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Dan McBride

WWII | 502nd Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division

Dan McBride and his buddy were dating a couple of English girls and were lucky enough to be invited over for Christmas dinner. They were sitting around afterwards and he began to feel a rumbling in his belly. His Army diet of beans and Brussels sprouts was about to betray him. (2:19)
His sniper rifle was too long to jump with so the plan was to carry it in a bundle. Dan McBride had successful test jumps in England, so he was confident that it would work on D-Day. As the paratroopers were leaving, they got a surprise visit from General Eisenhower, who spoke to each of them. They took off and as soon as the planes got to the French coast, Murphy's Law began to take over. (6:05)
He landed alone and had lost his compass. Paratrooper Dan McBride was moving slowly in the dark through the hedgerows. He encountered a cow, then a German soldier and then finally someone else from his unit. After joining a small group from another unit and commandeering a car, they finally found a road sign which got them back on track and headed for the intended drop zone. (9:06)
It was constant attacking. Hit and run battles with Germans between the drop on June 6th to around the 12th. Dan McBride was in the thick of it, including a bayonet charge at Carentan. Later, in an encounter with a German soldier, he faced a moment of truth when they both raised their weapons and fired point blank. (11:27)
He was shot in the arm so they gave him some German prisoners to take to the beach. When Dan McBride got down there, the prisoners saw the great armada that had crossed the channel. Definitely disheartening. After a short recovery, when his unit had returned to England, they were given what was called a short, easy mission jumping into Holland. It didn't work out that way. (6:39)
It wasn't the short, easy mission they were promised. It was continuous combat for weeks. Paratrooper Dan McBride had jumped into Operation Market Garden in Holland and right away nearly got killed by a mortar round. During the attack on Best, he got pinned down during a German ambush and had another narrow escape. (6:29)
Paratrooper Dan McBride's account of Operation Market Garden is colorful and exciting. He relates several tales, including the fate of an ill tempered sergeant, the improbable capture of a German unit four times the size of his, the reason you should not stop for tea and how he was injured by his own weapon. (7:25)
Dan McBride couldn't stand the Brits and he was stuck in a British Army hospital in Brussels. He had a broken ankle, but when he was told they were going to ship him to a replacement depot, he and some more GI's hatched a plan to get back to their own unit. They finally made that happen and were reunited just in time to react to the news about a German breakthrough. (5:40)
It was an M-1 rifle that he grabbed out of supply. Dan McBride found out he grabbed the wrong one, later on in a firefight. His Airborne outfit had just marched through an unknown town, dug in and were waiting for the Germans they were told were coming. What's the name of this place? Bastogne. (6:56)
Dan McBride was dug in at Bastogne, but he was lucky enough to be on the relatively quiet side of town. It was mostly small probes but there was one big final assault. He describes how the fierce battle seemed in slow motion to his perception, the altered state of combat. After the Germans withdrew, the GI's moved to counter attack. He stood up to move after a tank round burst overhead and he fell flat on his face, unable to walk. "Mac? You hit again?" (10:35)