Preserving The Oral HistorIES of Combat Veterans
5:33 | In 1943, new recruit Norb Studelska decided to go the extra mile and became a Paratrooper. In jump school he appreciated that, "They pounded us until we were practically dead." He knew it would do him a lot of good.
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Norb Studelska's paratrooper unit finally received a mission that would take them from their base in England to the Continent. The task was to secure a drop zone for gliders. They succeeded but the overall mission was a disaster as British troops making the assault were routed.
Norb Studelska had the best foxhole on the block, lined with a nice parachute. But he had to abandon it when German troops surrounded his position. After the Germans broke off the attack, and he was making a supply run, he saw movement in a haystack.
Norb Studelska saw the troop truck behind his tip over. A medic was killed in the wreck and Studelska couldn't believe that, after two months of heavy fighting, he could be killed in a traffic accident. Then, his unit was rushed, totally unequipped and unprepared, into the chaos of the Battle of the Bulge.
Norb Studelska couldn't believe how some of his fellow soldiers would not follow instructions for avoiding frostbite in the Winter of 1944. He also couldn't believe it when two men from his unit did not return a password and were shot dead. He says that was the saddest day of his life. Norb also recalls the death of William (Billy) Vacca, a highly emotional experience for him.
At the end of the war, Norb Studelska's unit set an ambush for a German unit moving nearby, but he couldn't pull the trigger. The man was kneeling and had his arm over his face.
