My grandfather (PFC Brownloe Garrett) was shooting down German planes at a 50 caliber machine gun emplacement at Iceland Base Command before the attack on Pearl Harbor. He knew General Patton personally. From Iceland he went to Tidwell Barracks in England. My grandfather went ashore D-Day +1 on Utah Beach in support. He helped take St. Lo under General Bradley with the 1st Army 10th Infantry Regiment, I Company, 3rd Platoon (Fort Custer, Michigan). He helped take Vidouville with the 5th Infantry Division (nicknamed the Red Diamond) and then was transferred to the 3rd Army under General Patton with the rest of the Division. He was part of Operation Cobra through the hedgerows of France and was wounded twice, once at Angers and again at Metz. My grandfather was a tough, frontline grunt who was part of a Black Ops group of 300 men under General Patton. My grandfather told us that at Metz, on the Mossell River across from Fort Driant, General Patton was strutting around firing his pistols and the Germans opened up on him with 88s. Garrett yelled to Patton to “get in the foxhole. You’re getting my buddies blown to hell!” Patton jumped in Garrett’s foxhole and was there for two hours. My grandfather said that Patton had all his sharpshooters and experts wear their stripes upside down so Patton knew where they were on the battlefield at all times. My grandfather’s Army serial number is 15/056/922