I will give you a brief overviwe which I hope may be of some interest to you and those you try to give some insight on world war II. I am now 83 years old and I live in the city where I was born, Sacramento, California, USA. I entered the United States Army on April 1st 1943 at the age of 20, and was discharged from service on December 15th, 1945.
During my time in service I was assigned to the 992nd Engineer Aviation Regiment and the held the rank of Private. our Regiment was part of the IX Engineer Command and our mission was to build, maintain and defend air bases for the 8th Airforce in Europe.n On August 20th 1943 we boared along with thousands of other American soldiers the U.S. Troop Transport "HMS Queen Elizabeth" for our trip across the atlantic ocean, landing in Gourock, scotland on August 25th 1943.
We were transported to the area of Essex, England and our first bas was to be at Birch. From there we were at Wormingford and then to Weathersfield. On April 1st, 1944 we were moved to Great Barrington in Oxfordshire to prepare for the invasion (D-Day) of France. On June 12th 1944 we departed from Southampton across the English Channel and landed on Omaha Beach, Normandy. We could not break out of Normandy area until St. Lo was taken and so the on July 4th, 1944 we were on our way to free France and the other German occupied countries of Europe.
Our route took us through Le Mans, Chatres, Etampes and into Paris where we arrived for their liberation on August 27th 1944. We were only in Paris for a short time and while there we were stationed at Le Bourget Air Base which was the main Air Base of Paris and where Charles Lindbergh landed on his solo flight from the United States to France in the "Spirit of St. Louis". While at Le Bourget our Regiment suffered our greatest loss of the war when our Commanding Officer Augustine Patterson Little, Jr. (Pat) and our Executive Officer Lt. Colonel Gilbert B. Hall were ambushed and killed by German soldiers on August 28th 1944.
From France we continued on to the area of Liege, Belgium where we were until the battle of the Bulge in december 1944. After that we moved to the area of St. Trond in Belgium and into Aachen, Germany this was in February 1945. We were the on our way yo Berlin via Bonn, Kassel and Frankfurt where the war ended on May 8th 1945.
After the war was over our group returned to Buc, France just outside of Paris and I returned home from Marseille, France on November 25th 1945 and was discharged from the Army on December th 1945. Many things happened during the time wew were in Europe but perhaps this will give you some idea on what took place with one American soldier.
