“One time we got a jeep out of the motor pool and drove out into the desert and came to this little village and the people there started throwing rocks at us. We had to get back in our jeep and get out of there. We figured it was the first time they had ever seen Americans before.”
Being assigned to the 82nd Airborne is all based on the needs of the Army. They have Special Forces Units, Rangers, 173rd and another unit in Alaska and the 18th Airborne Corp (where the 82nd falls under). Wherever the Army needed you, that is where you were assigned. For Jesse it was the 82nd Airborne at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.
“Whatever the Soviets were doing they had to launch their own communications. Our job was to sit there and listen to them. Some of the intel required reports and some was just to listen.
“On Monday morning, we listened to Roosevelt’s message on the radio in class. That’s when we learned about Pearl Harbor, and we knew we were in an emergency. We knew we were going to be drafted. That’s when I decided I did not want to get into the walking Army, so I joined the Navy. I didn’t want to walk,”
“I remember my brother and I went to the movie and when we got home my daddy told me Japan had attacked us. It was December 7, 1941. I said Japan, shot at us? I was too young to understand what that meant.”
“We run into about six NVA soldiers. We shot two of them. The others took off and we followed. We get into some thick elephant grass and then it got really quiet. I knew them son of a bitches were in there. They were, and they were waiting on us. It was like the fourth of July. The rest of the company finally got to our location. I don’t remember too much other than I was in a lot of pain,”
“To this day many historians discuss the impact of the two atomic bombs and would it have saved thousands if not millions of American lives. The ideological mindset of the Japanese was to commit suicide rather than surrender. The jumping off the cliffs in Okinawa and the Kamikaze pilots was a prime example of this fanatical mindset of the times.”
“We had B-26s on our base and I remember when we were going to breakfast in the mornings the B-17s and 24’s were flying out. They were heading to bombing missions in Germany. They were all in formation and man they looked good. Hundreds of them.”
“Pat was assigned to the advance parties setting up where you could use radio antennas. When there was a communications set up in the field her unit would dispatch to set up communications and coms for the active Army units coming in. I had the best soldiers to work with,”
The statue of the “Kneeling Soldier,” on the Veterans Memorial was sculptured by Ed Pickett. “It is double life-size. I have done miniatures from inch and a half to double life size. I have also done books where they want to bring characters to life out of a book,” said Ed.