I cannot remember any paratroopers, but I often ended up as a dishwasher at the country club. I noticed the chef always limped as he moved around the kitchen. When he saw my puzzled look, he said he got the limp from a wound received when he was with the Rangers at Pointe De Hoc.
This is just one story among so many I remember and so many more I have forgotten. As a result, when the time came, I volunteered for the Navy officer program and ended up in Vietnam. It was simply my turn.
Thank you for a very interesting read. My dad served overseas in WWII for 3 years. Wish I had asked him more about his time there.
Thank you.
I remember reading that if the invasion was delayed over a month all of the gun emplacements and land mines that were feared by intel as being at Pointe du Hoc would have been in place. It would have been virtually impregnable had the delay happened. Luckily the guns and mines were on back order. Rommel ordered one million land mines to add to the Atlantic Wall defenses and they were said to be in work.
Really just a blink of time in terms of human existence.
I still distinctly remember my elementary school principal coming over the intercom on June 6, 1969, the 25th anniversary of D-Day to commemorate it. Can you imagine that happening in a elementary school today?
At that time, most people that participated in that event were still alive and in the prime of life although Eisenhower himself had died just a few months prior.
May all the U.S. Soldiers who died in the Normandy D-Day invasion Rest in Peace always.
Thank you. I seem to recall maybe you mentioning the golf, the kitchen and the veteran before.
My Dad profaned golf though he could hit the ball a very long way when pressed. He seemed to be able to do about anything but that is another story. His opinion of golfers was a lot of them cheated or lied about their scores and he did not discriminate.
He also worked for the giverment and had a gang of scores of WWII veterans in his organization. I accompanied him to work from the time I could get around and often went to the field with the various veterans when Dad had to be in the office. There were few war stories. My learnings were more about character borne of inspiration from the stories of the individuals Dad would tell me about his people. A lot of who I am was from being with these men and I believe I should be grateful to them for that alone.
I have wondered today what would have happened if we, the US did not engage in this monumental conflict in Europe the way we did. What if we had left it at North Africa, Sicily, Italy or daylight raids of the Eighth Air Force and mountains of supplies and ships and men that carried them with so many not arriving safely? In all probability, if we kept supplying them, the Russians would have reduced Germany to an even smaller pile of rubble than we and the British had by bombing. What then would have become of Europe? The answer seems obvious and much worse than it actually was anyway. I wonder how many wondered the same thing at that time that I do today?
Excerpts: The U.S. airborne landings in Normandy were the first U.S. combat operations during Operation Overlord, the invasion of Normandy by the Western Allies on June 6, 1944, during World War II. Around 13,100 American paratroopers of the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions made night parachute drops early on D-Day, June 6, followed by 3,937 glider troops flown in by day.[2]...
The assault did not succeed in blocking the approaches to Utah for three days. Numerous factors played a part, most of which dealt with excessive scattering of the drops. Despite this, German forces were unable to exploit the chaos. Many German units made a tenacious defense of their strong-points, but all were systematically defeated within the week.
Efforts of the early wave of pathfinder teams to mark the drop zones were partially ineffective. The first serial, assigned to DZ A, missed its zone and set up a mile away near St. Germain-de-Varreville. The team was unable to get either its amber halophane lights or its Eureka beacon working until the drop was well in progress. Although the second pathfinder serial had a plane ditch in the sea en route, the remainder dropped two teams near DZ C, but most of their marker lights were lost in the ditched airplane. They managed to set up a Eureka beacon just before the assault force arrived but were forced to use a hand held signal light which was not seen by some pilots. The planes assigned to DZ D along the Douve River failed to see their final turning point and flew well past the zone. Returning from an unfamiliar direction, they dropped 10 minutes late and 1 mile (1.6 km) off target. The drop zone was chosen after the 501st PIR's change of mission on May 27 and was in an area identified by the Germans as a likely landing area. Consequently so many Germans were nearby that the pathfinders could not set out their lights and were forced to rely solely on Eureka, which was a poor guide at short range.
The pathfinders of the 82nd Airborne Division had similar results. The first serial, bound for DZ O near Sainte-Mère-Église, flew too far north but corrected its error and dropped near its DZ. It made the most effective use of the Eureka beacons and holophane marking lights of any pathfinder team. The planes bound for DZ N south of Sainte-Mère-Église flew their mission accurately and visually identified the zone but still dropped the teams a mile southeast. They landed among troop areas of the German 91st Division and were unable to reach the DZ. The teams assigned to mark DZ T northwest of Sainte-Mère-Église were the only ones dropped with accuracy, and while they deployed both Eureka and BUPS, they were unable to show lights because of the close proximity of German troops. Altogether, four of the six drops zones could not display marking lights.
The pathfinder teams assigned to Drop Zones C (101st) and N (82nd) each carried two BUPS beacons. The units for DZ N were intended to guide in the parachute resupply drop scheduled for late on D-Day, but the pair of DZ C were to provide a central orientation point for all the SCR-717 radars to get bearings. However the units were damaged in the drop and provided no assistance.
Despite precise execution over the channel, numerous factors encountered over the Cotentin Peninsula disrupted the accuracy of the drops, many encountered in rapid succession or simultaneously. These included:[3][4][5]
Flak from German anti-aircraft guns resulted in planes either going under or over their prescribed altitudes. Some of the men who jumped from planes at lower altitudes were injured when they hit the ground because of their chutes not having enough time to slow their descent, while others who jumped from higher altitudes reported a terrifying descent of several minutes watching tracer fire streaking up towards them.
Of the 20 serials making up the two missions, nine plunged into the cloud bank and were badly dispersed. Of the six serials which achieved concentrated drops, none flew through the clouds. However the primary factor limiting success of the paratroop units, because it magnified all the errors resulting from the above factors, was the decision to make a massive parachute drop at night, a concept that was not again used in three subsequent large-scale airborne operations. This was further illustrated when the same troop carrier groups flew a second lift later that day with precision and success under heavy fire.[6]
The troop carrier pilots in their remembrances and histories admitted to many errors in the execution of the drops but denied the aspersions on their character, citing the many factors since enumerated and faulty planning assumptions. Some, such as Martin Wolfe, an enlisted radio operator with the 436th TCG, pointed out that some late drops were caused by the paratroopers, who were struggling to get their equipment out the door until their aircraft had flown by the drop zone by several miles.[22] Others mistook drops made ahead of theirs for their own drop zones and insisted on going early.[23] The TCC personnel also pointed out that anxiety at being new to combat was not confined to USAAF crews. Warren reported that official histories showed 9 paratroopers had refused to jump and at least 35 other uninjured paratroopers were returned to England aboard C-47s.[24] General Gavin reported that many paratroopers were in a daze after the drop, huddling in ditches and hedgerows until prodded into action by veterans.[25] Wolfe noted that although his group had botched the delivery of some units in the night drop, it flew a second, daylight mission on D-Day and performed flawlessly although under heavy ground fire from alerted Germans.
My favorite story of Ike was that after the war, he and his men liberated a concentration camp. The prisoners were in terrible shape. He told his photographer to take pictures of everything. That in the future people would not believe what had happened there. He was proven correct.
I had a summer job before college. One old guy in the shipping department was suffering from what we now call PTSD. I managed to engage him in conversation enough that the reason became obvious... he’d been in the 1st Marine Division at Peleliu. I had read a lot about the Pacific campaign but not about that particular battle. His description of the Japanese tank assault while his unit was out in to open crossing the main airfield was perfectly captured by the HBO series “The Pacific”.