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I go to a WW2 D-Day re-enactment every August in Conneaut, Ohio and see many WW2 veterans walking around and willing to talk about their war experiences. Last year, I had the pleasure of talking with an Army vet who walked up to me with his wife and asked me if I knew what a bazooka was. I said I did and asked him if that was his weapon in combat. He replied in the affirmative and proceeded to tell me about how his job was to destroy the treads on a German tank with his bazooka rendering it immobile. He laughed saying how they could only go in circles with one tread missing. I realized while I was talking to him that he was probably in his mid 90s. I looked for him this year but didn’t see him.
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I'm a member of a veteran's organization that has some interesting people. One of the members in my chapter (sadly deceased now) was a member of the 503rd Parachute Infantry. They jumped onto the Rock, Corregidor. The drop zones were so small the Navy had PT boats circling the Rock -- when a paratrooper missed the drop zone, they'd dash over and try to snag the canopy of his parachute -- otherwise, he'd go straight to the bottom.
When the jump ended, the half-drowned paratroops in the PT boats saw a beach at the foot of the Rock and began shouting, "Land us there! Land us there!"
Many of them had no weapons -- they had cut everything away as a matter of survival. Coming out of the water, the men who were unarmed gathered arms full of rocks. They fought their way in, cleared the lower level and started up the stairs -- and met the rest of the regiment coming down.
I can't tell you how it feels to know a man who made a parachute assault and an amphibious assault on the same morning, and stormed a Japanese fortress armed only with rocks.Comment
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