PFC Poin

"From his position at D Company headquarters, Lt. Baglietto, the platoon leader, jumped into the cab of the first convenient truck. Privates Amos Grizzard and Bob Davis and PFC Lorenzo Poin leaped on board as he drove past the infantry officers and troops that were frantically getting themselves assembled into the proper units and digging in. Baglietto gunned the truck through artillery and machine gun fire for 500 yards until they reached the guns. With a few of the gun crew, they piled the 350-pound mortars into the truck bed and roared back. The guns were back in action before night fell."

This, according to one trigger-happy Chemical Weapons expert, is how my grandfather got his medals. (He didn't mention that the truck drove over a land mine on the way back to their encampment, killing and/or wounding everyone on it, including my Nonu.) He was too busy being impressed by the way that, "Carefully protected, [German soldiers] fell in thousands to 4.2 shells which dropped high explosive and searing white phosphorous nearly straight down into their midst with a suddenness that left survivors confused and demoralized." He also didn't mention, and probably didn't know, that my grandfather was saved and brought to a hospital by a German soldier.

My grandfather was demoted to PFC when his troop commander told him to drive a truck across an encampment with no lights (so as not to alert the Germans). There were men sleeping on the ground, so he said no. I guess they got someone else to do it.

If you'd asked my grandfather what he thought of the war, he'd say, "Patton was a butcher."