The most common drink in Normandy and central France, as well as the easiest to obtain, was calvados. It is extremely potent. Rumor had it that you could burn it in the jeeps instead of gasoline, and they would run just as well. We never tried it, but I do know that it burned in a cup with a little blue flame, just like pure alcohol. Cognac was also a popular drink. Of course, in northern France and Belgium, we had lots of wine and champagne. During the cold weather in Belgium, I actually had two bottles of prize champagne freeze and break while stored inside the half-track, under a blanket. Calvados would never have frozen!
We really never lacked for spirits. In France, but especially in Belgium, the "liberated" were always handing us bottles of wine or inviting us into their cellars for a drink. On top of all this, the officers all got liquor rations. In addition, the Air Corps decreed that all pilots were to receive two ounces of whiskey for each mission flown, not realizing, I'm sure, that we liaison pilots often flew four or five missions daily. I never developed a liking for whiskey, but always having it on hand made me popular with some of the drinking buddies in the battalion.
The officers who flew with us as air observers were also eligible for the additional allotment per mission. Some of them liked that, and too, for many of them, flying was a welcome relief from being a forward observer in a light tank up with the infantry. Consequently, air observer assignments were sometimes rotated by the battalion commander, who usually didn't send me an officer without my approval. In combat I never had an observer who hadn't had some experience with me during training in England.
I don't remember many of the little villages in France after the St, Lo breakthrough, except for the one called Villedieu. It was here that our whole battalion was thrown back by an SS Panzer attack. Willie Best, the battalion air officer with the 54th Armored Field Artillery Battalion, won a purple heart medal when his plane caught a downdraft while he was trying to fly out of a too-short pasture field. His only visible injury was a skinned nose, and if his nose hadn't been so big, he might have escaped unscathed. Of a much more serious nature was the death of Eddie Golas, my counterpart in the 391st Armored Division Battalion. Eddie and I spent a lot of time together and when in combat sometimes used the same landing strip. He was attacked and shot down by eight Messerschmitts, which dived at him from out of the sun at his rear. I suspect he never knew what hit him. Later we heard from a captured Messerschmitt pilot that the Luftwaffe was giving an automatic three-day pass to Berlin to any fighter pilot who shot down an American artillery plane. The Germans were beginning to recognize the importance of our Piper Cubs.
Eddie Golas, who was from Chicago, was much more "gung-ho" than I. He wanted to make the army his career. Usually, if we saw enemy fighters in time, we could elude them by diving and flying close to the ground, following the contour of the terrain. At the speed the fighters flew, they could not turn as quickly as our Cubs could, so that if they missed us with their initial shots, we could usually out-maneuver them. One liaison pilot I knew actually caused a Messerschmitt to fly into a hillside during the chase. He proudly painted a Messerschmitt kill on the nose of his Cub.