Climbing aboard the C-47s was difficult because of all the gear each man carried. Individuals were overloaded, following the age-old tendency of soldiers going into combat to attempt to be ready for every conceivable emergency. The vest and long drawers issued each man were impregnated, to ward off a possible chemical attack; it made them c.u.mbersome, they stank, they itched, they kept in body heat and caused torrents of sweat. The combat jacket and trousers were also treated. The men carried a pocketknife in the lapel of their blouses, to be used to cut themselves out of their harness if they landed in a tree. In their baggy trousers pockets they had a spoon, razor, socks, cleaning patches, flashlight, maps, three-day supply of K-rations, an emergency ration package (four chocolate bars, a pack of Charms, powdered coffee, sugar, and matches), ammunition, a compa.s.s, two fragmentation grenades, an ant.i.tank mine, a smoke grenade, a Gammon bomb (a two-pound plastic explosive powerful enough to damage a tank), and cigarettes, two cartons per man. The soldier topped his uniform with a webbing belt and braces, a .45 pistol (standard for noncoms and officers; privates had to get their own, and most did), water canteen, shovel, first-aid kit, and bayonet. Over this went his parachute harness, his main parachute in its backpack, and reserve parachute hooked on in front. A gas mask was strapped to his left leg and a jump knife/ bayonet to his right. Across his chest the soldier slung his musette bag (knapsack) with his spare underwear and ammunition, and in some cases TNT sticks, along with his broken-down rifle or machine gun or mortar diagonally up and down across his front under his reserve chute pack, leaving both hands free to handle the risers. Over everything he wore his Mae West life jacket. Finally, he put on his helmet. Some men added a third knife. Others found a place for extra ammunition. Private Gordon, carrying his machine gun, figured he weighed twice his normal weight.
Nearly every man had to be helped into the C-47. Once aboard, the men were so wedged in they could not move.
General Maxwell Taylor had moved heaven and earth to get enough C-47s for Exercise Eagle. The planes were in constant demand for logistical support throughout ETO, and Troop Carrier Command came last on the list. It was cheated on equipment. The fuel tanks did not have armor protection from flak. Easy got its briefing for Eagle on May 10-11. The objective was a gun battery covering the beach.
At dusk on May 11, Easy took off. The planes made "legs" over England, flying for about two and a half hours. Shortly after midnight the company jumped. For Easy, the exercise went smoothly; for other 29 companies, there were troubles. Second Battalion headquarters company was with a group that ran into a German air raid over London. Flak was coming up; the formation broke up; the pilots could not locate the DZ (Drop Zone). Eight of the nine planes carrying Company H of the 502nd dropped their men on the village of Ramsbury, nine miles from the DZ. Twenty-eight planes returned to their airfields with the paratroopers still aboard. Others jumped w.i.l.l.y-nilly, leading to many accidents. Nearly five hundred men suffered broken bones, sprains, or other injuries. The only consolation the airborne commanders could find in this mess was that by tradition a bad dress rehearsal leads to a great opening night. On the last day of May the company marched down to trucks lined up on the Hungerford Road. Half the people of Aldbourne, and nearly all the unmarried girls, were there to wave good-bye. There were many tears. The baggage left behind gave some hope that the boys would be back. Training had come to an end. There had been twenty-two months of it, more or less continuous. The men were as hardened physically as it was possible for human beings to be. Not even professional boxers or football players were in better shape. They were disciplined, prepared to carry out orders instantly and unquestioningly. They were experts in the use of their own weapons, knowledgeable in the use of other weapons, familiar with and capable of operating German weapons. They could operate radios, knew a variety of hand signals, could recognize various smoke signals. They were skilled in tactics, whether the problem was attacking a battery or a blockhouse or a trench system or a hill defended by machine guns. They knew the duties and responsibilities of a squad or platoon leader and each was prepared to a.s.sume those duties if necessary.
They knew how to blow bridges, how to render artillery pieces inoperative. They could set up a defensive position in an instant. They could live in the field, sleep in a foxhole, march all day and through the night. They knew and trusted each other. Within Easy Company they had made the best friends they had ever had, or would ever have. They were prepared to die for each other; more important, they were prepared to kill for each other. They were ready. But, of course, going into combat for the first time is an ultimate experience for which one can never be fully ready. It is antic.i.p.ated for years in advance; it is a test that produces anxiety, eagerness, tension, fear of failure, antic.i.p.ation. There is a mystery about the thing, heightened by the fact that those who have done it cannot put into words what it is like, how it feels, except that getting shot at and shooting to kill produce extraordinary emotional reactions. No matter how hard you train, nor however realistic the training, no one can ever be fully prepared for the intensity of the real thing. And so the men of Easy Company left Aldbourne full of self-confidence and full of trepidation.
They were part of a vast movement of men to the embarkation ports in the south of England. Overlord was staggering in its scope. In one night and day, 175,000 fighting men and their equipment, including 50,000 vehicles of all types, ranging from motorcycles to tanks and armored bulldozers, were to be transported across sixty to a hundred miles of open water and landed on a hostile sh.o.r.e against intense opposition. They would be either carried by or supported by 5,333 ships and craft of all types and almost 11,000 airplanes. They came from southwestern England, southern England, the east coast of England. It was as if the cities of Green Bay, Racine, and Kenosha, Wisconsin, were picked up and moved-every man, woman and child, every automobile and truck-to the east side of Lake Michigan in one night.
The effort behind this unique movement-which British prime minister Winston S. Churchill rightly called "the most difficult and complicated operation ever to take place"-stretched back two years in time and involved the efforts of literally millions of people. The production figures from the United States, in landing craft, ships of war, airplanes of all types, weapons, medicine, and so much more, were fantastic. The figures in the United Kingdom and Canada were roughly similar.
But for all that American industrial brawn and organizational ability could do, for all that the British and Canadians and other allies could contribute, for all the plans and preparations, for all the brilliance of the deception scheme, for all the inspired leadership, in the end success or failure in Operation Overlord came down to a relatively small number of junior officers, noncoms, and privates or seamen in the 30 American, British, and Canadian armies, navies, air forces, and coast guards. If the paratroopers and gliderborne troops cowered behind hedgerows or hid out in barns rather than actively sought out the enemy, if the c.o.xswains did not drive their landing craft ash.o.r.e but instead, out of fear of enemy fire, dropped the ramps in too-deep water, if the men at the beaches dug in behind the seawall, if the noncoms and junior officers failed to lead their men up and over the seawall to move inland in the face of enemy fire-why, then, the most thoroughly planned offensive in military history, an offensive supported by incredible amounts of naval firepower, bombs, and rockets, would fail.
It all came down to a bunch of eighteen- to twenty-eight-year-olds. They were magnificently trained and equipped and supported, but only a few of them had ever been in combat. Only a few had ever killed or seen a buddy killed. Most had never heard a shot fired in anger. They were citizen soldiers, not professionals.
It was an open question, toward the end of spring 1944, as to whether a democracy could produce young soldiers capable of fighting effectively against the best that n.a.z.i Germany could produce. Hitler was certain the answer was no. Nothing that he had learned of the British army"s performance in France in 1940, or again in North Africa and the Mediterranean in 1942-44, or what he had learned of the American army in North Africa and the Mediterranean in 1942-44, caused him to doubt that, on anything approaching equality in numbers, the Wehrmacht would prevail. Totalitarian fanaticism and discipline would always conquer democratic liberalism and softness. Of that Hitler was sure. If Hitler had seen the junior officers and men preparing for the a.s.sault he might have had second thoughts. They were young men born into the false prosperity of the 1920s and brought up in the bitter realities of the Depression of the 1930s. The literature they had read as youngsters was antiwar, cynical, portraying patriots as suckers, slackers as heroes. None of them wanted to be part of another war. They wanted to be throwing baseb.a.l.l.s, not hand grenades, shooting .22s at rabbits, not M-1s at other young men. But when the test came, when freedom had to be fought for or abandoned, they had to fight. They were soldiers of democracy. On them depended the fate of the world.
4 - "OK, Let"s Go"
D-DAY FOROVERLORD was scheduled for June 5. At the end of May troops and equipment of all kinds began to move to the southern British ports and airfields. Tens of thousands of them. Once into their secure areas, they got their first briefings on where they were going to land. The armada of transports that would be carrying them across the English Channel gathered in the harbors; little LCVPs, Higgins boats,* carried the men from the quays to the transports. The armada of warships that would protect the transports began to gather off the coast-battleships, cruisers, destroyers, minesweepers, and more.
Named for its inventor and producer, Andrew Higgins of New Orleans. The Navy designated it landing craft vehicle, personnel. The AEF was set to go, living on the edge of fearful antic.i.p.ation. "The mighty host," in Eisenhower"s words, "was tense as a coiled spring," ready for "the moment when its energy should be released and it would vault the English Channel."
31 SHAEF had prepared for everything except the weather. It now became an obsession. It was the one thing for which no one could plan, and the one thing that no one could control. In the end, the most completely planned military operation in history was dependent on the caprice of winds and waves. Tides and moon conditions were predictable, but storms were not. From the beginning, everyone had counted on at least acceptable weather for D-Day. There had been no contingency planning. Eisenhower"s inclination, as he noted in his diary, was to go, whatever the weather, but if he held to a rigid timetable and conditions became really bad, the invasion might fail. Wind-tossed landing craft could founder before reaching the sh.o.r.e, or the waves might throw the troops up on the beaches, seasick and unable to fight effectively. The Allies would not be able to use their air superiority to cover the beaches. If Overlord failed, it would take months to plan and mount another operation, too late for 1944. The evening of June 3, Eisenhower met in the mess room at Southwick House* with his commanders and RAF Group Capt.
J. M. Stagg, his chief weatherman. Stagg had bad news. A high-pressure system was moving out and a low was coming in. The weather on June 5 would be overcast and stormy, with a cloud base of five hundred feet to zero and Force 5 winds. Worse, the situation was deteriorating so rapidly that forecasting more than twenty-four hours in advance was highly undependable. It was too early to make a final decision, but word had to go out to the American navy carrying Bradley"s troops to Omaha and Utah Beaches, since they had the farthest to travel. Eisenhower decided to let them start the voyage, subject to a possible last-minute cancellation. He would make the final decision at the regular weather conference the next morning.
SHAEF headquarters for the invasion, outside Portsmouth At 4:30A.M. on Sunday, June 4, Eisenhower met with his subordinates at Southwick House. Stagg said sea conditions would be slightly better than antic.i.p.ated, but the overcast would not permit the use of the air forces. Montgomery said he wanted to go ahead anyway. Tedder and Air Vice Marshal Trafford Leigh-Mallory wanted postponement. Adm.
Bertram Ramsay said the navy could do its part but remained neutral when asked whether or not the whole operation should go. Eisenhower remarked that Overlord was being launched with ground forces that were not overwhelmingly powerful. The operation was feasible only because of Allied air superiority.
If he could not have that advantage, the landings were too risky. He asked if anyone present disagreed, and when no one did he declared for a twenty-four-hour postponement. The word went out to the American fleet by prearranged signal. Displaying superb seamanship, the fleet drove through the incoming storm, regained its ports, refueled, and prepared to sail again the next day.
That evening Eisenhower ate at Southwick House. After dinner he moved into the mess room.
Montgomery, Tedder, SHAEF Chief of Staff Walter B. Smith, Ramsay, Leigh-Mallory, and various high-ranking staff officers were already there. The wind and the rain rattled the window frames in the French doors in staccato sounds. The mess room was large, with a heavy table at one end and easy chairs at the other. Two sides of the room were lined with bookcases, most of which were empty and forlorn. A third side consisted of the French doors; the fourth wall was covered with a huge map of southern England and Normandy, filled with pins, arrows, and other symbols of Allied and German units.
The officers lounged in easy chairs. Coffee was served and there was desultory conversation. Stagg came in about nine-thirty with the latest weather report. Eisenhower called his a.s.sociates to order and they all sat up to listen intently. Stagg reported a break. Gen. Kenneth Strong, the SHAEF G-2 (intelligence officer), recalled that at Stagg"s prediction, "a cheer went up. You never heard middle-aged men cheer like that!" The rain that was then pouring down, Stagg continued, would stop in two or three hours, to be followed by thirty-six hours of more or less clear weather. Winds would moderate. The bombers and fighters ought to be able to operate on Monday night, June 5-6, although they would be hampered by clouds.
Leigh-Mallory remarked that it seemed to be only a moderately good night for air power. Tedder, his pipe clenched between his teeth and forcibly blowing out smoke, agreed that the operations of heavy bombers were going to be "chancy." Eisenhower countered by pointing out that the Allies could call on 32 their large force of fighter-bombers.
The temptation to postpone again and meet the following morning for another conference was strong and growing, but Ramsay put a stop to that idea by pointing out that Adm. Alan G. Kirk, commanding the American task force, "must be told in the next half hour if Overlord is to take place on Tuesday [June 6].
If he is told it is on, and his forces sail and are then recalled, they will not be ready again for Wednesday morning. Therefore, a further postponement would be forty-eight hours." A two-day delay would put everything back to June 8, and by that time the tidal conditions would not be right, so in fact postponement now meant postponement until June 19.
Whatever Eisenhower decided would be risky. He began pacing the room, head down, chin on his chest, hands clasped behind his back. Suddenly he shot his chin out at Smith. "It"s a h.e.l.luva gamble but it"s the best possible gamble," Smith said. Eisenhower nodded, tucked his chin away, paced some more, then shot it out at Montgomery, huddled in his greatcoat, his face almost hidden.
"Do you see any reason for not going Tuesday?" Montgomery straightened up, looked Eisenhower in the eye, and replied, "I would say-Go!" Eisenhower nodded, tucked away his chin, paced, looked abruptly at Tedder. Tedder again indicated he thought it chancy. Finally Eisenhower halted, looked around at his commanders, and said, "The question is just how long can you hang this operation on the end of a limb and let it hang there?" If there was going to be an invasion before June 19, Eisenhower had to decide now. Smith was struck by the "loneliness and isolation of a commander at a time when such a momentous decision was to be taken by him, with full knowledge that failure or success rests on his individual decision." Looking out at the winddriven rain, it hardly seemed possible that the operation could go ahead. Eisenhower calmly weighed the alternatives, and at 9:45P.M. said, "I am quite positive that the order must be given."
Ramsay rushed out and gave the order to the fleets. More than five thousand ships began moving toward France. Eisenhower drove back to his trailer and slept fitfully. He awoke at 3:30A.M. A wind of almost hurricane proportions was shaking his trailer. The rain seemed to be traveling in horizontal streaks. He dressed and gloomily drove through a mile of mud to Southwick House for the last meeting. It was still not too late to call off the operation. In the now-familiar mess room, steaming hot coffee helped shake the gray mood and unsteady feeling. Stagg said that the break he had been looking for was on its way and that the weather would be clearing within a matter of hours. The long-range prediction was not good, to be sure, but even as he talked the rain began to stop and the sky started to clear.
A short discussion followed, Eisenhower again pacing, shooting out his chin, asking opinions.
Montgomery still wanted to go, as did Smith. Ramsay was concerned about proper spotting for naval gunfire but thought the risk worth taking. Tedder was ready. Leigh-Mallory still thought air conditions were below the acceptable minimum.
Everyone stated his opinion. Stagg withdrew to let the generals and admirals make the decision. No new weather reports would be available for hours. The ships were sailing into the Channel. If they were to be called back, it had to be done now. The Supreme Commander was the only man who could do it.
Eisenhower thought for a moment, then said quietly but clearly, "OK, let"s go." And again, cheers rang through Southwick House.
Then the commanders rushed from their chairs and dashed outside to get to their command posts.
Within thirty seconds the mess room was empty except for Eisenhower. The outflow of the others and his sudden isolation were symbolic. A minute earlier he had been the most powerful man in the world. Upon his word the fate of thousands of men depended, and the future of great nations. The moment he uttered the word, however, he was powerless. For the next two or three days there was almost nothing he could 33 do that would in any way change anything. The invasion could not be stopped, not by him, not by anyone. A captain leading his company onto Omaha or a platoon sergeant at Utah would for the immediate future play a greater role than Eisenhower. He could now only sit and wait. That morning he visited South Parade Pier in Portsmouth to see some British soldiers climb aboard their landing craft, then returned to his trailer. He played a game of checkers on a cracker box with Butcher, who was winning, two kings to one, when Eisenhower jumped one of his kings and got a draw. At lunch they exchanged political yarns. After eating, Eisenhower went into a tent with representatives of the press and announced that the invasion was on. Smith called with more news about Free French leader Charles de Gaulle. After hanging up, Eisenhower looked out the tent flap, saw a quick flash of sunshine, and grinned.
When the reporters left, Eisenhower sat at his portable table and scrawled a press release on a pad of paper, to be used if necessary. "Our landings . . . have failed . . . and I have withdrawn the troops," he began. "My decision to attack at this time and place was based upon the best information available. The troops, the air and the Navy did all that bravery and devotion to duty could do. If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt it is mine alone." At the quays, in Portsmouth, Southampton, Poole, and the smaller harbors, the men from the U.S. 1st, 29th, and 4th Divisions, the rangers, and a.s.sorted other units, along with the Canadian and British divisions, began to load up. As the troops filed onto their transports and landing craft, they were handed an order of the day from General Eisenhower. It began, "Soldiers, Sailors and Airmen of the Allied Expeditionary Force: "You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we have striven these many months.
The eyes of the world are upon you. The hope and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you. . . . "You task will not be an easy one. Your enemy is well trained, well equipped and battle-hardened. He will fight savagely.
"But this is the year 1944! . . . The tide has turned! The free men of the world are marching together to Victory!
"I have full confidence in your courage, devotion to duty and skill in battle.
We will accept nothing less than full victory!
"Good luck! And let us all beseech the blessing of Almighty G.o.d upon this great and n.o.ble undertaking."
Sgt. John Slaughter of the 29th Infantry Division had his buddies sign his copy. He wrapped it in plastic, put it in his wallet, and carried it through Normandy all the way to the Elbe River in eastern Germany. "I still have that doc.u.ment framed hanging over my writing desk," Slaughter said. "It is my most treasured souvenir of the war."
Thousands of those who received Eisenhower"s order of the day saved it. I cannot count the number of times I"ve gone into the den of a veteran of D-Day to do an interview and seen it framed and hanging in a prominent place. I have one on my office wall.
Pvt. Felix Branham of the 116th Infantry got everyone on his ship to sign a 500-franc note he had won in a poker game. "One guy asked, "Why?" and I said, "Fellows, some of us are never getting out of this alive. We may never see each other again. We may be crippled, or whatever. So sign this." I have that hanging on my wall in a frame. I wouldn"t takeanything for it." On the afternoon of June 5 the Allied airborne troopers began dressing for battle. Each rifleman carried his M-1 (either broken down in a padded case called a Griswold container or already a.s.sembled), 160 rounds of ammunition, two fragmentation hand grenades, a white phosphorus and an orange-colored smoke grenade, and a Gammon grenade. Most carried a pistol-the paratroopers" greatest fear was getting shot out of the sky, 34 next was being caught on the ground at the moment of landing, before they could put their rifles into operation-plus a knife and a bayonet. An unwelcome surprise was an order to carry a Mark IV ant.i.tank mine, weighing about ten pounds. The only place to fit it was in the musette bag, which led to considerable b.i.t.c.hing and rearrangement of loads. Machine gunners carried their weapons broken down, and extra belts of ammunition. Mortars, bazookas, and radios were rolled into A-5 equipment bundles with cargo chutes attached. Every man carried three days" worth of field rations and, of course, two or three cartons of cigarettes. One sergeant carried along a baseball. He wrote on it "To h.e.l.l with you, Hitler," and said he intended to drop it when his plane got over France (he did). There were gas masks, an ideal place to carry an extra carton of cigarettes (Capt. Sam Gibbons of the 501st PIR stuck two cans of Schlitz beer in his). The men had first-aid kits with bandages, sulfa tablets, and two morphine Syrettes, "one for pain and two for eternity." They were also handed a child"s toy cricket with the instructions that it could be used in lieu of the normal challenge and pa.s.sword. One click-click was to be answered with two click-clicks. Pathfinders would go first to mark the drop zone with a gadget called the Eureka/Rebecca Radar Beacon System, which could send a signal up to the lead C-47 in each flight.
Cpl. Frank Brumbaugh, a pathfinder with the 508th PIR, had not only the sixty-five-pound Eureka to carry, but two containers with carrier pigeons as well. After he set up his Eureka, he was supposed to make a note to that effect and put it in the capsule on the first pigeon"s leg, then turn it loose. He was told to release the second pigeon at 0630 with information on how things were going. But when he got to the marshaling area, he discovered he had no way to feed or water the pigeons, so he let them go. Stripped, Brumbaugh weighed 137 pounds. With all his equipment, including his main and reserve chutes, he weighed 315 pounds.
Around 2000 hours, "Axis Sally," the "b.i.t.c.h of Berlin," came on the radio. "Good evening, 82nd Airborne Division," she said. "Tomorrow morning the blood from your guts will grease the bogey wheels on our tanks." It bothered some of the men; others rea.s.sured them-she had been saying something similar for the previous ten days.
Still, it made men think. Pvt. John Delury of the 508th PIR talked to his friend Pvt. Frank Tremblay about their chances of coming through alive. "He thought he"d get a slight wound and survive. I thought I was going to be killed. That was the last time I saw him."
Pvt. Tom Porcella, also of the 508th, was torturing himself with thoughts of killing other human beings (this was common; the chaplains worked overtime a.s.suring soldiers that to kill for their country was not a sin). "Kill or be killed," Porcella said to himself. "Here I am, brought up as a good Christian, obey this and do that. The Ten Commandments say, "Thou shalt not kill." There is something wrong with the Ten Commandments, or there is something wrong with the rules of the world today. They teach us the Ten Commandments and then they send us out to war. It just doesn"t make sense."
When every man was ready, the regiments gathered around their commanders for a last word. Most COs stuck to basics-to a.s.semble quickly was the main point-but one or two added a pep talk. The most famous was delivered by Col. Howard "Jumpy" Johnson, in command of the 501st PIR. Every man in the regiment remembered it vividly and could quote word for word his conclusion. As Lt. Carl Cartledge described Johnson"s talk, "He gave a great battle speech, saying victory and liberation and death to the enemy and some of us would die and peace cost a price and so on. Then he said, "I want to shake the hand of each one of you tonight, so line up." And with that, he reached down, pulled his knife from his boot and raised it high above his head, promising us in a battle cry: "Before the dawn of another day, I"ll sink this knife into the heart of the foulest b.a.s.t.a.r.d in n.a.z.i land!" A resounding yell burst forth from all 2,000 of us as we raised our knives in response."
After the regimental meetings the companies grouped around their COs and platoon leaders for a final 35 word. The officers gave out the challenge, pa.s.sword, and response: "Flash," "Thunder," and "Welcome."
"Welcome" was chosen because the Germans would p.r.o.nounce it "Velcom." When Capt. Charles Shettle of the 506th PIR gave out the signals, Dr. Samuel Feiler, the regimental dental officer who had volunteered to accompany the a.s.sault echelon, approached him. Feiler was a German Jew who had escaped Berlin in 1938. "Captain Shettle," Feiler asked, "Vat do I do?"
"Doc," Shettle replied, "when you land, don"t open your mouth. Take along some extra crickets and if challenged, snap twice." Later, as Shettle was inspecting each planeload prior to takeoff, he found Feiler with crickets strapped to both arms, both legs, and an extra supply in his pockets. At 6P.M. Eisenhower and a group of aides drove to Newbury, where the 101st Airborne was loading up for the flight to Normandy. The 101st was one of the units Leigh-Mallory feared would suffer 70 percent casualties.
Eisenhower wandered around among the men, whose blackened faces gave them a grotesque look, stepping over packs, guns, and other equipment. A group recognized him and gathered around. He chatted with them easily. He told them not to worry, that they had the best equipment and leaders. A sergeant said, "h.e.l.l, we ain"t worried, General. It"s the Krauts that ought to be worrying now." When he met a trooper from Dodge City, Eisenhower gave him a thumbs up and said, "Go get "em, Kansas!" And a private piped up, "Look out, Hitler, here we come." A Texan promised Eisenhower a job after the war on his cattle ranch. Eisenhower stayed until all the big C-47s were off the runway. As the last plane roared into the sky Eisenhower turned to Kay Summersby, who was his driver that night, with a visible sagging in his shoulders. She saw tears in his eyes. He began to walk slowly toward his car. "Well," he said quietly, "it"s on."
For Major Howard and the Ox and Bucks, June 5 had been a long day. In the morning the officers and men checked and rechecked their weapons. At noon they were told that it was on, that they should rest, eat, and then dress for battle. The meal was fatless, to cut down on airsickness. Not much of it was eaten. Pvt. Wally Parr explained why: "I think everybody had gone off of grub for the first time possibly in years." Then they sat around, according to Parr, "trying to look so keen, but not too keen like."
Toward evening the men got into their trucks to drive to their gliders. They were a fearsome sight. They each had a rifle or a Sten gun or a Bren gun, six to nine grenades, four Bren-gun magazines. Some had mortars; one in each platoon had a wireless set strapped to his chest. They had all used black cork or burned c.o.ke to blacken their faces. (Pvt. Darky Baines, as he was called, one of the two black men in the company, looked at Parr when Parr handed him some cork and said, "I don"t think I"ll bother.") Lt.
David Wood remarked that they all, officers and men, were so fully loaded that "if you fell over it was impossible to get up without help." (Each infantryman weighed 250 pounds, instead of the allotted 210.) Parr called out that the sight of them alone would be enough to scare the Germans out of their wits.
As the trucks drove toward the gliders, Billy Gray could remember "the girls along the road, crying their eyes out." On the trucks the men were given their code words. The recognition signal was "V," to be answered by "for Victory." The code word for the successful capture of the ca.n.a.l bridge was "Ham," for the river bridge "Jam." "Jack" meant the ca.n.a.l bridge had been captured but destroyed; "Lard" meant the same for the river bridge. Ham and Jam. D Company liked the sound of it, and as the men got out of their trucks they began shaking hands and saying, "Ham and Jam, Ham and Jam."
Howard called them together. "It was an amazing sight," he remembered. "The smaller chaps were visibly sagging at the knees under the amount of kit they had to carry." He tried to give an inspiring talk, but as he confessed, "I am a sentimental man at heart, for which reason I don"t think I am a good soldier.
I found offering my thanks to these chaps a devil of a job. My voice just wasn"t my own."
Howard gave up the attempt at inspiration and told the men to load up. The officers shepherded them aboard, although not before every man, except Billy Gray, took a last-minute leak. Wally Parr chalked 36 "Lady Irene" on the side of S. Sgt. Jim Wallwork"s glider. As the officers fussed over the men outside, those inside their gliders began settling in.
A private bolted out of his glider and ran off into the night. Later, at his court-martial, he explained that he had had an unshakable premonition of his own death in a glider crash.
The officers got in last. Before climbing aboard, Lt. Den Brotheridge went back to Lt. R. "Sandy"
Smith"s glider, shook Smith"s hand, and said, "See you on the bridge."
Howard went around to each glider, shook hands with the platoon leader, then called out some words of cheer. He had just spoken to the commander of the Halifax squadron, he said, who had told him, "John, don"t worry about flak; we are going through a flak gap over Cabourg, one that we have been using to fly supplies in to the Resistance and to bring information and agents out." Finally Howard, wearing a pistol and carrying a Sten gun, climbed into his own glider, closed the door, and nodded to Wallwork. Wallwork told the Halifax pilot that everything was go. At 2256 hours, June 5, they took off, the other gliders following at one-minute intervals.
The flight over the Channel of the American paratroopers in the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions was uneventful, but when the C-47s crossed the coast the skies erupted. German anti-aircraft gunners had gone to work and were firing with every gun they had.
In the body of the planes the troopers were terrified, not at what was ahead of them but because of the hopeless feeling of getting shot at and tumbled around and being unable to do anything about it. As the planes twisted and turned, climbed or dove, many sticks (one planeload of paratroopers) were thrown to the floor in a hopeless mess of arms, legs, and equipment. Meanwhile, bullets were ripping through the wings and fuselage. To Pvt. John Fitzgerald of the 502nd PIR, "they made a sound like corn popping as they pa.s.sed through." Lt. Carl Cartledge likened the sound to "rocks in a tin can." Out the open doors, the men could see tracers sweeping by in graceful, slow-motion arcs. They were orange, red, blue, yellow. They were frightening, mesmerizing, beautiful. Most troopers who tried to describe the tracers used some variation of "the greatest Fourth of July fireworks display I ever saw." They added that when they remembered that only one in six of the bullets coming up at them was a tracer, they couldn"t see how they could possibly survive the jump.
For Pvt. William True of the 506th, it was "unbelievable" that there were people down there "shooting atme! Trying to kill Bill True!" Lt. Parker Alford, an artillery officer a.s.signed to the 501st, was watching the tracers. "I looked around the airplane and saw some kid across the aisle who grinned. I tried to grin back but my face was frozen." Private Porcella"s heart was pounding. "I was so scared that my knees were shaking and just to relieve the tension, I had to say something, so I shouted, "What time is it?" "
Someone called back, "0130." The pilots turned on the red light and the jumpmaster shouted the order "Stand up and hook up." The men hooked the lines attached to the backpack covers of their main chutes to the anchor line running down the middle of the top of the fuselage.
"Sound off for equipment check." From the rear of the plane would come the call "sixteen OK!" then "fifteen OK!" and so on. The men in the rear began pressing forward. They knew the Germans were waiting for them, but never in their lives had they been so eager to jump out of an airplane. "Let"s go!
Let"s go!" they shouted, but the jumpmasters held them back, waiting for the green light.
"My plane was bouncing like something gone wild," Pvt. Dwayne Burns of the 508th remembered. "I could hear the machine-gun rounds walking across the wings. It was hard to stand up and troopers were falling down and getting up; some were throwing up. Of all the training we had, there was not anything that had prepared us for this."
37 In training, the troopers could antic.i.p.ate the green light; before the pilot turned it on he would throttle back and raise the tail of the plane. Not this night. Most pilots throttled forward and began to dive. Pvt.
Arthur "Dutch" Schultz and every man in his stick fell to the floor. They regained their feet and resumed shouting "Let"s go!"
Sgt. Dan Furlong"s plane got hit by three 88mm sh.e.l.ls. The first struck the left wing, taking about three feet off the tip. The second hit alongside the door and knocked out the light panel. The third came up through the floor. It blew a hole about two feet across, hit the ceiling, and exploded, creating a hole four feet around, killing three men and wounding four others. Furlong recalled, "Basically the Krauts just about cut that plane in half.
"I was in the back, a.s.sistant jumpmaster. I was screaming "Let"s go!" " The troopers, including three of the four wounded men, dove headfirst out of the plane. The pilot was able to get control of the plane and head back for the nearest base in England for an emergency landing (those Dakotas-C-47s-could take a terrific punishment and still keep flying). The fourth wounded man had been knocked unconscious; when he came to over the Channel he was delirious. He tried to jump out. The crew chief had to sit on him until they landed. On planes still flying more or less on the level, when the green light went on the troopers set a record for exiting. Still, many of them remembered all their lives their thoughts as they got to the door and leaped out. Eager as they were to go, the sky full of tracers gave them pause. Four men in the 505th, two in the 508th, and one each in the 506th and 507th "refused." They preferred, in historian John Keegan"s words, "to face the savage disciplinary consequences and total social ignominy of remaining with the aeroplane to stepping into the darkness of the Normandy night."
Every other able-bodied man jumped. Private Fitzgerald had taken a cold shower every morning for two years to prepare himself for this moment. Pvt. Arthur DeFilippo of the 505th could see the tracers coming straight at him "and all I did was pray to G.o.d that he would get me down safely and then I would take care of myself." Pvt. John Taylor of the 508th was appalled when he got to the door; his plane was so low that his thought was "We don"t need a parachute for this; all we need is a step ladder." Pvt.
Sherman Oyler, a Kansas boy, remembered his hometown as he got to the door. His thought was, "I wish the gang at Wellington High could see me now-at Wellington High."
When Pvt. Len Griffing of the 501st got to the door, "I looked out into what looked like a solid wall of tracer bullets. I remember this as clearly as if it happened this morning. It"s engraved in the cells of my brain. I said to myself, "Len, you"re in as much trouble now as you"re ever going to be. If you get out of this, n.o.body can ever do anything to you that you ever have to worry about."
At that instant an 88mm sh.e.l.l hit the left wing and the plane went into a sharp roll. Griffing was thrown to the floor, then managed to pull himself up and leap into the night.
Over the Channel, at 0000 hours, two groups of three Halifax bombers flew at seven thousand feet toward Caen. With all the other air activity going on, neither German searchlights nor antiaircraft gunners noticed that each Halifax was tugging a Horsa glider.
Inside the lead glider, Pvt. Wally Parr of D Company, Ox and Bucks, a part of the Air Landing Brigade of the 6th Airborne Division of the British army, was leading the twenty-eight men in singing. With his powerful voice and strong c.o.c.kney accent, Parr was booming out "Abby, Abby, My Boy." Cpl. Billy Gray, sitting down the row from Parr, was barely singing because all that he could think about was the pee he had to take. At the back end of the glider, Cpl. Jack Bailey sang, but he also worried about the 38 parachute he was responsible for securing.
The pilot, twenty-four-year-old S. Sgt. Wallwork, of the Glider Pilot Regiment, antic.i.p.ated casting off any second now because he could see the surf breaking over the Norman coast. Beside him his copilot, S. Sgt. John Ainsworth, was concentrating intensely on his stopwatch. Sitting behind Ainsworth, the commander of D Company, Maj. John Howard, a thirty-one-year-old former regimental sergeant major and an ex-cop, laughed with everyone else when the song ended and Parr called out, "Has the major laid his kitt yet?" Howard suffered from airsickness and had vomited on every training flight. On this flight, however, he had not been sick. Like his men, he had not been in combat before, but the prospect seemed to calm him more than it shook him. As Parr started up "It"s a Long, Long Way to Tipperary,"
Howard touched the tiny red shoe in his battle-jacket pocket, one of his two-year-old son Terry"s infant shoes that he had brought along for good luck. He thought of Joy, his wife, and Terry and their baby daughter, Penny. They were back in Oxford, living near a factory, and he hoped there were no bombing raids that night. Beside Howard sat Lieutenant Brotheridge, whose wife was pregnant and due to deliver any day (five other men in the company had pregnant wives back in England). Howard had talked Brotheridge into joining the Ox and Bucks, and had selected his platoon for the #1 glider because he thought Brotheridge and his platoon the best in his company.
One minute behind Wallwork"s glider was #2, carrying Lieutenant Wood"s platoon.
Another minute behind that Horsa was #3 glider, with Lieutenant Smith"s platoon. The three gliders in this group were going to cross the coast near Cabourg, well east of the mouth of the Orne River.
Parallel to that group, to the west and a few minutes behind, Capt. Brian Priday sat with Lt. Tony Hooper"s platoon, followed by the gliders carrying the platoons of Lts. Tod Sweeney and Dennis Fox.
This second group was headed toward the mouth of the Orne River. In Fox"s platoon, Sgt. M.C.
"Wagger" Thornton was singing "Cow Cow Boogie" and-like almost everyone else on all the gliders-chain-smoking Players cigarettes.
In #2 glider, with the first group, the pilot, S. Sgt. Oliver Boland, who had just turned twenty-three years old a fortnight past, found crossing the Channel an "enormously emotional" experience, setting off as he was "as the spearhead of the most colossal army ever a.s.sembled. I found it difficult to believe because I felt so insignificant."
At 0007, Wallwork cast off his lead glider as he crossed the coast. At that instant, the invasion had begun.
5 - The Opening Hours of D-Day
WALLWORK MANAGED to land right next to the bridge, with the trailing two gliders landing right behind him. This was exactly where Major Howard had wanted to be. Air Vice Marshal Trafford 39 Leigh-Mallory later called this "the finest feat of flying in World War II."
It was 0014, June 6, 1944. Howard"s men jumped out of their gliders and began attacking the trenches around the bridge, where the German defenders had come alert and started firing. One squad, led by Lt.
Den Brotheridge, started across the bridge to attack the Germans on the far side. Brotheridge, when almost across the bridge, pulled a grenade out of his pouch and threw it at the machine gun to his right.
As he did so, he was knocked over by the impact of a bullet in his neck. Just behind him, also running, came Billy Gray, his Bren gun at his hip. Gray also fired at the sentry with the Verey pistol, then began firing toward the machine guns. Brotheridge"s grenade went off, wiping out one of the gun pits. Gray"s Bren, and shots from others crossing the bridge, knocked out the other machine gun.