Subj: The Castle.
Date: 8/14/2002 8:54:26 PM Eastern Daylight Time
From: louettad2001@yahoo.com

BEN  I though that I had sent this to you early but
never did see it in mail call, so here it is again,
mabey some of the guys will get a laugh out of it.   
Jesse Darden HQ 460th.


THE CASTLE

Story # 2   At some time in France while making a move Masha and  I spotted this large building. It looked like a castle. As we went by he said,  “Darden lets see what is inside”. Well it was a castle.  Empty except for a few things in the big room, the fireplace was huge. And hanging over it was a pair of fencing swords. Being a pair of young guys we each grabbed one and started playing around. Well Masha being from N Y City and I from rural Oklahoma he knew more about fencing than I did, on one of his jabs he caught the back of my hand ran the blade about two inches under the skin. We did not tell the medics how this happened.  At one of the reunions Masha found out that I was the one he stabbed.  Hope Alice gets a chance to read this story. We were foolish kids back then.    Ha, HA.   More stories to come later.       Jesse Darden  HQ 460th.

Subj: FW: RE: MAIL CALL NO 338 517TH PRCT
Date: 8/14/2002 7:58:00 PM Eastern Daylight Time
From: hhensleigh@earthlink.net
To: Ben517@aol.com

Dear Ben: The following remembrance will not be news to the Buzzards, but may be interesting to some of the younger generations. Fifty eight years ago this August the pup tents were scattered through the olive trees in a grove that encompassed the 3rd Battalion. The other elements of the Combat Team were similarly situated. As you came in from the road to Frascatti the grove sloped up to the right at a good angle. That is where the tents were, but before you came to them there was a slit trench latrine and a shower space, both surrounded by tent fly without a roof. The mess fly (all roof and no sides) was on the left Little Italian kids came there to retrieve any edibles they could find in our garbage cans. In between was where the battalion held formations, reveille (at day break) and retreat (after a hard training day in the field). Sometimes our hardening double time runs took us up to a lake for a PT swim. That was a refreshing respite from the searing Italian sun. The chow was good. Frequently you heard, "they are fattening us up for the kill". There were a few diversions. An election coming in the November. In those days you had to be 21 to vote. Some of us had reached that mark of antiquity. Congress had passed a law allowing service men over seas to vote in the national elections. It might have required troops slated for dangerous missions to vote while they had the chance. At any rate we voted in August. Franklin D. broke the precedent of the two term limit and had already served three terms. He went for a fourth. They selected me to lecture those old enough to vote on the importance of that right. My success or failure depended on the number of men who voted. At the end of the lecture, I solved that problem by forming up the class in a column of threes and marching them down to the polls. I’m sure virtually all of us, Republican or Democrat, voted for Franklin D., because we didn’t want Hitler to get the idea that we wanted a change in the policy of going for his jugular. This probably was not fair to Tom Dewey who had prosecuted crooks like Hitler in New York.Then there was Rome, a few miles away, and places like Pompeii where we could soak up some of the grandeur and the tragedies of the old Roman empire. The Vatican was a few miles away. Many of us saw St. Peters, the largest, and some would say, the most beautiful cathedral in the world. It was possible, with several thousand other soldiers and civilians, to have an audience with the Pope. He spoke to us in seven languages to accommodate everyone there. I do not go along with some of the modern second guessers who fault Pope Pius for not taking on Hitler, Mussolini and antiemetic single handedly. That was a job for the military, a job for us to do. There in that olive grove we made the best of it. Lt. Col. Zais got some pipe, shower equipment and assistance from the 596th so we could take our turns at a shower every couple of days standing on marble slabs "liberated" from ruins of nearby buildings. But, we knew our stay there was to be short lived. We were sent to Italy to get a taste of combat before the main mission that had been in the works before we left for the ETO. We had gotten that taste. In a short time had boosted the offensive that had been bogged down south of Rome so that it soon reached the Po valley, where it bogged down again after we pulled out. In our final days there we were briefed on a mission we all expected, but few if any knew where they would drop us. Our training and field exercises were tailored to that mission, but we all knew that on night jumps nothing goes according to the plan. Soon we loaded onto trucks and were headed for the C-47's with arrived Roma in our minds. Many years after that August, during the 1960's, I was in Rome on business for the Defense Department. The military attaché, a Col. Dawson, and I became good friends. He knew of the Combat Team’s record in moving the allied line north up and down those mountains between Rome and the Po Valley. He also learned that we had bivouacked near Frascatti and offered to take me out there in his Jaguar. Everything had changed. We went down the right road out of town, but nothing clicked. Then I asked Dawson to stop. I looked out that oval back window of the Jaguar and saw our old stomping ground, the place that housed all the 3rd battalion buzzards. There were a few olive trees left, but several large apartment buildings had taken the place of our pup tents. Fifty eight years has changed a lot of things. Don’t you agree??? Highest regards, Howard Hensleigh        

Subj: D Day
Date: 8/14/2002 9:33:25 PM Eastern Daylight Time
From: AARGoodman
To: Ben517

Something to think about . Just about now Italy time we were in the air  sweating it out.
   Incidentally that was Dean Essex that Ted called about. Dean was in D Co. according to our current roster. When I called Ted Back to apologize for my confusion over the phone it got more confused- he didn't remember calling me . I then called Deans number and it is no longer in service so I hope my information was correct. Airborne regards You are doing great work. Al

Subj: Please add me on
Date: 8/15/2002 7:59:25 AM Eastern Daylight Time
From: Cakes2112
To: Ben517

Please add my address to mail call. My grandfather (Robert Cooper) was D Company 1st platoon 3rd squad. Thank you!
Patrick Christman

Subj: Happy 58th
Date: 8/15/2002 11:16:20 AM Eastern Daylight Time
From: hhensleigh@earthlink.net

Dear Ben: Fifty eight years ago today we did it. We were airborne a little after midnight and jumped into the blackest darkness you ever saw about 0400, not knowing what was below. Troopers who preceded us had ben dumped in the sea and most everywhere else but in the drop zone, so we wondered as our chutes opened .and we were making a rapid decent somewhere. We didn’t have too long to wait. The fortunate ones got into body position for landing right away, and them wham. What most of us hit certainly wasn’t water. It was terra firma alright, with the emphasis on the firma. There were broken bones, sprains and ripped hide on most of us from the landings in the Maritime Alps, rather than that valley with a few irrigation ditches in it promised by the Air Corps. All those who could walk or hobble went flat out to accomplish the mission we came to do. The raggedy tag third battalion, as Dick Spencer called it, was scattered over five or ten miles and most of us about twenty miles from the drop zone. That made it tough on the rest of the combat team, but those guys hung in there. How we assembled and staged a successful attack on the south part of Les Arcs on D plus one, is one of the wonders of the world. That was the spirit of the 517th and I don’t believe we thought too much about it at the time. The attitude was, "What is the next job ahead". Fifty four years ago today, Jan and I were married. So, we celebrate two anniversaries every year. She must wonder sometimes which is the most important. I sent you a squib about August of ‘44. My computer pout it in the draft box for about a week, but my paralegal out guessed this infernal machine yesterday when we learned what had happened. HAPPY ANNIVERSARY, ALL YOU BUZZARDS! Howard Hensleigh

--- Howard Hensleigh
--- hhensleigh@earthlink.net