Dear Ben,

In a Veterans Administration facility one encounters some remarkable people. 

A recent hip replacement put a gentleman named John Kennedy here in Menlo Park for a couple of weeks for rehabilitation.  When I heard the name Kennedy, I thought of my 38 years in Massachusetts.  This guy wasn't Irish nor from Massachusetts, but had a twister of a tale worth telling.

Kennedy's parents and he lived in prewar Germany under a different name; they were Jewish and the Nazis were bearing down.  His father and mother wanted him, as a 14 year old boy, to escape to America.  They knew their trying to escape with him would ruin his chances.  His mother somehow got him across the Swiss border and he made it to Italy.  Italian families somehow got him onto a ship headed for New York.  He was stopped in the Azores and came within an inch of being sent back to Germany as possibly being someone the Germans were trying to smuggle into the country for their fifth column.  He arrived safely in New York and did all sorts of jobs to keep alive, again living there with Italian families.  He learned after the war that all his family, including his father and mother, died in concentration camps

As soon as he was seventeen he tried to join the army, but the man who was his guardian thought, in spite of the fact that he was a good sized boy, he was too young.  He eventually got past the age hurdle, joined the army and was impressed by an airborne officer recruiting a few good men for the paratroops.  He was in class eight at the jump school at Ft. Benning.  He remembers wearing the football headgears, the towers and the whole nine yards.  He was assigned to the 508th PIR and remembers relieving us in that Godforsaken, mine infested area of Germany remembered by us as Bergstein. 

Since he spoke fluent German, he was assigned to the regimental S-2 section of the 508th.  The officers there thought that his German name would give away his identity and decided he should change it.  They took him before a judge in North Carolina and the officers and the judge came up with the name, John Kennedy.  Back in Fort Bragg he was with a group of men when he heard the command, "Kennedy, attention!".  He immediately stood at attention and all his buddies laughed.  They were testing to see if he remembered his new name. 

He was wounded twice and made all the jumps with the 508th.  On the Market Garden jump, Montgomery's folly, he landed right in the middle of a unit of German troops.  He and a sergeant from another airborne unit were taken prisoners.  His name fooled his captors and of course he understood all they were saying without their knowing it.  He and the sergeant kept eye contact.  When the two German guards set their weapons against a tree to shade their eyes to see other troopers floating down the sergeant gave Kennedy an eye signal and they did away with the guards and escaped.  A short time later, Kennedy, elated to have escaped, came across the regimental S-2 who was down on his knees digging himself a fox hole, with his fanny exposed to the rear.  Joyfully he exclaimed, "Captain, its Kennedy, I'm here."  Without getting up the captain replied, "Damn it Kennedy, late again."  Kennedy told me that was the closest he ever came to kicking a captain in the ass. 

Howard Hensleigh

---Original Message-----
From: matt price [mailto:mattprice88@hotmail.com]
Sent: Monday, August 04, 2008 7:39 PM
To: webmaster@517prct.org
Subject: