Send Me Back!

While in the Hospital in England, on the morning check with the Staff Doctor a U.S. Major advised me that I was going to be shipped back to the States to recover from my wound. I said to the Major, “I don’t want to go home until my face gets back to normal. I would like to go back to my outfit, the 101st Airborne!” The Major took no more than a second before shouting, “I WILL BE A SON OF A BITCH! I have here in this Hospital Soldiers faking Section Eight (acting nuts) to be sent back to the States and you want to go back into Combat.”

My Request to allow me to rejoin my outfit was granted. I Was shipped back over to Normandy and given instructions to be sent North to a Distribution center. From there I would be placed back Into Combat Service. I went aboard the designated train as told. It was a long trip to the North of France riding in the 40&8. (Railroad boxcars with 40 Men or 8 Horses) Us guys were talking about what happens when you get to the Replacement Center and one fellow, an authority on that subject, said they send you to any Infantry Outfit that is requesting help. I thought, Hell, I should have gone back home when I had the chance.

I surely was a disappointed Soldier and not very long after that conversation, the train stopped to take on, only God knows what. We set along the tracks on the train, with the boxcar sliding door open, and our legs hanging out. We had stopped along side of a Town called Mourmelon la Petit. While we were sitting there on the box car, I saw a Jeep about 25 feet away on the street bearing the letter of the 101st Airborne on its back bumper. I jumped off the train without my barracks bag and yelled like hell at the driver! Believe it or not, that driver either noticed me waving in his mirror or heard me and stopped.

I said please take me to your outfit and he saw that I had the same 101st emblem as his and he asked what Battalion and company I was in. He said he would deliver me right to the company Head Quarters. In a few minutes, I arrived there and The 1st Sergeant said, “Hey, you’re Missing in Action!”

Tears are coming in my eyes as I write this because it really was A God Send