Jwarren, thanks for posting your grandfather's comments.
It sounds like your grandfather was a sniper or at least a designated marksman of sorts. In that light, I could see those two issues being moreof a problem to him than it might be for a regular rifleman.
You are welcome, DMK.
Yes, he was a "sniper" in WWII-- basically a designated marksman as we fielded them. He was attached to a squad and moved with them.
Its actually very funny how he got into that role. He was drafted at 30 years old and originally they set him up for mortar training.
He used to tell me an interesting story of when he went to the markmanship part of basic. They started them out with targets at 25 feet (not yards). He said that there were several people there that had never held let alone fired a rife. They shot at large targets that had a plaster bucket beside it. After one would shoot, they would plaster over the target and go to the next draftee. He said the guy in front of him was from Chicago and had never fired a rifle. At 25 feet, he hit the plaster bucket. Oh... they started using M1 Carbines at this stage.
At any rate, my grandfather grew up in the country and had a rifle or shotgun in his hand since he could walk practically. Needless to say, he did well at 25 feet. I don't have all the details, but he ended up scoring expert marksman and was firing a 1903 at long range targets before the day was out.
That evening, he was called to his CO's office and told that he was reassigned as a rifleman and recieved the M1C a few days later.
He travelled on a converted luxury liner from the US to England, but he never told me which one. He was seasick the entire time. At any rate, he landed on Normandy on D-Day. He was in the 3rd wave and I've heard him comment that getting on the beach was more of crawling over the dead as opposed to wading. The water was red, he said.
A stray (or not so stray) caught him in the head and punctured his helmet. The round was deflected and put a gash in his scalp. It didn't even require stitches. After everything cooled down, he did let a medic take a look at it. He was surprised and embarassed that he recieved a purple heart for his wound later. He never thought he deserved one for that.
He only lasted 33 days before he was hit through the ankle with shapnel from a mortar round that required him to recover for 4 months in an army hospital. Fortunately, he could type and he spent the rest of the European war as a clerk. For the rest of his life, he had a severe limp from siaptic nerve damage.
I am sorry to lay all this on this thread. It just got me to thinking about all the stories he told me. I could tell plenty.
One thing I'll leave it with was a picture of how serious we anticipated our planned invasion of the Japanese home islands to be. Even with permanent injuries and a bad limp, my grandfather had been assigned jungle fatiques and had orders to report for the Japanse invasion after VE Day. They were tossing him back into combat. Based on his condition, I'd have to say that we believed we were going to need everyone that had a pulse for that invasion. According to the History Channel, we ordered 400,000 Purple Hearts a few months before the planned invasion and we are still giving out Purple Hearts from that order today. The Purple Hearts anticipated for that one invasion has lasted through every conflict and war we have had up to this day.
Kinda puts dropping the A-Bomb in perspective.
-- John
