There was firing going on around the cemetery, but we had an outpost in daylight and listening posts at night, located at least one or two hedgerows out in front of our squads and platoon position. But no one in and around Ste. Mère-Eglise was spared intense mortar and artillery fire. The Germans fired everything they had on the town, from corps on down to division artillery. In our position, shells flew into the cemetery, hitting monuments, gravestones and walls. Bits of marble and gravestones were flying all around, in addition to the steel shrapnel. When I went around to inspect the foxholes, I’d tell the men who were digging down deep: “Another six inches and I’ll call it desertion.”

D-Day duties included patrols. I went out with some men to recover the dead. We’d go out as far as we could without getting into a firefight, pull the bodies out of the trees, then carry them back and lay them out on top of the ground in the cemetery. The best we could do for them was to cover their bodies with parachutes. As I remember it, we laid out nine troopers, most of them from F Company 505. […]

The artillery fire was heavy throughout the day from very early on. It increased in volume, then died down a little, then continued until well after midnight. That night we were on a high state of alert, expecting attacks. I was awake around midnight with my head and shoulders out of the foxhole, when I heard one particular round of artillery coming in, and misjudged it entirely. It landed a lot closer than I expected, but even then it was quite a ways away. I got hit in the left shoulder, spun around, and dropped in the hole. I felt my shoulder, trying to determine how bad it was, and it had gone completely numb. I had visions of the large chunks of shrapnel that I’d seen lying around from other artillery shell explosions, pieces of eight inches to a foot, sometimes.

I panicked a little, thinking I might lose my shoulder. This is the type of thing that drives men into shock. Shock is a big killer on the battlefield. It doesn’t matter if you’re hit hard or lightly, a man who goes into shock is in a dangerous situation. I hollered for a medic and Joe Carnecki, our aid man, also from Erie, came running over. He examined my shoulder and tried to calm me down, saying it wasn’t very bad. A small rectangular piece of shrapnel, maybe an inch and a half in size, had lodged in my flesh, but it hadn’t penetrated far. It was pretty well spent when I got hit. Many a time I saw Joe and others expose themselves to enemy fire to reach a wounded man.

Joe put a field dressing on my wound, gave me a shot of morphine, and asked if I wanted to go to the battalion aid station. I thought I’d be better off right there with the platoon. I was put in a prone position on the inside of the cemetery, just over the wall from my squad position. The one benefit of the wound was that I didn’t have to be on the alert. I could let the effects of the morphine take over, and I quickly dropped off to sleep. ⁽¹⁾