I WAS A 507 PIR PARATROOPER on D-Day. When I hit the ground in Normandy, I looked at my watch and by English time it was 0232 hours, June 6, 1944. I cut myself out of my chute, and the first thing I heard was shooting and Germans hollering, “Muckschnell toot sweet Americanos!” I landed about a block from a farmhouse the Germans used for a barracks, and about 200 feet from flooded fields that covered most of the area. If I had landed in the water I might not be here today, as I can’t swim. A lot of paratroopers drowned in the flooded area.
I got to the edge of the flooded area by some trees to try to figure out where I landed. I knew I was in the wrong place. We were supposed to jump 15 miles inland. I waited for about an hour, then I saw someone coming from the direction I landed. With the moonlight, I could see his helmet and knew he was an American. We later hooked up with about four pals from our plane.
When daylight came we met some 506/101st paratroopers. We had secured the area and the little town of Poupeville. An American tank came up the road from the Utah Beach invasion area about noon and all was well. We gathered the wounded and dead and had about 75 to 100 prisoners, whom we marched down the road from where the tank arrived. It seemed about two to three miles to the beach. We gave our friends the best seat in the house right on the beach, enclosed in their own barbed wire fence. It was something to look out and see all the equipment coming ashore and the ships in the water. They looked like a bunch of corks in the water.
One prisoner complained because the Germans were shelling us, saying we might be killed. I said to him, “You son of a bitch, you started this years ago, and now you’re going to get your belly full of it.” He was a German officer and I asked him where he learned English. He said he went to college in New York. I can remember a truck coming up on the beach loaded with ammunition and a German 88 shell hit it. It was the loudest noise I ever heard.
I stayed on the beach that night and left the next morning to find my unit. The next day I found my Company, C/507 PIR, getting ready to go across La Fière causeway on June 9, 1944.