you know a bunch of all captain company a in other words today he was from new york and i run into him up for about a second one of those that i went to and he told me then and him and another boy saved my life and he said what caused him to do it was the first thing he heard was get him out of the flamethrower get the flamethrower off because that would have taken everybody out so you know i don't remember anything but but they got it out and when i didn't have nothing on except the little maywest thing i had around my chest they were trying to get it off you so it wouldn't blow up i don't know where they went from there so y'all were about to hit the beach and then maybe hit a mine you suspect it was right that's what i believe it was because of the sound of it and i never heard an artillery shell sound that way you see and i had one of them excellent from here at that time until later per landing craft is that a platoon or you knew all those guys right yeah it was called a vote section section see we were turned out from infantry amphibious and then when we made our beach head we went back into infantry we still worked similarly a lot we had certain ones in each squad certain ones that done certain jobs and all this kind of stuff we all had a position okay and but there was 30 men and and as a sergeant and the lieutenant and i think they had two sailors on their call them coxswains steering it yeah and they the one carried us in so just to kind of get the your your specific recollections of it you know exact you're you're heading on in company a first ones to hit the beach outside of the engineers that weren't really able to be down there heading in really close shells going over probably there's a little defense coming out as well from the german positions do you remember that at all oh yeah they've spawned against the boats so you were getting dinged you could hear it yeah well that of course it's hard for me to remember you see but uh but do you know they were returning fire going down we thought we had it later so we're gonna just walk in for the stuff that was coming down all them bombs now they told us it's supposed to be about a about 120 000 pounds or bombs dropped on water's edge 1100 yards in my see all of that i learned in england i thought it was gonna do that would leave us some bomb craters on the beach for places to get in and it also takes a lot of the defense out and when we got there it had not been touched the only thing that had touched with what the navy had for didn't i that day and or just right before yeah and uh so you're approaching close to the beach your landing craft probably hits a mine you get knocked unconscious some people around you maybe while the boat's sinking or was it still a flow because you were you were knocked out yeah well when i talked about where i could see it and i hate to say i was knocked out but i don't i just can't remember that you hit a mine and it was a haze basically one thing i remember was a guy laying about 12 15 feet in front of me to the side over here you see but he was dead i could tell pretty well tell that because i just started at him about it you know and he didn't move his face was away from me from your landing craft i i don't know where it come from by that time but uh i like to think that he hit with me getting around but anyway i i just like to thank that for just be good so so how far that body and yourself were you floating or were you close enough to land sand all right water was coming up around my feet i guess so you were pretty close when the mine happened yeah and when because time you know was arising fast i think you said about a foot hill or foot a minute i believe they said so the legs not working like they're supposed to see and i i wasn't was hurting in my back or anything but i kept trying to figure out why i couldn't move them and i worked around where i could get my hand back there to see it you know and i couldn't find anything and i'd take my arms and try to pull in the sand and they just dig in and i couldn't pull them away were there rounds going off around you or all the other horses everywhere all around everywhere and matter of fact you just got where you didn't try to dodge from yes any places as good as the next of course then what you see was a lot of the pen that didn't make it in because put out water over their heads and they're floating out there so you're landing craft close gets hit by mine in the scramble afterwards they get the flamethrower off of you you're a little incapacitated from something you're not exactly sure yeah and you're cr you crawled trying to get on end you know close up the beach but without your flamethrower obviously because they had taken it off anything no guns a combat knife and a 45 pistol that i shared with the flamethrower see did you draw them or well i couldn't use that a pistol i couldn't hit the side of the barn with it but i just woke carried it because i had to have some kind of weapon along with the front and so of course soon as soon as i emptied the flamethrower by my rifle i'd get my rifle to go again not necessarily my rifle any rifle that handed me a bill again but uh so you you saw him struggling oh yeah he was well he was unconscious of course but you just but he's still breathing enough to know he's still alive was that the two you know unfortunately gruesome sights you saw was the one body over to the side and then the sergeant on the way back that you can kind of recall vividly oh yeah i could refill that and when they got me aboard they pulled i remember they're dragging me over and vote i've seen all those and nobody talking much or anything you know but i recognize the sergeant anyway because he's one of our boat sergeants do you remember his name i know his name will but it takes me a while to dig it up yeah so he's buried up in virginia they brought him back so without any kind of weapons or anything you were just kind of in this area right off the beach after your boat hit the mine second or third wave or something swings in and takes you out uh yeah were you able to take stock of your injuries kind of what what did they end up being i don't know time i got back aboard ship i could i could drag along with a couple of happy big you know so it was your legs mainly that way yeah yeah yeah and couldn't he walk or no but time i got back to england i could we got back to england about uh somewhere around midnight i would say same day yeah well you know he went back to get another one to diploma and they put all of us off the british was not allowed to treat us or anything if they wouldn't even give us a band-aid well come and some of the guys wanting something you know ahead or so asperger's or something but they told us that they was not allowed to touch us medically now i don't know i have no idea what to say anything like it was about but anyway when we got back over there they unloaded us on the docks and and uh they would had a girl our fourth outfit from britain was just a block or show up they come and got us and took us out took us up there and called first army headquarters and of course they was down there by daylight and goddess do you remember when you were able to regain your ability to walk well it was during that period of time by the time i got back to the bear i could walk without help except i was just hopping pretty bad on the right leg wouldn't do what i wanted it to you know was it impact were you in pain were you in pain not much not a whole lot of pain not you know that's weird it just must have knocked your joints out of place or something so anyway they was trying to get all that was able to go back because what the commanded officer i don't know remember hearing but he was the officer was talking to us those boys that was able to walk how bad they needed us because we had the training and there's running fresh guys in there you know and they needed us over there real bad but if i wanted to go to the hospital they'd send me on up there to see if they could partner on my leg and everything but i told them well another boy and lady that froze from the boat section uh greg reynolds corporal we told him well we'll just go back to the up here so the same boat loaded down there sometimes they loaded they put us right back on was this all the hms and tell me the name again that british ship oh was this all the same british ship uh what was it called again it had a weird name yeah they uh it was the japanese empire javelin took you over first took you back and they took you right back when he come back to get load they put us in that load and we went back and so mean i was gone i think six or seven days i'm not sure which back in england uh no back to my company from the time from d-day about about d-6 or d-8-7 or something like that then i rejoined the company were you surprised and again you know like you said and i think has been recorded company a took very heavy casualties were you kind of surprised at uh what had been what had happened to it well of course i didn't know all that happened you know but uh because you were taken out of commission pretty quick yeah and uh i do know when i got back that the uh the boat started uh made it through and uh the lieutenant made it through lieutenant guerin and uh sergeant roy stevens and you're just you're you're ranked a private through all this uh well when you hit combat you automatically a plc okay so first class yeah yeah and uh so uh i know they made it back and graham reynolds so that was out of my boat section but that's all that's all i knew of at that time until after the war when i got acquainted with my sister flamethrower um was that their verdict too that it was a mine was everybody's kind of agreement that it was a mine that you hit not like a mortar shell or i don't know that they ever even discussed it as i remember they just say whatever hit us it was some kind of explosion yeah and i know my heart sergeant has actual war had to have it saying they either hit us or we hit them that's just his way of doing it so but they was there and all well it wasn't a half a company anyway but we're still working under a company headquarters and uh so there you go so what did you so you went right back obviously the the that first section of beach had been taken yeah by the time you got back kind of how did things unfold for you i mean you went you went back to england but then you went right back were you involved in their march through france right afterwards no oh september well i was taken out one time for 21 days under another list carried back to england again but uh so where did you go first after the normandy beach i know there was a bunch of towns right back there brought up there just it wasn't about a mile a mile and a half off of the beach at the most at the most when we got back and i don't know where graham went he went to a different part of the company or something but anyway the sergeant that was in charge i didn't know him he was a new one and but he he had he asked me said he said did you come in and i said yeah d-day and so he said well he'll take this boy with you and keep him which he said because this is his first trip and i told him all right so well they had re-equipped us at first during the headquarters rightfully and took off the old dirty impregnated clothes for they've been pregnant for gas and gave us regular uniform of course our commander would let us see anything because they uniforms to fight so and you obviously now had a rifle to defend yourself full load rifle with everything i needed so the flamethrower was a very temporary thing that was just the d-day and then i didn't fool with it no most of them didn't know i was flying through so i didn't bother to tell them and well it was a suicide job i knew that one would put it on every one of us near the suicide job and so were the people that you knew you probably knew some of the other flamethrowers where they unfortunately maybe didn't make it through d-day or well i i couldn't tell you who they were even because it was in a different boat section and each boat section was a little outfit by itself we were supposed to be able to travel by ourselves and you were the only flamethrower well beside yourself not sex she'd ever said she'd had a flying thrower was supposed to have a flamethrower and what was your so say things had gone ideally were you supposed to do some of the uh put the flame into some of the bunkers on the beach or yeah i seen it the other day where we landed on the sand tables just where you up above how tight see back in there was a gun emplacement okay and it wasn't too big but according to what they told me it was reinforced concrete the german positions yeah german possession far across the beach and i was supposed to get him within the first 30 minutes that was my direction to carry pollen and then if i had fuel left i was to go angling from that back up almost to the top of the hill upper a huge gun emplacement up there and i was supposed to take it if i had the fluid left and the assistant was carrying an extra set of taxi fluid and i was supposed to try to burn that out now you called it a a suicide job were you surprised that you came through well i don't really know how to answer that obviously you're grateful for well of course though uh grateful enough i didn't volunteer for kerry's functional again but you did you did your job and and uh he didn't want to fool with him i don't know what i was supposed to or what i tried to do what i'm supposed to i fought myself a whole lot which is not my fault did you volun did you volunteer for flamethrower or get assigned did you volunteer as flamethrower or did you get assigned to well they don't don't take volunteers there with us it was they told you what to do that's your job so anyway i just went ahead and took it and went out and i farted twice before we just get it just shortly before whatever encounter and you'll probably say of course did you ever encounter combat situations against the germans while you were in france three times a day again three times a day your hedgerow was a mainland resistance for them when we got to overpowering them they backed up to the next one then we had to take that one so every one of them was a with a battle roll all through there for the first oh for the first weeks do you remember like coming face to face where you can recall taking out enemies or well yeah you come have old eyeballs sometimes you have bayonets on and all this kind of stuff you know so did you have to you know i don't talk to talk about it yeah oh let me tell you so that people think it's fun to to the guy that takes a alive it's that moment it is two hours later yeah kind of coping with with what you've just had to do yes we're bound to have to do that because it's hammer made see so and now i'll tell you what i've told a half a dozen people people don't realize what a combat soldier is first thing he has to become is full of hate the next thing he has to become wanting to kill okay now if he don't if he's not that he's not a combat soldier that is absolutely necessary so that's what they do to the young men that goes in there that's what they make out of them fighters and and you kind of felt that going in against and and probably right you know obviously rightfully so against the nazi regime and takeover of europe is you had been you had seen the coverage you've known what's going on obviously the full scope of what they did was not had not come to light yet but you had that in you ready to do what you needed to do coming training you see they trying to put it in his heart like i told you 24 hours a day and so by the time i got there well into combat well well i was just a combat soldier and if i see a man i shot at him if hoping he didn't see me and all that kind of stuff you know and sometimes we'd have to go promote the hedgerow for their lead of course we had hand grenades and things like this was just that we could toss a hammer nade over the bedroom and kind of clear us out spot to go over and we tried it to start with we didn't know how to fight it now that time territory because that kind of territory wasn't in england they ever failed lined with a hedgerow and all of them was a battle and now a lot of guys i've you know i've done several talked with several veterans a lot of them were in kind of more support roles behind whether it was in the navy you know off on d-day whether it was on france behind the front lines it sounds like you were very involved in the front lines from the get-go we was the raffle company the very leaders we had the company of of our outfield was carrying heavy weapons throughout his uh 81 millimeter mortars and things like that they farted over our head over so they was back here and did you feel kind of a special responsibility of being that front line spearheading and and got to hear that i didn't feel anything hardly i didn't know what day of the week it was didn't care i didn't talk about the time of day but it was 24 7 without to be in battle at two o'clock in the morning if it wasn't eight o'clock and it didn't matter you know so and for your front-line soldier you know i've read a whole lot of things too where they talk about oh on such and such a day such as such a time it's such such a little place this happened to me and all this i didn't know any of that stuff and i didn't know what time of day it was on the way i don't know what what that i took the shroud on on uh may the second you know i don't know where i know that because i got my medical records i got a copy of them after i come out and that's when i learned what they never think about that was in the training accident when you took the shrapnel yeah some shrapnel and stuff i had gone 21 days that time and come back so sorry i uh uh so that wasn't the training accident when you so the the shrapnel i think you had said may when when when did that happen the shrapnel that took you out 21 days in the battle for my last sight low so that would have been not may but uh what july or august or because you know d-day was june july is what i'm trying to think about july and uh is the second day of july that uh that my records show and uh so in this battle of saint lo that's that's when you had taken the shrapnel and were put out for 21 days for for the 21 days they took me back to england the fractures well i don't want to come through this arm it would cause a whole lot of blood but the others wasn't that bad they could have patched me i could still use this arm but it would just kept bleeding and if they could have patched me up and i could have stayed over there as far as that part was concerned as far as the seriousness of what they've done to me there and but uh well i'll go ahead the rest of the story on it but this time i was company runner and i'd been back and i picked up some uh k rations for some guys we was on a holding position while they was trying to work on down on the other side of site level we was up on that east side and uh looking down into the town yeah always up on top of that uh well i found out later when i went back over there to martinville ridge where this road little road was and that's where you were stationed marketing we was in hold up there while he was trying to catch up everything get ready and i carried them and we always put a uh guard out in front of us about four or five hundred yards out in front of the mainline resistance out there to draw fire in case they'd come in on a counter attack it wouldn't catch us that was a technical way we looked at it so when i start to take that out that's all under sniper for and everything like that between us and sergeant hollered at me and said pick it take care on our turn stay with them tonight and i'll send you replacement the morning said they ain't got before i turned an 8-5 i said okay so i crawled around got it all out there all right and been there about what less than two hours you know you know the roads smaller house was a smaller field and we would had a fox hole this way looking this way and one in this the corner looking this way in a corner so i was innocent that looked down this way and about i'd say i'd say better than 20 somewhere between 20 and 30 germans come over that hedge row now what uh and immediately when you see them you know what they are they are combat patrol if it's that size otherwise just got through forge just to recon patrol that we knew was combat but they didn't know he's there so we was first to open fire on them and we had we had a pretty good battle and then but uh then i took this route was that from a grenade or from around uh what was it from an artillery round or no just the hand grenades of what they carrying with them you see it was a hand grenade you know we had hand grenades and that's hand grenade got me but uh of course i was still working because it hadn't hadn't stopped me you see until the blood kept running and i thought i better try to do something and i told this punch this guy and i said i'm going to sit down i sit down and rip my sleeve off this was obviously after the battle was over no oh it's still going still going and uh i'd have to jerk my little old packet to have a bandage in it you know and got it on and got my teeth trying to tighten it enough to stop the blood a little bit you know got his blood bleeding pretty bad and i couldn't get his stomach but i got it cut down a little and so i just i just got back hold up and stayed kept working and because there wasn't enough of us out there he said how many was it four besides five of the total five total fight and taken off about 20 30. so it took us a while to might change their mind down arm and so they eventually retreated because you had the advantage what i was able there and maybe made myself razor went back over the hedgerow and but and not being company runner kind of my duty was to do a body count but i was bleeding so bad and of course they they forgot them because like the stop was trying to help me stop the blood no no none of those could get it stopped for some reason i know i've never figured out why but uh so i told him well i'm i'm not gonna count you guys can count it and turn it in if you will i'm going the number of germans yeah that was when there was laying in the field what a dead or alive and all that tends to call them but dead but were you all able to take any prisoner or well i don't know what they've done with them what are they well i just don't know soldiers do differently they get so bad condition if they're mad enough they just shot him higher they don't they think the american soldier wouldn't do that but he would and but anyway my idea was to get back to the mlr at the main company back there where our our medic was you say we had a medic with us in each company that i run into as soon as they got back there he said he got hit a couple hours ago he's gone he's not here i said well how am i gonna get this one stop running so he tried he couldn't and he said the only thing i can tell you to do is get back to battalion aid station another long walk and you're by yourself right yeah and so uh well of course there's all holding positions too you see that little boy that i that he had given me you know that one the sergeant told people you could hear me he seen me as i was going out he started cussing me and called me everything you're doing that just to get to go out cutting up you know just cutting up playing i was thinking you were taking yourself out but you were bleeding pretty bad accusing me the other night through getting it done so i could get out of the way and all that stuff that's all he's doing so i was running for lefty when i got back there finally it was it was getting pretty dark and i remember i was just struggling to walk possibly and it was staggering and almost falling and everything and i was trying to keep going and they seemed they'd run out there and got me and took me on in that must have been a really trying time just walking trying to find a medic all by yourself going from position to position trying to find a medic knowing that bleeding that bad wasn't good for you and but they uh they checked me out back there and kind of got to a tourniquet area where it would stop so you finally found a medic yeah well that's a at the battalion aid station it's just a small aid station in betweeners and so they had a a jeep with a windshield let down a stretcher tied on a mount on the stretchers and they took me and tied me into the back seat where i wouldn't fall out you see you had me tired and i helped her with his hands a bottle of plasma they called it that they were going in that guy he was unconscious while they took us all back so you were with a bunch of other injured folks along you were with other injured along the way to respond they carried us on back to the collecting station back there to a little bigger place and when i got back there while i don't know exactly what they did with me i know that they that i woke up a time or two and then the next morning they was one of what they told me it would be next morning before they could put me asleep to take that out you know and the next morning well i clowned up i could get up a little bit while they offered to feed me but then about the time i got my food they hollered at me not to take it because this fish had put me sleep so from now you're probably pretty hungry well yeah i had lazy nothing the day before my rations were still over yeah but the next thing i knew after they put me to sleep i woke up tied up in a c-47 my stretcher bound her with a rope all the way around shoes sitting up on my chest and they flew you back to england yeah and i roused up enough that they happened to be a porthole coaster and i i see down unseen water and went back out again i didn't know anymore until the plane landed were there other injured on the plane with you were there other injured on the plane with you they kept them tied for all of the balls tied full of stretchers is full of them so when it hit the old planes you know this line those c47s and i woke up at that time now then of course it took him a while to get me to to my stretcher to take down and everything and then they come got it carried me in but uh and i i kind of feel like that that might be the reason i had still where the 21 days was lost below now now that i've been out since enough to think about it you see do you still have to this day do you still have fragments i have had a small one about that big that it was stayed in there but it and according to what they told me was that they didn't take it out because it had to go through from this side to get it do my arm more damage than it would to leave it in there yeah because i know that at some points yeah leaving it in there doesn't really hurt you yeah i i've lost it now i can't i don't know i think sometimes maybe it works it finally works its way out so you but did that uh i mean did you always have you viewed that or you know maybe it's gone now but did you view that for a long time as bringing home a piece of the war well germany bothered me too if you get against it back here it bothered you and everything and so it weakened the army just a little bit for a long time but i've always been born to exercise so i'll keep it going about it but but you're obviously probably right-handed so at least you're not non-dominant so uh you fly back to england what what city were you in a hospital in for 21 days was 186 general hospital 186 general hospital 21 days and then are you the one who instigates okay i'm ready to go back or they had to dismiss you or discharge you rather oh captain is they put me in an officer's ward because it was crowded and i was walking patient okay so i was at the old captain that come in there he's he's a big cusser he cuts to everybody to talk to you he's cutting up you know and uh he come in there and when not time for me to go he said well you're good for another round um you get out of here and go on back i don't see you anymore he said so i was talking to one of the nurses she had walked me down to the ambulance take me back out and he said especially you and her stand around here together you ain't supposed to do that it's just going on at me you know because we had already talked that over when i walked her back to her back time or two before i got down before it got loose to go and she's just friends now as a matter of fact i stayed pen pal with the toronto that come out of the service but it was never any more than just walking along talking and we we just took the lock at each other and uh when i got where i could i had her address when i got where i could i got back with her when i come out of combat sounds like you were able to keep track a lot of these folks who you met along the way well i was a bigot for pen pals for all the time that i could get loose to have pen pals to write to i enjoyed that for some reason of course being a country boy and all this but uh so 21 days captain says you're ready to go back and you're probably ready to get out of there so i went on back then i got knocked out in september so hold on one when you okay so 21 days you're headed back to france did you were you able to rejoin company a yeah so you stayed with company a your whole time in service well they have a place in my records that is listed as k but from what you remember from d-day on company a and you probably had a lot of replacements maybe coming in to fill those we was totally wiped out three times because with it one time we had 14 one time we had 17 another time 27 for the whole company was a the time of 17 had a corporate company calendar he's the only officer head so but they kept putting replacements to keep company going yeah that time the 300 radio had been been up there with us now you say 14. were you the last kind of original to stick with company a or do you it'd be hard to make it the time i left over there there was nobody else from company again there there's all replacements and so nobody from company a there at all so when you went back after the 21 days in hospital uh where did do you remember where you met back up with company a at like a town just beyond huntsman low so they had in those 21 days it was slow going on about where it is i forgot maps and i love cerritos but they had taken st low and and we're now beyond it yeah they had taken saint low and i think they took i see i was hit on the second that's like low fell on the 18th july 2nd is when you were hit saint law was a kind of a breakthrough so they moved out a little ways and i went on down with them from there through through gray i mean through here which is another pretty big battle after that one when i come out of that while they took us up into the brittany peninsula to take a town abreast so that's where they knocked me out so you're marching through you return they've taken st low you marched through veer uh make it up to breast and we didn't march through or not march rather we just kind of fought yeah fought through all encompassing terms took the same hill out there twice and that matter of fact we got a presidential citation for taking that hill or our at veer or st low or which one here here i'm i happened to get up there to see the monument that they put up to my outfit first battalion and so you've you're fighting through france you make it to brest and what happens there uh that that this is this is september 44 right what happens at uh that town that was considered about next to the d-day now what they told us on the way up there they had to haul us up when the veer battle was over they loaded us up with with two other divisions and formed the ninth army to go and help take breasts they said that they had about 20 000 people who hemmed up in there that couldn't get out by our water or lands him circled that well it was a big uh uh submarine park you see and they couldn't get they had people up there fighting them but they couldn't take them we couldn't do nothing with us for the mont berry fortress when they knocked me out they knocked me out on 16th and that thing fell on the 18th the rebs gave up on the 18th you keep uh you keep foot getting put out right before the the townsfall and the you know and the battles were on it sounds like yeah but uh was it was it a uh mortar round or do you remember what it was or just artillery shells was it one maybe one of the buildings i don't know but it was strong whatever it was were you in a foxhole at the time just jumping down when they started that you see and then you look over and see the foxhole coming in you don't know no more too so they the the shelling started on the 16th you you run and jump in a foxhole and uh foxhole coming on me from a blast well obviously since you survived it wasn't a direct hit but it was well i i did yeah the only thing that i could remember from that part for that part was it just seemed like i thought this is it see because it's coming in now i don't know i've been a handful of dirt i don't know my shovel or something but that's it was when i woke up that was all i could remember about it because i woke up in england they said 12 days later you were really knocked unconscious this time oh yeah yeah was this the and you know i know a lot of times things are a little bit hazy but was this the only time you were like really blacked out to where you had no idea yeah i didn't know anything since i woke up earlier standing in the bed anyway and i was confused of course and couldn't talk for a little bit when i finally got where i could talk i asked her you know natural question where am i at so outside of breast you've got positions outside germans start shelling you run to jump in your foxhole you make it to the foxhole right but still a mortar catches you and knocks you out as i went in it went in with me but now it wasn't necessarily my foxhole just watch holes all over the place down through there because like i told you every field was a fight and uh where we got stopped long enough we scratched out a foxhole as we could and always stayed there the deeper gun so and i don't know whose foxhole it was because we was on a move and uh now was uh because of this you know be you being at the front lines and and being injured a few times was veer the only town you were able to see through with the capture of and taking of yeah beer was well i could see all of of saint lo and then i traveled through it to catch up after it had been taken after it was taken and uh but veer that probably felt pretty good your first victory that you could be there for as far as it captured town well it was a rough deal we did a small mountain to us but it was a mountain and it just about like a mule space climate as you see and they had it totally covered up where the germans did and our outfit went in there and finally got them beat out and when we got them beat out to run off of the mountain well late that evening uh they come and brought us back off of the mountain to guard the bridge down in fear and nobody there to guard it so they brought us back down there we had to take the silly thing again next day so that's that's the reason they put up their mind went through there so basically the the folks who have taken ver you and others yeah they needed somebody to guard a bridge that pulled you out of here yeah germans moved back in and you had to go take it again yeah yeah now if you ever find a book and he wrote one of now what made this name leave me no i remember it well caught up associated with it he was from d company of our outfit there the division which was heavyweight let's see and he wrote an article on that uh deer well uh i don't know his name to come to me in a minute because i knew him well even after the war well he was one big one that was a man leading the force over putting in the d-day thing and the petrol he was prevented and he he wrote an article on it kind of explains some of that there so breasts taken out uh outside of it two days before it falls unconscious for twelve days i think you said uh wake up uh what haas same hospital or no it was uh the uh 101st 101st general hospital and unrelated to the 101st airborne that just happened to be though the name that just happened to be the name of the hospital is this what finally took you out for good from the war or yeah well it was full of guys it was kind of my shape too oh you were what you would consider pretty bad shape at that point well of course it was they uh kept me under locked key for a matter of two or three weeks what were the uh what were the injuries specifically now as far as knowing what he's doing i don't i've talked to doctors since then and they've given me what they think about it you know and talked with one psychiatrist limitless and they would explain what it was had been a head injury right it had been a head injury right to knock you total nervous breakdowns what he said it was a total complete nervous breakdown they put me to sleep wake me up put me right back to sleep for two solid weeks and but you obviously don't remember that oh you don't remember that all the part i remember is when they'd give me the stuff to drink tasted like gin i remembered a little over shot glasses and i took that and gone help with the pain maybe and but they kept it up that way until then also this i remember they they after i become they woke me back up and trying to get me over what they've done to me well they had they pulled the death curtains on me twice you know one of them places that they pulled a curtain all the way around your bed they really weren't bad because you're going to reward your other people you see you were in bad shape and i'd get better and get up and move to study myself i could remember that so well yeah so they thought you were in worse shape than you thought you were well i never was one to give up uh i still don't give up and like i tell them all the time give out but don't give up uh when you give up you're gone now did you think that you know and speaking of not giving up did you think that you were going to get back into it or did you know that this was kind of the end of of you going and fighting in europe no i fully expected i was going to get oil and go so but did you stay in that same hospital for the duration of the europe no front i stayed in arkham about christmas a little after christmas and they took me over to a place then called an american school center and i don't really took me over to try to train me i reckon it's something else because all i knew was infantry and for some reason uh the bunch that i went with they went off and left me there and i stayed there well it wasn't there but a matter of a month anyway if not more than that what were they going to try to train you guys well anything they could get me to do really kind of maybe yes they just couldn't seem to accomplish what they figured they should and and uh so they marked me as they sent me i saw an interior and or uk and so the major wanted to send me home and another boy and myself at about my same age about the same condition we was talking about it and we didn't want to come home till the war was over see i'm still 19 years old yeah i was about i can't believe wow only 19. and i i had been putting you in early 20s but you're still a teenager didn't have much sense he knew he already wanted so we got talking to him and we didn't want to come home and he said well we can't retrain you and there's nothing you can do for your help would be no help to us or anybody so you finally did you might as well go home so we told him well he could give us a job around the hospital or anything work till the war was over you wanted to be there for the conclusion to be there for when it's over come home after and so he found a hospital down there and come back and told us we're talking we directly at that time he said uh what it is you could work in this hospital down there for anything they want you to do just for your order or whatever if you want to do that and i said well all of it he said well good because you're supposed to stay close to a doctor all times you're supposed to eat five times a day and all this junk you said he said so it's gonna be ideal placement so that's where i wound up with that hospital come home with it uh what was the hospital name it was the 61st 61st central hospital do you remember what city do you remember which city it was in uh well it was out between two little villages uh one of them was called philippines after seeing so many injuries and so many awful things did was it something special to be able to help these young people get better working in that hospital and contributing yeah yeah i got into well we wasn't hard to care about taking care of herself really when all is said and done i can see that now i couldn't see it there but there was another with me that i would stay on this officer's ward and keep it mocked and cleaned up 24 hours 12 to 12 and then he'd take the next and that'll be off see which sort of went 24-24 between us so so you're pretty much serving as an orderly at the hospital yeah just more or less and of course the officers and all the walking officers they've done as much of the work as i did and all that was the hospital pretty filled up because the battle is still raging it was at that time it was coming down it was already coming down it was closing it uh oh okay well they went in that night provost marshall calling out the next morning you bet so you basically you got pulled off uh uh german guard duty because you were a little too rough with him yeah yeah and so he told me he started fussing at me that provost where he's a couch and he started fussing at me i said captain i don't want to hear any art without you out there trying to guard people that shot me now and cut me up like they have and you think i'm gonna pedal overhead i said i ain't gonna do it if you give me the chance i won't do it again but they didn't let you he said you don't get a rifle anymore oh you had a rifle keeping i'll be done just in case one started running because it wasn't out on that was a that was pretty bold of you to talk to a captain like i didn't care i didn't care i i was stepped up pouring down you see so but that's i come on of course he he realized it too you see i'm sure i'm sure that you just lean out with me and so did you stay working at that hospital through victorian europe through v.j day i got a call through victory in japan uh yeah no no v day v.e days i got caught on duty my 24 hours on duty and the other boy was up but do you remember how you heard that they the germans had surrendered oh lord everything that tolk said it everything screamed screaming it was blowing well built a ring to the hospital all around it the little villages around there where you could hear the bells ringing from one village to the other you probably heard those noises before there was like someone said it formally and you know explained it and you and you probably knew what it was did you just kind of forget that duty and celebration began or no well i just sat down with some of the officers and helped them drink up what they had well you guys probably knew that victory was coming soon i mean you know they were pretty much cornered well i didn't realize it was coming that soon until it happened really i wasn't completely sure of why they was closing up part of that or anything like that i mean that didn't matter to me anyway you see now was it did your hospital was it only u.s troops that you received or was it well probably british too and canadians but even germans they had germans and they had some are when i first got down there they said they come home in body casts and come back to us and body casts and i know del mar's trying to wash instruments at the at the operation room when they cut one out of a body cast that's full of maggots was the person living yeah but with maggots yeah but we all started going on and the captain said no way germans use their they put them in hard to keep down the infection oh so they did it on purpose the germans put it in they put him in the body cast that's taken him out um did you have any uh holocaust victims come through the hospital no as civilians just military just military so celebration you know you're you're injured in september kind of flow through maybe doing some work you're at the hospitals you get assigned to a hospital you stay there through victory in europe um correct and victory in europe there's a big celebration do you get sent back home immediately after or do you help close down the hospital or i just yeah i didn't i didn't go to town for anything answered or anything like that anyway uh you're probably still recovering i would assume from you i would say so yeah i know i know this that uh when we got back over here that the records was totally messed up and gone they couldn't your personal records my personal my my service records of now the medical records have been preserved and taken care of because they with the actual like i had enough points to get out immediately but i didn't even know that she said until you're talking about when you were injured or don't come out of the army if you if you was wounded in there anything like that you had more points the more points you had the quicker you could get out because then for duration plus six so he had it for six months anyhow but i could have got out straight with with all my ones yeah you were hurt yeah three times at least yeah so but i didn't know that and uh evidently they didn't know it down florida so how long did you stay in the service let's see i stayed in almost three years not quite three years so 46 yeah but you you came back home first probably what uh june i think it's december of 45 oh wow and but it's registered as the 6th january 45 and then i was still 46 yeah for 46. so you were still over there a while after victory in europe oh yeah yeah until we finish closing that place up and then come on we come home in in july about middle of july when you say close up make sure that every patient who's still there has received their treatment and are able to be discharged sean had ready to turn the place back over to hang on so you were still caring for people for a while after the war or taking care of the hospital brother yeah um came back home finally would you say into 45 beginning of 46 somewhere in there yeah came home i believe it was the discharge they gave me was in in december 45 and but then i got another statement after that that my time was an army was it was i believe it was january 6th or 7th 40. so so the closing of the hospital and you're discharged from the military went hand in hand it was right there in the same time well they wasn't treating me as a patient in the hospital at that time or what just whatever i needed of course it would do naturally but uh so you made it back home i bet you're uh you made it back home probably about early 46 back to saudi daisy yeah oh and i bet your mom was in your other your siblings were pretty happy to oh yeah of course uh when we got back to the state side they too we assembled in fort mcpherson georgia and then went to count southern alabama to break the whole hospital up see and that's i went on to camp cyber with them before i could i come home one time or two and that period of time they'd let me they'd let me hitchhike home or whatever down as far as my sister's in chattanooga i never did come on up here she lived down there because i had to go back the next day anyway see and but there they tried to run us through the infiltration courses and through the dummy handkerchief and actually there's 35 of us that had been through combat and there was almost a joke to be doing this kind of simulation they gave us orders that we'd be out there the next day which we refused to go and probably seemed kind of silly after not only having been through the combat but now the war is over we wasn't going to do it we just made her we got together made up our minds we were not going to do it no matter what the commander said and the command they told us this evening around about doing the time of the day said eight o'clock in the morning you'll be at the colonel's office for failure to do what he said but he took major nine o'clock in the morning i shipped out i missed him you you might have uh finally gotten the disciplinary something on your record got back to florida so they worked up told me to turn in all my clothes everything i had except what had on getting the discharge so i did went up to separation center stood in the long line name wouldn't call so got from up there all of them was gone about me and here i stand i said well where's mine i always said you're not you didn't get one discharged i said i didn't turn my clothes and everything um so anyways you were saying that uh i said they said i was declared essential and i had stayed up 30 days and i'm down here that wasn't right so told me to go back and get some more clothes so i did flew around a motor pool there [Music] until the next time i turned them in and after my 30 days and i was going through the line i got about half way up to there and a woman standing over the side calling and i'm real loud and said come over here a minute and i said you come over here i ain't getting out of line so she came walking over there and said i want you to sign some papers i said i don't want nothing this man's army's got what it is i want to go home and that's it she said well if he'll hold your place in line will you go here and sign a paper so i asked him he said y'all okay so i went over and signed that paper for her got back in line don't know who she was doesn't talk about her but you finally got your discharge six well i got my discharge come on home six months later got a letter i was discharged on a 50 percent disability my compensation would be on this way um so do you still a woman come to find it out she was a red cross woman she found it in my records what had happened to me seeing that there's hawk trying to trying to find some records on me when i was in the hospital or the corporal come in one morning bright and early with a clipboard in his hand and sat down to my bed asked me to remember everything i had done since i was reporting in the army now you imagine that kind of like i'm bugging you about right now what i've been through and all so we'd sit and talk and if i remember something i'd tell you if i didn't and finally i asked him i said well tell me what's going on i don't know what's going on he said your records is gone they missed uh he said we just don't got a record of you but disability speaking of did you have any kind of lasting injury effects from your time in the service oh lord yes still still they don't go away they stay leaving i don't know if they'll leave me when they've heard me or not they sure haven't left me before now you get used to it i don't say you get uh where you can handle it all the time or anything like that but most time you can turn around walk off or something you know you learn to have to learn to deal with it because you got it you're gonna have it with your volunteerism though originally getting into the service you know putting unemployed wanting them to draft you not walking away from company a when that when the commander had offered it sounded like you were ready to accept all these things and do it for the country when given the opportunity well that was just what i was supposed to do i i was always want to try to do what i was supposed to do whether i enjoyed it or not to see and that's been my opinion all the way through is this needs to be done and i'm here to supposed to be doing it and take me real quick just the rundown of after you got back so you came home 46 you're finally discharged what month 1946 was it june or july or and you couldn't buy a job all the other restaurants too some of my educations that i didn't have or sorry real quick which uh which month were you discharged in 46 do you remember was it june or july or uh i waited registers in in december 46 yeah no 4 45 december then a carryover in a few days into january so and what'd you do when you came back uh career-wise well i've got a the first year i was wild as a bucket well that really wouldn't fit me around i'm honest with you don't know i wouldn't fit to be around but they let me stay at the four-door thor pal and drive a truck around i'd drive a garbage truck or jeep or for the army for the army for the first year so and uh time we got out there then i tried to find a job but if i filled out an application it had a word a line on earth said are you a disabled investor you marked that yes you don't want to sell it in the garbage you can get it were you able to eventually find work quite a while after okay but i know i got thinking about insurance then for some reason because they just mentioned that my insurance there was out and i tried to buy insurance i couldn't even buy insurance and so i was just pretty well put out on the street uh i had married a little girl and she took off in a few months and just probably went out on the street then from there on picking up whatever i could and so i went to when finally got back in school for vocational training the guy that was in the dorm building down there worked for the va at that time on the va you had then and he helped me to get started on that so i went back and took a high school course in mathematics automotive training got my certificate in that and just as i got my certificate and now the guy come in wanting to go to asked the teacher about somebody for a maintenance mechanic and he recommended me and so i went ahead and went with him and come find it out they owned a construction company with big equipment heavy equipment and everything which i knew nothing about but i learned well stuff didn't stay with them long anyway because they're staying out of town and everything and the boss the one that run the cup there was a son of the owner and he was he come out of the navy about in the same condition i was and he wasn't fit to be around either so it was a need for a little bit right urban tennessee irving so i could it was a big plumbing company for your water systems and all kinds of big heavy stuff and so i took a job then with uh dave l brown company here at chad movie what was the specific uh well i just drove and i hauled his heavy equipment for a while or i mean what was the what was the company like what did they do what was the company that dave l brown like what did they do oh road building and actually at the time i went with them they was repaving the big airport out there that that their first big her painting they had done after the war he was doing that chattanooga airport yeah i'll be darned oh and so you helped with the building of chattanooga airport yeah he done all that kind of work and uh and uh then i i started hauling his heavy equipment from place to place if i don't have jobs out of town i'd take heavy equipment moving and so you were hauling heavy equipment there to the site that's now the chattanooga airport yeah when it was first being built this was first big and they had a small one out there but the first bigger that went in there is it the same location that it is now yeah yeah it's just been added too now with other runways and so was that kind of the career you settled into was construction related oh yeah for 11 years with dave l brown yeah and then during that time my back and legs was going on down on me and given me a lot of problems and i seen i was not going to be able to stay with that so i started training in something else i finally got my feet on the ground because i was homeless for a while but i finally got my feet on the ground and thinking so i trained him and he excused me no that's true but training training and electronics and finally got my diploma in that and like um radio and television stuff like a kind of a tech uh diploma or detection and it just repaired work more than what i was interested in and were you able to work that here in chattanooga well i opened a little place here in saudi davis and stayed in 29 years good for you what was the name of it pickett's television service pickets television service right up here on the main road yeah yeah yeah i was down here across from the funeral hallmark for a while then i moved into an old grocery store it went out of there and that's where that one went out is that where you kind of retired was well from it was a job that i could my cousin worked with me to start with and then he was older and he returned out i just bought him out and stayed and my back and thanks was in so much trouble that i could work what i had what i wanted to and i had to stay off i could without any problems you'd see so i i just managed to feed us raise four kids i was about to say uh uh you you married somewhere along the line yeah a married lady that had two children so uh two kids uh two step kids and then grandkids great grandkids great grades great great do you know the number totals for grandkids uh too many to count too many to get some of my milks they come in honestly now yeah so many down the line but you're you're at the great great well i had a grandson that uh that kindly uh pulled away you know from me to his other grandfather and everything and so in his bunches so i got the great greats and he he might come by once a year and i don't know their names or anything but children but he'll wrangle every time one's born introduce it to it and i want to see more for no telling how long but you got a big family moved in this house in in 1955 55. so you've seen a lot of changes up this way nothing else terrible wagon trail down through there no pavement or anything they bought their date right out here to his telephone on the yard four houses down there didn't have 27 dayton pike wasn't paved no well they have repaid they tried twice or three times since i've been here uh but but it wasn't paved when you first got here well dayton park this little road out here was just a path just like for you wagons in it you know it wasn't it had some gravels on it places ways the gravel stopped out here telephone pole there's one more house on down there anyway so the last big thing i want to talk about is your recent celebrity status and going over there for the now was that your first time back uh third okay but probably the most exciting i would say well i went with the 50th anniversary with with the 29th divisional association when it was the 50th you couldn't do anything much because we had four buses so kind of had to go with the group yeah so when we one of two buses would go over to do this was today and two over yards and then they'd swap the next day you see and so you didn't get the new months and then as luck would have it 1999 the lady in new york got in touch with myself and another 29 out of 115th internship down here right back and of course he come here day after day day and i went there on d-day and she was allowing some soldiers to go with the way was setting up a plan to take school children or well 16 and up and and into the battlefield since thanks and teeth do some teachers call normandy allies you may have heard of it still alone and that was the first trip they went and they wanted us to go with them for our what we knew so you probably were able to teach them some things and go to some very specific locations that you remember yeah because you could get in the spot where you used is ahead or something like this and talk to the children all this kind and you remember the specific spot oh yeah yeah yeah and you went to those specific spots with the children it's the 50th anniversary the governor named steve west in england got in touch with me and that other boy and i got in touch with the other boy and he told me that that he would bring a jeep or two over there and show me around on one of the days was over there so naturally i went for that well come to find it out when i got acquainted with him through the mail and everything he owned a museum over our 29th division with everything he done he knew everything the 29th division down where it was maybe even more than you did so i said well i'll be happy so he picked us up we had another soldier that went with us from up in north carolina so there's three of us they come on sunday whether it's going to take a whole day off well it was actually the the i said son it was actually the day that they're going to have the president of our taxi i don't know well clinton was his president there and he come over and got us and took us back out in the field and i asked him how he knew he said you tell me what company is with what day and i'll stand you in the field where he was and he knew that much i told him on may the 2nd company a he stood me right here where foxholes was now not out where i got hit you mean july the second but i was out where we was on our main line last company runner and i got to looking for the hedgerow that went down to go out to where i got hit by the grenade they've cut the hedgerow down there's a big field but you recognize the land i recognize the place where the company was set up that's where you got hit by that german grenade yeah um so how many presidents have you met did you meet clinton how many presidents have you met i didn't meet clinton he didn't i was just back in the crowd but this time you did you know the big ceremony going over there that that was going to happen yeah yeah you know because they was trying to get me what he done he brought four jeeps in a carry-all and some other uh historics too and we would they went out with us and we talked out there almost almost too long because we had to get back into at a certain time because they had locked everything down for miles around when we got back they wouldn't let us in so he went to about four different places and they wouldn't let us in no you're not going you're bulked out and finally i i remember a little thing it was about that wide and they striped up with stuff that they had give us batteries and i'd stuck in my pocket so i sat behind him and to carry on when they stopped us that time and i said show that guy this and see if that has in there he handed it to him but god wouldn't even take it he said go ahead now this is the 99 1999 trip right yeah okay and then with this last one did you know that this was in the in the 94 94 94. and uh so that was a pass that i had and didn't know it anyway but we got back here just a little while before he landed so back to the cemetery where he gave his food now this this 75th anniversary you probably knew for a while that you would be going over there for that right the 75th yeah um did you know it was going to be the big uh recognition ceremony that it was you didn't know no no see i for some time myself had been trying to find another company amen that landed on the first wave in and they all gone i couldn't find never been able to find one without having people call me and ask me if i'd hear one and all this kind of stuff and i didn't well then this guy calls and told me what he'd do he said y'all pick you up and you drive away and put you back in your driveway well i was having some cancers taken out my mouth and they said the other so i put it off and it's the third time but then i told him i would go because the doctor got me healed up enough and left this until until i got right here when they were trying to find someone else from company a did you know that you're the only one or that's kind of the the conclusion that was made right is that you're the only one i didn't i didn't connect the two but they led me to believe this that he they was wanting some war veterans over there to sit behind him to make the speech like he has you know whatever somebody sat behind the president yeah and uh just to be present back to our sea so that's uh i thought well that'd be a great deal anyway you know and and they did they put them in wheelchair and carried me whatever i wanted so that is that is true though that you're the last of the company a omaha beach survivors yeah that's that is what they said on this so i i don't know where they got that whole total information or anything but i i don't have any right to deny it or agree with it what is it if you indeed are what does that kind of mean to you to be the last person to carry on this this legacy of company a well i don't know that it changes anything really it's just it does i believe in the lord and i just believe it's blessings from him that i mean here now absolutely matter of fact they interviewed me on television one time and asked me how i managed to get out of that on day day i told him i had to pray in mama and two praying nights and that's what got me out and i i still believe that same way and i do know god's in charge of everything and it's his business and i'm willing to go along as he wants me to go and go when he's through it now speaking of the president did you know that he was going to personally recognize you in your speech didn't even know i was going to be recognized when he called my name i i didn't know what to do i felt not running but i couldn't run yeah you guys were kind of in a wheelchair i think they had two rows of d-day veterans there with you well they had we had the group that took us over to 14 veterans and male veterans and one nurse veteran that also worked over there and they was all there and they they was be there close to d-day anyway all of them was uh well some of them were still different outfits too you know when all 29 or so was that special to be personally recognized by the president was that special to be personally recognized by the president yeah uh it's hard to explain a feeling on it of course one i never had before not had it since but to to think that i've been kidding with some of them about being tennessee hillbilly and here i am shaking house was president so it's it's something you can't hardly imagine you know i don't know if you knew this but you're his twitter you're his twitter banner image the president's did you know that twitter banner image no yeah you're his uh you know you know they're always talking about on the news is tweets and stuff you're his you're his image up there up top okay let me let me pause this and let me show you good i'll show you here it may still be up there i'm pretty sure it is you see yourself yeah and i think that gentleman who's sitting next to you is the other one who was who was recognized yeah and i think the one over there the black cat was uh he's a general she's 99 years old isn't that cool yeah i think that's hill right there 99 year old general was over the eighth he's a tanker outfit i talked to the tail with it but but it got kind of mesmerized me all set on something i know to say and when they started putting me up front and in the van and looked like treating me special and all this and i asked them for that just to make keep be sure that i got set in earth the rest of the guys that you look for breakfast and stuff because i didn't want them to get offended at me i think i something else so but they i like i told my wife they treat me as a king and that didn't i couldn't figure it all out how long were you over in europe total how many days this trip ten days ten days total okay so you went to a lot of these sites and ceremonies they took me back to where i landed on the beach one evening and i gotta we got they took some pictures of that now the first gun emplacement down earth covered up or down that was gone without washing up on the hills there's very obvious they in their self-esteem here they loaded me in a wheelchair and four of them pulled me halfway up to that other one and it got so steep this afraid didn't hurt me and they don't brought me back down i never i can't even conceive of the people treating anybody the way they treated me honestly you get a lot of nice dinners and just as good to me as all of us all also everywhere the veteran wednesday needs a wheelchair there's loads to go and take it how many ceremonies would you say you went to how many days was there that many huh several big ones was that one and then we had i don't know how many but but quite a few meals went with it talking and singing and so on and so forth and then the day they dropped the pair troopers we was up there they had lined us up us guys together in the mines sitting right up on the front of it in the building where we could watch them coming down you see and we desire we've always there what little of them we got to see where we was busy signing autographs and pictures the company they go well i call them a company that took us over there and brought a thousand pictures of each of us and the vast majority of them was giveaway that day and you autographed a lot of them i asked i asked one of them over there united how many autographs that one of us would sign and he said well the best i could figure it out i'd say yourself a little over 600 i said you've got to be 10. how are you handling your newfound fame and well i think they got us about as curious about it if anybody could and did you know you were going to basically become a celebrity kind of no i have no idea because you know that's not ever been me to seek glory for anything but but now you are like like it or not i guess now i'm i'm happy two quick uh biographical questions before i forget did your brother make it out of the war okay yeah he stayed in the army 30 years wow and uh what year did you finally retire from television repair uh 1989 89 okay so been enjoying retirement since yeah but uh stayed out about oh maybe 60 90 days and i'm too shaky because you've always worked so you retired in 89 but you found some stuff to do afterwards so i've worked since i was 14 i didn't i can't get it didn't get over it but uh oh you worked even to oh 14 you said yeah from wow from no from age 14. oh age 14 sorry that's what i worked all that time somewhere everywhere i could but but uh but you found even after you officially retired you found some work to do another long story making sure as a can 1949 they sent a little doctor woman doctor around here that was cancelling all the the uh compensations that she could cancel that she called me and down there talking to me and and uh asking me sexually over-ending questions and stuff and one question she said mr pickett when this happened to you was you sleeping with anybody no i said look there in a minute and i said lady that's a foxhole on the front line when nobody uploaded me i was the only stupid one if they had me i would have been so it goes on and she asked me another similar question i said wait i believe i'm the one that's got the brains i think there's something wrong with you i said i instead she said i ain't through with you i said what's the door to say so i gotta well she put in to cut my compensation from 50 to 30 percent now this i know by what i have done since okay so the guy that was down there to talk about it to va i think his book he turned her to who it was he took me out to another doctor the other doctor made a little record for his stenographer to write the letter off of he let me hear it he said instead of cutting the man he should be raised to a minimum of 75 percent okay now i trained to be a service officer since so i know what happened then that i didn't know then okay they got those two letters in there they sent me a letter come immediately preparedness to stay 30 days in the hospital in nashville the captain had told me that they like to kill me and learn not to never take another not let absolutely refuse any kind of anything that's doctored me because i couldn't stand that other treatment that way ain't no way you don't get me to go to the hospital see because that was the first thing hit my mind so i didn't go they stopped my compensation totally in 1949. i thought it back in 1988 39 years they kept my compensation that's what the va used to be and by far it's not that now it's a beautiful operating thing now but so it was almost kind of a a they they shortchanged you big time well sure they did for 39 years see i raised my family without that income what i could beat out of the woods you might say oh so i get what you're saying so when you retired is when you were finally able to start withdrawing on the va again yeah well uh when i went and got the compensation back and found out that kind of what had been going on i knew i was not the only soldier that had been treated that way so i was retired and i decided i'd pay my way through school to train to be a service officer i did that in 99 and i you know i actually got my my diploma in 91 91 and uh i was a service officer out of the clinic there and for the clinic service officer for 13 and a half years and i filed claims so i know what the situation us back then and they didn't they wouldn't give me any back pay because there's a no show see they just picked it up from there but when they did pick it up why they sent it back at 30 percent i filed a claim against it and they raised it back to the 50 percent and somebody from the main office over in the regional office in nashville sent me another form to fill out and send it back well at that time i didn't exactly know what but i filled it out and sent it back he raised me to 70 and started paying me a hundred percent 100 yeah 400 percent did what it was was unemployable and then soon after that i had filed a claim on a back and leg condition which i never was able to prove that that bothered with the flamethrower on that because that's where it started and so i finally probably felt uh really uh unjustifiable to see these percentages over time just be bouncing around almost arbitrarily based on the bureaucracy yeah yeah that's why i'm not so i get agitated at the va that way they operated down i wanted to try to help do something about it but see i tried to file a claim on my back because carrying that flamethrower 19 years old running hit the ground with it and all this kind of stuff and my back's all crooked and turret from a skull to a sacrifice bowed down they can't knock down about it i got his office address and i sent him the whole package to both places so there's no they can't claim that they don't have the record and when they when it got back they was apologizing and everything probably for decades worse and he sent me a copy of everything he sent them he told risbound is a 100 total and permanent disabled combat related whatever he needs you're supposed to do the secretary said this yeah the fee basis fee basis who has turned it down that bunch over murderers were bad at it so i've got a good lick at them too you see and i filed claims over there i know it's 13 and a half years since i filed claims with my certificates right but uh

Channel: Michael Stone—I subscribe back

Views: 96,139

Rating: 4.8756218 out of 5

Keywords: world war II, d-day, dday, europe, omaha beach, army, military, war, wwII, france, normandy, operation neptude, operation overlord, company a

Id: 3wVB68woKXs

Length: 142min 38sec (8558 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 27 2020