Going into Normandy, do you remember much of the flight over?

The things I remember, it was nighttime, when we took off it was like 10:00 at night.  And of course a lot of rendezvousing to do, so we’re going to be in the air for 2 or 3 hours.  And I had a guy sitting beside me, remember the guy I told you who had been a prisoner, and joined the outfit.  Now he was from New York.  He’s sitting right beside me, and the flak it came through the side of the plane and hit his parachute, and tore a hole in his backpack.  And he had me look at it and I said, “Well, that’s not too bad Jim.”  He’s not going to stay in the airplane, that’s for sure.  But anyway, he came out all right, he was OK.  He used his reserve.  But ran into a lot of flak.  You couldn’t see very wellbecause of the nighttime.  We could see the gulf, see the ocean, also the Channel, we crossed over the Channel.  You really couldn’t tell too much on the ground.  We had a problem, simply because the airplanes were going to fast.  Of course they drop you at 120, 130 miles an hour and you’re going like a 160, 70 because they want to get the hell out of there, which I don’t blame him.  What happened was, when that happens, and you got 20 guys in an airplane let’s say.  The first guy to drop, he’s going 180 miles an hour, instead of 120, we’re too far apart.  We’re just spread all across the countryside. 

What altitude did you jump from?

We were supposed to jump at about 1200 feet.  I’m not too sure we were at that elevation, I really can’t tell you.  We had made jumps, he had made practice jumps with the pathfinders at 700, 800 going a little faster, so we get on the ground quicker.  Because, see at that elevation you were going much faster and as that shoot pops open much quicker, after a couple oscillations you land on the deck.  Well, I landed in an orchard, you know the hedgerows over there were something else.  Got anybody that told you about the hedgerows? 

No.

Well, we had a hell of a problem with hedgerows, number 1 you had to find a way around them.  You couldn’t walk through most of them.  They were too thick.  The roots are that big.  Look like trees, because they’re growing close together you know.  And some of these were as much as 20 feet fight.  And these separate the fields instead of fences.  Most units had problems, so somewhere along the line, some guy gets the bright idea of, and it developed very quickly, of tank, put on the front of a tank, it was a wedge, like a snow blade.  Just split those hedgerows, and it worked very good.  But that came a little later.  And it was probably 2 hours, 2 and a half hours from the time we landed, I gathered up with a bunch of guys, I found 2 guys immediately.  We ran across 4 or 5 more guys within the next half hour or so.  And we’re walking through this field and trying to keep in the shadows of the trees, because the bright moonlit night at that point.  We decided to cross the field.  As we crossed the field, I heard this hissing noise.  When something is uncertain, the way your trained, you hit the deck.  We hit the deck, everybody hit the deck, everybody almost simultaneously.  This glider flew over our heads.  He was going to land in that field.  Of course he couldn’t see, you couldn’t anything about it anyway, so he skid, and this is a really funny story, he probably skidded a 100 yards maybe, from the time he hit to the time he stopped.  He went right up against this bank of hedgerows, the hedgerows, the bottom of the ground was this high, and the hedgerows sat on top of that.  Went right into that bank and we got up there and try to get him out of, outside of the glider, he’s by himself, but he had a D2 dozer in the back, the lacings broke loose and slid up towards the front and kind of pinned him in the front, so we got to dig him out of there.  And I swear this is true story, when he came out of the front of that glider, he had a soft hat, no hard hat, and a pair of tennis shoes.  And I said, “Where in the hell did you think you were going?”  He said, “Hell, I figured I get out of here and they would take me back!”  But anyway, he joined up with us, we got him a set of boots, got him a gun, got him a helmet you know.  And he spent several days with us. 

I’ve heard from other paratroopers, not so much to complain, just the fact that, how much weight did you carry?

Probably near 100 pounds.  From the time you get everything lashed on, your weapons, your pack, your reserve, your backpack, your weapons, your knife, whatever, its probably near 100 pounds. 

Lot of ammunition?

As much as you could carry safely.

What type of a weapon were you carrying at this time?

At that time I was a private and I carried an M1.

And when you jumped what did you do with that big rifle?  How did you carry that thing and still manipulate your chute and all the rest?

Well you throw that across the front of you.  It straps over your back and hangs down the front of you.  A couple ways you could carry them.

Because that was a concern to have the full sized weapons.

See, he’s got his .45 like that.

He’s got a Thompson slung on a strap there.  I know for a while they carried, or maybe it was later, they had jump scabbards they could put them in.

No, we never had a scabbard.  We just laced them on there best we could.  Now here’s Salty, this is the airbase that we took off from.  Salty Air Force Base.  This was probably 30, 35 miles north and east of Nottingham.  Here’s that picture I want to show you.  This is our group.  This is our group here, ready for Normandy.  See this guy here?  He’s 38 years old.  And that’s me, right there.

Getting some coffee it looks like.  So is this you before you got on the plane?

This is getting ready to hustle to get on the airplane.

I see the guys have their faces blackened.

Everything’s all blackened, all ready.  We had a hell of a meal that night.  Anything you wanted to eat.  Most of the guys couldn’t eat, they were too nervous to eat.  We were all scared shitless.

That’s one of the things I’ve heard from one of the troop carrier pilot, he said there were a lot of guys they were acting really tough, he said, “I think it was a lot of false bravado.”  He said they had to be nervous going in there.

Everybody was.

But you had to take in as much equipment as you could, because you didn’t have, you weren’t going to be supplied.

Well, number 1 we were going to be supplied by our equipment bubbles.  Now they carried an army, 6 bubbles on the bottom of the plane, you know lash them on the bottom.  These are in turn released by the pilot, and most of the equipment bubbles in Normandy in particular were, most of them were lost to us.  What they didn’t know, what they probably knew and didn’t tell us, that the Merderet and the Douve Rivers, the dams had been blown, the water backed up into the lowlands, to give us less area we could jump into you understand.  A lot of the guys that landed, drowned in the water.  Never got out of their parachute.  A lot of those equipment bubbles landed in those watered areas.  Thank goodness there’s no pools, and I’m sure the photos they had showed them that water, they just didn’t say anything about it.  And you know, you’re jumping off target then man you have a problem.  In fact I found my cousin hanging in a tree, never got out of his chute.  That was probably I’m going to guess about 3:00 in the morning.  Just before we found our assembly area.  He was part of the 508 also.  We cut him out of there, but we couldn’t carry him with us, the grave registration would get him.