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4 Men from Company F
The Escape and Evasion Reports
(E&E) along with Morning Reports (MR) and
Surgeon
General Report (SGO) was the basis for this article
for some of the men from Company (Co) F 508th
Parachute Infantry 82nd Airborne
Division.
The 508th was Drop
Zone N was just north of Picauville, but most of
Company F though came to earth between Saint-Sauveur-le-Vicomte
and Etienville west of DZ N early in the morning of
0210 hours June 6, 1944.
4 Company F men landed closer
to Etienville than Saint-Sauveur-le-Vicomte.
Private First Class (Pfc) Terrence T. Nelson wrote
the report for this E&E. The first Co F man Pfc
Nelson ran across was Private (Pvt)
Joseph D. Comeau.
Pvt Comeau had been wounded shot in the right arm on
the jump so Pfc Nelson dressed his wound and left
him there in the care of a Medic.
Pfc Nelson then hooked up with
a group of paratroopers who tried to take the 508th
objective, Etienville.
That proved too much so they
pulled back. That is when Nelson ran into his
Platoon Leader First Lieutenant (1st Lt)
Hoyt T. Goodale. His 1st Lt said they
needed to find their own lines. That’s when they
found
General Gavin, the 82nd Abn Div
Executive Officer, Lieutenant Colonel Maloney and
Captain Creek both from the 507th.
Nelson and Pfc
Glenn E. Kincaid
found each other at some point on June 6th.
Kincaid was also part of Company F. Both Nelson and
Kincaid were at an Outpost June 7th when
the Germans started another attack. Nelson and
Kincaid tried to get back to their Command Post
(CP). The Germans were using small arms and
shelling them when Kincaid was hit. Nelson said
that
Kincaid told him he was dying. Nelson had to
leave Kincaid behind and when he checked on
Kincaid
he was unconscious.
On the way back to the CP,
Nelson ran into Pvt Joseph W. Oburn also from
Company F. Oburn told Nelson that the CP had pulled
back so Nelson and Oburn went the same direction.
Coming across a road Nelson decided the two should
hide in a hedgerow.
As they tried to jump over the
hedgerow they fell into a ditch filled with water.
For 8 hours they laid in the cold water in the
ditch. Finally Oburn said he couldn’t take the cold
and tried to crawl up to the hedgerow. The Germans
found him and Oburn was captured. Nelson thought
that the Germans had shot Oburn but that wasn’t the
case. Oburn first went to Orglandes, the German POW
Temporary Hospital.
The Germans captured Nelson on
June 10 according to the E&E. We have to take the
days with a grain of salt as Nelson also said his
Company Commander Flanders had been killed June 12
in a strafing. The strafing part was correct but
Captain Flanders was killed on June 7, not the June
12. The First Sergeant mentioned as being killed
was incorrect too as he was wounded and sent back to
England.
So of the 4 men from Co F 508th
listed in Nelson’s E&E account, 3 became POWs and
one was killed in action. Nelson escaped, Comeau
was liberated from the German Cherbourg Hospital,
Oburn became a POW for the rest of the war and
Kincaid was killed on June 7.
The E&E Reports have a wealth
of information at times. This was one of those
times. I had searched for a Co E 507th
soldier and came across this E&E. The reason I
found this? In the E&E they list anyone’s name if
they are in the report. In this case not just one
Company E 507th soldier mentioned but 2,
Lieutenant Smith and Private Kotzian.
There is on more interesting
thing in Nelson’s E&E narrative. At Alencon, a
German POW Camp a POW American soldier was made the
Mess Sergeant by the Germans. The soldier’s name
was Monk and he had drawn (by hand) Staff Sergeant
Stripes on his jacket. In reality Monk was a
Private in Company B of the 505th
Parachute Infantry.
In the narrative by Nelson he
speaks about Monk and how Monk would not give
rations to the POW Soldiers if they didn’t show up
at 0530 every morning. Monk also took bribes,
receiving cigarettes so a soldier could get more
rations. Monk also threatened to turn the American
POWs in to the Germans if he complained about the
bribery.
Monk worked with the Germans
and took bribes from his own men, calling himself a
Staff Sergeant. It just goes to show that scum came
in all shapes and sizes, even as a POW in WWII.
Brian Siddall
February 16, 2021
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