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- for Cornelius Ryan 2 -
Your name Donald Ivan Jakeway
Did you by any chance keep a diary of what happened to you that day?
Strict security rules•••no Diary••••
Were any of your friends killed or wounded either during the landing or
during the day?
very definetely...some bayonneted in trees, not being able to
get free of their chutes.
Do you remember any conversations you had with them before they became
casualties?
To remember the thousands of things said would be impossible.
Conversation usually ran in one line, "if anything happens to me
and you get out ..." from there on the requests could be anything.
Were you wounded? Not in the Normandy invasion, but once in
Holland, and in the Battle of the Bulge.
Do you remember what it was like—that is, do you remember whether you
felt any pain or were you so surprised that you felt nothing?
Your story is for Normandy, so I will disregard this question
Do you remember seeing or hearing anything that seems funny now, even
though it did not, of course, seem amusing at the time?
During the first ten days of the Normandy invasion, I was
separated from my outfit, and reported missing in action to my
parents, on my return to my own outfit the first thing my
Commanding officer said was, "Where the Hell you been ?" , don’t
you know there is a war on? After seeing some of the buddies
dead in trees, which I myself had landed in a tree, spending
8 days nearly always surrounded by Germans, hiding, sometimes
fighting for my very life, this was a funny statement.

Do you recall any incident, sad or heroic, or simply memorable, which struck
you more than anything else?
The very fact that one of my very best friends landed among
a platoon of Germans, and while hanging supended from a side of
a house where his chute had caught, nearly wiped out the entire
platoon before being killed himself. I found them that way
the early part of the morning, with no one else around. Lt Thomas
had only used hand gernades and a tommy gun, which was straped to
him.
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