Living History in Our Community

Jim Burns' Story, page 3

Frostbite and time in the hospital
The United States Army was ill prepared for winter warfare. Our front-line troops did not have adequate winter headwear or footwear nor did they have thermal lined jackets with parkas or lined mittens. This caused many soldiers to become amputees or cripples. Many soldiers who suffered non-life threatening wounds died because of the severe cold weather. The German soldiers were better dressed for the cold. They had padded jackets and pants, high boots, wool head wear under their helmets that covered their heads, ears and neck and warm mittens.

It was in January, 1945, that I started having pains in both my feet. It was the beginning of frostbite and it became more painful as the days went by. I seemed to get a little relief by kicking at tree trunks so I must have kicked the bark off dozens of trees in the Ardennes forest. I didn’t realize it at the time but this could have also caused more serious injury to the blood vessels in my feet. We started digging foxholes big enough for two men so that we could help to warm each others feet by laying in the hole with our boots under the opposite guys armpit. There was a shortage of Arctic’s (galoshes) to put on over our boots that could have helped keep our feet dry and a little warmer.

By January 10th I could hardly walk. I was limping badly and my feet became numb. Because of the numbness I would often slip on the ice or snow and fall down. Soon my wool knit gloves became wet and froze and my fingers got frostbitten, too. I tried putting my hands up under my armpits for warmth while walking but my rifle which was slung over my shoulder was constantly sliding off and I had to use my hands to put the sling back over my shoulder. Because of this my fingers also became frostbitten. It looked as if someone had inserted an air hose into my legs and pumped them full of air like a balloon.

 

Medical evacuation and treatment
I was evacuated to the hospital on January 11th for severe frostbite to my feet and legs after I was unable to walk or barely stand up any longer. I was first transported on a litter by army ambulance (meat wagon) to a field hospital similar to the kind you may have seen in the TV series “MASH.” From there ambulances took us again to a hospital in Liege, Belgium. It was a rather old brick building, not like hospitals you’re accustomed to seeing today. My litter (stretcher) was placed on the floor in one of the dimly lighted corridors with several others for a couple of hours.  Eventually, I was put on a bed in a ward that had about a dozen or more beds, still wearing my field uniform and carrying my jump boots tied together across my chest. The nurses seemed to be mostly Belgian and didn’t appear to speak much English. I was in extreme pain and was given painkillers and penicillin shots.

The following day I was taken by ambulance to a railroad yard and put on a hospital train. The car had racks on each sidewall where the stretchers were placed three high. There were no windows and each car held about thirty patients.  American army nurses were in each of the cars tending to the wounded.

The train took us to a hospital on the outskirts of Paris. Our stretchers were placed on the ground and American army nurses marked the tags on our jackets and had German prisoners carry us into the hospital. I told the nurse I didn’t want any Krauts carrying me, but she ignored me and ordered two reluctant Germans to carry me in. The following day I was taken by hospital train again to the port of Le Havre and put on a British hospital ship, which took me to another hospital in Southampton, England. Again overnight there and another hospital train ride to an American army hospital, the 68th General Hospital, in Shropshire, near the town of Oswestry, not far from the border of North Wales.

Ward 18, which I shared with thirty-nine other patients, was to be my home for the next two and a half months. The army called these facilities hospital plants. Enclosed corridors connected the wards, each in long one-story buildings. Each ward had a nurse’s station, latrine, pantry, and supply room. There were probably a couple of dozen wards plus utility buildings, nurses and doctors quarters, surgery rooms and a kitchen. Meals were taken to the wards in carts similar to what hospitals use now.

After about a week in this hospital most of the feeling returned in my fingers, which weren’t as severely frozen as my feet and legs, and I was once again able to pick up a knife and fork to eat my meals.

In the hospital, I was only covered me with a sheet and blanket as far as my knees. My legs were very swollen and my feet were almost the size of basketballs and extremely painful. Every day I would look down to see if there were any black spots. I was given morphine and other painkillers but nothing seemed to dull the pain. After about two weeks, one night all the pain disappeared, in fact all feeling from the upper thighs down was gone. I could no longer move my legs regardless of how hard I tried. One doctor remarked that they could amputate my legs without putting me to sleep. Can you imagine how that made me feel? Still I was confident that I would get better and the one good thing about my condition now was that I could get a good nights sleep and enjoy my meals.

After about seven weeks my feet and legs started to show some improvement and started shrinking back to normal size. The outer layers of skin would flake off like egg shells and you could hear pieces falling onto the floor. After the hard skin had all flaked off I was able to wear over sized felt slippers, and though I still couldn’t walk, I was able to get around in a wheel chair. It felt good to be able to sit up and be able to go and talk with some of the patients at the far end of the ward and to explore other areas of the hospital. 

Though I only did what was expected of me, I did win the Bronze Star Medal.  I’m not sure whether I deserved it or not, it was for a previous action the week before. I was also awarded the Purple Heart Medal. The Purple Heart: now that’s one medal that you don’t look forward to earning but once you have it you are proud to wear it. Emotionally, I was transformed from an adventuresome youth to a more mature person facing the facts that there was a good chance that I might not survive the war.  As an infantry rifleman the odds were not in my favor especially since most of my friends in the company had already been killed.

I was discharged from the hospital the end of March to return to my outfit at the front for combat duty. One of my nurses, Lt. McDonald, was angry with me for not complaining that I was still in pain. She told me that earlier on they were thinking of shipping me back to the States. Even though I wasn’t anxious to return to combat, I really didn’t want to go back to the States while the war was still going on.

 

Discharged from the hospital and returning to the 82nd Airborne
When leaving the hospital soldiers were sent to Army Replacement Depots for processing then shipped back to their units. Some recovering wounded soldiers, classified not fit for combat duty, were transferred to the Army Air Corps as ground crew members to ride out the war. I wasn’t going to have any of that and made sure that I was well enough for full duty. I wanted to end the war with my outfit even though I was well aware of the possible consequences.

After being discharged from the hospital I was given a five-day delay enroute to the Replacement Depot at Litchfield Barracks. I spent the five days in London where I had arranged to meet one of my ward buddies from the hospital who was getting discharged two days after me. After five wonderful days in London I reported to Litchfield, and two days later I was shipped to Le Havre, France, from a port in the south of England with a large group of other soldiers returning to their units from army hospitals.

Photo: Traveling by 40 and 8's in France. Click here to load a full size copy of the photo.

After landing in Le Havre we were put on a freight train (40 and 8’s) The name forty and eights came about during World War I when the freight cars, which were about two-thirds the size of American ones, were loaded with forty men and eight horses. During World War 2 they were loaded with just the men with all their equipment. This was not what you could call first class accommodations. You sat or lay down on the floor of the cars, if you were lucky you might find some hay to lie on. After a few days, we arrived at another Replacement Depot outside of Stolberg, Germany near Aachen. The depot was located in an old factory building along side a railroad yard. We were issued new rifles at the depot so that when we rejoined our outfits at the front lines we would already be armed.

A day or two later we were shipped to another replacement depot near Munster, Germany. It was similar to the one at Stolberg. This was the final depot before I rejoined my unit.  Several of us sneaked out of the depot to explore the area and maybe find something to drink. Most of Munster lay in shambles, brick by brick, on the ground.

The more I saw, the more sympathetic I became to the sufferings of others, especially the elderly and the children, including the enemy civilians. It took a long while before I felt any sympathy for any German soldiers because I was taught and trained to kill them. It was kill or be killed. I never did feel anything but hatred for the SS soldiers as I saw first hand the atrocities committed by them including the killing of American prisoners and wounded.

When I finally rejoined my regiment I felt like a rookie. I was in a company of strangers. Most of my old friends were missing, either killed or wounded. Of the hundred and eighty men in the company I could find only about a dozen who I really knew. My old company commander, Captain White, was in the hospital with wounds as was my First Sergeant. My platoon leader, Lieutenant Paul Vogel was also a casualty and would return later but was transferred to battalion headquarters. I soon renewed my friendship with old friends and got acquainted with many of the new guys but things were never the same as before.

The war ended after we crossed the Elbe River between Hamburg and Berlin. The German 2nd Army, approximately 150,000 men, surrendered to the 82nd Airborne and we met the Russians army just beyond the town of Ludwigslust. Two Hungarian horse cavalry divisions also surrendered to us and we divided the horses among our other regiments. Each of the three regiments had their own corral and we used the horses for roving patrols, two men to a patrol. We jokingly started calling ourselves the Airborne Cavalry. Little did we know that years later there would be airborne cavalry.

The 82nd also liberated the nearby Wobelein concentration camp. We found hundreds of bodies and made the German civilians make crosses and dig graves in the town square in front of Ludwigslust’ Palace of the Grand Duke. The corpses were wrapped in sheets with their faces showing and laid beside each grave while the population of the town were forced to walk by them and pay their respects, or else. The 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions were originally scheduled to invade Berlin from the air while ground troops would cross the Elbe and enter the city from the west, but General Eisenhower cancelled the plans and decided to let the Russians take it.

Photo: 82nd Airborne parachute drop and gliders at Templehof Airport in Berlin, 1945. Click here to load a full size copy of the photo.

 

Occupation duty in Berlin
A few weeks after the war ended we were sent to an old French army camp near Epinal, France in the Vosgue Mountains for replenishment of equipment prior to going to Berlin for occupation duty. Under an agreement at the Potsdam Conference Berlin was to be divided between the four major powers, the U.S., Britain, France and Russia.

During this period I became restless and for some unknown reason I decided to volunteer for a transfer to the Eleventh Airborne Division in the Pacific Theater as the war with Japan was still going on. I don’t really know why I did it, but I did. A few days later my company commander called me into his office and told me that he also had volunteered to go. He was all enthused about it and told me that he had served in the Pacific for a while before joining the paratroopers. He said we would probably get a furlough to go home before we were shipped to the Pacific and even promised to promote me to First Sergeant in his new company. I tried to show the same amount of enthusiasm as he but inside I was having misgivings. Regimental headquarters gave their okay to the transfer but a few days later division headquarters, much to my relief, turned it down.

While at the camp I was asked to design the regimental helmet emblem. Regimental headquarters liked my design and authorized it for all the helmets in the regiment, approximately three thousand of them. I made templates for airbrushing the design onto the helmets, one was the parachute wings minus the parachute to be sprayed on in white, the other was the French Cross of Lorraine which was placed in the center of the wings in a light blue. The Cross of Lorraine is part of the regimental crest and signifies the regiment’s participation in the battles of World War I. I supervised a team of men airbrushing the emblem onto the right side of all the helmets.

The division went to Berlin by freight train (40 and 8’s) in July 1945. Most of the 40 and 8 rides I’ve been on lasted four to five days and the cars were so crowded that I spent most of my time on the roof of the car. Up there you had to watch out for tunnels because if you were sitting up you could be swept off when entering a tunnel. Also, while going through the tunnels you had to lay flat and put your jacket over your head so as not to suffocate on the smoke and soot from the coal-burning engines.

On our trip to Berlin the train traveled through a Russian controlled corridor in Russian occupied Germany, land that had been taken in battle by the American army but handed over to the Russian to occupy under the Potsdam Agreement. Our sector in Berlin included Templehof Airdrome and my battalion was billeted in some old apartment buildings in the Mariendorf section of the city that somehow escaped destruction. Berlin was horrifically damaged by aerial bombardment and by artillery and mortar fire. Thousands of buildings were completely destroyed and thousands more were very badly damaged. All of the bridges over the river and canal were destroyed. It is a miracle that any of the people survived the bombings and then the battle for the city by the Russian armies.

Photo: Alvin Wirick on Unter den Linden, Berlin, 1945. Click here to load a full size copy of the photo.

One day in October, 1945, another trooper and I went through the Brandenburg Gate into the Russian zone. We walked for quite a way past bombed out buildings through streets strewn with the rubble of the buildings with hardly a soul insight. Before long we came to an area that wasn’t to badly damaged and where there were people walking about, mostly Russians. We saw a small movie theater and decided to see what was showing. It was crowded with Russian soldiers who were running up and down the isles like little children shouting to one another and generally being very noisy.

The movie seemed to be a series of newsreels about the war and the Russian army but of course we couldn’t understand a word even if we could hear above the din. Every time that Stalin’s picture came on the screen my buddy, who had had a couple of schnapps, would start booing and giving the Bronx cheer. I told him he’d better stop before he got us both killed. The Russians sitting around us either didn’t hear his booing with all the noise or maybe they interpreted it as cheering. We left the theater before the movie ended and by then it was getting dark and there were no streetlights. I got paid the week before, ten months pay all at once and no safe place to keep it except in a money belt around my waist under my shirt. It amounted to about thirteen hundred dollars, a huge amount in those days. There was my base pay of $66 a month plus $10 overseas pay, $10 combat infantry pay, and $50 airborne pay.

As we started walking towards the American zone we heard some drunken Russians up ahead of us coming in our direction. They were singing and shouting and shooting their pistols in the air. My buddy was carrying a pistol and I asked if I could have it as I was determined to protect my money regardless of what. We hid behind the rubble of the bombed buildings until they staggered past us. At one time they looked in our direction and started to walk towards where we were hiding but then changed their minds and continued on.

The relationship between the Russians and the American airborne troops was not very friendly and there had been numerous violent episodes. As for the conduct of the Russian troops towards the German one must take into consideration the countless atrocities committed by the German army against the Russian population during the German invasion of Russia.

 

The displaced of Europe after the war
Europe had millions of displaced people (refugees) roaming in masses hither and fro carrying their worldly possessions on their backs or pulling carts of every description with apparently no specific destination in mind other than to escape the carnage or to locate other family members lost in the confusion and disarray of the war. For some, it took years to locate family members and some families were never united, usually because some died or were killed. They were a hungry and unkempt horde of humanity with no place to buy food or water or to rest. There were no restaurants or hotels amid the destruction and no doctors or hospitals to go to if you got sick.

Photo: Jim Burns on guard duty in Berlin, 1945. Click here to load a full size copy of the photo.

We had to put guards at our big garbage cans, into which we dumped the scraps from our mess gear including cold coffee and cigarette buts, because the people including Germans were scooping out the garbage in pots and pans to eat. It pained me to see elderly, motherly looking women and small children so desperate for food doing this. Every day I saved my slice of bread and a little of my meal to give to a child or an elderly person. Many of the troopers were doing the same. The only vehicles moving about were military as public transportation was practically non-existent. Life for the DP’s, as they were known, was gruesome to say the least.

After the war ended the army and some civilian organizations did what they could to help the refugees and try to unite them with missing family members. This was quite a job as there were millions of displaced persons. We as soldiers didn’t share their deprivations and misery, we were well fed and had medical care and weren’t worried about the welfare of our families.

 

First furlough and a trip to Ireland
In September I got my first furlough after more than two and a half years in the army. I had put in for a furlough to visit my relatives in the Republic of Ireland, a neutral country. They were allowing twenty-five Americans to enter the country each week to visit close relatives. My company commander had to give me a letter addressed to the Leave Center in London requesting permission for me to visit my aunts and uncles. My furlough orders came through unexpectedly to leave that very day. I was flat broke having not been paid since the previous November. I borrowed two hundred dollars from one of my buddies, Alvin Wirick, and hurriedly packed my barracks bag.

When I was about to board the Troop Carrier Command C-47 aircraft at Templehoff field my company commander came roaring across the field in a jeep and came to a screeching halt under the wing of the airplane. He thought I might be low on funds and offered me some money. I thanked him but declined his offer saying that I had enough. He told me not to come back until I got to Ireland and if the leave center in London gave me a hard time I was to get in touch with him. Even though he was a big tough looking man who you wouldn’t want to tangle with he was a fair-minded man. I had a lot of respect for him.

I flew to London and got the papers for my visit from the leave center. The next morning I left London by train for Hollyhead in North Wales where I boarded a steamer for the voyage across the Irish Sea to Dun Laoghaire the port city for Dublin.

Dublin was only a short train ride from Dun Laoghaire and we found it to be a bustling, charming old city. The Vikings founded it in the ninth century as a garrison and trading port. We spent the night there at the city’s premier hotel, The Gresham on O’Connell Street. The next day we parted company as we set out in different directions to visit our relatives.

I boarded a bus for the eighty-mile trip to Kilkenny, which is located in the southeastern part of the country. My Aunt Annie had written and told me to instruct the bus driver to let me off at Mrs. O’Neil’s pub on the Dublin road five miles before you get to the city of Kilkenny. The pub was the only building on that part of the road and was surrounded by farm fields. A small paved road opposite the pub ran down into the village of Gowran.

My Uncle Jim and cousin Jim arrived shortly after in their horse and two-wheeled carriage. Gasoline was strictly rationed at the time and wasn’t to be used for pleasure. I was thrilled at meeting my foreign relatives for the very first time. We traveled along a dirt road up into a hilly part of the country for about four miles through some of the prettiest rural country you could hope to see. Uncle Jim was very soft spoken and at times I had a little difficulty understanding him although I was used to hearing people speak with Irish brogues. After all, both my parents came from Ireland.

We soon reached their farm, Flagmount, where I would spend most of the next week. Aunt Annie and my cousins, Mary Anne, Michael and Patrick were waiting in the courtyard to greet me. We sat in their living room for a couple of hours having a drink and getting acquainted. Aunt Annie of course wanted to know all about my Mom, her sister, who she hadn’t seen in forty years since my mother left for America in 1905. Cousin Pat was a good-looking young man with a very likable personality. He knew dozens of country western songs, had a terrific singing voice and played the guitar like a pro.

Uncle Jim, besides being a farmer, was also a blacksmith and had his own forge. He used to shoe the horses for the neighboring farmers and had a way with horses that calmed even the most nervous and skittish ones. I never saw anyone as good with horses as he.

One day, I decided on a solo visit to my Aunt Marie Scarif, my father’s sister, and her husband Uncle Joe and their three daughters at Clara Castle about five mile from Flagmount but in the opposite direction from Ballygurteen. It was a beautiful sunny day and I decided to walk.

I had a present for Aunt Marie, wrapped with a bright red ribbon and bow on it. After a couple of miles I came to a roadside farmhouse with a half dozen large geese outside on the road. When I got close they started chattering very loud and came after me. I heard that their nip could be pretty painful so I started swinging the package and kicking at them as I tried to continue along the road. I had to keep turning around and swinging as they kept trying to surround me. After a couple of hundred feet they decided to leave me go. When I got to Clara and told my relatives about the incident they started laughing. They explained to me that the geese were really after the package with the red ribbon and bow. That is what had attracted them.

I thoroughly enjoyed my visit to Ireland, which I found to be very beautiful, and vowed to return again which I did in 1947, 1950, and 1990.

I returned to London, where I was delayed for a week due to bad flying conditions. Each day that I reported to the leave center they would stamp my orders “Flight Canceled Due to Bad Weather.” I didn’t mind as this gave me time to see more of London. When I finally did get back to my company in Berlin my First Sergeant said, “Did the MP’s bring you back?” I said, “No, they didn’t, sarg, here take a look at my orders.” At that moment Captain McCall came in and he said, “Burns, did you get to see your relatives“ and “did you have a good time?” “Yes, Sir, “ I answered and “Thank you, Sir.” I still have those leave order with all the flight cancellations stamped on them and I still keep in touch with my Irish cousins though most of them have died since my initial visit. The horse and buggies are gone as well because Ireland has become very modern and mechanized but I sort of liked it the old way where life was much simpler.

 

Returning to Philadelphia
I left the division in early November 1945 to go home on points. Under the points system you were given so many points for every month served overseas and five points for every decoration such as the Purple Heart Medal. All the men with eighty-five points or more were sent to camps in France. My group was sent to a camp called Camp Oklahoma City near Reims. After about a week we were put on freight trains for shipment to a staging area in the south of France.

The journey lasted several days with frequent stops along the tracks so the men could relieve themselves or build fires along the railroad to heat their rations. There were a few designated stops where the army gave us hot meals and a place to shower. At some stops on the road French people would come up to the train and give us some wine. One of the men, Private Townsend from Seth, West Virginia, had a little too much wine and while climbing from one car to another fell between the cars and was killed. No one witnessed him falling but on our next stop he didn’t answer the roll call.

We got off the train at an unknown place in the south of France and continued our journey by army trucks. As we drove around a traffic circle in one town I took a photograph from the back of the truck. When I got home and put my photos in an album I labeled that one “somewhere in the south of France.” (In July 1951, my wife and I were traveling by bus from Paris to the French Riviera on our honeymoon. We stopped in a town for lunch break near a traffic circle. There was a kiosk nearby selling picture post cards so we bought a few to send to family and friends. I picked up one card and it was a picture of the traffic circle identical to the picture that I had taken years earlier. We compared them later on and you couldn’t tell the difference between them. The town was Aix-en-Provence.)

A couple of days after we reached the staging area near Marseille we got word that a French farmer found Townsend’s body on the railroad tracks. Near the staging area camp was an American Military Cemetery. Several of us attended his funeral given by the Army Graves Registration people; the flag draped casket and a bugler playing taps. I took a few pictures of the ceremony. I thought, how sad for his parents who were expecting him home after almost three years overseas and going through all that combat.

A week later we were trucked into Marseille to the dock where our troopship was moored. It was the army transport, J. W. McAndrew. I took a few pictures of it with some of the troops carrying their bags up the gang plank and army trucks unloading on the pier. After I was discharged and at home I had my photos developed and found that I had one double exposure. It was the picture of the troop ship superimposed over the picture I took of Townsend’s flag draped casket and the bugler. It was ghostly; there was Townsend and the ship that was to carry him home to his family. How tragic. I still have an 8 inch by 10 inch print of the picture.

We sailed from Marseille on or about December the second and after a thirteen-day turbulent voyage arrived in New York harbor. As we cruised into the harbor a welcoming boat with a large sign on her side saying “Welcome Home” sailed along side our troop ship. We docked in Staten Island about five in the evening and formed on the pier in formation. The Red Cross was there to serve us coffee while we waited to board a train to take us to Camp Kilmer, New Jersey.

Next to us was the ferryboat slip where ferryboats were unloading passengers coming home from work in Manhattan. We all took notice of the unfriendly looks we were getting from the ferryboat passengers. It was as if they resented us coming home and maybe taking their jobs. Some of the soldiers remarked that we saw friendlier faces when we entered Germany during the war. WOW! What a reception for soldiers returning from the biggest war in history. All we expected were warm smiles and maybe an arm wave or friendly nod of welcome back.

 

Life after World War II
Shortly after I was discharged from the army I joined the Merchant Marine and sailed on an oil tanker as an ordinary seaman. After that I worked on the railroad in track maintenance and then as a Block Operator (Signal Tower Operator) and also enrolled in commercial flight school where I earned my pilots license with a land and seaplane rating. I even acquired a British Pilots License when I was employed at the American Embassy in London.

In 1950 I enrolled at the Chelsea Institute of Art in London where I studied art and commercial illustrating. None of this could compare with my wartime army service though. I’ve been back to Europe many times since the war but have never once visited any of the old battle sites. I never had the desire to back then but I think I would like to now. 

While working for the Department of State at the American Embassy in London, England I married, Joan, an English girl who worked at the Embassy for U. S. Information Services and we have four wonderful children, a daughter born in England, a daughter born in Athens, Greece, and a son and daughter born in New Jersey, USA.

I worked for the Department of State for about six years and then accepted a position with the Naval Air Engineering Facility in Philadelphia, PA. In 1960 I was hired by RCA Government Systems in Camden, New Jersey as a Technical Illustrator, retiring from there in January 1989. I continued to work part time for a government contractor and also did freelance work for another company up until 2001.

 

A few final thoughts…
They say that war is hell, well it does seem so a lot of the time, but there were many times when we had fun and even joked about our situations. When not in combat I’ve had some wonderful times, saw many interesting places and met a lot of interesting people. It was quite a learning experience and now that it’s over I can truthfully say that I’m glad I served during the war and wouldn’t trade the experience for anything but I wouldn’t want to go through the fighting again.

Photo: Jim Burns, taken on Memorial Day 2006 at American Legion Post 281, Gloucester Twp. NJ.

I’m proud that I did fight and of the unit I served in. My unit, the 82nd Airborne Division was known as the All American Division (AA) because it was made up of men from every state in the Union, 48 at that time. Today it is the only paratrooper division in the U.S. military and is based in Fort Bragg, North Carolina. The division’s first Medal of Honor recipient was Sgt. Alvin York, from Tennessee, who gained fame for his exploits during the battle of the Marne in World War 1. In 1942 his life was portrayed in a movie starring Gary Cooper as Sergeant York.

Europe has changed quite a bit since the war days and at times I have had a hard time identifying one with the other. The feeling, the black outs, the mystique of wartime is gone. The debris has been cleaned up, the cities rebuilt and highway systems similar to our interstate highways have been built throughout Europe. Most of the people there today were born after the war and have a hard time comprehending what life was like back then. The same goes for most people in the USA, but I know. I remember and I’ll never forget.

Jim Burns, Stratford, NJ
May 8, 2006 (VE Day) 61 Years Later

Note: Jim's World War II memoirs have been condensed for use on this site. Please click here to download a pdf copy of his uncondensed memoirs.

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