"You go in by waves and you land. Bear in mind, this is the first landing with your friends. Ten of us were from Georgia, okay? One did not hardly make it out of the water. When the ramp came down on the landing craft and the machine guns opened…

"Your primary rifle was what we called an M-1. And you had to qualify with all of these, and the M-1 was a real major factor. You had to qualify 500 yards, 300 yards, 200 yards. Prone position, kneeling position, and standing. And the last day…

"On my work scholarship, I would be assigned to certain areas that I was to work in. And mechanical drawing was one of the big things that I had trouble with, but I finally mastered it and I became good at that, so that's where I would…

"When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, the world stood still for a moment. What are we going to do? And I thought, well, everybody is supposed to be doing something. So I decided I'm going to analyze the major armed forces. Army, Navy, Air…

"We went back to England and got ready for the Holland invasion, biggest invasion we ever had. 1,876 gliders. And we went in the 21st of September, I believe it was. We were in there 21 days. It was a long steal. But it worked out all right. We…

"We went into southern France. Of course that was an easy mission. And we had anti-glider and anti-parachute poles, pine trees that they’d [the Germans] planted in the big field we were going to land in. So we landed the gliders in between the…

"We were going to fly from England to Italy for the southern France invasion. And [Rev. Fitzgerald was] all set to go. I told him I’d take him to Rome, and we’d go and see the pope and all this. I’m just talking [laughs]. And they said, 'We…

"Let’s see, from there we went up to England in Oct-, March of ’44 to train for D-Day. And they sent me down to my base. We were based in Cottesmore, England, 316th Troop Carrier group. I was in the 36th Squadron."

"A C-54 came over with President Roosevelt in it. And he came over to do whatever he was gonna do to Patton. And a bunch of generals were waiting there for him. And when Patton came up, they all walked away from him. They wouldn’t have anything…

"We were picked up the next day by a Greek destroyer. And they took me into Algiers to the hospital. And of course the only thing they know to do in these army hospitals is cut your leg off if something’s wrong with you...They were gonna take my…