Standard Parachutist Pack:
M-1 Garand Rifle with 8-round clip
Cartridge belt with canteen
Hand grenades
Parachute and pack
Anti-flash headgear and gloves
Pocket compass
Machete
.45-calibre Colt automatic rifle Flares
Message book
Officer Pack (British, but similar to American officer pack):
Sten gun
Spare magazines with 9mm ammunition
2 lb plastic high explosives (HE)
2–36 primed hand grenades
Two full belts of Vickers .303 ammunition
Wire cutters
Radio batteries
Small-pack
Basic equipment webbing
48 hours’ worth of rations
Water
Cooking and washing kit
Spread throughout pockets:
Loaded .45 automatic pistol
Medical kit
2 additional lb HE
Knife
Escape/survival kit
Toggle rope
Additional personal items
Emergency Rations:
4 pieces of chewing gum
2 bouillon cubes
2 Nescafe instant coffees, 2 sugar cubes and creamers
4 Hershey bars
1 pack of Charms candy
1 package pipe tobacco
1 bottle of water purification (Halazone) tablets
Captain Robert Kirkwood, smoking a cigar, and Lt Pat Ward, Battalion intelligence officer, with twenty men in the stick from 505th Infantry, 82nd Airborne wait to board their C-47 on the evening of 5 June at Cottesmore. At least three “sticks” from the Third battalion were dropped off target at Montebourg, about 6 miles north of Ste-Mere-Eglise and Kirkwood, Ward and Lt Jack Issacs of G Company managed to gather and assemble 33 men in the subsequent fighting the group were dispersed and many casualties sustained. Kirkwood said later that “it took me three days to get back to our lines and in those three days I saw more Germans than I ever wanted to see again”.
U.S Army
Pierre Huet
a farmer living with his young wife in Pretot near Ste-Mère-Eglise.
‘At 4 a.m. there was a knock at the door. When I opened it, two Americans walked in. They pulled a printed message in French from their helmets, which read “My comrade is wounded. Please help.” They led me to a para with a broken leg and we carried him to my house. By dawn we had found another six. For two weeks they hid in my attic, but then the Germans came to arrest me. Someone had informed on me. An Austrian captain interrogated me. He knew who I was but protected me by pretending I was someone else. He told me, “If we find the owner of this farmhouse he will be shot.” He saved my life by letting me escape. That night my wife and I crossed the German lines, got through an American minefield and were taken directly to American HQ. I warned them my farm was a German base and asked them to shell it. Half an hour later there was nothing left of my house . . . and nothing left of the Germans.’
Frenchman Raymond Paris, 20
who lived in Ste-Mère-Eglise.
‘A fire broke out in a house at about 10 p.m. (midnight British time). A German sergeant gave Mayor Alexandre Renaud permission to rouse the populace and for the priest to ring the church bell. The people set up a bucket brigade in the light of the flames. As they were fighting the fire, American planes appeared low overhead, so low that I could see their open doors. Paratroopers began jumping out by the hundreds. I saw one paratrooper drop on the road, but a German killed him before he could get untangled from his parachute. Another was killed near me. I will never forget the sight.’
Private Ken Russell
F Company, 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment.
‘I jumped with the 2nd Platoon, it was commanded by 2nd Lieutenant Harold Cadish. I don’t remember all the stick in our plane but I know Private H. T. Bryant, Private Ladislaw ‘Laddie’ Tlapa and Lieutenant Cadish were most unfortunate. They were the fellows who were shot on the power poles. My close friend Private 1st class Charles Blankenship was shot still in his chute, hanging in a tree, a little distance down the street. When we jumped, there was a huge fire in a building in town. I didn’t know that the heat would suck a parachute towards the fire. I fought the chute all the way down to avoid the fire. One trooper [Private 1st Class A. J. Van Holsbeck of F Company] Who had joined our Company shortly before D-Day landed in the fire. Facing the church from the front, I landed on the right side of the roof, luckily in the shadow side from the fire. Some of my suspension lines went over the steeple and I slid down over to the edge of the roof. This other trooper came down and really got entangled on the steeple, I didn’t know it was Steele. Almost immediately a Nazi soldier came running from the back side of the church shooting at everything. Sergeant John Ray had landed in the churchyard almost directly below Steele. This Nazi shot him in the stomach while he was still in his chute. While Ray was dying he somehow got his .45 out (sergeants jumped with a .45-calibre pistol) and shot the Nazi in the back of the head, killing him. He saved my life as well as Steele’s. It was one of the bravest things I have ever witnessed.
‘I finally got to my trench knife and cut my suspension lines and fell to the ground. I looked up at the steeple but there was not a movement or a sound and I thought the trooper was dead. I got my M-1 assembled and ducked around several places in that part of town hoping to find some troopers, but all of them were dead. I got off several rounds at different Germans before they drove me to a different position with intense gunfire.’
Van Holsbeck died falling into the house, which was on fire on the south side of the town square. The Germans allowed the villagers, under guard, to break the curfew to fight it.
Tense and anxious, a Platoon from the Third Battalion, 82nd Airborne barely manage a smile just before they boarded their C-47 for D-Day.
U.S Army
Major Frederick C. A. Kellam, First Battalion Commander (left) and Colonel William E. Ekman, CO, 505th Regiment, 82nd Airborne, at Cottesmore waiting for D-Day. Kellam, whose nickname was the “Jack of Diamonds” (note the Diamond insignia on their helmets) was KIA by an exploding mortar shell.
U.S Army
General Eisenhower talking with paratroops of the 502nd Parachute Regiment, 101st Airborne Division at RAF Greenham Common on 5 June. At centre is Lt Wallace C. Strobel, the jumpmaster