AFTER LIFTING OFF from Down Ampney, Canadian Sergeant Harry Reid sat in the roaring darkness of his Dakota, feeling the weight of all his equipment pressing down on his back and shoulders.
“One or two attempts at the usual humour were made,” he recalled, “but the jokes fell flat and shortly the jumpers lapsed into silence and their own thoughts. I was engrossed in my own thoughts, mostly about what was to come this night. It was hard to believe that we were really on our way to fight. It did not seem so much a war as just a phase of something exciting with an element of danger. I wondered how many of us might not make it back and how I would behave under fire. For the first time in my career as a paratrooper, I was uptight about a jump…. In the past I had never doubted my ability to do anything I set my mind to, but now I am secretly scared that I might foul up on this jump and am praying that I would not. As we continued to circle [the airfield] I was able to subdue these doubts and gradually begin to relax.”1
The formation had stopped turning in circles and now was hurtling headlong to France. After an hour or so, the planes reached the coast and the order to stand up came suddenly. Reid said, “Although I am expecting it, it comes as a shock. The reality of the situation has still not fixed itself in my mind. (We are really going!) I struggle to my feet. It is not easy with the load of equipment and the airplane beginning to buck and weave. I grab the anchor line with my left hand, my snap-fastener in my right. ‘Hook up!’ I slam my snap-fastener onto the anchor line and commence to tug and pull it viciously to ensure it’s locked. For the first time as a paratrooper, I have visions of plunging to the ground without a chute because I have not hooked up properly. I am in turmoil by now. The thoughts running through my head are something completely new. The past four years have been an interlude in my life and everything has been theory. The Germans were a group that we sang funny songs about and made jokes about. They were not real. It all begins to flood in that this is not another exercise, not make-believe. This is for real. There were people on the ground who wanted to see me dead. That was real.”2
Sergeant Earl Rice, C Company, also had some terrifying moments after his plane approached French airspace and came under fire. “Every explosion caused the plane to pitch and vibrate until I thought it would disintegrate in the air. Then the voice in my earphones [Rice was the jumpmaster in his plane] said, ‘I don’t think we are going to make it, mates.’ I came back with, ‘What is our location now?’ The answer was that we were still over the Channel but he [the pilot] could make out land ahead. My last message was to get us over land and to give us the green light.”
Rice continued, “Then I removed my earphones as I saw the men trying to get the doors to the hatch open. I cannot blame them for wanting to get out of this death trap, but not into the water and certain death, so I yelled at them to wait for the light. At that moment the plane became steady and I watched for the lights. There was no red warning light, just the green light to go. And go they did. I never saw a plane empty so fast.”3
As the Albemarles—carrying the Canadians of C Company and the pathfinders of 22nd Independent Parachute Company—neared the drop zone, the lead pilot and some of the men nearest the hole in the floor of the fuselage could see a frightful sight: the DZ to the west of Varaville was being plastered by bombs. Apparently, some of the bombers that were supposed to have saturated the Merville battery two miles to the northwest had overshot their target and were carpeting the very ground where the parachutists were about to land. As a result, some of the pilots delayed in switching on the green lights and changed course. The paras were scattered over the landscape, many coming down along the Dives River south of Cabourg, far to the east of their intended DZs.4
There were other problems. When the pathfinders of 22nd IPC landed, their Eureka beacons hit the ground much too hard and were smashed. A lone green signal light survived, but so much dust and smoke had been kicked up by the errant bombing of the DZ that the trailing pilots, their planes filled with paratroopers, would not be able to see it. Subsequently, paratroopers were dropped everywhere.5
Lance Sergeant John Feduck, A Company, said, “The flight across the Channel was very scary. Most of the chaps were afraid, but we sang and told a few jokes. As we got close, we could see the artillery flashes. When we came over [the coast], we were hit by ack-ack, but not seriously. The jump was a real nightmare, as I was a Bren gunner. I was number one to jump, with an eighty-pound kit bag strapped to my right leg containing the Bren gun, spare barrel, ammo, gas mask, and other things.” To make matters worse, while standing in the door and awaiting the green light, Feduck lost his grip when the plane swerved and he fell out before the rest of the stick jumped, leaving him all alone once he reached the ground.6
John Ross, C Company, said, “I don’t recall anyone being apprehensive or fearful. You must remember that we were all very naïve; too dumb to know better. We were going over to utterly destroy any Germans who got in our way. When it came time to jump, two sides of a trap door in the floor of the aircraft were raised and fastened to the fuselage. This left a hole in the floor about the size of a bathtub. Narrow ledges ran along the sides of the hole. The first man to jump stood on the ledges, crouched over the hole. When the green light came on, the first man threw out a bicycle or some other piece of equipment with its own parachute, then he brought his knees together and was gone. He was quickly followed by nine others. Because of the heavy kit bags strapped to their legs, the last few men found it easier to scramble to the hole on hands and knees. When they reached the hole they just followed their noses down through it. Our plane was one of only four, I think, that dropped us right on the drop zone. Most other planes were scattered all over Normandy. I personally landed almost exactly where I was supposed to land. As it happened, there was no enemy on the drop zone, so that part of the operation was easy.” Within minutes of landing, however, a German fighter plane came over and strafed the men on the DZ. Ross was lucky not to be hit by the random firing.7
Corporal G.H. Neal, A Company, was sitting near the door of his C-47 looking down on the Channel, where the wakes of thousands of ships on their way to Normandy were bright against the black water. “Soon I could see the dark coastline of France ahead,” he said, “and we started to descend. We were to jump at 500 feet…. Everything was still dark and quiet except for the engines, but as we crossed the beach all hell broke loose. I was standing in the doorway when a solid wall of tracer bullets came up to meet us. Heavier ack-ack shells were exploding around us and the plane was jumping with each explosion.”8
Private Sully Sullivan, A Company, had a close call. After diving out of the plane and passing miraculously unharmed through a shimmering screen of tracer bullets and bursting shells, he saw a house directly below him, “which I landed on and then bounced off and onto the ground, expecting the whole German army to pop out and shoot me up. But there was not a sound from anyplace. It was pitch black now and I had no idea where I was or where the other guys in my squad or platoon were.”9
Ted Kalicki, also A Company, said that his jump was totally fouled up. “I was the next to the last man [in my stick] and Ted Evans was the last. As we got to the door of the C-47, the man in front of me went all to pieces and would not go out the door. I stepped over him and called to Evans, ‘Are you with me?’ He hollered, ‘Go!’ and out I went. Due to the hold up in the jump, when I exited the plane, I could see that we had really got separated from the rest of the unit. Five or six seconds delay at that speed and we were really strung out. When I landed I was all alone. It was about 0100 hours.”10
Another A Company trooper had his first brush with death moments after landing. Henry Churchill and a sergeant came down in knee-deep water, removed their harnesses, and saw two shadowy figures approaching in the dark. Not knowing if the figures were friend or foe, the sergeant waited until he heard them speaking German, and then opened fire with his Sten. “He brought them down with a single fast burst,” Churchill said.11
Sergeant Earl Rice, C Company, was also misdropped. He found the other nine men in his stick and they began marching cross-country in the dark, hoping to find a landmark that would tell them where they were. They would wander aimlessly for hours. At one point they came to a village (which Rice later learned was Colleville-sur-Orne, later renamed Colleville-Montgomery, five miles north of Caen and a considerable distance from the Merville battery) and decided to hide out in a ditch and wait for daylight. Rice said, “It was a good thing we did because within fifteen minutes after this we heard planes approaching and then the bombs started screaming down and the earthquake began. Our bodies were actually bouncing with the ground. When the ground settled back to normal again, I asked one of the men to check for the all clear and he said, ‘Holy shit, the whole German army is coming up the road towards us!’ I didn’t have to tell [the men] not to make a move, but I signaled for them to have a grenade ready in case we were spotted. As the first group started past us I noticed they were all in grey uniforms of the regular army and their faces were just as grey as the uniforms. Their eyes were straight ahead like zombies. One could tell they were in a state of shock and didn’t seem to be in any hurry. They numbered a good-sized company and following up in the rear was a field artillery gun being pulled along by a group in the same state of shock.”
Once the road was clear, Rice and his men continued north until they ran into a British unit, the Suffolk Regiment, which had just fought its way ashore at Sword Beach. They were now at last among friends.12
With the first British and Canadian troops now on the ground in France, it was time to go on the offensive and begin evicting the Germans. It would be a greater struggle than any of them could conceive.