war paint

 

Bill Guarnere
United States Army
Easy Company, 2nd Battalion,
506th Parachute Infantry Regiment (PIR)
101st Airborne Division - 1942-1945

I got this [paratrooper] tattoo after D-Day. Me and Johnny Martin got a pass for London. When you go on a pass overseas in England you hitchhike. All the trucks are going your way, they take you, then you get off and another truck picks you up. We wound up at an Air Force base, a U.S. Air Force base. We got something to eat and a couple of pilots come over to us and started talking to us and they said "You want to come to Scotland?" "You gotta be kidding!" they were fighter pilots, they had these jets, so Johnny got in one and I got in the other one. It took about twelve minutes, we got to Edenburough Scottland. That's when we got the tattoos. Drunk as a skunk. If I was sober I never would have gotten it, but I was drunk. We had a good time up there. Edenburough, 1944. Right after D-Day. Drunk. I would never get tattoos sober.

[continued & close-ups]
 

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