In episode 3 of this series, Bill takes us into his traumatic D-Day experience landing with Company E of the 116th Regiment, 29th Division in the first wave at Omaha Beach.  Being first off of his landing craft onto Omaha Beach, he and 5 guys raced across the beach under fire with the job of cutting the barbed wire for the men behind them. A group of displaced soldiers began to follow Bill and his leadership earned him a battlefield promotion from private to sergeant on D-Day + 1.

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In episode 2 of this 6 part series, Mr. Parker tells more stories of his teen years, riding horseback in weekend rodeo's and courting the girl who would later become his wife. He also discusses how he ultimately was drafted into the US Army in WWII and trained to be an infantryman using the greatest battle weapon ever devised, according to Gen. Patton: the M1 Garand rifle.

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Welcome to Episode 1 of the 6 part series featuring Tech Sgt Bill Parker who landed in the first wave on Omaha Beach on D-Day with Co. E of the 116th Reg 29th Div. In this episode Bill talks about his great life growing up in SE Oklahoma during the Great Depression and how he spent his youth as a cowboy breaking horses, roping calves and getting into a little trouble also.

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Please join us next week as we begin our fantastic series featuring 97 year old TSgt Bill Parker of the 116th Infantry Regiment of the 29th Infantry Division as he talks about his life growing up in SE Oklahoma as a true cowboy and then as a wire cutter in Company E in the first wave landing at Omaha Beach on D-Day. He lost much of his hearing on D-Day as the US Navy shelled German fortification WN 62 literally right over his head. Mr. Parker was promoted from Private to Sgt on D-Day + 1 at Viervile Sur Mer and walked over 600 miles across Europe as a squad and platoon leader. 

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In this final episode in the Edward Patterson series, Col. Patterson discusses the end of the war and rather than going home back over the hump, which he knew to be extremely dangerous, he chose to go home eastward through Shanghai. He also discusses an amusing story in which he and a buddy single handedly evicted a Japanese garrison out of a Shanghai hotel after the war's end.

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In Episode 4, Col. Patterson discusses the event that got him awarded the Soldiers Medal, his near death experience getting thrown from a plane door during a crash landing, the first incendiary raids on Japan and rumors of a new bomb that could end the war.

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In Episode 3, Mr. Patterson discusses his role in overseeing the movement of supplies over "The Hump", he discusses the 20th Air Force attacking Japan from the west for the first time since the Doolittle Raid, Operation Matterhorn, the logistics of supplying the B-29 raids as well as the seeds of the tense present day geo-political relationship between China and Taiwan.

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In Episode 2, Edward Patterson describes the end of the fighting in North Africa and the Mediterranean battleground. Instead of being sent north toward the war in Italy, he is sent east to the China-Burma-India theater where he is assigned to the 10th Air Force to begin the airlift of supplies over the Himalayas to China.

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Welcome to the first episode of the Edward Patterson series. In this episode Mr. Patterson describes how he got involved in the military, details his travel to the North Africa theater in 1942 and being strafed by an ME-109. He would go on to serve in logistical troop support in the battle against the German Army and Field Marshall Erwin Rommel.

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Adjutant Ed Patterson served in the Statistical Command during the North Africa campaign as well as the China Burma India theater of WWII. His work involved planning and coordinating supplies being flown from India over "The Hump", or the Himalayas to allied bases in China. From a goal of flying 10,000 tons per month early on to eventually achieving 70,000 tons per month, Mr. Patterson's group continually refined their supply chain to deliver over 650,000 tons of supplies over the hump in a just a few years, helping to keep the Japanese army in China tied up while American Naval forces marched across the Pacific. 

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