I was just about to paint
the picture for the readers of my articles about
what happened to the men in Normandy. 2nd
Lt Sweeney was killed on 6 June 1944 and thank god I went
right to the source instead of the secondary source.
For years I have used the footnotes from Phil Nordyke’s book All American All The Way.
In the first pressing of
this book I realized that on page 238 the writer had
a 307th 2nd Lt Durham as being
the man killed with Hq Co 2nd Bn Charles
Sammon. After reading the footnotes I realized that
this could not have been 2nd Lt Durham as
he was killed 7 June 23 miles away as a POW. 2nd
Lt Durham broke one of his legs on the jump so it
was not him. The only Lt Engineer who could have
been killed was Sweeney. Nordyke changed the
information on the next pressing on my say so.
I’ve creating a narrative
based on the Sammon narrative in the Nordyke book. I
requested and received the 10 page narrative from
Ohio University in Athens that houses Cornelius Ryan
papers for the book The Longest Day. I requested
this to verify the line concerning the death of an
Engineer.
With all of
the documents
and the original narrative from Sammon I was good to
go. When putting words to paper I then read the
Sammon narrative about the Lt killed right next to
him. Thank god I did read it word for word. Instead
of being 99% sure that the 2nd Lt Sweeney
and the Lt in the Sammon narrative were one and the
same I’m now 80% certain.
Here is the book passage
that is in quotations from Nordyke;
"About that time a
lieutenant [James L. Durham] from the airborne
engineers came running up the road in a …
Here is the actually quote
"At about this momentt
[sic] a Lieutenant from the Airborne Engineers I
believe came running up the road in a…
There are a few things
wrong with the quotation, first it isn’t the quote
at all. Whether it was Nordyke or the Editor that
changed the quote, this was not the quote. There is
a huge difference between About that time and At
about this moment. Then you can’t put the bracket in
the middle of a quote. That would be explained with
a footnote in the next sentence after the quotation.
The next error is airborne engineers should be upper
case and yet we are still not at the grievous part.
Here is the Nordyke
version; a lieutenant [James L. Durham] from the
airborne engineers came running up, while the actual
quote from Sammon is; a Lieutenant from the Airborne
Engineers I believe came running up the road, which
is a complete different meaning.
Sammon should have a comma
after I believe but other than that it was fine.
Sammon was not sure that the officer with him was an
Engineer, hence he said, I believe, where Norkyke
took that out of the actual quote and put a name in
the quote which made it look like the writer was
100% certain. It should have been written in this
fashion;
"At about this momentt
[sic] a Lieutenant from the Airborne Engineers I
believe, came running up the road in a… Since he
only believed that means Sammon did not know the 2nd
Lt whom he thought might be an Engineer. You should
never use the name unless sure or use a follow up
paragraph explaining why it was thought to be that
person.
BN Siddall
July 17, 2014
