That was in '43, I guess, '42 or '43. I don't remember. Anyhow, we got there about dark and we was getting ready to get on the train after we got off the boat, and the Germans bombed us for -- well, we got out of it. Finally, got down to England, and they put us on the English base down there, and that's where we built the gliders that went into D-Day. We pulled them out of these big boxes and then we lived in the box.
That's what we lived in for over a year. We assembled, and tested, and flew all of these gliders. And when we'd get so many of them, why another bunch of fellas would come pick them up, take them to their base. But we made them all. And they was used in D-Day and before. We were sent-- I was sent into, with 20 other guys -- a few days after D-Day, we landed in Normandy. I forgot where that was. But anyhow, they sent us over to pick up all the gliders that could be used.
Most of them was crashed, you know, they wasn't any good. But the ones that could fly, we were supposed to set up what they call a "slingshot." Two great big poles, and they had a rope across it, hooked to the glider, and they had specially equipped C-47's and C-46's, that had what they called a "yo-yo" on the outside of it. Great big round thing. And these planes were flying, and they'd drop their hook down and catch this rope and suck them up, and this "yo-yo" would let the line out and then fly enough to get flying and they would pull it back. And anyhow, it didn't work too well. We wrecked a lot of planes. But we got most of them into Chartres, France. They had a big air base there, and there were so many. I've got a picture of it.
We could have walked, probably, a mile from wing tip to wing tip in this field. And that's where they had the -- after we had all those gliders in there, they brought in B-24's and converted them. We didn't do it, but some other groups did. Converted them from bombers, they took all the armament and everything out of them and put great big monstrous gas tanks in them. And we was flying off this field supplying Patton with this gasoline. He was going so fast, we couldn't keep up.
But we stayed there for quite awhile. I remember during the war, my wife was working back in Oklahoma City in a grocery store, and one time she sent a tin box, it used to have ham in it, it was full of olives and sardines and everything. Three of my buddies and I was in this little town, we decided we'd have a picnic. So we found this carton crate or something there, it was in a church yard, and we sit on it and had our little picnic.
When we got through, I said, I wondered what that crate is. We opened it up. There was a five hundred pound German bomb inside of it. We had a picnic on that table. But there was so many things that happened though. I'm drawing disability right now for a deal that happened right after that. We went six weeks one time without a bath. No change of clothes. We caught some kind of a skin disease. I still have it. This morning I've got it. And we finally got to this bathhouse, and they gave us baths.
They asked us when we walked in, if we wanted to douche. And I said, "No, I didn't think so." Well, I didn't know that was a bath. But anyhow, after we got through taking a bath, we'd pick up those old clothes, we had the new ones we put on, and you could hardly pick those old ones up. Ooh, it smelt bad. Then when I got to come home, finally, they shipped me to Marseilles; and as soon as I got there, they quarantined me. I had this skin disease and I had two scabies on my butt. And I had to stay there in this tent for about a week, and them painting me with this purple (gingin) violet, it didn't do any good at all.
One day, I went down to the shower tent, and I had two big holes in my butt. And I saw this bar of GI soap laying there on the floor. And I picked it up and I soaped myself real good, soaped my finger, stuck it in both of those holes. Ooh, man. But it killed that worm. And then I finally got to come home. One other experience that I had, you might be interested in, we walked into a little town some place in France, one evening. And we walked in one side, and the Germans left on the other side of town. Didn't fire a shot. And when we got in there, there was a great big two story rock building that they had been living in. And when they left, they left everything. The food was on the table, the fire was going in the little pot-belled stoves; beautiful set up.
And we went in there so we was going to sleep in their beds, you know. And the Colonel came though and says, "Don't use any water, don't flush any toilets or anything." The next morning, engineers came in. If we'd have flushed the toilet, we'd still been going. They had booby-trapped the water system, and it would have blown us all to pieces. And the next morning he's down in the courtyard and he's blowing a whistle, which I'd never heard before. We all go down there, What the hell's going on? He said, "Well, fellas, I guess you got them too." We was so full of lice and crabs, you couldn't believe it. Everyone of us. Those beds were just full of lice.
So they stripped us off naked, put a raincoat on us, took us downstairs in the courtyard, and was spraying us -- the MD's were, and all the women in town were standing outside the fence watching us. They was enjoying us. But that evening, we got ready to eat, and we had built some little fires out there in the courtyard. And when we come into town, right across the street from a church, I saw this big garden. And I know there was some cabbage in there, and some carrots, one thing or another, we'd been on K-rations so long that I said, "I'm going to go down there and get us some fresh vegetables."
So one of my buddies and I we went down there, we jumped this little fence, a little barbwire fence, jumped into the field. And I put cabbage in here, some carrots and stuff, inside of my jacket; and about the time we got loaded up good, there was two Germans in the bell tower. They were shooting at us. We tried to lay down, but I told him, I said, "We'd better run." So we took off running. And when I got to the end of the field, where that fence was, I jumped it coming in, I tried to jump it going out. Well, it didn't work. I weighed about ten pounds too much, and came down on that fence and I ripped my butt, ooh. But as luck would have it, there was two medics in camp when I got back. And they patched me all up, and they said, "Well, that will get you a Purple Heart." Well, they patched me up and they left.
They said, "We'll turn it in for you." They never turned it in or either, maybe, they got shot, I don't know. But I never did get my Purple Heart. And when I applied for my disability, they sent me up to Albuquerque to be examined, you know. And this doctor looked at my butt and she says, "Well, Bill, I can't see any scar." I said, "No I don't have one." I do heal real good. And so she turned it in that she couldn't see the scar. So I never did get the Purple Heart. But you can see, when they did this bypass on me, they cut all this vein out from here all the way up. You can't see a scar.
The Library of Congress
>> American Folklife Center
