George Miles met Lloyd Polette [Annotator's Note: US Army First Lieutenant Lloyd L. Polette; awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, the second-highest award a United States service member can receive for a heroic or meritorious deed performed in a conflict; killed in action during the Battle of the Bulge in January 1945] at Camp McCall [Annotator's Note: Camp McCall, North Carolina] when he was attached to the 508 [Annotator's Note: 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 82nd Airborne Division]. Miles was then a battalion supply officer and was introduced to Polette of the 2nd Battalion [Annotator's Note: Polette was a member of Company F, 2nd Battalion, 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 82nd Airborne Division], and they became friends. Polette was a country boy and outdoorsman, married with two kids. They went through training together. Miles was attached to Easy Company [Annotator's Note: Company E, 2nd Battalion, 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 82nd Airborne Division]. They got to know each other better when they went overseas. The regiment [Annotator's Note: the 508th] left New York in 1943, landing in Northern Ireland. Polette lost his temper easily. He was a pathfinder. Miles met him briefly on D-Day [Annotator's Note: D-Day; the Allied invasion of Normandy, France on 6 June 1944] in Normandy while looking for his battalion. Around nine o'clock at night, Miles was shot and left in a ditch in a hedgerow [Annotator's Note: man-made earthen walls that surround a field that are often overgrown with impenetrable vegetation]. The line of march proceeded to Hill 30, under the direction of Lieutenant Colonel Tom Shanley [Annotator's Note: US Army Lieutenant Colonel Thomas J. B. "Tom" Shanley] who was head of the 2nd Battalion. The group fought off the Germans. Miles heard every day of the bravery of Polette and Millsaps [Annotator's Note: US Army Captain, later Lieutenant Colonel, Woodrow W. Millsaps, 1st Battalion, 82nd Airborne Division] who led scouting patrols. Miles was shipped to field hospital, number 93 [Annotator's Note: 93rd Evacuation Hospital (Motorized)], in England. When he was discharged from the hospital, Miles went back to camp in Nottingham, England and helped to organize moving the base to Sissonne, France around late December 1944. At this point, Miles had taken command of Company E. When the troops came back from Holland, Polette was made CO [Annotator's Note: commanding officer] of Company E, and made Miles his exec [Annotator's Note: executive officer, second in command]. They learned at a Christmas party that they would be sent by truck into Belgium, where the Germans were trying to break through to the Belgian seaports. Miles was executive officer for a little over a month. When they moved into a new position in Belgium, Lloyd [Annotator's Note: Polette] was hit by a shell and put onto a jeep in bad shape. He was taken to a hospital where he died, and Miles took over command of Company E. Miles returned to Sissonne. The 508th was assigned as an honor guard to Eisenhower [Annotator's Note: General of the Army Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower, Supreme Commander, Allied Expeditionary Force; 34th President of the United States] in Frankfurt [Annotator's Note: Frankfurt, Germany]. They were given special uniforms with white, silk neck pieces. Miles remained there until he was sent home at the end of 1945. He was discharged from the Army in March 1946. Miles went down to see Polette's mother and sisters in Shreveport, Louisiana in 1946 to tell them what he know about Polette's death and to console them. Miles became friends with Polette's granddaughter, Lisa Box, and her mother and aunt, Polette's sister. He remains close to them.

George Miles [Annotator's Note: serving with the 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 82nd Airborne Division] met Polette [Annotator's Note: Army First Lieutenant Lloyd L. Polette, recipient of the Distinguished Service Cross, the second-highest award a United States service member can receive for a heroic or meritorious deed performed in a conflict; killed in action during the Battle of the Bulge in January 1945] in a store room [Annotator's Note: Miles was a battalion supply officer at the time, at Camp McCall, North Carolina]. They made fun of each other's backgrounds, Miles being a city boy and Polette a country boy. Polette picked Miles up, threw him over the shoulder, and threatened to throw him down the stairs. That is how they became friends. Polette was humorous, always wise cracking. He was quite a fighter, a rough and tumble guy. They hit it off. Miles attended the University of Notre Dame [Annotator's Note: University of Notre Dame du Lac, known simply as Notre Dame, in Notre Dame, Indiana]. Polette attended college in Louisiana [Annotator's Note: he was from Shreveport, Louisiana] and was a good football player. He may have been a fireman. He talked about how much he loved his family. Once, Miles came upon Polette in a chapel during the Battle of the Bulge [Annotator's Note: Battle of the Bulge or German Ardennes Counter Offensive, 16 December 1944 to 25 January 1945] and asked what he was doing in church during working hours. Miles was Polette's exec [Annotator's Note: executive officer, or second in command, of Company E, 2nd Battalion, 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 82nd Airborne Division] at the time. Polette had learned that his brother had been killed, and he had a premonition that he too would be killed. Sure enough, he was later killed in action. Miles and Polette were both First Lieutenants. Miles had been battalion supply officer for the 2nd Battalion of the 508th until Polette made him his executive officer. Their impression is Shanley [Annotator's Note: US Army Lieutenant Colonel Thomas J. B. "Tom" Shanley] was that he followed rules by the book. He was a West Point graduate, which Miles and Polette were not. Polette had little regard for the ruling class of the 508th. In Holland, the leadership took tea while Polette and his unit were besieged by the enemy and in dire straits. Millsaps [Annotator's Note: then US Army Captain, later Lieutenant Colonel, Woodrow W. Millsaps, 1st Battalion, 82nd Airborne Division] was a country boy from Georgia serving with 1st Battalion. They both respected each other.

George Miles [Annotator's Note: serving with the 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 82nd Airborne Division] jumped into Normandy [Annotator's Note: D-Day; the Allied invasion of Normandy, France on 6 June 1944]. The airplanes began to feel the pressure of antiaircraft fire, so instead of going into a jumping attitude of tail up, nose down, and slowing down so that the stick [Annotator's Note: the group of paratroopers preparing to jump] could jump, the planes took off at a higher speed so the sticks ended up spread out all over the place. Miles was left looking for friendly troops to connect with. When they first landed, it was too dark to go out searching, it was impossible to see. He heard German voices. He had landed in a dry spot in a small enclosure of bushes and trees. He easily got out of his chute [Annotator's Note: parachute]. He saw a glider go headfirst into a brick wall, and everyone in it was likely killed. He proceeded to look for people he knew. Miles and Polette were together for about 15 minutes, watching troops caught in the Douve River outside of Sainte-Mere-Eglise [Annotator's Note: Sainte-Mère-Église, France]. They were too far away to do anything to alleviate their peril, so they had to watch them being shot at by Germans while staggering around under the weight of their equipment in the river. He and Polette parted. Miles wandered until he came across some men around eight or nine in the evening and joined them, until he was hit. He was shot with a rifle bullet while marching along a dirt road with Shanley [Annotator's Note: US Army Lieutenant Colonel Thomas J. B. "Tom" Shanley, commander of 2nd Battalion, 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 82nd Airborne Division] at the lead. Miles learned later on that Shanley was headed for Hill 30 [Annotator's Note: a high point near Carentan, France]. After being shot, Miles was carried ten miles by a fellow soldier to where they were dug in near Hill 30. He was taken from there on the hood of a jeep, driven to the beach, and put on an LST [Annotator's Note: Landing Ship, Tank] to southern England and put on an ambulance to the 93rd General Field Hospital. He remained there until September 1944. Miles saw Polette again when he returned from the campaign in Holland [Annotator's Note: Operation Market Garden, 17 to 25 September 1944]. That is when he made Miles his exec [Annotator's Note: executive officer, or second in command, of Company E, 2nd Battalion, 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 82nd Airborne Division]. Polette had ill feelings towards the British. He fought a lot. He was contemptuous of effeminacy. He adored his children and wife.

George Miles [Annotator's Note: serving with the 2nd Battalion, 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 82nd Airborne Division] took over [Annotator's Note: command of Company E, 2nd Battalion, 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 82nd Airborne Division] when he [Annotator's Note: US Army First Lieutenant. Lloyd L. Polette, recipient of the Distinguished Service Cross, the second-highest award a United States service member can receive for a heroic or meritorious deed performed in a conflict] was injured. Polette was killed on 20 January [Annotator's Note: 20 January 1945]. While in the field in Belgium waiting for orders, Christmas turkeys were dropped to the soldiers. Miles and Polette shared a tent. They woke up one morning and found that shrapnel had gone through the tent and their canteens, but did not hit them. They went the next day to help Colonel Mendez [Annotator's Note: US Army Colonel Louis Gonzaga Mendez, Jr., recipient of the Distinguished Service Cross], head of 3rd Battalion [Annotator's Note: 3rd Battalion, 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 82nd Airborne Division], near Erria [Annotator's Note: Erria, Belgium]. Here, Miles heard Germans shouting "me Katholik" meaning "I am Catholic". Polette was concerned at the time. He had received news that his wife was suing for divorce. He was contemplative and quiet. Miles volunteered for scouting work, and Polette kept telling him to be careful out there. He died shortly after that. Polette had gone out to inspect positions and was hit. Miles ran about five minutes to where he was when he was being taken to a field hospital. He was Miles' best friend. Polette was a great field man and an effective company commander. He was not much for intellectual pursuits, and often teased Miles for having gone to college [Annotator's Note: at the University of Notre Dame du Lac, known simply as Notre Dame, in Notre Dame, Indiana]. Polette had little respect for Lindquist [Annotator's Note: then US Army Lieutenant Colonel, later Major General, Roy Ernest Lindquist, commander of the 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment from from June 1944 to May 1945] and not very much for Shanley [Annotator's Note: US Army Lieutenant Colonel Thomas J. B. "Tom" Shanley, commander of 2nd Battalion, 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 82nd Airborne Division] either. Among the West Pointers [Annotator's Note: officers who had graduated from the United States Military Academy in West Point, New York], Miles liked Mendez who had given him his captaincy and made him regimental supply officer.

George Miles left the Army when he got home, but stayed in the Reserves. He used the G.I. Bill [Annotator's Note: the G.I. Bill, or Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944, was enacted by the United States Congress to aid United States veterans of World War 2 in transitioning back to civilian life and included financial aid for education, mortgages, business starts and unemployment] to go to graduate school at Columbia [Annotator's Note: Columbia University in New York, New York]. He went to work for a friend of his father's, and then for American Can Company and stayed there for 20 years. He left to work for George Milden Can Company, run by another friend of his father's, and became the executive vice president there, retiring at the age of 69. He has seven kids and 17 grandchildren. [Annotator's Note: The video cuts, Miles shows wartime photos in scrapbook. The video ends with a traffic incident and fire visible from Miles' home.]