"...FIRST campaign, FIRST combat jump !"
… my watch indicated 0115, it was my FIRST operation - being only 19, I was both thrilled and frightened, it was to be my FIRST campaign, my FIRST combat jump, and moreover it was dark … and when I jumped as part of the 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment, on the early morning of June 6, 1944, I tried to think about nothing, yet I told myself that if ever I managed to get out of this operation, I would NEVER play dice or poker anymore! We should have landed on “La Fière” but instead landed in Sainte-Mère-Eglise. I saw a wall about 10 yards away, climbed over it, and the other side was the local cemetery, so I quickly got out again! I later met 3 guys who’d been in the same plane as me. The fight in the town square only lasted a few minutes – and after having been rounded up by an unknown Lieutenant, we were regrouped and participated in mopping up the rest of the town … at the town’s southern exit, we were told to dig foxholes in view of a possible German counter-attack. I later fought at Fauville too, that’s where I saw my first ‘Asian’ soldier (German "Ost" Battalions) and drank some ‘Calvados’. I only found my Company, A Company at La Fière, it was midday, June 8, 1944. On June 16, I got shot in the left hand, by a German I thought was dead ... I killed him! The same day I got wounded one more time by German mortar fire, and while recuperating at a Field Hospital at La Madeleine (Utah Beach) the place was bombed by German aircraft on June 21, and I got plastered with shrapnel over both my arms and face. Subsequently evacuated to England June 22, 1944 I arrived in Southampton the same day. I was dismissed September 13, right on time to take part in "Operation Market-Garden" September 17, 1944 … and also fought in the "Battle of the Bulge", arriving at Werbomont, Belgium, December 18, 1944 - at the time my main interest was survival, having some beers, and chasing young women …
(Howard Manoian, Pvt, A Co, 505th PIR, 82d Abn Div, USA, #31285089, recollections)