I won't ever forget the buddies I lost during the Bulge and the one buddy from school I lost during the last days of the war. He was a medic in the 394th.

     I was an ambulance driver in the 324th. I hauled a lot of wounded back, during blackouts most of the time. I never hear much about the job the ambulance drivers did during the war.

     I even transported Gen. Mulberry from the front line in Elsenborn at midnight when he was sick. Snow was knee deep. I got hung up in snow and he got out and shoveled. I got him there.

     I followed the 393rd Infantry across the Cologne Plain to the Rhine. Two days later we crossed the Ludendorff Bridge. That night I had to go back across the bridge with a load of wounded. The guards said the bridge was condemned but they let us go on.

     Sgt. James Freehill from Fort Wayne IN, crawled on his knees with a flashlight to keep the boards in place for my wheels to roll on.

     They wouldn't let us cross the next morning. We had to wait until they got a pontoon bridge built. Planes were bombing and 88s were falling all the time.

     I was turned in for a medal for some of this but when the war was over and they gave out the medals I got nothing. I am still proud to be an American.

     I was taken off my dad's farm in 1942 and went all the way from Van Dorn MS to the Austrian Alps.

     While the convoy was stopped for 30 minutes on the Remagen Bridge the infantry soldiers kept walking across on the walkway of the bridge. Someone called my name and it was a friend I had back in Texas. I never saw him again.

     My ambulance was A-14-324th Med. Bn. The name on the door was my little girl, "Sharon." She is 58 years old now and lives in Atlanta GA. I am 81 and doing very well for my age.

Sherman Darnell