Tragedy struck the paratroops even before they could take off. While a stick of airborne soldiers of Captain Robert D. Keeler’s Headquarters Company, 1st Battalion, 505th PIR, 82nd Airborne, were strapping on their gear outside their C-47 at RAF Spanhoe, about eighty miles north-west of London, somehow someone’s grenade exploded, killing three, wounding all but one of the rest, and setting the wing of the plane on fire.^* While the accident was a sobering reminder of how dangerous the upcoming mission was, it did not deter the other paratroopers and air crews from refocusing their minds on the matter at hand.³²

Otis Sampson recalled the tension leading up to the flight: “I had those old butterflies again playing around in my stomach, yet I looked forward to getting back in the action to help finish a war the Germans started. I can speak for myself and I know many of the troopers can vouch for me—‘If we knew what a coming jump would be like, there would be something missing.’ It was the uncertainty of it all. Anything could happen and usually did; what’s around the corner made it interesting—meeting the challenge as it was put to us and to stay in the picture as long as possible, not knowing which way we would be taken out. At the time we hoped things would go well and tried our best to see they did, but we tried to keep that feeling, ‘Whatever will be will be.’ I felt proud to be part of [the Great Invasion], knowing I would be in its spear-head and be one of the first to land with the fighting units.”³³

The 82nd’s commanding general, Matthew Ridgway, who had finally made four training jumps, decided he wanted to parachute into Normandy rather than come in by ship or glider and approached Lieutenant Colonel Mark Alexander, executive officer of William Ekman’s 505th PIR. Alexander noted, “He said, ‘I want to be there on the ground right from the start, and I want you to pick a plane for me where I’ll have the best chance of landing on the drop zone.’ We were the only combat-seasoned regiment that was jumping into Normandy. He knew we gave him the best chance of getting on the ground in the right place…. I chose a C-47 with Lieutenant Dick Garber from the 505 Headquarters Company because he had jumpmastered at least fifty times as a trainer before he joined the 505. He had a lot of experience and was solid.”³⁴

Bud Warnecke, B/508/82nd, said that after all the planes had been loaded and were ready for takeoff, “The battalion commander’s runner came to our plane with a bicycle and cargo chute attached, stating that the [1st] battalion commander [Lieutenant Colonel Shields Warren] wanted us to drop the bicycle into Normandy so he would have transportation. We had our plane full of bundles, but Captain Royal Taylor [who was also the jumpmaster on that C-47] said ‘O.K.’” Not surprisingly, the bicycle never made it to France.³⁵

Twenty-three-year-old Sergeant Elmer Wisherd was a flight engineer on a C-47 transport plane, number 42-100823, that belonged to the 91st Troop Carrier Squadron, 439th Troop Carrier Command Group at RAF Upottery, about 140 miles southwest of London. Watching the heavily loaded members of the 101st being pushed, pulled, tugged, and hauled aboard his plane, Wisherd was amazed. “What surprised me,” he said, “was the amount and weight of the equipment the paratroopers were carrying. They must have been carrying over 100 pounds apiece of extra material that was strapped to them. And then to think that our planes would have to get into the air with all that extra weight, that was the big thing.”³⁶

AS THE FORCE that was scheduled to arrive in France before the seaborne invaders, the airborne troops were “loaded for bear,” but there was one thing missing. Jake McNiece, Headquarters Company, 1st Battalion, 506th PIR, 101st Airborne, knew what it was.

McNiece, a half-breed Indian from Ponca City, Oklahoma—a former high school football player and city fireman, and someone who never backed down from a fight—was tougher than most men. He had an idea: why not honor and emulate the bravery of Native Americans from years gone by and shave his head in warrior fashion—a “scalp lock”—with the sides of the head trimmed to the skin and a narrow tuft of hair running from forehead to nape. After all, if the white boys in the 501st PIR could yell “Geronimo!” when they jumped from planes, then he could certainly look the part with a genuine Mohawk haircut. He took a mirror and razor and began trimming away.

Soon his buddies came over and asked what he was doing. He told them. They all thought it was a pretty neat idea and soon everyone had his own razor out and was replicating Jake’s haircut. Then it was time to be trucked over to the airfield. McNiece watched as ground crews at the aerodrome finished swabbing thick black-and-white bands around the wings and fuselages. He was told that this was being done as a method of identification; nobody wanted American planes being shot down again by American gunners as had happened over Sicily.

McNiece had another bright idea. He stuck a finger in the still-wet black paint coating the sides of the plane and began making markings on his nose, cheeks, and forehead. With another finger, he also daubed on white paint. When somebody inquired about what he was doing, he replied, “War paint.” It was the perfect complement to the Indian-style haircut, so the rest of the stick began doing the same. “We started making Indian signs all over, here and there and everywhere,” said Jake’s buddy, Jack Agnew. After a few minutes, they were all decked out with fearsome faces. Their frightening countenances would be enough, some of them no doubt thought, to scare the enemy half to death.³⁷

THE MOMENT THAT everyone had been both excitedly anticipating and secretly dreading was suddenly at hand.

The pilots who would be flying the paratroopers and then the gliders and supplies and reinforcements to Normandy were also relieved that the excruciating waiting period was finally over. One of them, Captain Julian A. Rice, 37th Squadron, 316th Troop Carrier Group, based at Cottesmore, commented, “My assignment was clear and simple—fly the plane, keep strict radio silence, stay in tight formation, and deliver twenty-one paratroop passengers on time to Drop Zone ‘O’ northwest of Sainte-Mère-Église.”

Rice felt that he and most of his fellow pilots were superbly trained for the mission upon which they were about to embark. “I had eighteen months of technical and academic training, which included 400 hours pilot time before I joined the 316th Troop Carrier Group in Sicily in late 1943. By D-Day I had acquired over 800 hours of total flight time. Some of this involved miscellaneous supply missions, but was primarily devoted to close day-night formation flying, practice drops of paratroops, glider pulls, short field landings, instrument flight training, etc. We all knew the invasion of Europe was coming and we concentrated on perfecting our skills on a daily basis. Pilots were rigorously trained and routinely tested to maintain their eligibility for a green card Instrument Rating—which was required of all first pilots.”

Just prior to the mission, Rice said that his group received a detailed and thorough briefing from Lieutenant Colonel Walter R. Washburn, their group commander. Washburn looked around at the roomful of pilots and said, “Gentlemen, you will be taking part in the largest airborne armada ever created. The 316th Group will be putting seventy-two planes in the air from here, and thirteen more identical groups will join us en route to complete the two-hour, fifty-one-minute flight to our drop zone in Normandy. Let’s do the job you have been trained for. Keep the formation tight; give your troops a good trip to the DZ. Good luck.”³⁸

LIEUTENANT THOMAS MEEHAN, commanding E/506/101st, was at Upottery, helping his overloaded troopers climb into their planes. He then got aboard his C-47, chalk #66, in which he was the jumpmaster. He had no idea that he, like so many others that evening, would not live to see peace—nor, for that matter, even fire a shot at the enemy.³⁹

“Death was foremost on everyone’s mind,” said Dwayne Burns, F/508/82nd. As he and his stick climbed into their plane and took their seats, keyed up for their objective Etienville, he recalled that in his helmet was a small card Minerva Chastain, his girl back home in Texas, had given him.^* It was the Twenty-third Psalm: “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He maketh me lie down in green pastures. He leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul. He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for His name’s sake. Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me….” He tried to let the words comfort him and give him strength to face the test ahead, but he had serious doubts that he would come out of the ordeal alive.⁴⁰

The sky was almost dark by now, so Ike and Summersby returned to Greenham Common to watch the last C-47s of Mission Albany, loaded with Screaming Eagles, takeoff and head for what might turn out to be their doom. Ike said quietly to Kay, “I hope to God I know what I’m doing.”⁴¹

Chaplain Sampson noted, “[Ike] was gambling with the lives of these fine young men; he knew it and they knew it, but it was O.K. with them. They were ready and willing to vindicate his judgment.”⁴²

One of the C-47 pilots about to carry a stick of 101st Airborne paratroopers from RAF Exeter was Captain Don Orcutt, 95th Troop Carrier Squadron, 440th Troop Carrier Group. He noted,

“Each squadron had its own location on the airfield. All the planes for the mission were numbered with large white chalk figures on the left side just in front of the main cabin exit door.” After the troops boarded the planes, the pilots started their engines and waited for Colonel Francis Xavier Krebs, the group commander, to taxi around the perimeter “displaying his chalk number for all of us to see, and we fell numerically into line behind him. I was impressed with the fact that the troops all ‘made light of what was facing them.’”

Orcutt said that at 2350 hours, “forty-five aircraft were lined up ready for takeoff. We had a signalman who flashed a green light at the end of the runway. If my memory serves me correctly, we took off at ten-second intervals and the entire group was airborne in roughly eight minutes. The colonel flew at a speed of 130 mph and as each aircraft took off, it went ‘balls out’ playing catch the leader before eventually falling into position. Every plane had a series of dim blue lights, three on each upper wing surface and three on top of the cabin. After staring at those for a while your eyes begin to cross. Krebs kept his landing lights on so that outbound planes could spot the head of the formation. This was always a bit hairy because there was little room for error, particularly at night.”⁴³

Somehow the hundreds of aircraft managed to lift off from dozens of bases at their precisely specified times, circle until all were in formation, then head for France.

British military historian Sir John D.P. Keegan, then a ten-year-old lad, remembered the awesome sights and sounds of D-Day being launched: “The sky over our house began to fill with the sound of air-craft, which swelled until it overflowed the darkness from edge to edge. Its first tremors had taken my parents into the garden, and as the roar grew, I followed and stood between them to gaze awestruck at the constellation of red, green, and yellow lights which rode across the heavens and streamed southward towards the sea…. The element of noise in which they swam became solid, blocking our ears, entering our lungs and beating the ground beneath our feet with the relentless surge of an ocean swell…. The Americans had gone. The camps they had built had emptied overnight. The roads were deserted.”⁴⁴

Below the planes, some 5,000 ships of all description—many filled with the men who, with the coming of dawn, would be storming the beaches—were plowing southward across the Channel. No doubt some of the men in the planes wished they were attacking by ship, and some of the men in the ships were wishing they were coming in by air.

The “Great Crusade” had begun and no force of man or nature could reverse it now.