Jay Sutcliff

Hi Ben, hope all is well,

Thanks for all the hard work,

This is a reply to Mr. Hensleigh comment regarding the flares during the Bergstein night attack.  My father like everyone else’s talk very very little about the War.  I remember sitting watching a WWII movie with my dad.  During the movie, Germans shot off flares to expose the Americans.  My dad said, “Those flares make it as bright as daytime.”  I could tell by the tone of his voice, he had experienced something that wasn’t good.  I always wondered about what he had experienced. Reading Mr. Hensleigh's comments made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.  I can’t even begin to tell the Troopers how important it is to share their experiences, so the family members get a better understanding of what took place.

For what it’s worth

The Bomb Squad on my High School Team was nicknamed the “Screaming Eagles”.  Every year before the 1^st game the coach would keep all those after practice, who were a part of the Bomb Squad and explain why and how the name “Screaming Eagles” came to be.  It was a great story that was meant to motivate, and it did.  I would sit there every year and listen to that story and get goose bumps.  My dad picked me up after every practice, and every year I would tell him that same story about the Screaming Eagles, and every year he would say the same thing, “How about that.”, never saying a damn thing about the 517.  If only I would have known.  Those bomb squads would have been called “The Battling Buzzards”.

Thanks for listening