THE BOYHOOD DREAM

I strongly suspect there is a touch of the heroic fantasy in all men Long before D Day and while I was still a civilian I had dreams of being part of the avenging force that would put an end to the German march toward world domination Now that the time had arrived I sat in my crew position aboard a plane just as I had envisioned it so many years before. However by this time it was a bit different I no longer felt like a super patriot In the dark of a low overcast night with scores of engines revving up and a plane loaded with grim looking paratroopers the sensation was more one of apprehension if not downright fear These missions did not always go just like in the movies Even the dry runs invariably resulted in some casualties At this time of the war all that mattered was getting it over with and then my own speedy demobilization

In spite of all this there was the feeling that this was one of the mightiest events in the annals of man We were familiar enough with the ways of the news media to realize that in a matter of a few hours the radio waves and newspapers all over the world would be blasting away with sensational banner headlines which were never equaled

And now as I write this 25 years later I still feel a strong sense of pride When another veteran asks if I was by chance part of the invasion of Normandy I am pleased to say that I was and offer my hand to a soul brother We may have been on God's side as Joe Louis said when he volunteered for military service but for this invasion and the previous one I had been on in Sicily I never forgot that we had to help ourselves too The Germans wore Got mitt uns God's With Us lettering and I always wondered how Celestial Decisions were finally made

The Germans on one hand were battling for dear life against the so called atheistic Reds but on the other hand they were doing their best to exterminate the chosen people At the time of this writing Grambling University in Louisiana was turning out many players who became pro stars Their coach Eddie Robinson once came upon the team praying for victory He told them that God did not care who won those football games and to get out there and hit somebody And that seems to have been the Russian philosophy as well

BOMBER CREWS TOO

All military personnel in England had not just been training and waiting for many months for the invasion of Normandy The bomber crews of the American and British air forces had been hitting the Axis targets with steadily increasing bomb loads and were escorted as far as range would permit by fighter squadrons Many of us including me hoped that they alone could bring the German military machine down in defeat This was too much to expect but now that the invasion was scheduled the Allies had such complete mastery of the skies that our transport crews assumed than any planes over the invasion course would be ours Fortunately it worked out this way Our course took us southward to a point slightly west of the Channel Islands Jersey and Guernsey Then we made a ninety degree turn to the left the desired objective being to pass equidistant between these two islands At the radio briefing we were told that if this navigational feat were accomplished our flights should be out of the range of the German flak guns based there

There were eighteen planes from our squadron We formed two V of Vs of nine airplanes following each other 1000 ft back Other groups in front and back of us flew in similar patterns

NINE PLANES WIDE FIVE HOURS LONG

To visualize the enormity of this operation besides being nine planes wide it was strung out for something like five hours The groups had to be coordinated from dozens of bases in England so that they would mesh into a solid train The naval armada was even more awesome Following thelaunching of the second front Joseph Stalin was quoted as saying that never in military history had the world witnessed anything as grandiose or spectacular The lead plane of each nine was equipped with a Rebecca interrogator unit which activated a Eureka response unit set up on the drop zone I was the radio operator in the lead plane of the first group The pilot of our plane was Captain Edwin H Greer Our co pilot was a Lt Charles E Johnson who later was to die in a crash near Liege Belgium I do not recall who our navigator was Sgt Henry Jeffries was the Crew Chief or Aerial Engineer as he preferred Visibility at times was zero zero and other times it opened up a little Captain Greer tried lower altitudes and then higher ones in an effort to find better visibility

As we approached the Cherbourg peninsula we were at fifteen hundred feet but had to let down to around seven hundred feet to drop our paratroopers and loads We came out of the overcast just before reaching that lower altitude at about 0200 We were scheduled to be over St Mere Eglise at six minutes past the hour Since our run over land was to take twelve minutes we expected a fair amount of flak and small arms fire and it was certainly there The first planes had dropped their troopers ahead of us and the hornet's nest had been nicely stirred up by that time The sound of a flak burst hitting a plane can best be described as sounding like a hailstorm on a tin roof

Before take off time one of our paratroopers asked me if I would stand back by the cargo door and give him a good solid push if he froze before jumping A refusal to jump could result in a pretty stiff sentence This didn't feel OK so I didn't do it and I don't know to this day what he might have had in mind

In a matter of minutes our pilots spotted the lighted panel with the proper color designation for our drop The red light or warning light in the plane cabin had been on now for several minutes and then the green light was switched on to signal the paratroopers to jump The planes had throttled back to slower speeds for minimal shock to the troopers as their chutes opened And as usual the landing gear warning horns were blaring away inside the planes This provided some assurance of proper speed and altitude

A WARNING SIGN

This was a warning indication designed for quite another purpose to prevent wheels up landings but in a paradrop situation it provided some assurance of proper speed and altitude It was triggered automatically when the aircraft was below 1000 feet and the engine speed was below 1000 rpm and the landing gear was still retracted

Many paratroopers told me later that they felt sorry for us since we could not get away from the flak but had to fly back through it I certainly appreciate hearing that kind of sympathy from the men I consider the cream of the fighting crop Wherever you are at this writing I salute you all the men of the 82 nd and 101 st Division and the Allied Airborne Army

After our stick of paratroopers had cleared the door Captain Greer went into a rapid climb to get away from the flak which was concentrated at the lower levels At six thousand feet he leveled off and we soon were over the Channel on our way back to England

NO REST FOR THE ANXIOUS

I refused to relax however and thought up all sorts of possibilities like damaged gas tanks wing bolts hydraulic lines and perhaps tires punctured by flak bursts In those higher latitudes during the month of June daylight comes quite early When we touched down neatly back in the Midlands around five o'clock the night had ended

A check of our aircraft by the ground crews found most of them still ready for flight A supply drop was scheduled for the early morning hours of June 7th and since our plane was among those selected the heat was on again For the supply drop the undersides of the planes were loaded with parapacks containing high priority supplies These parapacks were also used when paratroopers were riding in the cabin and were released by a salvo control switch in the pilots compartment Inside the plane the cabin was filled with several heavy boxes which were rigged to parachutes attached to static lines.

Our route was the same as for the night drop which spearheaded the invasion This was the first occasion when we had ever made a daylight mission over enemy territory Visibility was quite good and we were greeted with the usual amount of flak and small arms fire I could not say it was any more comforting to be able to see the crews who were putting up the flak

When it was time to push out our boxes the co pilot came back to lend a hand as we had some very heavy ones When all were finally jettisoned we yelled to Captain Greer to kick the plane in the ass and get the hell out of there This time instead of climbing for a safer altitude he dove the plane right to the tree top level and we hedgehopped to the coast This was an effective way to escape flak which could not be fired effectively at low altitudes in the dark We stayed low for most of the return and climbed to several thousand feet shortly before reaching the English coast

Over the channel we spotted several planes which had ditched The crews appeared to be all right and we waved to them and noticed that launches of the British Air Sea Rescue were racing to the scene On each occasion when we approached the English coast I was reminded of a bunch of little chicks scampering back to the mother hen after straying a little too far away and being frightened by some unknown terror in the barnyard Our landing again went off without trouble and the crews mingled on the ramp swapping the usual after mission reports One pilot remarked that a greased straight pin could not have been driven up his butt with a sledgehammer That was pretty hard to top for holding a tight rear end I thought complexions were pretty much gray for several hours until most of the shock wore off

After these combat missions and after a calming jolt of Old Overholt rye whiskey the crews went through an interrogation session before going to the mess halls The usual questions concerned the amount of flak whether the drop was on target were any enemy aircraft spotted etc I often wondered what was considered light flak If I saw one burst or tracer bullet as far away as the horizon I rated the flak as heavy