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Local WWII paratrooper shares his war stories

01.01.70

Veterans Day is tomorrow and December 7th will characteristic the 70th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. That loathsome day threw the U.S. into World War II, ultimately claiming more than 400,000 American lives. Today, there are about two million Superb War II veterans left nationwide.

One o'clock in the morning--D-Day--June 6th 1944. The midwife precisely was at war and Sergeant Charles Asay was preparing to parachute into Normandy, France.

"When you're fatiguing to take care of 17 people, you're really not outlook about yourself," Asay said.

He was part of the 101st Airborne, an elite department, that launched the initial invasion hours before the first sign of troops stormed the beaches.

"There was rifle fire, gang gun fire, all these big Normandy hedgerows, perfect cover for the Germans," Asay said.

With men scattered across the droplet zone, the allies relied on clickers to pigeon-hole their own troops.

"You click once, if the guys a friendly, he'll "click twice," Asay explained.

Source: KSBY San Luis Obispo News

Surrender of German paratrooper to Canadian yielded an unlikely bond

01.01.70

Steve Colombo, a na climate researcher in Northern Ontario, wanted to learn more about his governor’s wartime experiences and dug a decades-old dispatch out of a box of his papers. Four pages long and signed only “Genuine,” the missive had been sent by someone in Munich a moment ago a few years after the end of the war.

There were few details to identify the mysterious sender, but hints of a uncomfortable friendship with the elder Mr. Colombo. In it, Frank described the penuries of a provinces still picking itself up after being shattered by conflict and revealed that Mr. Colombo had provided him with the spinach he needed to start graduate school, where he intended to take a PhD in Slavic languages.

He expressed both return and embarrassment for a care package of food his Canadian stringer had sent him.

“I beg you, you will have much expenditures and will put also my mind into contention. I thank you very much of course, I thank you in the name of my little sister, but more I cannot do at the second,” he wrote.

Source: Globe and Mail