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| Gary writes, 'this is Ed Tatara, Dad's closest buddy. They had both entered Company G at the same time right after the Kasserine Pass battle in Africa. Ed won the Silver Star medal at Omaha beach for showing rare coolness and heroism under fire while badly wounded.
He had a through and through gunshot wound right below his heart. The bullet entered from the rear and exited in the front (think about it, he was heading up the beach?) he still managed to place a bangalore torpedo in the wire so the men could get off the beach. He was evacuated to England and after recovering from his gunshot wound was told that he would be sent to a different division as a replacement. He went A.W.O.L., caught a boat across the channel and tracked down Company G where he got Capt. Joe Dawson to take him back into the company. He would go on to win the Distinguished Service Cross, another Silver Star and a couple of Bronze Stars. He ended the war as Company G's First Sergeant. Ed told me that when he and Dad arrived in England from Sicily and received a 3 day pass to London, they had just crawled into their bunks at the Washington Club, when all of London's air raid sirens went off. It seems they were in the middle of a Buzz Bomb attack. They were told to head for a bomb shelter but Ed said he looked over at Dad and he was sound asleep and he figured if dad could sleep through the racket ,so could he. Dad told the same story when we were kids, but it was just the opposite. Ed was the one that was sleeping. Ed is alive and well and living in Pennsylvania.' Gary Mohrlang. Photo: Sergeant Raymond Mohrlang |