About the movie. It started out as a silent movie and then when the lady and man were having an argument and all of a sudden the sound came on just as he was shouting at her and I almost jumped thru the roof. When I told my friends about it when I got home and they said I was crazy. The just couldn't believe it.
I aslo visited my cousin Frank McMahon that summer. He was a year older than me. We rode all
over Chicago on the Els. We went to visit my brother Larry who had quit school and went to Chi. A relative of my farther took him in and he had a job at Harrison's Orange Aid Hut. It was something like a McDonalds of today. He was night manager and he was only 17 yrs old. He had an apt with another guy near Lincoln Park. When we went to see him he was at Lincoln Park hitting golf balls. He wore golf knickers, argyle socks and a soft cap and a big cigar in his mouth. He kidded around with us for a while and let us hit a couple of balls.Then he gave me a five dollar bill and sent us on our way. I'll tell you more about him later.
You ask about my prisoner experience. It really wasn't that bad. I went into the army in 1943 and was sent to Ft. Worth Texas. Tom and I went in the same day and were sent to Camp Grant, Il. As we took our physicals we bumped into each other in a room and both had a small bottle in our hands. It was very comical.
I was shipped the next day and never saw him again until our mothers funeral. I managed to get
on a cadre in Ft. Worth teaching the rookies what I didn't know myself. I was chosen for Officers
Candidate School but before I got to Ft. Benning, Ga. I was shipped over seas wirhthe 8th Div.
to Italy with a stop over in Africa. It was a terrible place to fight a war. (is there a good place). Nothing but mountains. The tanks were no good to us. We had to take the high ground before they could get up there. All our provisions were brought up by pack mule driven by Italians. (The Italians were out of the war then.) Anyhow I was wounded in the head in Oct of 44 by a mortar shell that hit a tree just above our fox hole. The fragment went thru my tin hat,my helmet liner, my stocking cap on to my poor head. It kncked me down but I wasn't unconscious. My buddy was hit several places on his face and chest. He jumped out of the hole and took off for the CP. I called the CP to watch out for him and to send a litter for the medic with us in the hole. I never did find out where he was hit. When I tried to touch him he just screamed. I dressed my wound and stopped the bleeding and when the guys came with the litter I took off for the aid station. It was dark and the aid men wouldn't take my partner down the mountain because it was to dangerous, so I stayed with him and we all we all went down at first light and took an ambulance to the Hosp.
What aggravated me was I was in the Hosp. for two weeks. The day after I was hit my company went to Monte Caturi for two weeks rest. So I got sent right back to the front and missed out on the fun.
In the spring of 45 after a three day rest we went back to Mts. near the Po Valley. My Co. was to take a small village in a kind of valley. The Cos. on our right and left were suppose to take the high ground on both sides but they didn't. We had several dead and some wounded but we were trapped. They were up in caves around us. They were putting delayed action mortors coming on us and it was bad. They told us to surrender or else. Our Capt. told them to stick it. They then let us take our wounded out and it all started over again. Our Captain was wounded badly. My weapon wouldn't fire anymore because of the plaster and dust from the building. Our First Lt told a Corp. to hold up a white sheet or cloth and we surrendered. I couldn't belive the tunnels and the rooms they had back in the mountain. There were some civilians with weapons that were very threatening but the Ger. officer controlled th. They told us they might have saved the Capt. if they had plasma. They took care of our wounded in a high train tunnel where they had an aid station and marched us off thru Po Valley into a prison camp in the Alps. Sometimes we walked or rode in trucks. They took us into opera house in Milan for a rest. ( La Scala). As we came out an old Italian lady had large basket of raw eggs handing out to us as we came out. I cracked mine and ate it whole.
The camp I think was a place called Breenico high in the Alps. The germans were blocked of at the Bremer Pass and knew it was about over. We were in what seemed to be a large airplane hanger. British, GI"s, Indians etc. We had blankets of a sort and slept on the cement floor in groups of six. W e had four GI's and two Indians with the beards and turbans.
We had a cup of black coffee for breakfast, a bowl of soup and a hunk of bread for lunch and a cup of hot water for supper. If you had tea you could make tea. We got some Red Cross stuff but I can't remember what was in it. We also got about six cigarettes a week.
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