Q.: To try to stop any invasion. If my number's right, I think 19,000 Americans died
 there. Can you describe the atmosphere around Holland when you were there?
A.: Yeah, that was, we were in Harleem, Holland, which is in the coal mining region.
 This is a nice little city, a big city now I hear. But, we knew that something was
 happening because a couple planes flew over. Curiously enough, one of them
 was a jet plane, first jet plane. We'd never heard a jet type plane. And it was so
 close that you could see the pilot in the plane, that's how close he was. By the
 way, we learned later that he had bailed out of his plane and he was so glad to be
 captured. And the building next to our building was the shell. Actually it
 belonged to a dentist friend of mine which was next door to where we were
 bivouacked, our unit, medic and support staff unit was housed in this one kind of
 building. By the way, it wasn't heated at all. It was an old (inaudible). But we
 were glad we were indoors anyway. We were delighted about that. Yeah, one
 night the shelling, one went through that building. But nobody was hurt but the
 what it was, the strafing planes, the shell, there was a lot of people movement.
 Curiously enough, some of the troops had come in for actually a day's kind of
 respite that came back and that was the, it must have been 10, I don't know.
 Nobody ever informed us you know, about where we were in relation to the
 troops. I would guess we were somewhere between ten, because the shell, we
 were within shell distance. Whatever shell distance, we were from the Germans,
 that's how far we were. But the troops were pulled back and it was winter. And
 what a sight of troops there were. They happened to be, when I saw them again,
 they were lined up in front of a house of prostitution. And it was a long line.
 Could be twenty guys. And there they were. They're little guys, you know,
 they're not John Wayne guys. They're little guys in huge trenchcoats. Big boots
 and a gun that looks too big for them. A hat that looks too big for them. And all,
 they do not look like fighting men, I can tell you right now. And there they are,
 waiting in line at a house of prostitution. And I had never seen so much troop
 action. So we knew that something was going on but we really weren't informed.
 They never tell you anything because, like you guys, like you would tell
 somebody else and it would eventually get back to the opposition. You know,
 when they say that you know, the President of the United States needs to have
 been a soldier to really understand and be a general. That's a lot of malarkey.
 Soldiers don't know what the hell is going on. ... go damn north, north. The
 individual soldier has no idea what the devil is going on.

Q.: When you guys were given free time, what are some of the activities you would
 engage in? Like, maybe keeping a diary or...
A.: Oh. Well, we wrote letters a lot, you know. And that was a letter writing. We
 didn't have email or anything like that. The letter service was unbelievable.
 Unbelievable! You know, I wrote a lot of letters. But gee, once, when I was in
 Holland at that time. I got a day's leave, 24 hour pass. To go into Brussels.
 That's after the Battle of the Bulge was over they gave us a leave. And so we
 went there for 24 hours. But it took a while to get there. And I didn't see that



 Draf Q