Unit X: The Age of Franklin D. Roosevelt

Question/Problem 3: How did World War II affect people's lives?

We were crouched low in a landing barge headed for the 50-yard-wide channel into Hyane Harbor. These GI's were men from the 2nd Squadron, 5th Regiment, 1st Cavalry Division, who had left their horses back in the States. [Pvt.] Planthaber, dripping like a gargoyle, shivered in the rain.

'Put a slug in that tommy chamber,' he told another cavalryman. 'You think we're going to a picnic?'

As we neared the channel, the Navy men in the bow hollered to us to keep our heads down or we'd get them blown off. We crouched lower, swearing, and waited.

It came with a crack: machine-gun fire over our heads. Our light landing craft shuddered as the Navy gunners hammered back an answer with the .30-calibers mounted on both sides of the barge.

As we made the turn for the beach, something solid plugged into us. 'They got one of our guns or something,' one GI said. There was a splinter the size of a half- dollar on the pack of the man in front of me. Up front a hole gaped in the middle of the landing ramp and there were no men where there had been four. Our barge headed back twoard the destroyer that had carried us to the Admiralties.

White splashes of water were plunging through the six-inch gap in the wooden gate. William Siebieda S1c of Wheeling, W. Va., ducked from his position at the starboard gun and slammed his hip against the hole to plug it. He was firing a tommy gun at the shore as fast as wounded soldiers could pass him loaded clips. The water sloshed around him, running down his legs and washing the blood of the wounded into a pink frappe.