>> hi, my name is joe blansfield. i have a question for al. we chatted a little bit earlie outside from one medic to another. i'm just curious, did you choose to be a medic or did the army choose you to be a medic? >> the army chose to ask me. >> and what additional training did you get in preparation for what you are about to -- >> i had good traing. i was a boy scout. [ applause ] and my -the fellow that started about the same time i did at tacoa also had boy scout training. basically that's what we had. we had a little bit of traing. but not very much. not what they have today. it's wonderful today. by the way this fellow brewer that we were talking about, he ended up singing in the choir and everything, so he was okay. >> that's great. >> but we didn't have anything. but we used our heads and our hands and whatever good sense if we had any. >> over here, brian? >> my question is for mr. tipper.

i was wondering if youan speak a little bit more about ur experiences rit after? >> my hearing is not real good. >> he would like to know about your expernces right after carentan. >> it was my last effort in the war. i was hit in carentan. and we did something that i think probably only the paratroopers could have done. we had a battalion of 800 men. went single file all night long to the south of carentan and got ready for an attack that morning. single file. one person make a mistake, and the whole thing was gone. we did it. and 800 men made that trip. we got set up in a place where the germans had no expectation of any attack at all. and we attacked and we h them outgunned and we were moving

them back. things were looking pretty good. the actually -- i was wounded. we were inexperienced but suddenly we realized maybe ts was a little too easy. we were at a crossroads, a three-way crossroads. there were houses. if we moved forward a little bit, the hous would be behind us. somebody thought, maybe germans are in those houses. in the movies, you check the house for snipers or people, german enemy, you pull a grenade and throw itn. i didn't have any grenades. we just had to kick e doors in without a grenade, but we did . and the first house i came to, i kickedhat door in and went in and there was nobodyn the house at all. so i went out to look in the back, there was a backyard stone

fence about six or seven feet high nobody i could see. and there was, i think, an outhouse connected to e house. i thought maybe there's somebody in there and i called them to come out with their hands up a nobody answered. so i put a couple of shots into that outhouse for good luck. and thought, well, this -- i went back out and hollered. i went upstairs but nobody was upstairs. came bk down. i yelled across the street to the guy that was covering, this house is clear. and a little bit later, we waited and waited for a few minutes. suddenly, i had this tremendous impact. i didn't feel any pain, didn't hear any noise i don't think. tremendous impact had knocked me back. the training i had was so good that i didn't drop my rifle. i still held my rifle up. and i thought, well, it's a germanhe tossed a grenade, he's coming in. i was ready to take ca of him. nothing ppened, nothing happened.

and so i went across the street and he yelled, hey, and i came to theoor and he came running over and told me it was mortar shell. so it was not anybody throwing a grenade at him. and that was really the end of my war in carentan. the situation was the germans, they were retreating, they had set up almost a measured distance and they knew we would be coming up to that cross road and they were a little bit more experienced probably than we were, but wetill -i was out of the war, but "e" company still took carentan that day. >> thank you. i just want to say good luck to carrie. to the crowd, his daughter is running the boston marathon this monday. so best of luck.

>> everybody knows. >> you have a question, george, or somebodelse has a question? got it. >> have a question. >> this is for you, izzy. >> as an outfit survivor, what quality or qualities do you think were needed that enabled you to survive that terrible experience? what qualities in your life or your experience there enabled you to survive that horrible experience? >> did you hear that? what qualities that you had in your life made you be able to survive being in auschwitz and survive the other camps you were in. was it something internal? was it youth? what was it? >> thank you. >> ion't think that you need

any special quality. you needed a little luck and help. and i was fortunate enough to get help from people in different camps that i know. keep in mind i come from a family my father, my mother and weere five brothers. my mother used to say she has a basketball team, five boys. in 1942, in a town in the middle of the night without any prior rning, s.s. troopers came into the ghetto with barking dogs and flying rifle bots, and

ordered all the entire jewish population o to assemble in the center of the town. over there, selection took place. the germans selected those who in the opinion were cable of performing slave labor. they needed workers to work in their industries because the young men and women were in the military. that dayas the darkest day of my life which is still wh me today. because during the selection, i and two of my brothers were selected to one column, say, on the left side. my parents and my 7-year-old brother were selected on the other side of the column. i was never away from my rents. was never away from my famil

and i didn't want to be separate this time either. and so i sneaked back over to thcolumn where my parents were. and i said to myself whatever happens to the members of my family, let it happen to me, too. we're going together wherever we have to go. my father at that time realized what has taken place here and he said to me and to two of my brothers, chdren, go back over there. save yourself. and if you survive, remember to carry on with jewish life and jewish tradition. those were the last words that i hear from my father. they took them away. they were taken to a concentration death camp and they were gassed and cremated there the same day.

i and two of my brothers were nt to another camp in that city where there was a factory, and we were assigned to work in various places. my first job was to be assigned by the community council, there was a jewish community council. so you had to go there and register in order to get a ration card. e only way you could get the rati card is if yowere assigned to work. i was assigned by the community council to work in the gestapo. i'm sure that you all know what the gestapo is. don't think for a minute that i was a gestapo agent. i was doing labor work. i had to come in the morning, shine the officers' boots, can and do other various work. i was mistreated.

i was beaten. and i went back to the community council crying and said i can't work there. please send me to another, to another place of work. which th did. and they sent me tammunition ctory. remember that when the war broke out and the germans came into poland where i was living with my family, i was 14 years old. at the age of 14, i was declared a ave, condemned to death for the only crime i have committed because i was born to jewish parents. for that, i had right to live. in 1942 at that time i was in that camp working in the ammunition factory. the conditions in that camp were

so bad that people could not st very long. in the winter 1942, just a few months after we arrived in the camp, due to the conditions bed, food, unreasonable, unusable facilities for water and toilet and so forth, an epidemic of typhoid broke out. then the germans took one of the barracks, barrack five, and made this a quarantine and put all those people that became, that got infected with the typhoid sickness into that barrack. after a certain amount of people accumulated there, we had a camp commandant there by the namef

altov, billy altov. i'll be honest with you, i still today -- although i know the man was talking and breathing and doing all the horrible things -- i don't believe that he was not a german, he was not a human being. his greatest please was to shoot people. he was having a little sub machine gun hanging, and whenever he came into the camp, he was just shooting people for no reason at all. on sundays, he usually invited guests to a show, put on an exhibition, how he was killing people. he was the camp commandant. and so when the sick people accumulated in the quarantine, he usually took them out into the closest forest and shot them there. i was also ilicted with the typhoid.

and then one night, we had -- the lights went and we had everybody out, everybody out, and i'll make it very brief because i'm the one that take up all the time. there were 87 pele in that barrack thatight in that quarantine. 86 people were shot right there. only one, only one came out alive. only one escaped that night. and that's the one person that isitting here and speaking to you now. [ applause ] i just want to go by fast because it's very important that i mu finish with -- i don't know whether i'll get more time, so i have to finish with this. going through the different

conctration camp in auschwitz in 1945, in the last camp where i was, the american air force came and destroyed the camp. we could hear the artillery and seeing that the war is coming close to an end. we just didn't know whether we will live other hour and see the uniforms, to see the liberators coming and freeing us. we were placedn the dead march. the destination which we found out afterwards was to take us to abandoned salt mines, place us in those salt mines and there destroy us. on t third day on the dead march in the middle of the forest, if anybody knows, heard about the black forest, the middle of the highway, we were

walking and our guards abandoned us, left us in the middle of the highway and of course we were liberated. so i'm saying this i wouldn't be able to finish without telling you. i have the deepest, deepest respect and gratitude for men and women that i see in the uniforms. it is for the men in the uniforms, what we first saw, and especially you guys, you, in our opinion, called the liberators. because if you wouldn't have come, another three months, none of us, none of us would ha survived the war. so my gratitude, my salute, and my thank you to you men and women in the uniform for serving today and sang theives of her people and you men that liberated the conctration camps. although you did not liberate me or mine, the camp that i was on,

but that doesn't makany difference. you liberated other people that otherwise would not be alive today. my deepest gratitude, my deepest thanks to you. i cannot tell you how much and how i can say thank you to you. [ applause ] >> when platz kolin was invaded by the gmans in 1939, izzy and his family buried several religious artifacts in the bott of a basement in a house.

in two weeks, we are taking izzy back to that house wheree's going to unearth those artifacts and look at them for the first time since 1939 and bring them back to his family. [ applause ] question up there, please. okay. okay, we'll go over here first, george. sir, in the front row. >> i do not have a question, i have comment. to the actors, we thank you fo supporting the gentlemen to your left. for al, ed, babe and izzy, you are men among men, and we thank you very kindly.

>> young ladupper left. >> my name is leslie granger. >> speak loudly. >> and my question is for the three members of easy company. what i wanted to know is in your experience as veterans, having experienced combat, coming home transitioning back to that lifestyle. what has been the number one thing that civilians and individuals can do, you know, to make you feel appreciated and supported? >> the question is, coming back from war and coming back to the united states, what is the best thing that civilians here on the home front, during your war, could have done to make your transition better, to support you more? we saw in vietnam that didn't go so well when those soldiers came home.

what was it about that generation welcoming you back that made your transition easier? >> well, i think, my opinion, it took a lot of american women -- >> cut! that's a diffent show. i know where you're going with this, bugo ahead. >> let me tell you something. all e american women in this country live up the creek, you know what creek i'm talking abt, and i've seen it. i come home on a weekend pass in

north carolina. never knew what existed. in my street, my street, you couldn't get a truck through. it'soo small of a reet. these women,ncluding my mother, were out every morning with that hero-gerty on their head, whatever the hell they used. and they had the broom, they had everything to cln the windows, the steps. we call them steps. new york, they call them stoops. i don't know why. in philly, a stoop is a guy that's stupid. laughter ] but this is true. i don't tell lies sitting he. but the woman was standing in the group. i could tell you their names right now, and they were

talking. and i said, hey, ma, i'm home. she said go over to the house, babe. i knew she was in a good mood. called me babe [ laughter ] i went in the house. she's gog to make soup. so i -- before i walked into the house, i hear my mother holler, oh, my god, here he comes. and here comes a guy, made the turn on the corner. he had a bicycle. he had a brown uniform on. he was the guy that delivered the telegrams. and they all screamed. and you know what they say? i ain't allowed to curse. but the women, it's all right for them. and my mother and everybody else's mother. and they hollered, oh, my god, my mother said, look at this, look.

they looked. and they hollered, keep going, you son of a bitch! keep going, you son of a bitch! and every time he would look li he was going to stop, they would say, keep going, keep going. and once he did, he stopped in front of mrs. nelson's hse. i'm witness to this. and he said, it's mrs. nelson's house, and they all -- here he had his brace on his pants leg broke and it got caught in the wheel of the bicycle. after he adjusd, he got back on and he continued his ride down the street. my mother come in the house and i said to her, ma, what are you all excited about?

she said, babe, that's the man that delivers the telegram and it could have been your house, her house, mrs. bailey, mrs. thompson. so then i knew. i said how often does this go on? she said, every morning. every morning we're out here doing the pavement, dog the steps and we look for him. when he mes, then we have to worry. thiss every day. all during that war. they were out there doing the steps, doing the pavement. they were all housewives in them days. none of them worked because they had big families. we had one family on the street, she had 16 children. her name was mrs. gallagher. never forget her. and th were all out there. so when they tell you about who

the heroes is of any war, i can tell you my vote, and i mean this very, very sincerely, we know the kids who got killed. we soldiered with them, butt least their pain was over. but the women every day, every day they had theain and didn't get a telegram. think about it. and as i told these gentlemen before, how would you have liked to have been mrs. sullivan who lost five boys? when that priest came knocking on her door with a commandant of the navy. i'm talking here like it should be safe. and she heard a bang on the door, she looked out the wdow, she saw the priest. she opened up the door and she said, father, which one?

and he said, mrs. sullivan, come inside. we want to talk toou. they went inside. and she didn't have to say anything. she knew it was bad. and the priest said, you lost all five of your boys. she didn't carry a child for nine months. she carried five of them for 45 months. washed them, bathed them, fed them. you tell me who the heroes of any war are. don't tell me. i've been there. [ applause ] i don't say this just for the hellf it. i say it because it's true. it's true.

we're nothing. whate did we had to do because we wear pants. [ laughter ] >> thank youbabe. a question over here, a young gentleman who's decked out, ready to jump out of his suit. >> best dressed main theoom. >> best dressed man in the room. >> hi, i'm ethan schultz from dallas, texas, and my question is for al. can you tell us a story when you jumped off the 34-foot building without a harness? >> i wonder if somebody translate -- >> one more estion >> the story about the 34-foot building you jumped off. >> the story about the 34-story building. >> oh, yeah. i claimed that -- they recruited in a spefic intent and that was that they wod find the dumbt guys they could find and put them in one unit, but we first got there, my friend, ed pipping and myself, it was

the -- the camp was still under construction. and the was a big tented area off in the mud flats there. that was one place we would not -- we called it cow company. it would be a complete disgraceo be rejected and thrown into cow company to go somewhere else so wwere walking around there and we saw this towe it was about 35-foot high. is that what you're referring to? yeah. and 34, 35. and we said, boy, oh, boy, we don't want to be chicken, they're going to have us jump off that thing. so we end up and jump off. luckily, it had been dug up and everything, so we didn't break anything. we didn't break our heads. anthe lieutenant came along and said, what are you doing? you're not supposed to be jumpinoff there like that. we told him why we're jumping. he said, oh, no, we didn't complete that thing yet. they were going to put a cable down and we jump out and you'd be coming sliding down. [ laughter ] i'd like to add something to the

question the young lady asked up there, having to do what -- how -- and yourquestion tim, relative to the reception when weame home, and that is that, that war was different. everybody was in that war. women, children, mothers, fathers, aunts, uncles, the soldiers. and so when the war was over, we were all coming out of the war. not just the sdiers. after that, seems like all the wars were separate from the people at home. and the wars took place in oth countries, that sort of thing and our lives here in this country because at that time i was not a soldier anymore. just went on as usual almost. and there was sort of a detachment to the people that were doing the fighting and ourselves it seems like. and they didn't get the reception they should have. they should have been really brought home properly. and reassembled -- assimilated into our culture again. it was a terrible thing.

i think there was a lot of difference, too, between the war in europe and the war in the far east. in the war in europe, there was an awful lot of fighting and a lot of firing. and i don't know why i wasn't hit 15 times over. and people were just firing. in the far east, seems there was an intent to either kill you or maim you. preferably to maim you so you could take four or five more guys out of the picture. i was lucky i was in europe. >> if you've seen "the pacific," i thought the series did a great job of showing the brutality of the fight in the pacific from guadal canal on. that war wasn't fougy a geneva convention. there were no rules in the pacific. having been there, having bn to the guadal canal and seeing the conditions and knowing the enemy you were fighting, you know, there was -- there were no