Back From the Dead

I'd been in the army almost four years. It was June 7, 1944. I'd just come off Omaha Beach the day before, on the sixth of June. I was one of the few who made it. I was a lucky man, twenty-five years old, well-trained, and a corporal gunner in the 635th Tank Destroyer Battalion. We were attached to the "Big Red One," First Division, 16th Infantry Regiment, Company C. It was early morning. The previous afternoon a French resident of a town just above Omaha Beach had come out of his house and greeted us with a bottle of calvados, which is distilled apple brandy. He filled my canteen cup about three-quarters full, and while walking on, I drank it. That's the last I remember of the sixth of June until I woke up the morning of the seventh of June in a ditch beside the road where an M.P. was directing traffic. Beside me in the ditch were dead German soldiers. As I lay there getting my wits together and looking around, a half-track vehicle stopped on the road in front of me. I picked up my gun, walked over to it, and climbed on.