Robert W. "Bob" O'Connor was born in Carey, Ohio in 1923. He went into the service in Indianapolis [Annotator's Note: Indianapolis, Indiana] with two friends, one of whom was named Gene Smith [Annotator's Note: phonetic spelling]. He had been working for a railroad in Anderson, Indiana, despite his father, a police officer, not liking the idea. O'Conner had gone to Canada to join the RAF [Annotator's Note: Royal Air Force of the United Kingdom], but when the war broke out, he got a pink slip, meaning he was unable to serve in another nation's military while his own nation was at war. He could not become a pilot because of an eye problem, but he passed the airborne paratrooper tests. He would do the same thing over again if given the opportunity [Annotator's Note: O'Connor laughs]. He went to Camp Blanding [Annotator's Note: in Clay County, Florida] for a physical and did basic training there. Many of the men who did not make it were sent to the 30th Infantry [Annotator's Note: 30th Infantry Division]. O'Connor went to Camp Mackall [Annotator's Note: Camp Mackall in Hoke, Richmond, and Scotland Counties, North Carolina] he replaced a man in Company Headquarters who had been injured during a jump. Headquarters consisted of a First Sergeant, an operations sergeant, and a communications sergeant, the role O'Connor took on. His main job was to string wire and set up telephones when they arrived in a new area, and to manage all communications in the company. Sometimes, like in Holland, he operated the 300 radio [Annotator's Note: SCR-300, a backpack radio]. He and the operations sergeant were good friends. The latter was hit twice, but not seriously. Their company commander, a basketball coach in civilian life, was Lieutenant Hetland [Annotator's Note: US Army Lieutenant (later Captain) Eugene Hetland]. It had previously been under the command of Herb Sellers [Annotator's Note: phonetic spelling].

Robert W. "Bob" O'Connor [Annotator's Note: a communications sergeant in Company E, 2nd Battalion, 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 82nd Airborne Division] met Polette [Annotator's Note: US Army First Lieutenant Lloyd L. Polette Junior] was brought in from Holland to become company commander of Company E. O'Connor shipped out to Northern Ireland on the James Parker [Annotator's Note: USAT James Parker], a small, luxury ship. Everyone got sick. O'Connor volunteered for KP [Annotator's Note: kitchen patrol or kitchen police] because they were told if they ate and kept filled, they would be OK. He was. They arrived in Belfast [Annotator's Note: Belfast, Northern Ireland] and then took a train to another camp way out in Northern Ireland, where they stayed a few months. They then went to Nottingham [Annotator's Note: Nottingham, England] via Scotland. Everyone liked Nottingham. He met a girl there that he dated for a while. They did a lot of field work and patrols while there. Once they were in Normandy [Annotator's Note: for D-Day; the Allied invasion of Normandy, France on 6 June 1944], O'Connor missed E Company's landing zone and ended up on the other side of the river with General Gavin [Annotator's Note: US Army Lieutenant General James Maurice "Jumpin' Jim" Gavin]. There were around fifty men with them, and they headed to Chef-du-Pont [Annotator's Note: Chef-du-Pont, France] after he landed about two miles away from Sainte-Mère-Église [Annotator's Note: Sainte-Mère-Église, France]. The paved roads looked like water, he landed on one and rolled into a ditch, cutting himself on his parachute as he landed. He could see Sainte-Mère-Église burning. He encountered hedgerows [Annotator's Note: man-made earthen walls that surround a field that are often overgrown with impenetrable vegetation], three or four feet high. He heard men talking on the other side of the hedgerow and pointed his Tommy gun [Annotator's Note: .45 caliber Thompson submachine gun] at them, telling them to stop. It turned out to be fellow Americans. O'Connor went over to where the wounded were being treated. The executive officer he had jumped with gave him his camera and Beretta [Annotator's Note: a model of pistol]. He lost the camera and had to turn in the Beretta to the Supply Office when they went into Germany. In Normandy, he eventually found a fellow Company E soldier named Roper [Annotator's Note: US Army Sergeant Delbert R. Roper]. There was a cheese factory in Chef-du-Pont held by 1st Platoon under commanding officer Albright [Annotator's Note: US Army First Lieutenant Barry E. Albright]. Across the Merderet River was Hill 30 [Annotator's Note: the Manoir de Donville, a building in Cotentin, or Cherbourg, Peninsula, was designated as Hill 30], where the rest of the company was. It was probably two weeks before O'Connor got back to his company. In Chef-du-Pont, there was constant fighting. The Germans across the river were firing two machine guns, one high and one low. They also had ack-ack [Annotator's Note: antiaircraft artillery fire] guns. The Germans never had a chance, O'Connor's group shot about seven of them and they never got to their guns. Colonel Lindquist [Annotator's Note: US Army Colonel Roy E. Lindquist] was company commander at Hill 30, though O'Connor was still with General Gavin. All they did was patrol. When the company moved out of Hill 30, they were making way for Patton [Annotator's Note: US Army Lieutenant General George S. Patton, Jr.] who was coming with tanks. By the time O'Connor's unit returned to England, there were only 29 men remaining, the others were not all KIA [Annotator's Note: killed in action], but wounded, sick, or had trench foot [Annotator's Note: immersion foot syndrome]. Elements of the 82nd Airborne crossed the Douve River [Annotator's Note: Douve River, France] and went into Baupte [Annotator's Note: Baupte, France], but O'Connor was not there. Two companies were initially supposed to take Etienville [Annotator's Note: Etienville, France] but the plan never materialized because of the chaos after their scattered landings. When O'Connor got back to his company, First Sergeant Thomas and Operations Sergeant Ashley [Annotator's Note: US Army Sergeant Carlos E. Ashley] were there.

Robert W. "Bob" O'Connor [Annotator's Note: a Communications Sergeant in Company E, 2nd Battalion, 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 82nd Airborne Division] was never hit in Normandy [Annotator's Note: during D-Day; the Allied invasion of Normandy, France on 6 June 1944], although he did suffer from concussions. He carried a Thompson submachine gun [Annotator's Note: .45 caliber Thompson submachine gun], not a rifle. O'Connor went through some of the war in Normandy with a man named Roper [Annotator's Note: US Army Sergeant Delbert R. Roper]. When he thinks about Normandy, he thinks about hedgerows [Annotator's Note: man-made earthen walls that surround a field that are often overgrown with impenetrable vegetation]. Once when getting ready to attack, the Germans started shelling them, one of his good friends was killed, and Sergeant Aaron [Annotator's Note: US Army First Sergeant Lawrence T. Aaron] was hit in the leg. They jumped into Holland [Annotator's Note: during Operation Market Garden, Netherlands, 17 to 25 September 1944] in the afternoon. Company Headquarters was not big enough to have its own plane, so they were spread among different planes but landed together. Holland was bad. O'Connor did patrols in Nijmegen [Annotator's Note: Nijmegen, Holland or The Netherlands]. O'Connor got back in with company headquarters which set up a long way from the battalion. The first day after landing was mostly just reassembling into companies. The first time O'Connor met Polette [Annotator's Note: US Army First Lieutenant. Lloyd L. Polette Junior] was when he was introduced as their company commander. He was also with him later on 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]. They had taken over a house and could see the Germans. It was snowing heavily. O'Connor was sitting next to Polette with his gun on his lap. He said to Lieutenant Polette that he thought he lost his gun, to which Polette responded that he was dumb, it was just covered in snow. There were 40 Germans in a dungeon behind the house. Bob Hicks [Annotator's Note: US Army Private Robert C. Hicks] was shot that night when he went in there. They lost two or three men there until they threw in grenades and the Germans surrendered. They then moved into the house, where O'Connor kept on eye on one of the German prisoners who was wounded in the arm. Polette and Miles [Annotator's Note: US Army Captain George E. Miles] were also in the house, as was Ashley [Annotator's Note: US Army Sergeant Carlos E. Ashley]. They could see the Germans moving in. The Germans knew they were there and sent snipers up. Westbrook [Annotator's Note: US Army Sergeant Harold V. Westbrook] was shot through the head and killed. They soon pulled out and set up somewhere else. The snow was bad. Polette was down with the troops on the line, O'Connor was back at headquarters. A patrol had been sent out but had not come back. A few men had also been sent out to mine [Annotator's Note: stationary explosive device triggered by physical contact] sweep ahead of them. O'Connor and a man named Martini [Annotator's Note: phonetic spelling] took a jeep out to look for them and found them all dead along the road. There was one survivor, shot in the stomach and leg, who told O'Connor what happened. They took him back with them, but he eventually died.

Robert W. "Bob" O'Connor [Annotator's Note: a Communications Sergeant in Company E, 2nd Battalion, 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 82nd Airborne Division] was scared as hell when they were in Holland [Annotator's Note: during Operation Market Garden, Netherlands, 17 to 25 September 1944]. There were a lot of Germans and a lot of shooting. Polette [Annotator's Note: US Army First Lieutenant Lloyd L. Polette Junior] was leading an attack against bridge number ten [Annotator's Note: Honinghutje Bridge, spanning the Maas-Waal Canal in the Netherlands]. The bridge was heavily defended by the Germans who were dug in around the bridge and had a Panzer [Annotator's Note: panzer is the German term for armored and typically refers to tanks] unit. They went into Belgium around Thanksgiving or Christmas [Annotator's note: November or December 1944]. They were patrolling at night and went into a town where O'Connor was punched in the face by a German who escaped through a window. When they had attacked at the bridge, O'Connor was in a flank group, and the Germans eventually gave up. It was a few hours before the Americans crossed the bridge. On patrol one night with First Lieutenant Sweigert, [Annotator's Note: phonetic spelling] the officer was killed. In Belgium, they were in an area with British who had halftracks [Annotator's Note: a vehicle with front wheels and rear tracks] and tanks. O'Connor and Cavalluzzo [Annotator's Note: US Army Sergeant Roger J. Cavalluzzo] were out hunting for a duck or goose. O'Connor fired his Thompson [Annotator's Note: .45 caliber Thompson submachine gun] and it frightened all of the British soldiers in the area. They were scolded by a British officer for firing. Cavalluzzo was holding the duck behind his back and claimed they did not fire the shots but then the duck quacked.

Robert W. "Bob" O'Connor [Annotator's Note: with Company E, 2nd Battalion, 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 82nd Airborne Division] did not know very much about Polette [Annotator's Note: US Army First Lieutenant Lloyd L. Polette Junior] when he took command over Company E, except that he had from come Company F [Annotator's Note: Company F, 2nd Battalion, 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 82nd Airborne Division]. He was cool and calm, even with explosions around. Once O'Connor went on a few patrols with him, he knew he was a good guy and a good soldier. He gained the respect of the men quickly. During an offensive on a bridge, he saw Polette on a stretcher on the back of a jeep. Polette told O'Connor he had been hit by flak [Annotator's Note: antiaircraft artillery fire]. O'Connor did not see any blood, but Polette was not talking or moving very much. Polette told him to take care of George [Annotator's Note: US Army Captain George E. Miles]. It was a wonder he was not killed sooner as he did not believe in sitting still. When everybody else was sitting back, he would go forward. He was a real soldier. Later, a few of the men were in New Orleans [Annotator's Note: New Orleans, Louisiana], they met some of his relatives. Miles was a graduate of Notre Dame [Annotator's Note: University of Notre Dame du Lac in Notre Dame, Indiana] who did not understand why he was at war. Miles was a great guy and a good officer. He was shot by friendly fire in Normandy [Annotator's Note: Normandy, France]. Polette was a regular guy, but he understood things and had a better picture of things than most people did. He was good at combat, everyone looked up to him. The night Hicks was hit [Annotator's Note: US Army Private Robert C. Hicks], there were Germans not very far from them. It was very cold and snowy. They were shelled one night. O'Connor was in contact with two of the platoons, and Grindo [Annotator's Note: US Army Corporal Andy J. J. Grindo, Junior], one of the platoon leaders. They told him that the Germans had laid off a bit. When O'Connor was talking with Polette when he was on the stretcher, he grabbed O'Connor's wrist and told him to take care of George. He told O'Connor he would see him later [Annotator's Note: but he later died from his wounds].