ALL ACROSS NORMANDY on D-Day, as Brigadier Hill had correctly predicted, chaos reigned. Small groups and individual parachutists stumbled into German positions and fought pitched battles with the enemy in the dark. Some troops landed in trees and dangled helplessly until they could either cut themselves down with their combat knives or were shot to death by the Germans. Others drowned in flooded fields, pulled underwater by their heavy equipment. Flaming transport planes crashed or exploded in midair. Farmhouses became fortresses, bridges became barriers, and roadways turned into killing zones. The enemy had no idea of the scope of the airborne assault and fought back furiously, aware that their—and Germany’s—very existence depended on defeating the Allied paratroopers who seemed to be behind every tree, building, and hedgerow. In some cases, Soviet POWs—who had been impressed into German service—fought as fiercely as their German overseers, but given the opportunity were more likely than not to surrender at the first opportunity. German commanders sent frantic messages back to higher headquarters, where the captains, majors, and colonels had no better idea interpreting what was transpiring than did the average Ländser in his foxhole.
Almost nowhere was the scene more chaotic than at Sainte-Mère-Église.
Spencer Wurst, a squad leader in F/505/82nd, was one of those dropping over the town. “The first thing I remember seeing as I descended was a large spire in a bunch of buildings that later proved to be Sainte-Mère-Église,” he said. “To my surprise, there were fires in the town. Almost immediately after—these things happen in microseconds—I started receiving very heavy light flak and machine-gun fire from the ground. This was absolutely terrifying. The tracers looked as if they were going to take the top of my head off, but they were actually coming up at an angle. Many rounds tore through my chute only a few feet above my body. The third thing I remember is the explosions on the ground, making me fear that the Germans had already zeroed in on our DZ. I later found out that these explosions resulted from our mine bundles. Either the speed of the plane pulled the chutes off, or the bundles dropped faster than expected, and the impact bent the safety clips on the fuses, causing them to explode.”1
Another paratrooper, Private first class Ernest Blanchard was floating down over the town when a buddy next to him, loaded with a mine or demolitions, exploded and completely disintegrated right in front of him.2
Duke Boswell, G/505/82nd, recalled, “When we jumped, we floated over the edge of the town. There was fire coming up. We could see the tracers from the machine guns. And you know for every tracer round you can see there’s about ten bullets in between. When they went by you, they’d pop and made you kind of jump. It’s funny—you jump with 10,000 troops and you hit the ground and you’re all alone. That’s a hell of a thing. For a moment or so, you’re right there by yourself, period. We actually hit our designated target, right outside Sainte-Mère-Église. I think that all of the other units, including the pathfinders that went in ahead of us, missed their targets. I landed within a half a mile of Sainte-Mère-Église, or closer.”3
Lieutenant Vincent Wolf, a platoon commander in F/505/82nd, also had indelible memories of the drop. “The 2nd Battalion did not land in any of the flooded areas. That was mostly the 1st and 3rd Battalions, so we were lucky. After we landed, we took fire immediately from the Germans; thank God I had my Thompson sub-machine gun.”4
Misdropped men from the 101st were also drifting over Sainte-Mère-Église. The jumpmaster of his stick, Lieutenant Charles Santarsiero, 506/101st, remembered looking out his C-47’s doorway as the plane neared the town. “I could see fires burning and Krauts running about. There seemed to be total confusion on the ground. All hell had broken loose. Flak and small-arms fire was coming up and those poor guys were caught right in the middle of it.”5
Most of the parachutists landed safely in the dark fields around the town but some of them—primarily from F Company, 505th—were coming down in the very center of Sainte-Mère-Église, where the light from the burning Hairon house made it easy for the Germans to spot them. Breaking out of their momentary bewilderment, the German soldiers suddenly unshouldered their Mausers and Schmeisers and began firing up at the descending forms. The paratroops hit the ground or landed in trees or snagged their chutes on utility poles, killed in their harnesses even before they could reach their Thompson submachine guns or remove their disassembled rifles from their carrying cases and put them together. It was an unmitigated slaughter.6
The civilian bucket brigade scattered as the lead flew indiscriminately and a full-scale battle for the town square erupted. But neither the French nor the Germans immediately realized that the parachutists were Americans—most everyone thought they were British. As David Howarth writes in Dawn of D-Day, “The people of Sainte-Mère-Église, through all their years of listening to the BBC, had never dreamed that their liberators, in the end, would be Americans.” It was only after the American flags sewn onto the sleeves of the dead paratroopers’ jump jackets were seen that the truth became known.7
One paratrooper got caught in a tree near the church and was machine-gunned to death as he struggled to release his harness. Mayor Renaud recalled: “About half a dozen Germans emptied the magazines of their submachine guns into him and the boy hung there with his eyes open, as though looking down at his own bullet holes.”8 One paratrooper pulled his risers hard to slip away from the gunfire in the square but found himself drifting straight for the burning house. Having jumped from the plane so close to the ground, he had no time to maneuver and dropped into the inferno that was sucking in the air all around it.
Another one of the paratroopers, Private John Steele, a member of Wolf’s platoon, was shot in the foot as he descended, then got his canopy snagged on a corner of the church steeple and dangled there helplessly. With all the wild gunfire going on below him, Steele decided that the best thing he could do was play dead.9
The exact number of paratroopers who came down in Sainte-Mère-Église is unknown, but Cornelius Ryan estimated it to be no more than thirty, with about twenty of that number landing in and around the church square.10
ED KRAUSE PATTED the pocket of his jump jacket to make sure it was still there. “It” was the flag he had raised over the Naples city hall eight months earlier and he had sworn to repeat that act here in Sainte-Mère-Église—if he lived to do so.
On the outskirts of town, the lieutenant colonel from Green Bay, Wisconsin, commander of 3rd Battalion, 505/82nd, surveyed the ville which, minutes before, had been in an uproar, what with a fire blazing and para-chutists dropping here, there, and everywhere.
One of those who landed with Krause’s battalion was Private first class Leslie P. Cruise, Jr., H/505/82nd. He said, “Captain DeLong gathered H Company platoon officers together to pass along the orders given by Colonel Krause. The battalion, numbering several hundred men plus some troopers who had missed their drop zone, would move on Sainte-Mère-Église where the glow in the sky was showing, take the town, and defend it.”
“We could hear sounds of machine-gun and rifle fire all around,” Cruise continued, “but nothing was from our immediate location. We had secured our area and were waiting orders to move which came after the confrontation with a civilian who had been convinced to join our group by a group of troopers. With the assistance of our newfound friend we moved out towards Sainte-Mère-Église with G Company in the lead, followed by H and I Company groups. Some groups were missing by the planeload, and we had no idea where they were, but we could not wait for them because time was very important to the success of the mission.”11
Krause had nearly 200 men with him, hiding in the weeds and in the hedgerows and behind buildings, preparing to enter the town.12 He knew that it was a foolish gamble, but one he knew he had to take. Without first making a house-to-house search, Krause and his men would slip into the town with their rifles empty, using only knives and grenades if they should encounter the enemy. That way, if any flashes were spotted in the dark, they would know it was the enemy doing the firing and be able to pinpoint the location.13
SPENCER WURST, F/505/82nd, made a hard landing in a field outside of Sainte-Mère-Église, hurting his back and hips. “If it had been a training jump,” he said, “I would have sought medical attention; I didn’t have that luxury. Before I even attempted to get out of my chute, I crawled over to the nearest hedgerow to get some cover. I pulled my pistol out, put it beside me, and went to work on the buckles of my chute.” As he lay there, Wurst saw C-47s above him seemingly coming from all different directions and taking AA fire. He saw a green star cluster. “This was the sign that someone in the battalion command group had reached the battalion assembly location.” With pain in his back and hips, he hobbled off in that direction and met up with his platoon leader, Lieutenant Joe Holcomb.
Despite the darkness at the battalion assembly point, Holcomb could see a standing paratrooper. Not wanting to give the position away, Hol-comb told Wurst to tell that soldier to get down and take cover. Wurst said he hollered at the individual. “I don’t know about the politeness of the language I used. As the individual turned toward me, I saw two big stars. It was General Ridgway. That was the first and last time I tried to chew out the general.”14
As a platoon commander in the 82nd, Lieutenant Vincent Wolf was in charge of forty men, but his platoon was scattered from hell to break-fast. Strangely, he didn’t mind. “If you had two or three guys together,” he explained, “it was a lot easier because you knew what you were going to do, instead of worrying about thirty or forty other guys and what the hell they’re doing; you could get yourself lost in the dark a lot easier with thirty or forty other guys. And if you have a small group and you see the enemy, it’s easier to knock them off with a knife.”
Wolf said that, after landing, “We cleaned out buildings, ran into groups of Germans who were well-trained—German paratroopers, who were tough guys [6th Fallschirmjäger Regiment, under Colonel Friedrich August Freiherr von der Heydte].”15
Also moving toward Sainte-Mère-Église, Sergeant Otis Sampson, E/505/82nd, noted that the night sky was still filled with paratroopers. “Troopers came raining down to the rear of us,” he said. “My heart was in my throat, afraid that the first ones out would be hit by the lower-flying planes as they floated to earth, and there were some pretty close calls.”
At the battalion assembly point on the outskirts of town, Sampson came across the injured Lieutenant Colonel Benjamin Vandervoort, his battalion’s commanding officer. “He had his back against a wall and his legs outstretched,” Sampson said. “He filled me in, saying, ‘Some of the planes have become lost. I have sent out to gather what men and equipment we have; we’ve got the situation in hand.’ He paused for a spell and then said, ‘I came down quite hard on this leg,’ running his hand along his left one. ‘I’ve done something to it; I’ve sent for a medic.’”
Sampson said, “I could see he was in pain. There was nothing I could do for him, so I turned to go. ‘I’m proud to have you with us,’ he said as I walked away. It is me who should be telling him that, with a busted leg and still in control of the situation; it was a nice compliment. I made no reply.”16
Spencer Wurst also saw Vandervoort. “He had broken his ankle in the jump and was hopping around on one leg, using a rifle as a crutch.”17 Broken leg or not, Vandervoort had come to France to fight and lead his battalion, and that was what he was going to do. The 505th’s exec officer, Mark Alexander, described Vandervoort as “a hell of a good battalion commander, but he was hard-headed as hell.”18
Vincent Wolf recalled that Vandervoort “had a broken ankle but he wouldn’t let that slow him down. He was the greatest guy alive—great, great, great, great. We always called him ‘Ben,’ never ‘colonel.’ He’d give you a rap on the head if you saluted him in combat. I was the same way; I told my men ‘Never salute me,’ because that gives away to the enemy who the officers are, and then you’d get picked off by snipers. That’s what we did with the Germans. Once you knocked their officers and non-coms off, the privates, hell, they didn’t know what to do. We could improvise a lot quicker than they could.”
Wolf continued, “I knew that we were supposed to free the French people, but I was more concerned about my men and me. The men first—where the hell were they? How many guys have survived? Out of the eighteen that jumped with me, Russ Brown, my 60mm mortarman, he’s the only one that survived. There were Germans all around. It was a matter of survival—who saw who first.”19
Vandervoort nabbed a couple of 101st men with a cart to haul him to his battalion’s objective. His mission was to get to Sainte-Mère-Église, and that’s just what he intended to do.20
AS KRAUSE’S GROUP got closer to the town, it looked like everything was over; the fire was out, the townsfolk had returned to their homes, and the German soldiers had also vacated the square by the big church, apparently thinking the battle was over, not just beginning. Smoke still filled the air and the bodies of dead paratroopers hung from trees and poles or lay sprawled on the pavement. With stealth and silence the Americans slipped into town, found a building that was being used as a German barracks, and took thirty soldiers prisoner; ten others were killed when they resisted. The Yanks also found the main communications cable to Cherbourg and destroyed it, then established a defense around the town’s perimeter.21
ALTHOUGH HE DIDN’T immediately know where he was other than somewhere in northern France, Duke Boswell did his best to round up other troopers. “My mission was just to get our group together and move into Sainte-Mère-Église. I put a flashlight on top of a pole—several sections that fit together—about twenty feet high. I think the lens was colored—red or green. The idea was to stick it in the ground so the troops could see it as an assembly point. We found somebody right quick-like, and then we got several more together. I assembled most of my squad and we got a few more and then one of the officers got there. The officer took charge and we went into Sainte-Mère-Église.”
“We had certain positions around the town that we were to occupy,” continued Boswell, “and the mission was to hold the village of Sainte-Mère-Église, well, not really the whole village, but the crossroads and a bridge to keep [German] reinforcements from getting to the beach and others at the beach from retreating. Seemed like our whole regiment was in and around Sainte-Mère-Église. We established our position on the edge of town on one of the roads. The first thing we saw when we got there were some of our guys hanging from the trees. They had jumped right over the town, and were shot before they could get out of their chutes.”22
The sky finally lightened to a gray overcast. Ben Vandervoort decided that he had assembled all of 2nd Battalion that he was likely to gather, and so with about 400 men—including some from the 101st—moved out cross-country toward Sainte-Mère-Église, sending out small patrols to farmhouses and barns to make sure that no German troops were lying in wait.23 Lieutenant Wolf said, “We went into Sainte-Mère-Église. It was chaos for the simple reason that everybody was all over the place. We didn’t know who was who, who was supposed to do what, where the CP was. Total confusion.”24
Otis Sampson recalled, “Orders were for us to take Sainte-Mère-Église. It wasn’t known at the time that the city had already been taken by Colonel Krause and was secure in his hands. It was early morning when our group came into the city with our colonel on a makeshift two-wheel stretcher. There were paratroopers still hanging from their chutes where they had been caught in the high trees before they could release themselves. Colonel Vandervoort’s first command: ‘Cut them down!’”25
In the northern part of town, Krause’s American flag flew proudly from the city hall flagpole. Next door, at the large hospital/hospice, 505th surgeon Robert “Doc” Franco and his medics set up shop, caring for Americans, Germans, and civilians alike. “I was there from about 4 A.M. until noon. During that time we treated about thirty or forty casualties. Somebody came in and told me that about a mile away there was a farm-house loaded with wounded guys. The family who lived there was doing the best they could to care for them. I walked to that farmhouse and, sure enough, all around the outside there were dozens of wounded guys, some of them badly wounded. There were a few inside, too, in this large room. I was alone, with nobody to help me.” Franco himself would be wounded a few days later.26
But if the Germans thought the onslaught ended with the para troopers, they couldn’t have been more wrong. The glider force was on the way.
SAINTE MARIE-DU-MONT, some seven miles north of Carentan, is like a hundred small picturesque villages that dot the Norman landscape. The architecture is simple and yet rustically appealing, redolent of an earlier time. As with most of the other towns and villages and hamlets of Normandy, until the war dropped in, nothing of much significance had happened in Sainte Marie-du-Mont for a few hundred years. A couple dozen charming shops form a square around the main church. In Sainte Marie-du-Mont’s case, the church is big, bold, and beautiful—a cathedral, really, with a huge, dramatic steeple that takes the breath away while simultaneously looking totally out of place and out of scale in such a small village.
In the pre-dawn hours of 6 June 1944, members of the 101st were landing in and around this quaint French town, bringing war and death and destruction—not to mention liberation—in their wake. David “Buck” Rogers, first sergeant of Headquarters Company, 1st Battalion, 506/101st, was one of those Screaming Eagles who came down almost on top of the village. He related, “The pilot of my plane stayed the course and we flew directly over our drop zone ‘C.’ A mortar cart that was to be pushed out the plane door before we jumped was slow in getting out and delayed us a bit. When my parachute opened, I was directly above the steeple of the church. The moon was full and there were scattered clouds, which made everything on the ground easy to see. When I looked down, I saw the picture of Sainte Marie-du-Mont. It looked just like the picture I had studied so intensely at Upottery.”
Rogers landed with his parachute caught in a small tree in a hedgerow less than forty yards from the nearest buildings. “I got out of my parachute and was looking around the area when I saw a shadowy figure about 150 feet along the hedgerow moving toward me. I clicked my cricket and received two clicks in return. We moved toward each other and I met my Battalion Sergeant Major, Issac Cole. We were extremely happy to see each other.”
“At this time,” Rogers continued, “troop carrier planes were still flying over and gunfire sounds were coming from every direction. It wasn’t long before Sergeant Cole and myself had gathered together six or seven other paratroopers, none of whom I knew. We didn’t bother to ask their names or what unit they belonged to. We were just glad to have this small group together in one place.”
The group moved toward the church along the darkened street, and someone knocked on a door to ask the locals about the enemy. “An elderly French man answered our knock,” said Rogers. “One of the men in our group could speak some French and he asked him where the Germans were. Waving his hand over his head, he said, ‘Everywhere.’”
The group silently crept to the church and entered. Seeing no Germans around, it was decided that half the group would stay on the ground floor and the others—Rogers, Cole, and three others—went up. From the top, the Yanks discovered that they had unrestricted fields of fire and observation in all directions. “We would do our best to prevent any German troops from moving through the village,” Rogers said.
When daylight arrived, Rogers looked north toward Utah Beach and “saw the most awe-inspiring sight I had ever seen. There were hundreds and hundreds of ships of various kinds laying off the beach; I could see some of the ships firing on the beach. Later there were planes dropping bombs. After some time had passed, we saw the boats carrying the landing forces moving toward the beach. We now knew the sealanding forces were on their way.”
Rogers also saw a distressing sight below the tower. “We saw a lone paratrooper moving along the sidewalk hugging the buildings as he moved. He was passing the corner of a building where another street entered the church square when he collapsed to the sidewalk. We then heard the shot and we knew he had been hit. He didn’t move after he fell so we knew that he was probably dead. This was a sobering event. At that moment we realized that we were in a deadly game of kill or be killed. After a few minutes a German soldier came from around the corner of the building where the dead paratrooper lay and began to go through the trooper’s pockets. We started to fire our weapons at the German and he dropped across the paratrooper’s body.”
“Later that morning two German soldiers came riding into the village driving a small vehicle,” recalled Rogers. “When they came into view below us, we opened fire. One of them, I remember, had red hair. He jumped out of the vehicle and started running along the sidewalk below us. He was looking left and right trying to determine where the gunfire was coming from. He didn’t go far before he dropped to the sidewalk, dead. The driver of the vehicle placed it in reverse and it was moving backward. It backed into a building and stopped. The driver was slumped over dead by the time the vehicle stopped.”
Rogers quickly learned that his excellent observation post was also a magnet for shells. “In the early afternoon I saw an American tank about 175 yards distance with its gun pointed toward the steeple,” he said. “I unfolded an American flag and waved it at the tank. That wave did not save us from some shellfire. It was not the tank that was firing at us. An artillery shell came screaming by the church steeple. From the sound, we knew the shell was coming from a different direction than the tank. A moment or two later we heard another artillery shell screaming toward us. This one hit the steeple above us with a very loud explosion. Debris began to fall from the explosion and a big hole was opened in the steeple. It was a miracle that none of us were hurt.” The Americans scrambled down from their high perch.
Shortly thereafter, forces moving inland from Utah Beach arrived in the town and a brief reunion was held. Rogers’ group moved out of Sainte Marie-du-Mont late that afternoon and marched to Holdy,* a mile away, where the Headquarters Company commander, Captain Patch and other members of his company, were located. “When we arrived at Holdy,” said Rogers, “we were told that they had captured four artillery guns and that Sergeant William King* had bore-sited one of the guns and fired it at the church steeple they could see in the distance. They thought that the steeple was being used by the Germans to direct artillery fire.” (It was, of course, being used by Rogers and Company.) The area around the four guns was littered by dead Germans and a few paratroopers. The dead paratroopers were from our company mortar squad. They had landed in and around the area of the guns and were immediately killed before getting out of their parachutes. By this time it was getting dark and we learned we would be heading toward Carentan the next morning, June 7.”27
Carentan would prove to be the 101st Airborne’s supreme test in Normandy.