1st Lt. Fred Bahlau will tell what it was like to be a paratrooper in the 101st Airborne during WW II. Fred jumped into Normandy on D-Day June 6 th 1944. He said that everything was lit up by fires to illuminate the paratroopers jumping from only 800 ft. It was a killing field and Fred was in the middle of it. Fred also tells of Operation Market Garden in Holland on 17 Sept. 1944 which was a brutal fight under the English Field Marshall Bernard Montgomery. Mr. Bahlau also was completely surrounded by the German army at Bastogne in freezing weather 12 degrees below zero with just regular Army clothing ( no heavy winter clothing). His legs were so frozen from the winter of 1944 that the VA gave Fred a small disability in 2006 to help him with his legs which hurt him 60 years later. He also tells about opening a concentration camp at Landsberg. Listen as Fred tells you what that camp was like with thousands killed there. Fred carried a Thompson Submachine gun most of the time. He was promoted by what is called a “Field promotion” several times because the men senior to him were killed in front of him.
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