M: Right. Back to 149th Infantry. In my particular company I was a platoon
 leader; in fact, I was the executive officer of a company, and my particular
 company came from Harlan County, Kentucky, which is a coal mining county
 in eastern Kentucky renown for its feuds. Neither the Hatfields nor the
 McCoys came from there, but they came from the neighboring county. When
 these boys went AWOL [absent without leave], nobody went in after them,
 neither the M.P.s nor the civilian police. For various other reasons we lost
 members of the original group. We received a contingent of ex-coal miners
 from western Pennsylvania, and I was given the job for the regiment of
 running a rifle/marksmanship school. My Kentucky regiment had held the
 record in the National Guard for marksmanship, and I was now charged with
 taking a bunch of coal miners from Pennsylvania who did not have the same
 tradition of marksmanship that the Kentucky mountaineers did, and I did not
 relish that the least bit. I was looking for some way to get in another infantry
 outfit, but I was told there were no transfers under any circumstances.
 However, I saw published on the bulletin board a request for volunteers for
 the parachute infantry, and I volunteered for that. That immediately cost me
 a promotion, but ultimately, after about two months, it resulted in my being
 transferred to the parachute school at Fort Benning, Georgia in August, 1942.

P: What rank did you hold when you went there?

M: I was second lieutenant.

P: When did you get first?

M: The next year. I became one of the oldest second lieutenants in the army.

P: You stayed in the parachute infantry until the end of the war?

M: That is correct.

P: Tell me about the rest of your military career.

M: In my second week of training of a three-week training course at parachute
 school I managed to break a leg, so I was laid out for four months.

P: How did that happen?

M: They had two or three of these towers that they had originally built for the
 1939 World's Fair. They were about 300 feet high, and they would pull you
 up on that and then release you, which gave you the feeling of falling down
 in a parachute. I came down, and I think I was scared. In any event, I was
 very stiff and I came in sideways, breaking my lower leg.

P: So that laid you up for quite awhile.


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