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Article: GROWING UP AS BULLETS FLY SALIDA VET SEES INSIDE PURPLE HEARTS.(City Desk/Local)
- Article from:
- Rocky Mountain News (Denver, CO)
- Article date:
- May 27, 2004
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2004 Rocky Mountain News. All rights reserved. Reproduced with the permission of Dialog LLC by Gale Group. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Byline: Jim Sheeler, Rocky Mountain News
SALIDA -- Of all places to get hit, William Archuletta finally fell in the middle of a French cemetery.
"The German 88 fired on us - that's their worst weapon. It hit 19 of us. So we just laid there," he said. "We were all in the graveyard."
By that time in the war, as a member of the 320th Infantry Regiment, 35th Infantry Division, the young soldier had seen weeks of fierce battle and plenty of new cemeteries. As he lay among the graves in Nancy, France, he swore he wouldn't join them.
For Archuletta, the war had started three months before, as he boarded a landing craft on June 6, 1944, and ...