[Annotator’s Note: There is a person off screen that relays the interviewer’s questions to the interviewee throughout the segment. There is also a ringing sound in the background throughout this segment.] James H. Martin was born in Pennsylvania in 1921, but moved to Ohio shortly after with his parents. He spent much of his childhood near Dayton [Annotator’s Note: Dayton, Ohio] and in Indiana. For the last 70 years, he has lived in Sugar Creek Township, Ohio, a place he considers home. [Annotator’s Note: Telephone rings at 0:05:03.000.] He is an advocate for guns and believes that this country would not exist without firearms. Guns have not changed, people have changed. The only rule he adhered to as a child was to be home by supper. Everyone he knew was involved in some way with agriculture. He ran the rivers, quarries, and gravel pits of Ohio all summer long hunting for rabbit, squirrels, and pigeons which he would bring home for his mother to cook. He walked several miles to school each day and often stopped along the way to visit carriage shops and blacksmith forges. Martin would arrive between 9:30 and 10:00 each morning and would receive a whipping from his teachers. The local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan [Annotator’s Note: an American, white supremacist hate group] was headquartered nearby in Indiana. Martin’s father and other local businessmen worked to break up the organization. One night, they burned a cross in the Martin family yard. Each month, Martin’s father held a meeting at the house to discuss ways to improve the community. Martin is thankful for this upbringing because he was exposed to and allowed to participate in adult conversations. By the Great Depression [Annotator's Note: the Great Depression was a global economic depression that lasted from 1929 through 1939 in the United States], everyone pulled together to survive. His father invented a motion picture machine called the “Photo Tone,” which made the family enough money to install linoleum flooring in their kitchen in 1928. Both of his parents were college educated and held jobs. At the onset of the Depression, the bank encouraged Martin’s father to declare bankruptcy. Instead, he put $185,000 of his own money to keep the company alive, but it eventually collapsed, and his parents lost money to RCA [Annotator’s Note: RCA Corporation was a major American electronics company].

[Annotator’s Note: There is a person off screen that relays the interviewer’s questions to the interviewee throughout the segment.] After this financial collapse, James H. Martin and his family moved to Dayton [Annotator’s Note: Dayton, Ohio] where Martin’s father employed a team of men who went out and dug up hemp to be burned as it was considered dangerous at the time. Martin recalls lining up for commodities like salt pork and potatoes once per week during the Depression [Annotator's Note: the Great Depression was a global economic depression that lasted from 1929 through 1939 in the United States]. He visited a huge hobo camp and gathered corn and potatoes for the pots of stew cooking throughout the camp. The men in the camps were not bums, but businessmen like his father who were looking for work. He mentions “Railroad Dicks,” who were detectives who would keep the hobos from riding on railcars to leave town. The worst part of the Depression was that many people began to think it would never end. His days in the Army felt like a vacation compared to the hard times he and others experienced during the Depression. Throughout the 1930s, Martin was aware of the rise of Hitler [Annotator's Note: German dictator Adolf Hitler] and the Nazi Party. He visited movie theaters and saw newsreel footage from Germany and read daily reports about the situation in Europe. He felt as though he could not get away from it. Hitler was everywhere. As the situation worsened, he and his family became staunch isolationists as they reflected on the experience of the American Expeditionary Force during World War One [Annotator's Note: World War 1, global war originating in Europe; 28 July 1914 to 11 November 1918]. He mentions the laws in place that were meant to keep America out of the conflict and how President Roosevelt [Annotator's Note: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 32nd President of the United States] used the Lend Lease Program [Annotator’s Note: Lend-Lease, formally the Lend-Lease Act, was a policy under which the United States supplied Allied nations with food, oil, and materiel between 1941 and 1945] to get around them. On the other hand, Martin was totally unaware of what was going on in Asia regarding Japan. The attack on Pearl Harbor [Annotator's Note: the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941] came as a total shock to him, but he quickly resolved that they could be beaten easily. The capabilities of the Japanese military completely surprised him and he began to hate the Japanese.

[Annotator’s Note: There is a person off screen that relays the interviewer’s questions to the interviewee throughout the segment.] After Pearl Harbor [Annotator's Note: the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941], Martin saw the enlistment offices full of men enlisting, but he was not interested as he still harbored isolationist feelings and he was entitled to a deferment [Annotator's Note: postponement of military service] due to his job in a defense plant. As the war began to progress, Martin changed his mind and decided that without United States support, Great Britain and France could not survive the Nazi machine. Around this time, he witnessed a parachute jump from a hot air balloon at a county fair and knew he wanted to be a paratrooper with the “hottest outfit in the Army”. He originally wanted to serve aboard a submarine, but after being told he would have to wait six months before joining active duty, he chose to enlist in the paratroops. From mid-July until December 1942, Martin trained at Camp Toccoa, Georgia as a member of G Company, 3rd Battalion, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division. The attrition rate was high and the training proceeded in all weather conditions. Martin recalls a speech from Colonel Sink [Annotator’s Note: Colonel Robert Sink, commander of the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division] in response to complaints about the intense training. Sink, in his soft-spoken manner, told the men it would get a heck of a lot worse. He mentions another incident involving a man who sent a letter home to his mother detailing the so-called abuses of training who in turn sent a letter to a congressman. The congressman visited Toccoa to see the conditions for himself. Once he left, Sink gathered the men and promised that if he ever found out who sent the letter, that person would be out of his outfit.

[Annotator’s Note: There is a person off screen that relays the interviewer’s questions to the interviewee throughout the segment.] James H. Martin joined the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division. The training days lasted from 0430 until 1700 [Annotator’s Note: four thirty in the morning until five in the afternoon] and they were horrible. After the physical training, many nights involved night problems in which the men were dropped in an unknown location and made to find their way back to camp. No one ever quit. Martin describes his experiences on the famous march from Toccoa to Atlanta [Annotator’s Note: Toccoa and Atlanta, Georgia] ahead of jump training at Fort Benning [Annotator’s Note: Fort Benning, Georgia]. They made the march in 84 hours through sleet and snow, eating only peanut butter sandwiches and sleeping in the open. For the final mile of the march, Colonel Sink [Annotator’s Note: Colonel Robert Sink, commander of the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division] ordered all the men to march like paratroopers. Upon arriving in Atlanta, the men were issued a three-day pay which Martin used to stay in his barracks and recuperate. After jump training at Fort Benning, Martin went on maneuvers in Kentucky where they slept on limestone to keep warm. Each morning, Martin went around and killed snakes that had crept in beside the sleeping paratroopers during the night. Despite the hardships he faced in training, Martin does not hesitate to say he would do it all again. He received his jump wings at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. It felt like a real triumph. He was furloughed [Annotator's Note: an authorized absence for a short period of time] and went home to visit his family before reporting to Camp Shanks [Annotator’s Note: Camp Shanks, New York] to await shipment overseas. Martin crossed the Atlantic aboard the S.S. Samaria and took turns sleeping in the hammocks below deck. On nights when he slept above deck, he was awakened in the morning by sailors scrubbing the deck. He saw meat with maggots on it while in the mess hall and did not eat again while aboard ship. After 10 days at sea, he arrived in Liverpool [Annotator’s Note: Liverpool, England].

[Annotator’s Note: There is a person off screen that relays the interviewer’s questions to the interviewee throughout the segment.] After 10 days at sea, James H. Martin and the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division, arrived in Liverpool [Annotator’s Note: Liverpool, England] and were put on a train to Ramsbury [Annotator’s Note: Ramsbury, England] where he was stationed until shortly before D-Day [Annotator's Note: D-Day; the Allied invasion of Normandy, France on 6 June 1944]. While not in training, the paratroopers developed friendships with the British civilians and shared their supplies with them since they were under strict rationing. Martin would walk into at least five houses in Ramsbury without knocking. He developed a relationship with a married woman named Molly Studdy [Annotator’s Note: phonetic spelling] whose husband had a mistress. The two agreed to the other seeing someone else, as a result. After the war, Studdy wanted to marry Martin, but he refused for two reasons. First, she was Catholic, and second, she smoked. The pre-invasion training was much of the same as he experienced in the states, though it rained a lot more, and he dug foxholes and slit trenches in people’s front yards. They developed a rivalry with many of the Air Force men who sat around the Bell Hotel eating nice meals while the paratroopers were fed SOS [Annotator’s Note: short for “shit on a shingle”, slang for the creamed beef on toast they were often served for breakfast]. In May 1944, Martin and the rest of the 506th were moved to a marshaling area surrounded by concertina wire and armed guards in advance of the coming invasion of Normandy.

[Annotator’s Note: There is a person off screen that relays the interviewer’s questions to the interviewee throughout the segment.] On the night of 5 June, the day before D-Day [Annotator's Note: D-Day; the Allied invasion of Normandy, France on 6 June 1944], James Martin [Annotator's Note: serving with the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division] heard General Eisenhower’s [Annotator's Note: General of the Army Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower, Supreme Commander, Allied Expeditionary Force; 34th President of the United States] message. It was well-known that the paratroopers would likely be slaughtered if the invasion did not go according to plan, but he was happy to hear General Eisenhower take responsibility for it. At 1900 hours [Annotator’s Note: military time for seven at night] on 5 June, the planes took off for Normandy. Martin describes the scene of the armada below crossing the English Channel. As they crossed the coastline, a cloud bank sent the tight formations scattering. He watched anti-aircraft fire hit and explode planes all around him. The tracer bullets lit up the sky. When asked if he was scared at that moment, Martin says he had nothing to compare the experience to at the time, was pumped up, and ready to kill. Because the planes were scattered, the troopers jumped when they spotted the first Pathfinder outfit [Annotator’s Note: specialized soldiers dropped into place in advance in order to set up drop zones]. After hitting the ground, Martin ran into a captain and 25 men who wanted to advance to the Douve River. Instead, Martin’s sergeant led his men to a German pillbox which turned out to be empty. As they attempted to return to the captain along the Douve, they engaged in a fierce firefight with a German machine gun platoon. Only one of the nine machine guns in their own platoon was in operation at the time, as many of the others were lost during the jump. Martin says the crickets they were issued to help identify one another in the dark [Annotator’s Note: a small brass clicker that made a noise used to identify friend from foe] were ineffective as the Germans picked up on their purpose almost immediately. All of G Company’s communications equipment had been lost, causing HQ [Annotator’s Note: headquarters] Company to believe that they were MIA [Annotator’s Note: missing in action] and order a strike on their objectives, two bridges over the Douve. What was supposed to be three days of fighting turned into 33. Martin describes the French lifestyle and civilians he encountered in Normandy. Men traded cigarettes for eggs, milk, and sex. The rate for the goods went up dramatically during the month in combat from two packs to a carton of cigarettes in some cases. He attributes this to the fact that the French had no access to good tobacco before the Americans arrived. Martin developed a sense of gallows humor to combat the horrors he saw around him. To illustrate this, he recounts the story of a G.I. [Annotator's Note: government issue; also a slang term for an American soldier] removing the face of the dead German soldier and placing it over his own like a mask as the rest of the men sat around laughing, and eating K rations [Annotator's Note: individual daily combat food ration consisting of three boxed meals] while surrounded by dead bodies. Not all the French people were hospitable as some had married German soldiers or otherwise allied with them.

[Annotator’s Note: There is a person off screen that relays the interviewer’s questions to the interviewee throughout the segment.] James Martin [Annotator’s Note: serving with the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division] says there was no big buildup to Operation Market Garden [Annotator’s Note: Operation Market Garden, 17 to 27 September 1944; the Netherlands, also known as Holland], just the order to get ready to go. As Martin flew over Holland on 17 September 1944, he saw sunny skies and people waving up at the planes from the ground below. There were machine guns posted on the tops of tall buildings and on water towers surrounding the landing areas. The fighter escorts peeled off just before the jump, leaving the transport planes to fend for themselves. Martins landed and was instantly engaged in combat. After ten days in combat fighting under his own officers, British General Montgomery [Annotator's Note: British Field Marshal Sir Bernard Law Montgomery] took over command. Martin landed near the village of Son [Annotator's Note: Son, the Netherlands] and advanced with his platoon, 2nd platoon, to Eindhoven [Annotator's Note: Eindhoven, the Netherlands] where they were selected for duty as security troops for Divisional HQ [Annotator’s Note: headquarters] and General Taylor [Annotator’s Note: General Maxwell Taylor, commanding officer of the 101st Airborne Division]. A captain ordered Martin to dig a foxhole for him, to which he replied, “Dig your own damn foxhole, this is a combat zone!” Eindhoven was bombed relentlessly by allied forces, and many civilians were killed. Martin and some others were ordered to carry undetonated bombs and toss them in a river following one night of bombings. For a time, Martin’s platoon was based at a girls’ school that had formerly been occupied by German troops. The girls were unwilling collaborators who had been beaten and abused into cooperation. In the town of Grave [Annotator’s Note: Grave, the Netherlands], Martin was hit in the ankle by shrapnel and evacuated to England where he recuperated in a hospital for 15 days. He then returned to his outfit which had been pulled into reserve in Mourmelon, France.

[Annotator’s Note: There is a person off screen that relays the interviewer’s questions to the interviewee throughout the segment.] In November 1944, James Martin [Annotator’s Note: serving with the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division] was ordered to turn in his weapons and uniforms and told he would be returned to the United States before being sent to fight in Japan. At 0430 [Annotator’s Note: military time for four-thirty in the morning] on 16 December, Martin and the men in his platoon were unexpectedly roused from sleep and told they were being sent into combat. Martin complained as they had no weapons, ammunition, or food. They were trucked 100 miles into Belgium and dumped without any maps or information. Martin’s officers relied on tourists and civilians for directions. Men who had borne the brunt of the German offensive ran bloody and in fear in the opposite direction as Martin and the others advanced to the front. Martin was in place on the northern edge of Bastogne [Annotator’s Note: Bastogne, Belgium], a few hundred yards from a German position. The Germans butchered hogs for food as the starving Americans watched. A hog wandered into their position and was slaughtered and eaten raw. Constant patrols were sent out to the village of Foy [Annotator’s Note: Foy, Belgium] and Martin estimates it changed hands five or six times with heavy casualties resulting from each attempt. Martin spent Christmas in this position, entirely exposed, the only cover offered by his foxhole. His Christmas dinner consisted of two K rations [Annotator's Note: individual daily combat food ration consisting of three boxed meals] and lemon powder-topped snow. The snow tasted like cordite. The men lacked energy to continue shivering to ward off freezing to death. As the sky began to clear, planes with ammunition and fuel began dropping supplies, though food came several days after. The men of his platoon traveled to a nearby frozen pond to retrieve water using an empty gasoline can. Martin’s admiration for the officers grew during the Battle of the Bulge [Annotator's Note: Battle of the Bulge or German Ardennes CounterOffensive, 16 December 1944 to 25 January 1945] as the officers fought in the trenches alongside the men and led with a “follow me” mindset. He was born with the strength to keep going despite the conditions he experienced. In terms of conditions faced in combat, the Battle of the Bulge was the most dangerous due to the weather. There were some funny times despite the misery of combat.

[Annotator’s Note: There is a person off screen that relays the interviewer’s questions to the interviewee throughout the segment.] No matter what he faced, James Martin [Annotator’s Note: serving with the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division] always told himself he was going to survive and believed that men who felt pessimistic about their chances often ended up being killed. He cried twice during combat, once in Normandy [Annotator's Note: D-Day; the Allied invasion of Normandy, France on 6 June 1944] following the death of Lt. Chambliss [Annotator’s Note: First Lieutenant Turner Mason Chamblss, platoon commander of the Second Platoon, Company G 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division] and a second time following the death of Don Scoglin [Annotator’s Note: phonetic spelling] whose mother was a widow and he her only child. After the war, Martin went to speak with Scoglin’s mother, but she refused to meet with him. He mentions a tank convoy rolling over miles of German and American bodies on their way into Bastogne [Annotator’s Note: Bastogne, Belgium]. Once the tanks arrived, the bodies were paved over. Upon arriving in Berchtesgaden [Annotator’s Note: Berchtesgaden, Germany], Martin saw discarded German equipment laying all over the town, but there was no fighting despite rumors of a great German redoubt. G Company was sent on patrols through the mountains in search of any Nazis trying to escape capture. Once such patrol uncovered many of Hermann Goering’s [Annotator's Note: German Reichsmarschall Hermann Wilhelm Göring, or Goering, commanded the German Air Force and was second only to German dictator Adolf Hitler in the Nazi chain of command] riches, including a silver chalice. Soldiers sent home German pistols through the mail.

[Annotator’s Note: There is a person off screen that relays the interviewer’s questions to the interviewee throughout the segment.] James Martin [Annotator’s Note: serving with the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division] occupied Berchtesgaden [Annotator’s Note: Berchtesgaden, Germany]. Martin would often pop German soldiers coming home with an air rifle until his commander took it away. In September 1945, Martin received orders to go home. He was sent to Lucky Strike [Annotator's Note: one of the transit and rehabilitation camps in France named after popular cigarette brands; Camp Lucky Strike was near Le Havre, France] to wait for a ship to take him back to the United States. The voyage back across the ocean was uneventful. When he arrived home, there was no fanfare. When Martin arrived at the Indiantown Gap [Annotator's Note: Fort Indiantown Gap in Lebanon County, Pennsylvania], he argued with the secretary to enter the regiment he was in during the war on his discharge papers. He met his future wife, Donna, shortly after he was discharged from the military. Society had changed due to the aftermath of World War 2. After Martin became a civilian, he did not let his war experience affect him. He did not use 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], but got a job.

[Annotator’s Note: There is a person off screen that relays the interviewer’s questions to the interviewee throughout the segment.] James Martin’s most memorable experience of World War 2 was getting to know many of the high officers in the service. It was very memorable when he heard that the war was over. It was such a relief to him. He also recalled the great affection he had for his officers and the sacrifice they experienced when losing their men in combat. Martin fought because it was necessary. If he did not fight, bad things would happen. The war gave him a different aspect of life and became more tolerant of people that were not like him. Martin is a gun advocate and believes it is important for citizens to have firearms to protect themselves. His service means a lot to him, even though it was a short time in his life. It will be with him forever. He is proud he took part in World War 2. Martin believes there should be institutions like the National WWII Museum [Annotator's Note: The National WWII Museum in New Orleans, Louisiana], and that we should continue to teach World War 2 to future generations.