Bill T. is a member of the Old Bastards. He is one of the few who is a veteran of WWII. He tells this story with great humor. It is one he would tell when old Army buddies would get together at his home. He would wait until his late wife was in earshot.
There is some truth and maybe a little bit of a stretch.
He tells that he was dropped into France 10 days prior to D-Day. As a member of an advanced party he had a great number of duties. The one he tells that used to rile his wife was this one. One of his primary duties was to help the French women learn how to greet and treat the US soldiers. He did indicate that he showed them how.
Whenever his wife heard him tell it, she would throw something at him. I don't think he has any scars from it. It is funnier when he tells it.
Hi Jack,
ReplyDeletedon't know, how often you check this page, but I'll leave a comment here anyway. The Christmas-gift-story was sweet. You know, I went to school with some of the boat people...
The story below that (tear gas/ chopper): I had just seen your comment on phosgene kid's blog and was wondering what really happened, but here is the answer, I only had missed it before, because I only briefly had glanced over the page... but you might anyway wanna check what I wrote...
Re WWII: hm... kind of interesting taht he tells such a sweet story... well that's not really what I heard from others. Must really be due to his good sense of humour. My husband's uncle was there just off the beaches, keeping the engies running and aparently evacuating as many as he could, but he was still to traumatized to talk about it. All I know is that after D-day he was even more upset about the allies then he was about the enemy. So nobody in the family did ever get the real story, but as his brother said, I should look it up and see what he really got his medal for... so I will do that one day when I get around to it. There are not many of these people left, who can tell their story and soon, it will all be media-fiction, what is left.
Mind you, I got really close to having an interview with one of the german soldiers who was there on D-day, but then I blew it, because I kind of fell out with his buddy. Well, I got a really story out of him. it wasn't easy at all, but eventually patience paied off and the best thing. I've got it in (hand-!) writing! However, then I made the mistake to ask him, what exactly he was thinking/feeling when he was firing off those cannons (well.. Flak-fire) and then it came just a pure wave of hatred and a lot of false accusations and at that point I just felt like murdering him. Eventhough I managed to swallow most of what I was thinking without exploding... from that point on it was very clear who was on which side, even without really saying anything!