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The American soldier pictured is from the 101st Airborne Division. These men parachuted into the combat area under the cover of night on D-Day.
By British standards they came late to the ball game, but they came to play. According to Montgomery they were crude and lacking in military finesse, but they won many more times than they lost. They were a mixture of excited volunteer kids and older draftees and without them the invasion could not have taken place and the Germans defeated.
The men were well equipped and eager to get into the war after spending months held up in Britain waiting for the big day. They sweated through eight weeks of basic training.
Life at war for the American GI was essentially long hours of hard physical labour, painful slogging under heavy weights and boredom - interspersed with moments of sheer gut-wrenching terror. It was a hard way to live, more like a hobo than a human being, and creature comforts of any kind were hard to find. They were always hungry and usually moving too fast for field kitchens and hot chow to catch up with the advance. Stomachs shrank and often rebelled at the weeks of steady rations, crammed with calories and carbohydrates, but tasting just a cut above cat food. No matter what the weather, dehydration was always a concern. Marching made them sweat, and combat left them cotton-mouthed and croaking. Water was often what they could dip out of a shell-hole. Treated with tablets to kill the bugs.
