during the series say hey, you know what? throw a hand grenade or reload your m-1 or -- you know, they would give you a direction that if you didn't have training you would have to brinsomebo in to do. it was just smart. they never cut in for anybody elsereloading. it was all us. >> i'll give you a quick example of us, and i'm sure you want to get these guys. later on on the episode u showed up on set and i remember one of the directors coming up to me. like i said, she all were fantastic. they said percante. i said yes. they go that's your squad? i said yeah, that's my squad. they said okay, here's where my

cameras-r here's the hedge, where where you're going to go and bring these guys. and you just have to gwhere yours cameras and and he said right there. where are they? they're there, there -- okay. is this barn in your shot? and they would say yeah, i'm seeing everything, the barn. and i'd say i'm not going behind a hedge. there's a barn right here. i'm not going to go behind trees. a hedge. they'd be like oh, you're right. most of them knew stuff like that. but it just -- somimes you had to sort of say hey, i think this might work a little bit, i'm going to get in trouble if i don't open my mouth. and the big guys see that i did it. so yeah. you had that sort of thing going on. >> i have a question for al mampre. al, when someone says you guys are heroes, i know the first reaction right down the line in most veterans that i've ever talked to, when someone say that you guys are heroes, you always say the heroes are the guys who never came home. the guys who were buried over in

margrauten, in the normandy american cemetery and in belgium d luxembourg, those are the heroes of world war ii. how often do you think about those guys who never came home? >> well, i -- actually, after the war i went back to school and i put the war behind me and went on with my life. and i didn't really start thinking about fellas that we left behind and my fellas that are still here until just recently when i'd pretty well retired. and i began attending some of these kinds of affairs. and i began to realize th there was a whole part of my life that i'd sort of forgotten. ani actually have forgotten. and occasionally something comes up or someone saysomething that triggers a memory. and i -- but i do think of the people there. i was at -- i didn't want to go to margraten because to me it was like going to gettysburg, where all those people were slaughtered and wounded and everything like that.

but i'm glad i went. and my daughter was with me. and i saw the way they were taking care of those graves. each grave was taken care of by a civilian. justimmaculate. you couldn't believe h wonderful that cemetery is. and they were truly honored. and i waslad i went. but i do think about them more and more, it seems like, every day. yes. it's a sad thing. >> mr. tipper, the next question is for you. if anyone out there haseen the episode in carentan when you were in the building and the mortar shell hit, it was a devastating, devtating injury to you. and i know while there is no humor behind that, i know you've told me a story in the past about about how the guys actually thought that day that you were killed. >> yeah. that's true. and i didn't find this out till a couple years after the war.

floyd talbert was there when i was hit. and i was very severely wounded and the top of m head was about half off, i guess. but i spent a year at army hospitals. and i guess it looked worse than it wod. i put my hand over the top of my helmet, it was knocked over. my head felt like a watermelon and mushy and soft. and i could understand. talbert looked at this and thought he saw me lled. and he just turned away. and back when was in the states six or eight months later i went to visit talbert's parents because i was in a hospital in indianapolis and they werep in a place called greentown, indiana near kokomo. and his mother wrote him. ed tipper came to visit from the top. and he wrote back immediately, that guy who claims to be tipper

is an impost. call the mps and get him put in jail where he belongs because i saw ed tipper killed. of course we got all that straightened out a couple years later. >> babe, when you came in as a replacement before operation market garden, what was your concept of war in terms of what it would be like and how was it different than what it was actually when you got into holland and started fighting? >> ll, i remember -- can i stand? >> you c do anything you want. >> i ain't got a gun. when i was about -- it was in the '30s, early '30s. i happened to be sitting on a step in south philly. you want to know about war, the

first time you get ataste of it. and i sat next to an old lady. she was up there in years. same as i am now. and a man was coming up the street. and this is about 1932 and i was maybe 9 or 10 years old. and a man wasoming up the stre street, and he was walking. and there were ceme cracks, all block, squares. and he was walking, and he wouldn't step on the crack. and he walked all the way up the street like that. he was going to mass. and i said, mrs. lyons, mrs. lyon why is he not -- he won't touch any cracks?

she said that man was gassed in the first world war, and this is what war does to you. so i went home and said to my moth mother, mama, mrs. lyons said that he was in the first world war and he was gassed, a man that won't step on the cracks in the cement. and my mother, of course, she was always very, very into the house. she never would leave the house. irish. red hair. quite a temper. and had four boys. i guess that was part of it. and anyhow, she sai -- and i'm sitting there by myself. she said, well, let me tell you, when she was mad, she'd call me

edward. when she wasn't mad, it was babe. so i knew she was in a good mood because she called me babe. so she said, babe, let me tell you something. your father wasn't in the first world war, but let me tellou, that son of a bitch is gassed. i said, well, i didn know. and not knowing, i'm 9 years old. i said did he work for the gas company? "you're like your father." i'm like, well, the one day -- this is true, what i'm tlling you. my father was out at the republican club all night. he come home about 4:00 ie morning. and we had all just come back from mass. i was sitting at the breakfast table, and we're almost finished, and my dad come downstairs, and my mother's in the kitchen.

and he said, ann. myother said, yeah, joe. this fish is cold. he always ate sea bass in the morning. this fis is cold so my youngest brother said to him, dad, you were out at the cl till 3:00 or 4:00 this morning. we heard you come in. my mother didn't say nothing. he said, ann. she said joe, i'lle right in. and she come in. she had a knife in her hand. but she was using that for cutting meat, i guess, or something. we got a little nervous. but she said to myfather, my father had his back turned, and he was talking to my younger brother. she said joe, and he turned around and said, yeah, ann.

she said, go shit in your hat. and we said -- >> hey, babe, we may have to elite that out a little bit. we mayave to edit that for c-span, but don't worry about it. >> well, i don't know that. i'm telling the truth here. >> i know you are. >> you want to hide ings, i don't belong here. [ applause ] i'm only trying to do what's right here. >> you're doing ne. you're doing fine. >> make sure you edit that. i'm done. >> so mom was boss in the hour, is what you're trying to say? mom was boss in the house? >> yeah. she is. >> she certainly was. >> yeah. >> let's -- izzy.

a lot of people know about auschwitz. they know about e conditions. they can read about it. they can watch it ithe documentary. could you describe what the conditions were like at auschwitz? to those who never lived through what youe lived through. >> yeah. first of all, let me say it's a etty tough act to follow. >> yeah. yeah. [ applause ] >> i'm only telling the truth. >> you are following a guy who tells the truth. he tells it like iis. and we love him for it. >> that's the way we talked on the corner. can't hide anything. they all know you. >> you rember i asked you outside whether this is going to be a comedy show. >> yes. yes. >> because that's all i heard,

was jokes and allind of stories. >> i know. >> it's not aomedy show. it's true to life. >> right. >> it's the earliest form of the reality tv show. babe should have his own reality tv show. and he would put the kardashians to shame. there's no question about it. >> okay. so l me go back toreality. >> let's go back to auschwitz. >> yousked me whether i can tell what it was like in auschwitz. >> can you convey it? >> number one, how much time have i got for that? >> we're going to keep it short. soou have to do the condensed auschwitz version which is not easy to do, i know. >> the reason why i'm asking, because it is very difficult or practically impossible to tell you in the few minutes what auschwitz was like. so let me just say in general, i don't know how many you people saw movies about the holocaust,

how many books you were reading, what you know about the holocat, what you know about auschwitz. in general, the frmer chancellor of germany, helmut hl, on the 50th anniversary of the liberation of auschwitz, said auschwitz is the darkest chapter inerman history. it is en for me, for one tt was living in auschwitz, living -- living in auschwitz. existing in auschwitz. it's impossible to describe. even if you'll give me the rest of the evening. of what a death camp -- you must remember, auschwitz was not only a concentrion camp. it was a death camp. auschwitz was one of six death camps in poland. wherehen i was there in 1944 whatas called the busiest

time, 10,000 people -- please. 10 -- we're talkingabout 10,000 human beings were being gassed, cremated, in auschwitz every day. transports were arriving from all over europe. men, women, children, babies. the ones like myself that were pied out from my traport to place for slave labor for work, some were thinking and talking out oud, not knowing who is better off, their relatives, their friends who were snt this morning from their transport to the gas chambers, or those the ones that were picked to live in the camp. that's what the situation were.

every day people not being able to take the conditions, live under those condition, threw themselves on the high voltage wires and were electrocuted. i don't kw where to start to be able to get into details. but in general, auschwitz was something that never existed before in the history of the world. and i hope, i hope and pray that it will never happen again anywheres in any part of the world against any people [ applause ]

>> babe, when you were in europe, easy company liberated a concentration camp which s a subcamp of dachau. it was called landsberg. >> landsberg, germany. >> landsberg, germany. what do you say to those people who deny that the holocaust ev happened from somebody who saw it personally? >> you ain't allowed to curse them. and what i'd tell them in no uncertain terms, it was there. it was there. just as this gentleman said. the german people denied it. the villagers that lived around the camp said they never saw it, they don't know about it. but our cmpany commander,

winters, said, well, i don't believe yous because you're going to come in here, you're going to can it up, you're going to get these bodies and put them on the -- where they can be buried properly. and it was mighty hard. nobody gave them any mass or any kind of medical coverage for their faces. but when they come in to do the job of moving their own people, thr own people in the camp, the jewish people were lying there, the ones that were livi, which i want to tell you also, the movie version is quite a little bit different. we couldn't get near them. we couldn't hug them. they wanted to, and it was a

sad, sad thing and i remember one jewish fellow, very thin they were all very thin. i remember him yingo talk. in english. and one of the other jewish inmates said to us as a group, especially eddie stein, who happened to be one of our boys, jewish descent, from st. louis. he said -- i think he said it right. he said, "he is american, but he can't say it. can't talk. but we know he is an american." so ty pulled him out. i don't know what happened. nobody knows because it was very -- i can't tell you because

it's not -- not to be told. it's something the gentleman hereo my left is saying it right. may you never, never see anything like it again. because it's something you dream about, something you go to bed thking aut. it's very sad what man can do to man. but when these german people walked into that camp, they all had surgical masks on. why did they have surgical masks on? they must have knew what they were going to face where'd they get them from? but the german villagers knew because i'll tell you why. the stench would tell you

something's wrg in tt section of that little village. i don't know how many years they were there. but somebody, somebody knew they were there, and somebody has to sell somebody else, word gets around but they didn't care. nobody came. nobody made an effort. they let things go the way they we were. bodies on top of one another. and eddie stein said to me,