In Memory of All Our Comrades Who Served in
Company B from Fedala to Berchtesgaden
Known or Unknown to Us ...

These "anecdotes" were, typed and collated by me, "Okie". They appear in terms of style and substance as they were sent to me by each contributor. Any slight editing was done only to help clarify a phrase or sentence (or to guess what the writer was stating in his terrible penmanship)!

These insights, some brief, some in depth, reveal the experiences of young men in combat ... they do much to "fill in the gaps" often left in ordinary history books.

I have taken the liberty of offering my comrades some of the accounts I have written about what it was like, for me, and I believe for all who shared the trials of combat, to live and survive in that combat.

I would encourage all my comrades in Company B to take time to record their remembrances of war and combat. It is through such "oral" history, the memories only known in a personal terms by those of us who lived those times, that a reasonably honest record can be left to those generations who follow, our children and their children, so they can make wise decisions as to what are the consequences of war—and what are possible better options.

I have two vivid memories, among many others, which forever impress me about the stupidity, banality, futility and anguish of war. One is about a very young soldier named Jones who died in my arms after a mortar barrage on us on top of "Goon" Mountain in France. He looked so calm slouching there when I went to him ... his only words were, "Mom, Mom"—then he died.

A few months later some of us were taking out snipers on top of a ridge, in the woods, in Germany. A German soldier rose in front of me with his rifle pointed ... I shot him, he fell. I went forward to see what I had done ... at the time our own men below, thinking we on the ridge were Germans, began to fire on us with rifles and machine guns ... I dropped to the ground and came face to face with the German ... I then noticed he was wounded badly in the stomach ... and he was very young ... we stared at each other, bullets flying over our heads, suddenly brought together in a strange way ... he uttered these words over and over ... "Mutter, Mutter".

- Robert Maxwell "Okie" O'Kane

O'Kane came from Dover, New Hampshire receiving two Silver Stars and 2 Purple Hearts during the war. O'Kane later served as a professor at Rutgers University, the University of North Carolina and the University of New Hampshire. These stories were collected for a 1997 Reunion program and are posted with permission of Brooks O'Kane.

Robert Maxwell O'Kane |  Foreword |  Dogface Soldier 
Stories Part 1 |  Stories Part 2 |  To A Medic |  Why