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Originally Posted by Literature
If I were you, I would try to find if there are any surviving members of your grandfather's platoon, who would have served right next to him. It would be worth contacting them and trying to get some stories about their particular experience. Perhaps one of them has/had written something - whether it be a journal at the time, or a memoir of some kind afterward. They would almost certainly remember your grandpa.
These platoons often met up for reunions, though most have stopped simply because there aren't many living or able bodied WWII veterans anymore.
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Great idea. I will look into it.
Although he didn't talk about the war much, his oldest brother, my great uncle Dewey, lived until 2004 and I got a good bit of information from him. He was also an airborne infantryman and I believe he said he was in the 82nd Airborne division. He fought during D-day and then did a major drop during operation Market Garden. The second day of the operation, he was shot 7 times in the left leg, abdomen and chest. He remembers blacking out and waking up in a hospital. When I was a little kid, my cousins and I would ask to see his 'bellybuttons', since his wounds on his chest all looked like bellybuttons...that's what he told us they were.
He always talked about how nice the weather was the day he got shot. I remember his saying something along the lines of 'I was just admirin' how good the warm September sun felt and listening to the wind blow through the trees when all of a sudden it sounded like every gun in Europe was goin' up. Then I just woke up in the damn hospital."
haha.