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Mr. Cox
Mr. Coleman
me but at least I'm going somewhere. And I walked in there and they said How you doing,
Sergeant. And I said I'm doing fine and I'm ready to go back. 1 don't even know where they are,
but I want to go back. And so I started to explain to them where I thought they were. And they
said don't you worry about that part because you're not going over there. You're going home. We
need the bed. Your feet will nexer be anything but trouble to you, and your ears, and your going
home. And I went home. And I wxent back to, right back to Patrick Henry. Got there by boat, left
from Liverpool - actually from England I went to Wales to another hospital, and then went to
Liverpool. Got on a boat and went back to Hampton Roads, Virginia. Got there and that night had
oyster sten and saw a movie called National Velvet. And then the next day we was on a train
going I didn't even know where and wound up in a El Paso at the hospital there, Ft. Bliss. And I
talked to the officers over there and they said the war is over or just about over. It really w as oxer,
I think, or close to it. And I said in the Pacific too? And they said no. I said well, you know, I
think maybe I could go there. I don't know I must have been crazy. Because anyway, they said,
you're not going. Said that's it. So anyway to make a long story short, that's where I got out.
And when I got out I was so glad to get out and so miserable about the way it happened. The fact
that I wasn't with my outfit. You haxe no idea how that feeling, or maybe you do, but I'd
understand if you didn't. Anyway, I got out and when I got out they said O.K. we're going to give
you this discharge and on the back you can put whatever you want on there for people to see. I just
kind of faked it. I was in France and maybe said Belgium, I don't know. Just a few little things.
And I didn't say anything about combat at all. I just didn't care. And I didn't think anybody else
would. So I got out and discharged.
Do you remember the date?
Yeah, June 22, 1945. And got back home to Corpus Christi. About two weeks later I got a Purple
Heart medal, and a commendation and all that stuff from some General at Ft. Sam. I don't know
where anything went except, for some reason, 1 still have that medal. I didn't know - people would
ask me what campaigns - I couldn't tell them the name. I didn't know anything. Until I found
out about our organization, I didn't know we had one. And once l found that out about five )ears
ago, and have gotten in contact with these guys, I began to realize I owe this to my grandkids and
my kids as well as myself to knoNN what the hell I did and where I did it and have a little history of
it, you know. So I started in and the more I got into it, the worse it was. Nobody had a record of
anything. And that's when my deal with the congressman and some guy out of Ft. Sam started and
I had to fight like hell and contact every government agency to see if they had a record of anything
that I did there in their deal. And I slowly began to hear from foreign countries on little citations
or what have you before I could get anything out of this outfit, my own. But finally that came
about last fall. And they got it right except for one thing. When I left, I was in the 517"' Parachute
Regimental Combat Team. And I wasn't in any other outfit. But as the war went on after I had
left, in the closing weeks of the war, we were sent into - part of our guys were in the 82"d, part of
them were over in some cavalry division or something - when they got out, when we got to
Germany and the war was over they gave our guys this option. You can either go into the Pacific
or you can go into the 82" Airborne Division and stay in Germany. And some did and some did
the other and some didn't want to do either one. So somehow or rather before we were disbanded,
and we were at Ft. Bragg later that year, the 517th was disbanded formally. Somewhere in there we
were in the 13th Airborne Division. How that happened and who they are I don't know. And I
argued with the Congressman and everybody else about it in Washington, and they said )es, you
were. And thex said it was a temporary thing. Your outfit went out of the 13"' Airborne Dixision
when you were discharged. And I said, I didn't, and they said, well, you did. And I didn't. On
these citations. so and so and so and so in the 517t' Regimental Combat Team 13th Airborne
Division. They sent me those all framed. A general handed it to me. And I'm reading it and, oh
God, I've got to get that corrected. Well, as soon as we left Ft. Sam, I went back to the
Congressman and told him, this was not right. And we sent it back in and they refused to change
it. The only records they have show that our guy s went through the 13th somehow. And they don't
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