Remembering D-day: Personal Histories of Everyday Heroes

US 8th Air force base, Bassingbourne, Cambridgeshire in May 1943 during the visit of HM King George VI and Queen Elizabeth. Behind the royal entourage is a Horsa glider, one of hundreds waiting on airfields throughout UK. On the eve of D-Day many Horsas were used by American paratroopers.

Extract from ‘Currahee!’ by Donald Burgett, 19

506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Screaming Eagles Division. ‘Currahee!’ was the only World War II book to be endorsed by General Eisenhower, who called it a ‘fascinating tale of personal combat’.

‘Inside the other planes I could see the glowing red tips of cigarettes as men puffed away. It was weirdly beautiful, lots of sparks and tracer shells. But I knew that between every tracer shell are four armour-piercing bullets. “Let’s go,” shouted Lt. Muir and we began moving in what seemed slow motion towards the open doorway as the green “go” light spread a glow across our faces. (In the hours before D-Day we were given our objectives – capture the bridges over the rivers and canals around Carentan and secure the exits from Utah Beach – and told to burn personal possessions like letters from home. There were bonfires across the camp. When the ashes could be raked out we used them to blacken our faces for the drops. We looked like racoons. Several of the guys broke into the Al Jolson ‘Mammy’ song which helped relieve the tension. Singing might have lightened the emotional burdens, but not the physical ones. If mules were the slave carriers of WWI then the paratrooper of WWII was its two-legged equivalent. Our equipment must have weighed over 100 lb.) It seemed like forever but in fractions of seconds I was at the door and tumbling into space. Tracers were coming up towards me. As I checked the canopy above I hit the ground backwards so hard that I was stunned, unable to move.

C-47 The Black Sparrow, in 302nd TCS, 441st Troop Carrier Group markings it wore on D-Day when the 441st carried paratroops of the 101st Airborne Division to the Cherbourg area and next day towed 50 CG-4 gliders carrying reinforcements for the 82nd Airborne division.

His aircraft had strayed off course and dropped them nine miles away near Ravenoville. In the light rain of that early morning he crawled on his belly across a field to a thicket . . . only to hear rustling. I thought it was the enemy and I raised my rifle. Sweat was pouring off me. I knew I was about to kill a human being and it was a terrible thought. Suddenly this guy began crawling towards me. As my finger tightened on the trigger I recognized him as a pal called Hundly. His throat was so dry with fear he couldn’t even speak!’

After surviving machine-gun strafes across the field from a gun hidden in a hedgerow, Don linked up with several other survivors to begin the march on Ravenoville. ‘There were about 200 Germans down one end of town and only 20 of us. They began hand-grenading civilian houses. I got a bead on one of them and squeezed. There was a slight vapour that came from his body. He buckled and went down. It was done and it didn’t worry me. Another came around the corner. I aimed and shot him in the chest. He fell too. But they killed four of our guys from a heavy machine-gun burst from a window in a house. The guys lay there in the front garden.

‘The next day we began to march on our objectives but were halted by heavy German machine guns placed outside of town. Several times we tried to break through but were driven back. We decided to march the German prisoners on to the guns, figuring they wouldn’t cut down their own. They did. As the Germans screamed, “Nicht schiessen, Nicht schiessen”, they were cut down. Then they made a break for it and we shot them down from the back. None survived.

‘On the road to Carentan a Sherman tank used its tracks to run over three Germans in a fortified trench. Their screams could be heard above the engine’s whine. Then we came into conflict with an SS battalion and mounted Cossacks [Anti-Stalin horseman who had deserted Stalin to fight for Hitler]. On the outskirts of the town of St Côme du Mont there was another vicious firefight in which the Germans were beaten back before launching an even more ferocious counter-attack. The roads, fields, ditches were littered with the dead. I nearly got it from a German except a medic with a long-barrelled cowboy revolver got him first. I shot a blond-haired German crawling to a farmhouse to get more mortar shells to lob on to us. I saw his blond hair and it agitated me. Then the whole thing became clear to me: I wanted his scalp. I started crawling towards him. The prize was nearly within my reach when rifle fire opened up and I was forced to dive behind a hedgerow. Twice more I tried to reach him but each time I was driven back by stubborn squareheads. I decided to forget the whole thing. Finally a tank, one of ours, came by and raked the hedgerows with cannon and machine-gun fire. When he was out of ammo he said he would be back for more. He took off down the road to make better time instead of crossing the fields. It was a mistake. A German 88 opened up and the tank started to burn. The crew were all killed, the commander burning alive in the turret. We called up artillery and those Germans were wasted in a rain of high explosive.

Douglas C-47 transport aircraft Iron Ass of the 75st Squadron, 435th Troop Carrier Group, 9th Air Force.

Jack Krause

‘The next day we were on the outskirts of Carentan and I was told to go back to regimental HQ with vital information on German positions that they didn’t trust being radioed. I had to go back through [where] the heaviest fighting had been the day before. The road was a river of gore. When I came to the end I felt as if I had left a world of darkness for a world of sunlight.

Waco CG-4A glider lands at a D-Day airstrip.

Author title page

U.S Air Force

‘Crawling to investigate what lay behind a thick hedgerow I was confronted by a German lobbing a stick grenade into my face. I went after it to return it but it went off inches from my fingertips. It was an orange ball that gave off real furnace heat. I passed out. When consciousness came back I was stone deaf, but otherwise felt OK. I have heard that a person can be just the right place in an explosion and live. I must have found the right spot.

‘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!