UNKNOWN SOLDIERS: Reliving WWII in Europe

There was two planes come over. One bombed our house, one the next one. We heard a HHHRRRMMMMMM and that was it. A ZZZOOOOMMMMMM over here and then a BOOOOOMMMMMM, and when we heard the ZZZOOOMMM again we took off. Got about halfway down when we heard the first bomb hit the next house. The second one just got the back corner of ours, but the concussion knocked the shit out of everything in front, and in back everything was on fire. I mean we was just ready to go out the door. It was in a little cupola. That bomb turned us every which way. I said them sonsabitches are gonna shell us ’cause they’d shelled us before. I think I had three guys with me, and we hit for cover. Maybe I should of stayed, but I was all rattled up with that God damn bomb.

So we went back across the road into the woods. The CP was back in there with a bunch o’ artillery an’ every other damn thing. Then they started shellin’ the woods. We heard guys talkin’ an’ found out they had a nice little cave, so we stayed there for about two hours and come out and went on back, and everything was deserted.

Dom Trubia thought they were going to use the house for an artillery OP and there’d been no time yet even to lay in a phone line.

I think I was the only one that didn’t get a scratch. There was a British ack-ack gun in front of the house they’d been using for artillery. They burned up the barrel and were changin’ it when the planes came over and dropped those 500-pound bombs, so nobody got a shot at ’em. After the medics picked ’em all up there was a major there gettin’ out of his tank to come over to the house to ask us directions, I guess. He got a leg blown right off.

The medic asked me if I was all right, and I said I had an awful headache. Boy, the concussion just doubled the size of my head. So he took me back to the aid station, opened a foot locker where he had some good old American whisky and gave me a good slug and said that oughta help me, and if it didn’t, come back the next day. My headache was gone, and all I could think of was that quart, so I told him I still had a headache, and he poured me another drink and says, “I guess your headache’s gone now ’cause that’s the last one you’re gonna get from us!”

It was here that Valen Mullenax, the One-Man Army, Mohawk our Shield of Invincibility, had his Date with Destiny at exactly 1415 by his watch:

Three of our tanks came up there. Dive bombers came over. One bomb turned a tank over on its side. The other two bombs was right around the house, and one was about seven feet outside the big window I was looking out through at the German lines, and that’s the one that smashed my chest, broke ten ribs, put three of ’em through the left lung and nearly hit the heart. A piece o’ shrapnel or rock tore through my scalp. Pullman was up there and had just left. I thought Locklear was killed. I’d been breaking him in, a good man. [Monty and the two greenhorns were wounded.]