That First June Night

"To know how to wait is the great secret of success"

- Xavier de Maistre

The C-47's flew southwest toward their marker boat stationed off the northwest tip of the Cotentin Peninsula of France. The planes had lifted off English soil at 2221 hours, 10:21 pm, and climbed to 2000 feet. Approaching the English Channel, the aircraft dipped to flying altitude for the trip over the water. This altitude of five hundred feet placed them below the probing eyes of German radar. The moon was nearly full, casting a deep purple-blue-black tint to the channel below and punctuating frothy whitecaps in the water. Winds were brisk, out of the west at 35 mph.

The flight plan was to swing southeast at the marker boat, then dash east into French airspace after passing the small islands of Guernsey and Jersey. This path would take the planes into drop zones from west to east, arriving behind German lines and fortifications on the beaches of Normandy. The Allied Command had code named Utah, Omaha, Juno, Sword and Gold Beaches on the coast and identified them as assault targets. Their specific Drop Zone (DZ) was behind Utah Beach, where the Army's 4th Infantry Division was to storm ashore at daybreak. The prearranged flight path placed the aircraft over the drop zones for less than ten minutes, plenty of time to complete their part in the overall plan.

Twin 1,200 horsepower Pratt & Whitney R-1830S1C3G Twin Wasp radial piston engines droned in the night, powering each aircraft at the normal cruising speed of just under two hundred miles an hour. For paratroop operations, the C-47 interior was fitted with 28 fold-down bucket seats hinged to the walls. Six parachute containers filled with explosives and equipment for use on the ground were on some planes, attached to racks under the fuselage and ready for release by the pilots once over the proper drop zones. Painted olive drab for the military, the 1,000 transports were marked with three white and two black bands around the fuselage and each wing for easy recognition and identification in flight.

Wind buffeted the C-47's with sufficient velocity to cause sudden lurches up and down, as well as side-to-side. Paratroopers of the 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment (PIR) sat in the darkness, helmet-clad heads bobbing in unison with the motion of the bumps of the invisible air currents outside. Darkness enveloped the interior of the transport, except for the small pale blue light in the tiny passageway to the pilot's compartment. This faint glow afforded modest details of faces sitting in the semi-darkness, but there was an element of apprehension in all the men. They tried, as do all men heading towards danger, to show a game face. Some sat with helmet-clad heads resting against the bulkhead of the plane, eyes closed. Others sat staring at nothing; eyes open but unseen by others in the dark shadows, thinking about the operation, or home, or whether or not they would survive until daylight. With the aircraft bouncing and swaying as it was, some even wondered to themselves if the plane would hold together long enough to get them to the drop zone.

The jumpmaster stood near the open door with a major and one young lieutenant; all three staring down at the black water below. Other C-47's, over a thousand of them, full of more paratroopers from the 101st, 82nd Airborne, and the British 6th Airborne were flying in multiple V formations in the dark sky, like so many geese heading south in October. Over 17,000 paratroopers were staged for the night jump. As the planes passed midpoint of the English channel, the jumpmaster and two officers saw thousands of ships on the water, all heading southward toward the largest beach assault invasion ever attempted in history: D-Day, Operation Overlord, the day the Allies invaded France at the previously unheralded Normandy beaches.

Inside those outwardly tranquil ships floating below on the water were hundreds of thousands of men armed with the most modern weapons of destruction: bazookas, Bangelor torpedoes, flame throwers, hand grenades, rifle grenades, 30 and 50 caliber machine guns, tanks, wheel mounted artillery and tons upon tons of ammo and explosive charges. Men inside those ships were charged with the task of winning the beaches first, and then plunging headlong toward the heart of the German held territories in France, Holland, and Belgium. The plan called for them to destroy Hitler's army and liberate those countries viciously invaded under Hitler's orders. History was to be written in the coming weeks, a history to change the world. The veteran sergeant and two officers watched the ships for a few minutes, and then peered back into the solemn and dark confines of the plane.

The 501st PIR was part of the 101st Airborne Division. Colonel Howard F. "Skeet" Johnson, a demanding and hardened veteran who trained his men to excel at physical conditioning and the determination to succeed in combat, led the 501st. An Annapolis graduate from Washington, DC, he had trained alongside his troops, often making three or four jumps to each one made by his men. Paratroopers of the 501st affectionately switched his nickname to "Jumpy" instead of "Skeet" as a result of his love to parachute with the Airborne. He had been a young lieutenant colonel when he enrolled in the parachute school located at Fort Benning, Georgia and earned the coveted wings of a paratrooper.

Colonel Jumpy Johnson was an angular man, thin and sinewy, with blonde hair and clear eyes, filled with a passion to excel. Men shuddered under his demands when his anger exploded and his fiery eyes gleamed intensely. Demanding and precise, Colonel Johnson was charged with molding the raw recruits, which he handpicked, into a force to be reckoned with in any situation. He was not interested in average. His men had to be much more than that. He would personally see to it himself. Johnson knew that men had to be filled with total commitment if they were to be the best. Total commitment meant they had to obey orders instantly, without hesitation and with complete trust in their leaders. Each individual would be tested to ensure he had that extra drive to be one of Johnson's men.

One factor high on Johnson's list was the attitude of each man under his command. He had to know they would do whatever was necessary in any situation. He had to be completely satisfied that the men would do the impossible. Could they go without rest? Did they have the guts? Did they have the desire? Could they exist on almost nothing and still succeed? Above all, could they actually kill? It was one thing to sit on a ship far out at sea and send huge artillery rounds into an unseen enemy, killing at random, or drop bombs from high altitudes and return to a warm bed at night, knowing that you had just killed someone. But...