Preserving The Oral HistorIES of Combat Veterans
4:35 | Wade Knowles' father was in World War One and he and all three of his brothers served in World War Two. He was still a little taken aback when he was drafted, but he marched right through basic training, even throwing a guy twice his size into The Pit. He had a little attitude because he was going into the Air Corps and then he was forced into the infantry.
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Wade Knowles shipped over to England and then, almost immediately, he was landing in Normandy, shortly after D-Day. They marked an enemy position with smoke but it drifted and the American plane struck his position. It was close, and later on further inland, they were strafed by another American plane.
Wade Knowles was moving down a street in Saint-Lo when he saw a little girl, only five or six years old, crying for her mother. He swooped up the child and and carried her up the street one way, then down the other until, finally, a woman emerged from a cellar and ran right into him.
They were warned. Do not pick the apples. When Wade Knowles moved inland from the Normandy beachhead, he ignored the fruit which could be tied to a wire that triggered a booby trap. There was no warning that could have saved the Lieutenant from what waited a little further past the orchard.
He was crossing a river at night moving into Germany and the fire from the bluffs above was heavy. Wade Knowles was making his way in this firefight when a bullet went right through his back pack. That bullet was close but it was the weather that got him in the form of frozen toes. Better memories: the German farmers who shared their fire, a chance meeting with a friend from home, and the sight of General George Patton doing his thing.
