Welcome
mats are clean, bright and shiny, you'll do more hand-shaking
than a politician at an Elk's clam bake and you'll be damn glad
to be back—but don't waste your time looking for a seat on the
gravy train.This is the good word being passed out today
by the first contingent of Red Devils to rejoin the 508th Parachute
Infantry Regiment after spending 30-days at home in the States.
"When we go home for keeps, we'll get the kind of a welcome
that has made the State's famous, but that's about it," Corporal
Robert Ellis of Headquarters and Headquarters Company predicted.
"Many of the civilians I talked to on the train, in New York
and a few at home in Newton, Massachusetts got the idea that
we are as well off as they and it's still every man for himself,
war or no war," he explained.
Corporal Ellis' opinion, generally speaking, was about the
same as that of the six others from the Regiment who accompanied
him to the States and back again to the ETO, a trip which took
about 15 weeks.
The seven Red Devils, all veterans of the Regiment's campaigns
of Normandy. Holland and Belgium, were part of the first "dream"
quota permitting troops 30-day furloughs at home.
All agreed that as far as their families and close personal
friends were concerned things were just as good if not better
than before. It was conversation with casual acquaintances _cr
strangers that indicated that a war record was a swell thing
to have in war time but at the same time wars don't last forever.
"What I like to remember is that I was treated like a king
in Owenton, Kentucky," Corporal King S. Burke of Headquarters
Company added.
