Word: gunness
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...just in strings. I can remember them being so close that I actually pulled my legs up as far as I could, my knee into my stomach, to get away from a stream of tracers. I slammed into the ground, and I was immediately pinned down by machine-gun fire. There was no way to raise up. Every time I tried to turn, the machine gun would open up. Every time I tried to move, there would be a burst. Apparently the great big ball of fire was a C-47 that had been shot down, and I was silhouetted...
...hedgerow. It [turned out to be] my assistant gunner, Grover Boyce. There were two of us together now. It seemed like a better world all of a sudden. [Soon] we located a parapack, and believe me, we were fortunate. One of the packs we opened had a machine gun. We really felt pretty good having that thing in our hands. We didn't know where we were, but we knew that we weren't anywhere near where we were supposed to be. We were getting ready to go ahead and set up some sort of a decent roadblock in both...
...backed off about 200 yds. and, son of a gun, here came another group of Germans. All of D-day, we just moved, moved, moved, and we never seemed to get away from activity by the Germans. It was one fire fight after another. Getting up into the afternoon, pretty late, we went back inland a couple of hundred yards. We picked out a pair of good and decent spots, and we were going to take a break. I remember lying down and lighting a cigarette, and that's all I recall until I felt something nudging...
...waiting to be loaded onto the ships at dockside, I would often light a cigarette using my weapon. Being experienced with it, I knew all the safety factors. I could, without triggering the propelling mechanism, light a cigarette by simply producing a small flame at the mouth of the gun. In doing so, it produced the same hissing sound as when the thrower was actually being fired. When my team would hear the terrifying sound, I would immediately be the only one on the dock...
During that walk (I was unable to run), I got my first experience with enemy fire. Machine-gun fire was hitting the beach, and as it hit the wet sand, it made a "sip sip" sound like someone sucking on their teeth. Ahead of me in the distance, I could see survivors of the landing already using the base of the bluffs as shelter. Due to my near drowning and exhaustion, I had fallen behind the advance. To this day, I don't know why I didn't dump the flamethrower and run like hell for shelter. But I didn...