Hidden Gem

I have been reading in most of my spare time preparing for this paper I have to write this quater for a class called comparative literature. Basically the assignment is to compare types, sytles, genres, ages, whatever of written language. There are a few guidelines, but none of them matter to me because they're things like it has to be the english language or work not your own... So I have been reading... I found some really cool things, but tonight I found this and just had to post it:

"Don Malarkey, age 22, E Company, 2nd Battalion, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment:

As the battalion proceeded toward the causeway that we were to take, we had not gone more than five or six hundred yards when machine-gun fire started breaking out and the column halted. Colonel Bob Strayer, the battalion commander, ordered E Company to mkae an attack on the position. I believe there were twelve of us, led by Lieutenant Dick Winters from Pennsylvania, the platoon leader, and Lieutenant Buck Compton from Los Angeles, the assistant platoon leader.

We went through an aorchard area to approach the position, and when we were very close by, Lieutenant Winters stopped us all and had us line up along the hedgerow looking into the position, which incorporated and emplacement of four German 88s. We all lined up and placed withering fire into the position with all our weapons, prior to making an assualt.

Buck Compton went first, and as he dropped into the entrenchment he saw a German standing about fifteen feet from him. He drew his tommy gun and fired, but the gun jammed. In the meantime, the German ran away down the trench. Compton turned and waved us all across and we proceeded toward the first gun. Robert "Popeye" Wynn, from Virginia, was with me and got hit halfway across.

As I neared the gun I could see the crew of a German 88 firing straight down the field. They couldn't traverse on us, but they were firing at whatever enemy forces they might hit in that vicinity. I pulled a grenade and threw it, but the two gunmen were already hit either by Buck Compton or by Lieutenant Winters. Both of them, I think, fired simultaneously.

When I got there one of the crew was lying dead under the gun and the other had run out into the field about fifty yards before he went down. I could see that he had a case on his hip, which I thought was a German Luger. I thought, Well, I'd better go and get that gun, so i ran out on the field, and as I knelt down Lieutenant Winters saw me and started yelling at me tha I was stupid and should get the hell out of there as the place was crawling with Germans.

Across the main hedgerow, toward the family farm of Brecort, the whole road was lined with German infantry with machine guns. They apparently thought I was a medic, because they didn't fire at me when i was going out to where the german lay. But when Winters yelled and I jumped up and started running back, four or five machine guns started firing at me and the bullets were kicking up the ground all around me.

I dove under the gun, which was dug in below the surface of the ground about eighteen inches. I lay there, face up, as they kept firing in the gun and fragments of bullets dropped into my face. I finally turned over to keep that from happening and the kept intermittently.

I was stuck until Bill Guarnere, my sergeant, got along the hedgerow to about five or six feet away from me. He said, "We'll time their bursts." So he started timing the bursts of the machine-gun fire that came in and he said, "OK, as soon as you hear the next burst, jump up and run to me." I did that, and i got out of there without being hit.

From then on, we fought there through a good part of the day and eventually captured three of the gunners."

This passage comes from a book called "The Oral History of D-Day" that is made of of several hundred first hand accounts like this one. Some of the stories are millitary reports, some are from letters home, others are stories by journalists along for the ride, but every angle gets its spot; Germans, Americans, Brits, French, and everything else. So far I like it a lot, but how nuts is it that this passage is in the book.