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Belt 9 - Page 6

time prowling along hedgerows. There was no Fox Company, no 1st, 2nd or 3rd Platoon.
So the best one can do is to pick up a group of men from where they've landed and
string along with them until they join the 2nd Battalion. Hugh (Jack) Borden, then
a Sergeant, now a 2nd Lieutenant was a good man to tag on to. He was one of the best
fighting Fox soldiers. In Lieutenant Borden's plane there was Lieutenant Simon, the
jump master, Manning Haynee, John Taylor, Joe Hogan-Miller, James Waters, Ralph Poovenzano,
Norman Trembull, Rail Ochoa, Marion Gradowski, Ralph Robins, Ray Persenuf, Bernard
Tom, Joe Gillespie and Joseph Watkins. Lieutenant Borden landed in and was dragged
to the bottom of a swamp and it turned into a five-feet deep lake. He worked fast
cutting away harness and equipment and swam to shore, stripped of everything except
his clothes. He heard machine gun fire on his left. On his right there was much
moving and commotion. Seeing no chance of picking up a weapon quickly he swam back
to a tree with tommy gun and three clips of ammunition cleaning them up as best he
could. He went to the place where all the commotion was coming from which was a
stableyard full of scared horses. Having lost his maps and having no idea where he
was Lieutenant Borden followed the first road he came upon. He heard a cricket.
Borden answered with his and yelled "flash," the password. The countersign "thunder"
came back. They were two 501st men there machine guns set up alongside the hedgerow.
There was no good reason for them being there but they didn't know where to go,
what to do while waiting for more of the men to show up. "Have you see any 506 mem-
bers around?" asked Borden. "No," they said so he continued on and bumped into men
from his own platoon and plane. One of them Bumtang Robbins, Watkins, Persenuf,
[inserted]?Trembull[end inserted] Tremble, Gradowski, Poovenzano, Hogan-Miller and Milliard Moore, a medic from
another plane. This was one of the rare incidents that so many of one squad managed
to get together so close after the jump. Trembull told Borden who automatically
assumed command that Lieutenants Simon and Waters were dead from drowning. They
went back to investigate and found their bodies on shore. The wind had their