I fought with the Fifth Rangers in Germany. I was a replacement, joining them on the line in February, 1945. I had trained for two years in a tank battalion but had always wanted infantry, and, recovering from a minor illness in France, ran across a Ranger recruiter in a repple depple in France and signed up.

I was assigned to a machine gun squad (anyone in tanks knows the light machine gun backwards and forwards; there are three to five of them in a medium tank; you can dissemble and assemble them in your sleep).

I fought with them in several engagements. Then was wounded and captured when the Germans broke through our perimeter -- briefly -- as we were holding a position on the Irsch-Zerf road, some miles behind their lines.

The guys whose names come to mind at the moment are Joe Remes (t may have been Rhemes), Vergil ("Jock") Lynch (it may have been Lyncee) and Johnny Lasciavo (Loschiavo?). I think it was Johnny who got me in the hand and face; I have always thought it was an American burst. Not his fault. It was pitch dark, I had failed to pull back when I should have and there were people talking German behind me.

The Germans did some surgery on my face. I spent a pretty lean month in an unregistered prison hospital. Lost 31 pounds in 30 days. Most of the Americans there were litter cases who could not get up, and we lost a lot of them.

Was recaptured by the Third Division of the Seventh Army coming north from the Mediterranean and was sent to Paris and then to the Zone of the Interior for reconstructive surgery on my face and to fatten up.

I spent a very happy summer assigned to my home in Connecticut for rest and recuperation (it didn't even come off my leave time) sailing up and down the New England Coast with my younger brother. Figured I would be headed for the Pacific in the Fall. I called Col. Mucci, who lived in Bridgeport, Conn., about joining the Sixth Rangers in the Pacific (which he commanded), but The Bomb saved me that.

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