Shames fought with Easy Company in Operation Market Garden and volunteered for Operation Pegasus led by Frederick Heyliger. He was wounded once in his left leg during the campaigns. He then fought with the rest of E Company in the Battle of the Bulge in Bastogne. In Foy, Shames and Paul Rogers knocked out a German tank with a bazooka. In Germany, he saw some of the concentration camps in which the Germans imprisoned and murdered Europe's Jews and was deeply affected, because he is Jewish.