The red light by the door went on four minutes from the dropzone.
‘Stand up and hook up!’ came the shout from the dispatcher. Some of
the heavily burdened men had to be hauled to their feet. They clipped
their static line to the overhead cable running the length of the
fuselage, then the order was yelled to check equipment and number off.
This was followed by the command, ‘Stand in the door!’ But as the
aircraft continued to jink or shudder from hits, men were thrown around or
slid on the vomit-streaked floor. The flak and tracer were coming up
around them ‘in big arcs of fire’, the wind was roaring in the open
door, and the men watched, praying for the green light to come on so that
they could escape what felt like a metal coffin. ‘Let’s go!’ many
shouted impatiently, afraid that they might be dropped in the sea on the
east side of the peninsula.
The planes should have reduced speed to between ninety and 100 miles an
hour for the jump, but most did not. ‘Our plane never did slow down,’
remembered one paratrooper. ‘That pilot kept on floorboarding it.’ As
soon as the green light came on, the men shuffled in an ungainly way
towards the exit to jump. One or two made a hurried sign of the cross as
they went. With all the shooting outside, it was easy to imagine that they
were about to jump straight into crossfire from machine guns or land on a
strongly defended position. Each paratrooper, as he reached the door,
carried his leg pack, which would dangle below from a long strap as soon
as he jumped. Weighing eighty pounds or more, many broke off during the
descent and were lost in the dark. If any men did freeze at the last
moment, then presumably the sergeant ‘pusher’ kicked them out, for
there are hardly any confirmed reports of a man refusing to jump. As they
leaped into the unknown, some remembered to shout ‘Bill Lee!’, the
paratrooper’s tribute to General Lee, the father of the US Airborne.
Most suffered a far more violent jerk than usual as the parachute
opened, because of the aircraft’s excessive speed. Those who fell close
to German positions attracted heavy fire. Their canopies were riddled with
tracer bullets. One battalion commander, his executive officer and a
company commander were killed immediately, because they had landed among
an advance detachment of Major Freiherr von der Heydte’s 6th
ParatroopRegiment. Another officer, who landed on top of the command post,
was taken prisoner. An Obergefreiter in the 91st Luftlande-Division wrote
home, ‘US parachute troops landed in the middle of our position. What a
night!’
The natural instinct, when dropping under fire, was to pull your legs
up almost into a foetal position, not that it provided any protection. One
man literally exploded in mid-air, probably because a tracer bullet had
hit his Gammon grenade. In some cases the pilots had been flying below 500
feet and the parachutes barely had time to open. Many legs and ankles were
broken, and a few men were paralysed with a broken back. One paratrooper
who landed successfully was horrified when a following plane dropped its
stick of eighteen men so low that none of the chutes opened. He compared
the dull sound of the bodies hitting the ground to ‘watermelons falling
off the back of a truck’. The men of another stick which had been
dropped too low along a small ridgewere found later in a long line, all
dead and all still in their harnesses.
As the Germans had flooded large areas around the River Merderet and
inland from the beaches, many paratroopers fell into water. A number
drowned, smothered by a soaked chute. Others were rescued either by
buddies or, in a number of cases, by a French family who had immediately
launched their rowing boat. Most who landed in water up to their chest had
to keepducking under the surface to reach their trench knife to cut
themselves free. They cursed the American harness and envied the British
quick-release system. Similarly, those whose chutes caught on tall trees
had to strain and stretch to cut themselves free, knowing all the while
that they presented easy targets. A number were shot as they struggled.
Many atrocity stories spread among the survivors, with claims that German
soldiers had bayoneted them from below or even turned flame-throwers on
them. A number spoke of bodies obscenely mutilated.
Those coming down into small pastures surrounded by high hedges were
reassured if they saw cows, since their presence indicated that there were
no mines. But they still expected a German to run up and ‘stick a
bayonet’ in them. To land in the dark behind enemy lines with no idea of
where you were could hardly have been more disorientating and frightening.
