Easy Company Veteran Edward Shames describes combat with the 101st from D-Day to the Eagle's Nest

frightening scary wonder if you're going to be alive the next morning that's about the description of the jump itself i joined the army march my part of the service september 1942 because they had something that i wanted there's a specialty outfit that they just designed called the experimental unit 506 parachute inventory something brand new at the time i was looking for something different i didn't want to be drafted in the newspaper magazines this new unit being formed parachute infantry unit it looked very interesting and it was for me i said okay i'm gonna try so i went over fort monroe fort monroe was army headquarters at that time the pentagon was built but not occupied just finished when i got over to fort monroe they explained it to me what was going on and they said i had to be 20 years old i was only 19. i had to have my mother sign so one of the guys said where's your mother i see what so happens is she's in the car he said all you've got to do is get her to sign it you're in of course my mother wasn't in the car she was home and neither did about a thousand others in pete my same petition that mother signed it as well like me so i signed it i joined the 506 parachute infantry strickland experimental unit 7 000 people qualified for it 7 000 they only needed twenty five hundred so then the picking started they had to get doing the round of twenty five hundred they put us through the worst you could possibly think of to to to weed us out which they did they came up with 2500 of the finest men in the country frightening scary wonder if you're going to be alive the next morning that's about the description of the jump itself what happened was i wasn't supposed to be on that plane but because of a writer a british writer from the associated press took my seat in the plane that i was supposed to be on and i had to go to a different airplane at the last minute not knowing what the hell i was going to do i didn't know anybody there finally i got my seat sat in the plane everything was very quiet naturally everybody was in his own thoughts finally when the red light went on time for me to jump the man in front of me slipped on the floor i had to help him up to get up with all the stuff he had he had about 150 200 pounds of material on him besides his weight got him on his feet hooked up got him out the door by that time i know where the hell i was no one else did jumped out of the plane and it seemed like it took me a half hour to get down we actually was about 50 minutes from playing to the ground but i never did land on the ground i landed in a bunch of cows in a barn later on i found out there was a carnation milk company born and they were cows being ready to be shipped to germany prized cows from normandy i got myself to yellow scared to death of course not knowing where i was had no idea because i was supposed to i was the operations sergeant i made the sand tables for the jump so people would know where they were when they got on the ground things scattered around so bad nobody only one plane hit the ground where it was supposed to be that was number one plane that i was supposed to be on and on that plane everybody on that plane was either captured or murdered including my battalion commander finally i decided i had to get out to where i was i didn't know where i was had no idea had i known then that what i know now i wouldn't be here because i would have dropped dead from heart faint because i was in a town called carrantan which i notified my people on the sand table to absolutely avoid at all costs because of a heavy concentration of enemy in that town i didn't find out till about 10 minutes later when i finally picked up about six eight men and i told them i said look i have an idea where to go but i have no idea where i am no one else did and they were scared to death because i wasn't exactly happy but at least i had my senses about it i was supposed to be the operations sergeant so i was supposed to know something so finally i said to the man i said look all we're doing is just heading the direction that i think i said what we ought to do is stop by one of these farm houses i said this is normal it's in normandy and i said these people know the ground they know where they are they're the smartest farmers in the world let's find out from them to tell us where we are exactly they said okay of course they would do agree anything that i wanted at that time because they were really scared to death i wasn't exactly happy finally we came to this small small house knocked on the door firing everywhere fair stuff in the ground you know in the air on the ground the farmer and his wife came to the door she start screaming i grabbed her by the face put a hand on put my hand on her mouth put her down on the floor got him down on the floor and i told him what little words that i knew direction french directions he understood and i told him it was the uh invasion invasion so he understood with all this noise going around him so opened up the maps underneath a raincoat with a flashlight and i said to him point note on the map i said saint mary glees that was a town near where we were supposed to land and he said we and he pointed this way i said saint mary glees we saint calm demon we now moved the map around a little bit to orient it got to two more places and finally i said karen tan and he knocked on the ground bing bing bing he said we karen's hand so i yelled at him i said karen's hand karen's hand he said we we we on the ground so then i realized he was telling me that we landed in karen's hand which scared the living hell out of me right then and there so i told the guys i said let's get the hell out of here right now i know where i am so we got out of there we headed direction of the bridges where we were supposed to have our mission and we were about five miles away so i that picked up about 21 men total and all of them scared to death of course i was exactly happy i didn't want to show them that i was scared to death as well so i did a pretty good job and finally we picked up an officer a captain so i said captain i said fine told him where we were and i said take over he said no no he said you look like you know what you're doing you i'll follow you so i had a captain and 21 other enlisted men to take to the bridges on the way to the bridges we were stopped in the middle of the woods it was the headquarter the headquarter company of the 502nd colonel johnson he was the commanding officer and he said to me he said james oh he said sergeant he said do you know where the hell you are yes sir i know exactly where i am he said show me so i showed him on the map and he took he had about eight of his men in my group he took them with him so we kept going going going finally at four o'clock in the morning i ended up at the two bridges that was our mission and when i got to the bridges captain shuttle my boss was there waiting instead of the battalion we had 117 men plus the 18 that i brought so the first thing he told me he says incidentally i'm supposed to tell you something if i see fit he said you are now a lieutenant market garden as far as the 101st airborne division and the 82nd airborne division was concerned was a success the big failure was the british the idea was to open up a corridor parallel to the rhine from belgium all the way up to arnhem netherlands where the bridge cross crossed the uh ryan the idea was to keep the roads open 100 miles from belgium all the way up to arnhem the 82nd airborne division and 101st kept the roads open the british was supposed to plunge through with their tanks and move but they forgot something they forgot that stopped tea at four o'clock in the afternoon they had to stop fatigue don't make any difference where they were so consequently they were cut off we did our job we collect we uh our mission was successful they lost the whole division we came back from holland after 72 days of fighting 72 straight days on the battlefield by the united states army we were relieved to go back to france to rest relaxation all in all we went back to france to a place that was 100 miles from paris all we could think about was the fact that we're going to paris that's all we could think about because i hadn't had leave since april and this is now december so i was the first one on the list list came out people going to paris 72 hours in paris first name on the top of the list was lieutenant james he was a motor pool officer taking two trucks to paris uh 36 men two officers me and another officer i was the convoy commander big deal two kind two two trucks now we were in champaign district of france you could buy champagne for a pack of cigarettes cigarettes cost us 50 cent of cotton that's 5 cents a pack so we had plenty of champagne first time i'd ever had champagne in my life i still love it anyhow the time came about around december the 15th 16th and we were listening to the radio and the german had a breakthrough north of where we were in the ordinance of belgium but didn't bother us because we were going to paris and we had plenty of money i had a roll of money would choke a horse and i was going to blow it all in paris for three days waited for december the 17th that was a day that we were going to load up those trucks at seven o'clock in the morning and head to paris 100 miles loaded the trucks up got 10 miles outside of where we were the truck driver next to me says lieutenant there's a mp on a motorcycle telling us to pull over i said the hell with him i said we're going to paris i said somebody's playing a joke on me because i was a new man new officer of the whole unit and they all played jokes on me i said hell with him let's go he said sir that's a captain on that motorcycle i said you kidding he said no sir so i looked out the window sure enough there was a captain i pulled over i got out of the truck i said what the hell is going on he said turn these trucks around you've been recalled to going up north in belgium don't know where but you call your your your unit is being loaded as we talk you're not gonna have time to do anything but change clothes and get on those trucks that took care of paris right then and there not only that i was on a brand new uniform and never wanted i'd wanted one time when i tried it on and i looked like a a a gypsy with that beautiful uniform or shine up when i got to camp i was told don't change anything put all my coveralls get any jacket you can find because all of our heavy stuff was turned in because we'd been in field for seven or seven days it was all worn up all of our material everything weapons and everything else you don't have time to do anything just grab your weapon get what ammunition you can and get on those flat bottom trucks that's what we did where we were going had no idea in the world we know we're going north to belgium got out of the trucks had no idea where we were somebody saw an old beat up bent up sign and said bastogne had no idea what bastogne was never heard of it that's where we stayed until january the 21st and we held off 180 000 germans into eighteen thousand of us heading to burst garden went to the headline told by colonel sink he said you're going to be the first one in burst garden he's you're going to be the first one in eagle's nest with your platoon so i said fine i didn't know what the hell eagle's nest was when we got there of course it was magnificent and had everything in the world had all the whiskey you could possibly drink all the food that you could possibly eat and i told my men i said okay i didn't allow you to loot while you were in belgium or holland or france i said now you're in germany it's yours take anything you want except the innocent life i said if you come across any of the ss people that give you in a hard time shoot the bastards and they did so we got to the eagles nest there we had everything we wanted we looked around and we looked at the automobile uh garage there were about four or five of these large limousines mercedes limousines so i figured i'd like to have one of them so my men got one for me to ride around in and i was riding around burch's garden in that hitler z uh limousine so finally colonel sink found out about it and he got raised hell he called me and said get rid of that damn call he said you got no business with it i said yes sir i had it about three or four days so i said what should i do with it he said i don't give a damn what you do with it get rid of it so i talked to my number two man i said i got an idea i said we're right in front of what are called gross glockner gross glockner big mountain i said let's go up to the mountain a little ways i said i went up there the other day take a look around as uh overlooked i said i want to see something with that overlook so we went up there with the with the with the eagle with the hitler's automobiles got out the car got to the edge of the overlook and pushed it off went down about 3 000 feet that was the end of that automobile i noticed the guys first went for the silverware and all the other good stuff and i asked one of the people working there uh a hollander i said where's the whiskey he said down below i said let's go down and take a look at it so we went down and there was and there were those two bottles of cognac label on it for the first use only i grabbed those two and that's all i wanted and i i kept one i gave the other one to colonel singh and i brought it home i knew that it was worth something just the idea and i did just want to drink because everybody drank everything it could possibly get their hands on at the at the eagles nest they drank it dry my two bottles were left gave one the sink i brought one home and of course i kept it in at steve's bar mitzvah i decided to open it up and drink it there which i did and we did we had a a lot of my buddies there a lot of my army buddies and of course after we got through we threw the bottle away so somebody asked me about oh i don't know a couple years ago what happened to the bottle i said the bottle i said we've we drank it what happened to the empty bottle i said i'll throw it away throw it away i said that's right he said you have an idea what that be worth today i said yeah two cent i guess he said at least ten thousand dollars you

Channel: American Veterans Center

Views: 473,851

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

Id: uxJAtzQnyLM

Length: 23min 11sec (1391 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 27 2021