Interview of Pat Dunn
Transcript Number 050

INTERVIEWER: Today is May 1, 2001, today we're interviewing Patrick Dunn of Whiteville, North Carolina, who was in the U.S. Army in the infantry in an armored division in Europe in 1944 and '45. 

PAT: This is grand Pat and Uncle Pat, we know you'd like to hear a few stories, after all these years you heard grandma say, "Oh he won't talk about it or he talked about it too much". So anyway, 1939, I got out of high school, nothing doing, roaming around, not being a bum, but just no work. I decided, two buddies of mine, John Labatta, Eddie Muller, we got together and says "you want to go in the army"? Right away my mother says, "they're not going to take you, they won't take you" and I said sure they will. Well anyway, we go volunteer and ended up at Fort Dix, New Jersey. Cold. I guess they knew we were going to go to Boston in four years from now, something like that, it was so cold when we got in. 

Then, I ended up down in Fort Benning, Georgia. Was down there quite a long time. We were attached to the infantry school, and all the problems for the West Point officers that graduated. They'd come down and we'd have these problems. Well they came in handy when they got up to combat because a couple of the guys left and I said "Hell, we used to do that all the time in Fort Benning", yeah, but they says "yeah but they wasn't shooting at you down there". Well anyway, Fort Benning was there for quite a while and, oh, moved to Fort Jackson and was there a short time. That's where I met my wife and that was kind of a little sad day. I happened to be quartered, what do you call it, charge of quarters and had the day off. My wife was working up at the PX at the time, and I said "I think I'll go into town". I said, "Maybe I could meet that girl". So I went into town and all the sudden, I see this girl walking down the roadway and I don't know why in the world I yelled out, "Hey Margaret", (and I don't know where I got the name from) - she stopped and I said "Well, where you heading?" and I believe she said she was going to the laundry or someplace. Well, I gave her a snow job, and I finally convinced her to take a walk with me. We walked out to the park, and the funny thing, I had another date then with another girl, and I was just telling my youngest daughter last night about this. Mommy must've told her. And I said, we were sitting on a bench near a big old oak tree, I guess it was and I guess I was leaning trying to kiss her. And she kept saying, "You're crazy, you're crazy". I says "yeah, over you". 

So anyway, we went out for quite a while and then one day she stood me up. I said, "What in the world's the matter with me, I ain't never done this before. I just said "Heck, I'll go find me something else". So I went back to camp and says you know I must be in love with that girl and I guess I was and finally went out again. 

But anyway, let's see, Fort Jackson, oh, I almost got in trouble at Fort Jackson. They were going on a 35 mile hike, the infantry, and they said make sure you have good shoes. My shoes were in bad shape so I spoke to the first sergeant and he says, "Well, you can't go, you can't go on that hike". Well, I sneaked out and went into town where we had an apartment, they never found out anyway. 

But anyway, I just loved that girl and I still do, she drives me crazy yet but, then I ended up, let's see Fort Jackson, oh, yeah, that was another sad day there, I was up in the social club sitting with Margaret and we get a call, all 29 report back to the barracks. We walked down and they stopped her. She's on one side of the street and I'm on the other side, couldn't even get over to hug her and say goodbye or something like that. Well anyway, we moved out. Oh there was all kinds of rumors, we were going to the Pacific, we were going here. Some guys even got their hair shaved because they thought they were going to the Pacific. Took us to Stalton, Virginia, oh no, Massachusetts, and we were shipped out of there and ended up in Iceland which I didn't mind at all. I liked Iceland and some day I hope I can go back again.

INTERVIEWER: Do you remember the month and the year that you got to Iceland?

PAT: Well, let's see, it had to be '40, '43 I guess. Yeah, 'cause I went in the Army in '41, I guess it was '43.

INTERVIEWER: Okay.

PAT: And while there was a story there I told you I can't put that on tape, you know, with that accident I had.

INTERVIEWER: Yeah.

PAT: And then, well anyway, I only got to tell them twice and now I see on the travelogues about Iceland, I hope to go back and see it some day. Then from Iceland, we went to England. First we landed in Scotland and then down to around the Southampton area. I think we were decoys. I don't know really, but they worked down at the docks preparing for D-day, getting all the equipment I guess and shipment and things ready like that. 

And then from there, let's see, what did I say, oh, yeah, then was in England quite a while and then from England went to France, then from France, went to Paris. 

Let's put one little thing in there, got a little off I think, but it said I enjoyed a day and had to stay in a hotel, wasn't even there for one day and shipped out, my squad was shipped out to watching the railroad, loaded with you know, supplies and what not.

INTERVIEWER: Was that in Paris?

PAT: It was called Vincennes, about 10 to 12 miles from Paris. And that was a bad area, that was where the free French were and things didn't go too well with them I understand. And, then from there we went to, oh, you know, it was about the time the Germans were making that big offensive and I don't' know how many guys they took from my company, but then there was a lot of guys. I was a corporal then at the time. A lot of guys used to say "I want to get out of this chicken outfit", ya know, and come on, you can take place we are going up you know.... Oh, any another funny part, I think we joined that, maybe joined the 6th, I wasn't too sure, but in the meantime we were getting our repo-depot, for a while, I didn't want to mentioned that, skip it you know, and so anyway, then we ended up going to the 6th Armored, I was in the 44th Armored Infantry and I was a buck sergeant. My wife said, you tell him you was a staff sergeant, not a sergeant! But that's when the fireworks began.

INTERVIEWER: Was that the first combat you saw in the Bulge.

PAT: Yeah, and I used to say, I had a row six months which is quite a long time some poor guys didn't make a day, didn't make a week, and as I've said, this is coming into this article now. Used to hear that song, Ave Maria, oh I got so upset everytime I heard it.

INTERVIEWER: Go ahead and tell about how you were going over suicide mission, at Christmas.

PAT: Oh yeah. The first night I sat in the foxhole and another kid from Grand Staff, Kentucky, I still remember his name, and we were sitting next to a dead soldier, German soldier, and he went looking through his pockets and took out some pictures, his kids, and like I said, I felt sorry for that man, you know, I put myself in his place I guess and the kid made me laugh at that because he was in a little longer than I was in combat.

INTERVIEWER: Any you had a child at that time that you had never seen.

PAT: Right, and I carried that picture around with me and, but he was funny, he did make me laugh and he said, you see, you see what happened to that man he said, shell coming, his head bounced to that side of the tree and then bounced to that side of the tree, I said Grand Staff you're a nut, you know like that. But anyway, I thought I made a pretty damn good leader. 

I guess I told you about that other kid. We got our replacements, kids, 17 and 18, I was young myself and I was supposed to go on out on an outpost, some kind of listening post, out from the outpost.

INTERVIEWER: Ahead of your lines.

PAT: Man it was terrible. There was four of us and this kid says that we had to set up a telephone line and I never had experience with that because we had all this stuff down in Fort Benning, so I said, Swarty, you carry this telephone, he says to me, you carry it, well I saw a lot that day, a couple of guys get hit and it shook me up and I grabbed the bastard and slapped the living hell out of him. So there was four of us out there then in that shell hole, snow, cold, oh boy, I don't know how we ever survived it. Two guys went back in, you know I could've got him court martialed or in trouble but I said, hell, let them go, so I stayed there, me and I think a kid named Morno all night. This is another story I used to tell that I don't know how I ever made it. Walked in from that hole and you had a combat suit, it was like this (knock on table?) as hard as that, and you tried to get into the dugout. 

The guys were that good, they'd come out and met me and dragged me in and put me down into a dugout. But anyway, I said, nah, you should get a medal for that. That was really, a rough, rough time right there. And this other one, when I jumped into the hole, this was pretty good, I thought, we actually, we were trying to get an 88, you know what an 88 is.....

INTERVIEWER: German artillery, a very efficient one.

PAT: And I said to one of the guys, hell I can get that son of a "b", I said but I want somebody to cover me. So Sergeant Maddock, from Maryland, I took off like crazy and brought a junket to hold and there was a German in there, and I kept going, Come and sit here, here to home, all kinds of words, the poor guy was off, but he had a potato masher ready to heave, but the C gun section was in front. And another kid from Florida, I think his name was Prost, I left him in charge, to get him points, and he come in and jumped in the hole with me and we let him go. I didn't have that killer instinct, I didn't, I told you this once before.

INTERVIEWER: Now a potato masher is?

PAT: It's a grenade, a German grenade, he was already to heave it.

INTERVIEWER: But you let him run, the German, you let the German run.

PAT: They took him a prisoner and then sent them back, but he might have got it on the way back, these tankers you know, they didn't take too many guys alive, I'll tell you that. But that was a rough day. Then right away all these young kids were saying, "Oh, I want to stick with you, stick with you", you know, I says, "Hell, I'm just going along", but I did try to help him like, come over and say, "that's ours, that's ours", it's the same way if a plane went over. Oh, I got to get back to this one. You see, things come back after awhile. 

We got into Germany, I don't know whereabouts, and an old German civilian says "Welcome to Deutschland" . Cripes, Almighty, a plane come over and start strafing us, you know there's guys, there was a poor guy who run so hard he broke his leg. Somebody says, "kill that old bastard", you know. But I tell you, a lot of stuff.

INTERVIEWER: Was the plane that was strafing, was it our plane or a German plane?

PAT: Yeah, a German plane.

INTERVIEWER: Okay.

PAT: Yeah, you talk about that what happened quite a few times they had the wrong panel up, you know they put the panels up, there were Americans that strafed us many a time.

INTERVIEWER: Friendly fire.

PAT: Yeah, friendly fire. And another sad moment, oh yeah, there's only one I thought I was going to break myself. Damn shells were by the tank fire and the guy next to me got hit, I know I felt sure it got part of me, and I went "ew, ew", and somebody yells "Sergeant are you alright"? One of my guys did get hit and I says "take your pills right away". But, that was our own tank firing at us. Wrong panel. And then that would go, oh, when I got home, we were talking to this man he was in the Air Force and he was from Long Island and we got onto war stories. I says that damn Air Force sometimes we had the wrong panel and they'd strafe us, and he says "Oh, that was us up there in the air". Yeah, it's uh...

INTERVIEWER: Where were you when the war ended?

PAT: On the Elbe River, we could have taken Germany, not Germany, Berlin, but they stopped us. I think we laid there about 11 or 12 days or more just waiting for the, I said it was the Elbe River, it could have been the Oder, or I don't know what river but I'm definitely sure it was......

INTERVIEWER: He was there?

PAT: He took my book home and read quite a bit on it.

INTERVIEWER: Did you meet any Russians?

PAT: Oh yeah. Met a lot of them, they were afraid to give up to the Germans, they'd give up to the Americans. But I had a, like oh, one time too, we had a big, something was going on, some kind of drive was going on...but anyway, these black guys, they were I guess what you call the Red Ball Express or something, and they said they knew where there was cherry wine, or some kind of wine, if they could get some I said you know, I says, well I can give you a cup of water I said, I believe this was after the war. You see, I'm still mixed up, things are going so fast. I got the whole little town drunk. Some of the German soldiers were already there, you know, and they were playing the piano and you know I says, you know how to play Always, they didn't know. 

And there was another German man, I'll always remember him, Rich his name was, he had a "gast house", you know they call them Parr, and he was so good. That was the first, you know, I don't know if that was the town or not, we went into that one town and this guy stopped me and he says "Nix Nazi, Nix Nazi" he said "down the street, down the street", pointed to a, you know, I think barn I think it was, "he's got all the meats, all the meats", so I went down and looked at it and I told a couple of guys in my squad, I said "boy, there's hams hanging in there and roast beef, let's get a ham but leave the roast beef", I took a ham, I says the hell with them, I says you know we've had nothing. 

And that's another thing about the combat. I sat, Oh God, I don't know, nine days in one hole eating cheese and the first hot meal we got, we got diarrhea, bad. So, it was quite an experience.

INTERVIEWER: You slept in a fox hole practically every night from the bulge on, did you not? Did you ever sleep in an old house?

PAT: Oh, one time Patton said he didn't want none of his men sleeping on the ground, so we did go into a house. Weren't in there 20 minutes and he rescinded the order "Out." Out on the street. I said, "That son of a gun." 

INTERVIEWER: But it was very sad when you got a hot meal on the line.

PAT: Never. Never.

INTERVIEWER: C rations and K rations?

PAT: K rations mostly.

INTERVIEWER: Did you ever eat any German food if you could pick some up like the ham?

PAT: Oh the ham, yeah, but that was, the war was about over pretty near then you know. 

INTERVIEWER: Did they ever take you off the line for a couple of days for R and R, give you a shower and some clean cloths?

PAT: I'll tell you, the 6th armor itself was without a line more than any outfit, you know it was some part of the division was on it. You know I had more time overseas than the 6th armored division did? I went up one day when a breakthrough came. There's another time, like I told you once, there's a lot of things I wished I had checked into which I didn't, you know, a lot of things. Why didn't I go there and check on that, why didn't I do that. I mean I'd run after a guy in a black shirt one day, didn't know what the hell he was. Yeah, again, oh you said about getting in the homes, right, okay we went to this one town and got into this house and went upstairs. One of the tankers were down here somewhere and this poor old lady was lying in bed upstairs. 

I think I'm a little compassionate guy, I don't know, and I went over there tapping on her, and says "You know, you'll be alright" and in the meantime, we look out the window and saw a truckload of black shirts coming in the truck and I run downstairs, run out, and I tell the tanker "Get ready there's a truck coming down the road", so he fired one round and it never happened, and they scattered all over the place. But that woman, I tried to calm her down. And what was the other thing that got me so mad . 

INTERVIEWER: Were the black shirts German soldiers?

PAT: Yeah, they're Germans, but in the house that we were in, must've been coming back from school or something, there was a table set longer then this, there must have been about, with all books, that's what I mean, why the hell didn't I go check on, well I did call my basic driver, Pete, because he could speak German. But he would not speak German, he didn't want, he was afraid, and he shouldn't have even been in combat, he kind of an elderly guy, you know.

INTERVIEWER: Well you were the sergeant in infantry rifle squad, were you not? Was it rifle squad? 

PAT: I was in armored infantry and we had a half track which, what did I know about half track. I slept in mine, in between here and the guys that had been up there a while, they said you're crazy sleeping in there. I said what are you talking about, I'm freezing no matter where I am, he says, well that's the first thing they go for, and you know, tanks and what have you. 

Oh, I got to tell you this story. This has always amazed me. There was a town called Margarite, that's close, made me think of my wife and one soldier, I remember passing that guy so many times, and says, when the hell they going to pick that poor guy up and we outposted the tanks. We had a bunch of light tanks up on the hill and I said I was in the foxhole with Sergeant Drew, poor guy, did you ever see a man go combat fatigue and cry his head off and you can't do nothing. I say this, go the heck back. But anyway, I'm sitting in the hole and met a guy there after that and we got one, two, three I think there was seven or eight tanks on top of the hill and this tiger tank, which was the best, we learned something from that. He sneaked up and took, hit seven tanks, seven of those German, I mean American night tanks and I says to the guy in the hole, you know I says, that son of a bitch is going to get the iron cross. Then another thing, I says man, what do they call them guys, artillery Germans, what a call he made. They made the call back and they sent up a td, a tank destroyer, which is no armor at all to itself, and he took two shots that hit the side of that tiger tank, that tiger tank turned around and off he went. But I thought that was, and then I saw one of them guys jump up and grab the 50 caliber machine gun and take off. So that was another thing that will always be in my mind how that guy did.

INTERVIEWER: Were all the Americans tanks destroyed?

PAT: Uh, yeah they were knocked out, they were light tanks, but I didn't know if they were in operation after that because like I said, this was all around this place called Margarite. We were surrounded, I never knew it 'til we read it in the book. Yeah, I think we were lucky we weren't captured. 

INTERVIEWER: What year was that, what time of the year? Was it wintertime?

PAT: Wintertime, oh boy, and the whole time, we stayed there in winter. 

INTERVIEWER: It's supposed to have been one of the worst winters in history.

PAT: And one time we had to wait nine days for the air force, the fog was so strong.

INTERVIEWER: When you left Paris, and went to the bulge, did you go straight into the town of Bastogne or?

PAT: No, it took a while. I don't know where the hell we were going.

INTERVIEWER: You ended up walking a lot of the way too because...

PAT: Yeah, we walked but not too much.

INTERVIEWER: You don't remember how long it took you? How long were you on the truck from Paris heading toward Bastogne? Was it a day.

PAT: No, I left Paris and joined the, went into combat somewhere, I don't know where it was and, no, we did a lot of driving. One time, I don't know how many miles we drove. I can't believe it, I says, where the hell are we going? You know, they don't tell you nothing. Drove, drove, drove, drove, I said, Holy Cripes, we were driving for nearly a whole day, that whole 6th army. They left, I guess we were still up in Bulge somewhere and went down to a place called, I think called, Kaiserlauten, there was supposed to have been another invasion from that area, but I don't think they ever did pull it off. But it was a long drive from down there. 

INTERVIEWER: With a tiger tank, we didn't have a tank that could stand up to a tiger.

PAT: No, you know why, the tiger tank, the turret, made a complete circle. We didn't have a tank to do that, it only went so far. And another thing, people used to, excuse the language, think you're bullshitting, I said those tanks burn just like anything else, I've seen 'em burn and couldn't even get up to help anybody burning away. 

And another time I got p.o.'d, they said, oh yeah, I got to remember this one, this is the one, the kids don't know nothing about that one. They were going to assign my squad, to take a pillbox and I said how in the world am I going to do that. No way I could do that and the first thing I thought I'd have to call the engineers and let them lighten 'em up with a Bangalore torpedo. So anyway, time passed by and then I walked around, we stayed there all night and I heard this screeching. One of my men walking around in the dark, damn fool you know, so, oh, and there was these blankets laying down there by a tree and I told my men, I says there's blankets over there if you guys get cold, we were cold anyway, but I advise you not to touch it, I was a great believer in booby traps. I said do not touch it. 

Would you believe this, we left there and got relieved by some other company and those blankets exploded and I understand three or four guys got killed. Now that could have been part of my group. But anyway, I still think the army helped me, being in the army, I don't have any regrets. I was sort of a shy person and I always said the army will make the strong guy weak and the weak guy strong. 

Oh you know what happened when I was in Fort Benning? First night out, first night that it was raining, and I was in there talking away and the sergeant yells over "Dunn, shut your mouth" and I walked up and wammo, hit the guy in the face and it was a corporal. So they said, uh oh, they could have turned you in, you're in trouble but I had good friends with Sergeant Hawkins from Arkansas, he knew the army in and out, in and out. He said what you do is try to learn all the army regulations first and just stay out of trouble and so I said, I was scared, you know I was only in two months in the service and Hawkins said, they can't do nothing to you, it's dark, they didn't recognize anybody. 

INTERVIEWER: Well after the Bulge, after you went across, it was easy then, I mean you didn't have to fight quite as hard did you?

PAT: We mostly did mopping up after that, you know.

INTERVIEWER: On the way to the Elbe.

PAT: Yeah, right. Down to that river.

INTERVIEWER: Patton liked to measure how many miles his troops moved in a day, so you moved a lot of miles in a day.

PAT: Well I was in Paris when the 3rd Armor was moving through Paris and we were on guard in Paris, he took everything he wanted. He had priority, Patton. Yeah, that's the thing I'd like to see, I was reading the Wilmington Star News one day and there was an article in there on Colonel Margraff, lives in Monroe, North Carolina and it mentioned about Buchenwald. I says, my, that's an awful familiar name so I got out that armored book which I hadn't looked at in I don't know when and I went through it and I said damn, there it is, the Colonel Margraff. He was, I don't know what kind of job he had had.

INTERVIEWER: Now you were one of the first units to Buchenwald, but you didn't stop in Buchenwald, you were moving, is that right?

PAT: Yeah, part of our outfit must have stayed there.

INTERVIEWER: What did you see in Buchenwald? Did you go through the camp any?

PAT: Yeah, I went through, they had all these things already marking them down, diphtheria and all this kind of stuff and then there was jars and it looked like body parts, or whatever, you know, don't know what kind of organs they were. Then there was 3,500 prisoners still there when I got there and there's a guy, they didn't look too bad, they might have later been picked up. This one man particular, he stopped me, he had an awful big sore on his leg, it looked like cancer to me or something. He started bitching right away, he said they're not giving us nothing to eat and I says well they can't, if their first meal I said they'd kill you. They were giving them broth because they're trying to build you up and then they'll probably give you something. 

INTERVIEWER: You ended up the war on the Elbe and what did you do then, did you start back home or did they keep you in Germany after the war.

PAT: Well, no I went back with the whole division and there was only, oh Jesus, listen to this, I was there two days after the war ended. The war ended almost on my birthday, May 6th but it ended May 7th, something like that. They had the whole division together, yeah, I guess it was the whole 6th army and they called out two names, I can't think of the other guys name, that you're leaving to go home. Well, big shot, you know, I got oh so happy and I had some money so I said here's some money, go out and buy some beer for the guys that I'm leaving and I felt so happy. I got pretty well high myself and I said oh please, don't let me fall asleep, wake me up tomorrow, I'm going home you know. Oh geeze, that was funny. They guys came around and they gave me a lot of money and said we appreciate what you did. Did I tell you about me slapping that kid in the face? 

INTERVIEWER: Go ahead.

PAT: When they told me to carry the telephones, he says you carry it, well like I says, there's so many guys going back that I just slapped the living hell out of him in the face and a couple of guys grabbed me. You know, I saw quite a bit that day and thank God I don't think I ever had one killed though (knocking on wood). And would you believe this, when the war ended, he comes up to me and says, Sergeant Dunn, he says, remember that day you slapped me in the face, he says, you made a soldier out of me. It made me feel good, I'll tell you. Yes sir. But he's the guy got the Silver Star and he didn't deserve it, I still say he never deserved it. They sent my squad down to rescue some guy named Major Smith or somebody and I said, we crawled down the side of the road, in the road, quite a ways down and got down so far and I says, okay, I want three men to go across, that side and three on this side, the whole three took off at once. One got shot, he got shot in the leg, but why in the hell did he get a silver star, I don't know. He went back and told everybody we were trapped down there and couldn't get back. Some how or another, I don't know how, we just crawled back on our own anyway. But why should he get a silver star for that? 

Christ's sakes, it always puzzled me that, if he had listened, he wouldn't have got shot. Then I had another, oh, don't you believe you'll hear a lot of guys say, wait 'til I get you up there I'm going to shoot you, you know. That's a lot of bologna. They're glad to have somebody tell them what to do. We had a kid from Texas, he was the meanest damn thing you ever saw and I could have got him court-martialed. He took off guard asleep and he was so mean and I used to watch him. One day he found a big old canvas, about as big as this room. I says well, that's pretty good to camouflage a half-track with. So some shells start coming over and I kept my eyes particularly on him and I'm watching you know. I said see, don't ever say you're not scared, you got to be scared to stay alive in this kind of business I said. 

INTERVIEWER: That's very good. 

PAT: What was that other one. I can't remember all this stuff. Oh, I told you about that knife I got.

INTERVIEWER: No.

PAT: This was very appropriate for Christmas really.

INTERVIEWER: How did you get the knife?

PAT: Like you said about going in the holes, well we took this town, I took two guys with me and we went into the house and there was no, you could always tell how the Germans felt about you. The kids some how or another, you could tell if they acted like they were scared of you and this and that. But anyway, this woman brought out a knife, it was a dress knife, so I warned everybody and said nobody touch that knife, I'm taking it. I wouldn't have taken it but she mentioned her husband was an SS soldier, so, shoot, I took it. 

I brought that knife home and let my brother Billy hang it up in his room on the wall, he had it for a long time. Then my brother John, he got a little jealous, I don't know what he did with it. My father said he thinks he sold it to the milkman or did something. So I never questioned him, he died only last year, and I said anybody ever talk to John about the knife? Well Billy, my youngest brother, he found out he checked that knife out and you know how much it was worth? $3,500. But that wasn't the, you know, I said man, I could've used that. But John never did say what he did with knife, I think it was jealousy.

INTERVIEWER: Well you were allowed to bring back one firearm from Europe were you not?

PAT: I don't know if I told you that. You got to ask me questions and it brings back memories. Okay, getting ready, the war was over. We were in, somewhere in Germany yet, and this same kid, Grand Staff, the guy that told about the German dead soldier, he had a pistol. An order was out to turn in all the ammunition, the German ammunition, because some of it was practically the same. He sitting in the damn tent with me, I have to tell you another story while I have it in my mind, he's sitting there, I says Granny, you're supposed to turn in SS ammunition. No, no I want to keep it he says, I says, no, no, you're going to get me in trouble and I says and I'm on the way home. 

Well, he's free to go into Japan, stood right in front of me, I could still see that bull, could have himself right there, right there, I says you god damn fool you know, but he could've got me in trouble. 

I says see that, and another time with the same kid, he was with me, he must have been in combat a long time because he did say to me when I first went up there, he says, now, is this your first time up? I says yeah. He says, well when you see those shells coming jump in any kind of hole no matter how deep it is. One time he got drunk so bad and he got up on top of the half-track with the .50 caliber and he was fooling around with it. I said, hey, knock that shit out. So a couple of guys in the squad said, hit him, you know, knock him out, knock him out. I said, no I can't do that. But what I did I learned an old trick from some of the old timers, the rest of that whiskey that was in the bottle, I opened it and we poured it down there and he was out like a light after. Oh, he was a character, really that guy was a character.

INTERVIEWER: Patrick, where did you sail from to come home? What port, do you remember?

PAT: Le Havre.

INTERVIEWER: Le Havre, France.

PAT: Yeah, France.

INTERVIEWER: And how long did it take you to get from the Elbe when the war was over to Le Havre? Do you remember, was it a long drive?

PAT: Not really too long. Anyway, the camp was set up nice, decent, nice food.

INTERVIEWER: Camp Lucky Strike I believe, wasn't it?

PAT: I don't know what the name of it was. It was in Le Havre anyway and we landed in Boston. And I damn near fell off, they had a prank you know, you walk off it up to the deck, I nearly fell over that thing. I guess I was so happy to get home. Oh, and I said when we left, boy this story is all screwed up, when we left Fort Dix, I used to tell other guys, I'll show you where I live, we're going to go right through town. So I says, come here, come here, and there they were going before we even got a chance to look up. Oh yeah.

INTERVIEWER: Well you got out of the army right after you got home. After you returned from Europe, were you discharged? 

PAT: Yeah, I still say that I got turned in for the Silver Star with that incident in the foxhole you see, but somebody, whoever wrote it up had the wrong area. So a guy that called the next day or a day later, they called me down to the first sergeant's office and this guy says to me, how would you like another rocker. Excuse the expression, rocker with me, so that's when I made staff sergeant, the day after I jumped in that hole and Margaret picked that up. Well, she was never much with the war you know, she used to hate me to talk about it. But one morning, one time we were down at a party and there were quite a few people there, and somebody said, I can't believe, Pat was a sergeant. He says, geeze, I can't believe he was a sergeant and Margaret says I want you to know he was a staff sergeant. For once she stuck up for me you know. 

INTERVIEWER: When you went to Iceland, how long were you there?

PAT: About four or five months. That was supposed to be, what do you call it that kind of duty, you're only supposed to be there for so long. It wasn't cold, we were there when, well, when we first landed in Iceland, it was daylight. At 11:00 the guy says let's take a walk, I says, hell, it's time to go to bed. That's the only place I put weight on. I went up to 160 pounds or more. My granddaughter saw a picture of me and she says to Margaret, grandma, who's that? She says that's grand pap, and she says what happened to him? 

INTERVIEWER: Well you lost weight in Europe.

PAT: Yeah, and I wrote home one time and told them don't worry I'm down to 142 pounds fighting weight. Now I got emphysema now.

INTERVIEWER: Patrick, going to ask a favor of you. Why don't you look right in the camera, right here. I want you to tell your great grandchild what did you learn from being in war. You're talking about the future now.

PAT: Well, war is hell, like they say, but I just feel that none of my children, like you, will ever have to go through the same thing and that still I've always felt my country, I'm proud of it and to me, they're, well a lot of people think they're wrong, never to me, they're always right. That's the way I think.

INTERVIEWER: Hey you did a beautiful job.