‘We’ll start from right here.’
For more than thirteen thousand American paratroopers of the US 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions, D-Day began a day early, on June 5, 1944.
Shortly before midnight on June 5, they boarded more than a thousand Douglas C-47 transport aircraft.
Each man carried heavy equipment, with some packs weighing as much as eighty pounds.
Their intended destination was behind enemy lines at Utah Beach, the second of two American beach landing zones.
Their objective was to seize four causeways behind the beach to block German beach reinforcement and open a path inland for American troops and vehicles.
But the fleet of aircraft encountered difficulties over the Channel.
Bad weather and German anti-aircraft fire dispersed the fleet, and many aircrews were dropped far from their intended drop zones.
From the diary of Bob McKee, who piloted a P-47 fighter escort:
“I was flying the CO's wing in the number 2 position.
“Very dark, very low clouds with a 300' ceiling, foggy, and a steady rain falling. Eerie.
“Our takeoff, join-up and climb-out was tricky,
“yet we managed to join a large group of C-47 aircraft just south of Portsmouth [England] which were towing gliders with troops.
“We escorted them to the beachhead where they dropped onto the Cherbourg peninsula.
“The weather was better, with an 800' ceiling; misty/hazy and very crowded with Allied aircraft.
“Our mission then called for us to patrol just south of the beachhead for enemy fighters
“and, since there were none, we hit ground targets at will before returning to [our airbase at] Headcorn, England.”
But the disorganized, random air drops worked in the Allies’ favor.
The Germans couldn’t determine the Allies’ tactical objectives, so they couldn’t mount an effective counterattack.
Casualties among the airborne units were high, but they achieved their objectives largely because individual soldiers adapted their mission to their surroundings and circumstances.
It was ad hoc warfighting, and it worked.
Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., commander at Utah Beach, whose amphibious landing took place a mile off target, summed up this ad hoc approach, calling out to his men, “We’ll start the war from right here!”
And so they did.
*******************************
I’ll see you tomorrow.
— Brenda
Share this post