Good evening friends! Towards the end of last year, we had the distinct honor of spending some time with Clinton Riddle, who saw combat with the 82nd Airborne in all 6 campaigns in the ETO, North Africa, Sicily, Italy, Normandy, Operation Market Garden in Holland, the Battle of the Bulge and the push into Germany.  This is his story...

"I was born in 1921 in Loudon County Tennessee. I went into the Army on the 12th of December 1942 and landed in Casablanca, Africa May 10, 1943 and served 30 months overseas. I served in French Morocco, Algiers and Tunisia, made the invasion of Sicily, the invasion of Italy at Salerno and was then stationed in Ireland where we prepared for the invasion of Normandy. The weather was so bad there that we didn’t get much training, so they shipped us to England to finish our preparation. I crash landed in my glider in Normandy on DDay +1. We fought for 33 days and nights without any relief and out of 155 men in my company that went in, only 38 were able to return back to England, the rest had been killed or wounded. When I crash landed in my glider in Holland near a town called Grave, I was acting co-pilot and our glider stood up on it’s nose and it threw me to the crash bar and seriously injured my ribs. From there I was sent to Soissons, France and waited there until the break through of the Battle of the Bulge. We were the first unit sent into Bastogne, the 101st followed us in. Our unit was pushed up into a town in Belgium called Webermont and that’s the reason the 101st was trapped in Belgium. Following the bulge, we were sent back to Soissons, France and by then the war had ended. I had enough points to come home. I had my 85 points. Our division was credited for 422 days under enemy fire. Following the war, I was in a hurry to get home. I wouldn’t let nothin stop me from coming home. I had been gone for 3 years. It was amazing to see my family again because I’m an only child. My mother died shortly after I came home. But it was good to be home. I'm from Sweetwater Tennessee... A genuine Hillbilly and proud of it."