William J. Hayes
Age: 85
Hometown: “Born on a farm near Elm Creek, Nebraska.”
Residence: Indio/Eugene, Ore.
Military branch: U.S. Army paratrooper; 101st Airborne, 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment
Years served: Nov. 25, 1942 — Dec. 28, 1945
Rank: Private first class
Family: Wife Doris, six children, 16 grandchildren, 10 great-grandchildren
About this series
Staff writer Denise Goolsby will profile desert veterans from World War II Wednesday through Sunday through the end of 2010 — the 65th anniversary of the end of the war. Contact her at (760) 778-4587 or via e-mail at denise.goolsby@thedesertsun.com
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Private First Class William J. Hayes, a paratrooper with the 101st Airborne Division, jumped into Normandy on D-Day, fought his way through enemy-packed hedgerows, killed Germans, took a gunshot to the face and lived to tell the story.
Hayes credits his survival to excellent training and adapting to the sounds of battle — ducking for cover as soon as you hear the rat-a-tat of machine gun fire.
“After you've been there a while, you learn fast,” he said.
As soon as he landed in Normandy, he attracted enemy fire.
“I rolled over on my back to get out of the parachute just as a stream of tracer bullets went over me,” Hayes said.
Early the next morning, after digging in for the night on a narrow dirt road bordered by thick hedgerows, Hayes and his group came upon a water reservoir covered by a three-sided shed.
“I went off to the right and around the reservoir and came face-to-face with a German soldier,” he said. “He had his submachine gun hung over his shoulder and I had my rifle in my hand. So I shot him.”
He felt like vomiting. He learned later that it was a normal reaction “for a person to have the first time he shoots another person face-to-face,” Hayes said.
Later, Hayes and the rest of his “D” company were assigned to follow “F” company up a slope to take the high ground from a group of German soldiers.
A colonel had the USS Quincy, stationed offshore, assist in the advance by laying down a barrage of fire ahead of the paratroopers.
But its first rounds landed in the middle of “F” company.
“This was our first, but not last experience with ‘friendly fire,'” he said.
After the fire halted, “D” company was assigned to take over as the lead because “F” company had been “chewed-up” pretty badly, Hayes said.
“To move up, we had to crawl through the remains of ‘F' company,” he said. “There were body pieces legs, torsos and arms with protruding bones lying about.”
His group came across a two-story, stone house.
“As I went through the house I was mighty tense,” he said. “Anything that moved was going to get shot.”
He noticed movement out of the corner of his eye.
It was a German soldier standing with his hands up.
“He showed me a picture of him and his wife and his two kids,” Hayes said.
The man somehow got the message across that he thought the war had been lost and he wanted to go back home.
Hayes sent him to the back of the lines and hoped that he made it home safely.
At Bastogne, during the Battle of the Bulge, with rations running low and casualties mounting, his company had to pull back after a particularly lethal day.
“The pullback reminded me of some old Civil War movies,” he said. “It was foggy and there was a low mist that would swirl along the ground as we walked through it. There were many moans and calls for water and periodically a voice called out, ‘Mama, mama.'”
In the early morning hours of Jan. 5, 1945, there was an enemy attack. Small arms fire and bazookas sent shrapnel flying in all directions.
Hayes remembers waking up on his back.
He had been hit on the side of the face by a bullet. It chipped his jawbone and exited near the back of his ear.
He still wears the scars of the battle fought 65 years ago.
