My Story

My War Experience

I knew we had reached the German territory when gun fire whizzed over our plane. The odd shot even hit our plane making shrapnel fly everywhere hitting and injuring some soldiers.
My breathing got heavier as the red light by the open door turned on. Everybody had their own way of keeping themselves calm, but I knew whatever they were doing wasn’t working at keeping their nerves at ease, for they like me were too afraid of the Germans below our planes.
Sergeant Moncton yelled for our company to stand up, “Soldiers, take your place, ready position!”
One by one everybody stood up nervously. Then Moncton told us to hook up, after he told us to have a gear check. Everybody’s gear was in place and with Moncton knowing that he just stood at the front of the place in silence waiting for the green light to appear on.
In a couple slow , nervous minutes the light turned on. I began to sweat and my heart raced for I would jump after Moncton and Spiers. We had to jump as soon as the other soldier in front of us had left so we would land as close as possible near each other. Moncton waited a second and then jumped with Spiers following close behind him. I stepped up at the open door looking out down at the black ground way below lit up by tracer bullets. I paused for a second until Ryan yelled at me to jump, “Go Carter, jump now!” I had a terrible feeling as I leaped out of the plane into night air, counting to four seconds. Then I looked up to my open chute. It felt graceful in this chaos. Before I knew it I had hit the muddy ground, wet from the spring’s rain days ago.
As fast as I could I pulled my chute off myself. Then I quickly grabbed my gun as I heard something in the bush. “Thunder,” yelled someone in the dark woods.
“Flash,” I nervously yelled back and in an instant Spiers popped out from the large wet bush. “Thank God it’s your Carter,” Spiers said.
I had a relieved look on my face, then laughed, “That was quite a ride.”
“Get down,” Spiers whispered. I popped down onto the wet mud and grass. I was terrified again as I heard something in the bush rattling the branches. Pointing my gun in the direction of the sound. I suddenly saw two German soldiers .pop out and walk towards me. I shot my m1 Grand rifle a few times at the two dark foreign soldiers. I then looked at the ground seeing two bodies motionless. Spiers got up to check the soldiers and so did I. The one man had bleached blonde hair, a broken nose, a very long and skinny neck, with huge floppy ears. He seemed to be sleeping peacefully. Once again my heart raced as I felt nervous for I have never killed anybody before. “Ew, they don’t look too pretty,” I said trying to sound brave.
Chuckling Spiers said, “Come on, follow me. I hopped off my knees and went with Spiers into the misty dark forest that had been torn to shreds from bullets.
“Do you know where we’re going?”I asked.
“Not a clue.” Spiers talked calmly. Having a map or even a compass would help us but we had none of these at the time. We stuck to the forest for we felt it was probably safer than traveling in an open field. A couple hours had passed and we were still bush whacking in the same old mucky forest until we suddenly walked into a disced field.
We scanned the field carefully in the dim light checking for any Germans that would ambush us. The field seemed clear and we were about to cross it to another forest that could keep us safe. We were jogging but it felt like it was miles when it was only about 170 meters across.
“A little too long,” I yelled at Spiers between breaths.
But then Germans popped out from every direction, and started shooting with their machine guns. Tracer bullets lit up the muddy disced field. Bullets hit and tore up the ground everywhere around us, but then one lucky bullet hit me in the left leg. I stumbled forward until I laid motionless on the ground. Pain was shooting up my leg. I opened my eyes and saw Spiers dragging me in the forest. I realized he had also been shot in the hand.
“We have to get a medic!” he said to me.
I noticed my leg had been broken from the bullet. With Spiers dragging me minutes seemed like hours, but we finally lost our German predators. Soon we reached an American post where we saw Moncton and Ryan sitting on the wet ground.
“You made it, Carter!” Ryan screamed in laughter.
“Yeah, we did,” I murmured.
A couple minutes later, I entered into an army hospital that was really an old farm house. They tried to fix my leg the best they could, but it was still damaged.
“And well Mr. Burke that was my war experience, shortly after I was sent home the Germans Surrendered. You wrote everything down right?” I asked sitting in my well worn wheelchair.
“I’ve got it, Mr. Matt Carter,” he said . Then he suddenly left me sitting in the senior complex that has been my home for 22 years so far. Those memories still make my heart beat faster.