When I received my medical discharge from the Army, my first civilian boss was a veteran of D-Day. Didn't know it until I was in his office and framed over his desk was a battered piece of paper, Eisenhower's Message to the troops. In faded ink and pencil were the signatures of the men of his platoon. They were part of Company A, 1st Battalion, 16th Infantry Regiment of the 1st Infantry Division and they were part of the Third Wave into Omaha Beach.
He never would talk about his experiences on Bloody Omaha, but from research, I found out that his platoon went into action with 45 men assigned to it, by the end of the Longest Day, 21 men were left. By the time the 1st Division broke out of the bocage, there were only 7 men remaining out of thise who had landed on D-Day.
He served with the 1st Infantry Division, somehow remaining untouched until the fighting in the Ardennes, where he lost his left arm. By that time, he was the only man remaining from the D-Day platoon.
Corporal Joe Sheridan died on March 3rd, 2005. Another member of the Greatest Generation reporting for duty Saint Peter; I've served my time in hell!
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The reason that the American Army does so well in wartime, is that war is chaos, and the American Army practices chaos on a daily basis.
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