When I was older and in the service myself, I asked Utah about his time in the ETO, Normandy, Belgium and so forth.  He, like so many others, was pretty closed mouth about that time and the horrors they experienced.  The best I ever got was that once they landed at Normandy (which he said was the worst day of his life except for when his beloved wife passed away) and come upon a little village outside St. Lo, where the townspeople (and all others they came across all over Europe) started giving them homemade wine (probably about 18 or 19 proof) and they stayed pretty well drunk until the end of the war so he didn't remember much of anything about the actions. 

For a while after the war and after his first wife ran off with a bartender, he drank pretty heavy, beer mostly, but still a lot.  He got remarried to a gal (see above) who put up with it for several years but finally put it to him and he never drank another drop for the last 35 years of his life.  His second wife had four little ones so he had plenty of kids to raise and drive him nuts.  Their own father had disappeared when the last one was born and he ended up adopting them all. He smoked Lucky Strikes until the day he died, though that's not what killed him.  He was a master cabinet maker when he retired and he thought he was making big bucks as the lead guy at $13.00 an hour and lived in a trailer house until my other brother and I moved him to an assisted living place in Bakersfield.  Once his wife died he had only about $700.00 a month from SSI and a little from her insurance policy.  We had to help him with this, though we lied about what he had to pay at the rest home.  When he died he left me the flag used at his burial which I donated to our church and a well written history of our family and the life we lived back in the "good old days."

He never wanted to be an NCO or officer or bigshot of any kind.  He told me once that he'd been offered promotions in the army but he just didn't want to be the one to send his buddies out to be hurt or killed.  He was certainly smart enough and may have made a good staff officer or NCO, but he just didn't want to play those games.  Also he never took advantage of any of the GI Bill benefits after the war.  He said it sounded too much like welfare to him.  A different way of looking at things, I guess.  I think it made the playing field a little more even for everyone and made out country stronger because of it.  But he was a proud man and it was his way, I can't fault anyone for that.