ST. ALBANS TOWN, Vt. (WCAX) – At 99, it’s understandable that Bob Coon walks with caution.
Coon lives in Saint Albans Bay. We’re going for a short drive and he’s talking about memories from long ago.
“This used to be more or less camps around the shoreline and now there’s homes down here,” Coon said. “It was a good place for a kid to grow up.”
It was an innocent time. But in a few years, with the war raging across Europe, Coon wanted to sign up. “Weighed 165 pounds soaking wet, but I was all muscle,” he said.
Coon would join the Army’s 101st Airborne Division. The “Screaming Eagles” famously jumped into danger, a leap of faith many weren’t sure they would survive. “You jump into enemy territory about 10 to 15 miles ahead of your front lines. That’s where you’re going to find all the enemy,” Coon said.
In September 1944, Coon parachuted along with 41,000 British and American forces into the German-occupied Holland. It was called Operation Market Garden. “And we’re there for three days, and all this time we couldn’t get any supplies or anything, and the Germans were coming in from everywhere,” he said.
They were low on ammunition also and prepared for the worst. “We fixed bayonets and we were ready to take it. We knew we were going to die right there because we knew we weren’t ready to give up,” Coon recalled. “And we were losing men every night. They would shell us every night.”
With allied support, they were able to withdraw. But soon enough, they liberated the country. However, The celebration would be short-lived. That December, Coon was shipped off to Bastogne, Belgium, to what would become part of the infamous Battle of the Bulge.
“The weather was so bad, we had no air support, nothing. We were on our own,” Coon said.
Reporter Joe Carroll: You saw men die next to you?
Bob Coon: Yes, good friends, too.
For about a month, Coon and his band of brothers lived in foxholes, tortured by the freezing cold. “I had frostbitten hands and feet, yeah,” he said. It was the last major German offensive of the war.
Reporter Joe Carroll: How close to a German did you get?
Bob Coon: Very close… A lot of people died on both sides, yeah. It was a slaughterhouse.
The headline in the Stars and Stripes newspaper says it all — “Bastogne–a ‘44 Gettysburg.”
The Americans lost over 19,000 men and the Germans close to 100,000. It was the beginning of the end of the war in Europe.
“Lucky to be alive, lucky, lucky, lucky,” Coon said.
Coon came home, married Kathleen, and raised a family. but he never lost the urge to jump out of planes. In 1994, WCAX caught up with Coon as he was training to jump on the 50th anniversary of the liberation of Holland. Coon received a letter from a Dutch woman recalling the liberation of her country when she was 14. “’And now you are the witness of gratitude of 50 years. We did not forget and shall never forget,’” Coon said, reading from the letter.
Now, 80 years later, old and frail. Coon has parting words. “I want them to remember this — Freedom is not free.”