‘I was walking to the rear with mortars still exploding around me. Shrapnel from an 88 went into my arm and ripped it open. I didn’t lose a teaspoon of blood but my main artery was hanging out like a rubber tube, dangling there as I could put four fingers on the exposed bone.
The church at Ste-Mère-Eglise.
‘D-Day was the most momentous time of my life. I killed so many Germans I lost count. Would I do it again? It’s a hard question. Everyone loses in war, everyone. War isn’t like the movies, never will be. It was dirty and dehumanizing and disgusting. You never stopped for your buddies in the field, even your best pal. You stopped and they got a bead on you and you were next. You left them behind, dead, dying or just grazed. Hell, war is all politics anyway. We did it to each other because they made us. I just hope that when they make their fine speeches on the beachheads they remember what happened. I do. Every night of the year. The images of the dead always wake me up.’
82nd and 101st Airborne Divison badges.
Author title page
American Paratroopers’ Timetable
D-Day begins with an assault by more than 23,000 airborne troops, 15,500 of them American, behind enemy lines to soften up the German troops and to secure needed targets. The paratroopers know that if the accompanying assault by sea fails there will be no rescue. Departing from Portland Bill on the English Coast, 6,600 paratroopers of the 101st Division in 490 C-47s and 6,396 paratroopers of the 82nd Division are dropped over the neck of the Cotentin peninsula. (Force B of the 82nd Division has a strength of 3,871 glidermen.) Two parachute regiments of the 101st Division are to drop just west of the lagoon, silence a heavy battery and seize the western exits of the causeways leading from Utah beach and head off a German eastern advance. One parachute regiment is to drop north of Carentan, destroy the rail and road bridges over the Douve and hold the line of that river and the Carentan canal so as to protect the southern flank of the Corps.
The 82nd Division, landing farther inland, is to drop astride the Merderet River south and west of Ste-Mère-Eglise, block the Carentan–Cherbourg road, and extend the flank protection westward by destroying two more bridges over the Douve and secure the Merderet crossings.
Heavy fog and German guns mean that the pilots are unable to drop the paratroopers precisely as planned. Only one-sixth of the men in the 101st Division reach their destination points. The first regiment of the 82nd Division fare better but the second suffer heavy supply losses and much of the division is left without sufficient arms. Both Divisions form smaller improvized squads and by 04:30 the 82nd have captured Ste-Mère-Eglise.
19:00 Merderet crossing at Chef du Pont controlled by 82nd Airborne Division. Elsewhere paratroops are so heavily engaged fighting for their lives they have no chance of blowing the bridges over the Douve or forming a compact bridgehead over the Merderet.
US Airborne Forces
82nd Airborne Division
Major General Matthew B. Ridgway
505th Parachute Infantry
508th Parachute Infantry
507th Parachute Infantry
325th Glider Infantry
101st Airborne Division
Major General Maxwell D. Taylor
501st Parachute Infantry
506th Parachute Infantry
502nd Parachute infantry
327th Glider Infantry
101st Division casualties total 1,240, of whom 182 are killed. 82nd Division suffers 1,259 casualties of whom 156 are killed. Of the 6,396 paratroopers of the 82nd who jumped, 272 or 4.24 per cent were killed or injured as a result of the drop. Of the 6,600 paratroopers of the 101st Division, only about 2,500 had assembled by the end of the first day.
101st Airborne Division troopers with local civilians in Ste-Marie-du-Mont.
National Archives
Don McKeage
of F Company, 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment.
‘All went well until arriving near the DZ ‘O’ the C-47s did not slow up for the drop. Everyone in the 2nd Battalion agreed that it was the highest, fastest jump ever made. Eyeballs had to be screwed back into their sockets. The Second Battalion landed on or near the DZ. Except for one stick from F Company and they headed for the centre of Ste-Mère-Eglise.’
In the first few minutes low cloud obscured the target areas and the 2nd Platoon mortar squad of F Company, 505, mistimed their exit and landed in the Square of Ste-Mere-Eglise. Thirty minutes before, two sticks of the 101st Airborne’s 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment had jumped across the east side of the town. The German guards killed four and this alerted them to the 505 error.
Lieutenant Charles Santarsiero
506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st US Airborne standing in the door of his plane as it passed over Ste-Mere-Eglise.
‘We were about 400 feet up and I could see fires burning and Krauts running about. There seemed to be total confusion on the ground. All hell broken loose. Flak and small arms fire was coming up and those poor guys were caught right in the middle of it.’
Lt Colonel Benjamin H. ‘Vandy’ Vandervoort, 505th Regiment, 82nd Airborne Commander (left) and Major William J. Hagan. Vandervoort broke his ankle on the jump into Ste-Mere Eglise but carried on with his jump boot tightly laced and a rifle as a crutch. He later “persuaded” two 101st Airborne Sergeants to pull him rickshaw fashion on a collapsible ammunition cart until he transferred to a jeep and managed to borrow crutches from a crippled French housewife in Ste-Mère-Eglise!
Major Edward C. “Cannonball” Krause, CO, Third Battalion, 505th Regiment, 82nd Airborne Divison. By the end of the first day Krause had been wounded three times but his humour never deserted him. One morning while his men were in their foxholes he took the roll call in German, “scaring his men to hell.”
L–R Lt General Matthew B. Ridgway, 82nd Airborne Commander; Brigadier General James Gavin, Captain Neal Lane McRoberts, and 101st Airborne Division Commander, Maj General Maxwell D. Taylor, on the occasion of the presentation of the first of two Silver Star awards to Captain McRoberts, commander of the 82nd Airborne pathfinders. General Taylor could only assemble little over 100 men, most of them officers, before he set out to secure one of the causeways leading to Utah Beach. Referring to his brass-heavy group, General Taylor said, ‘Never were so few led by so many’.
Paras’ Equipment
Paratroopers carried an average of 70 lb of equipment, officers 90 lb. With the parachute, men weighed between 90–120 lb over