He rushed from the barracks and ran to division headquarters, where he arrived out of breath. Panting from his sprint, he told the duty sergeant that he was there to see the commanding general.
“The general is busy,” the sergeant said. “What do you want?”
Werner told the sergeant, who directed him to the office of the assistant division commander, General James Gavin, who within a few months would become the 82nd’s commanding general. He was known as “Jumpin’ Jim” for his practice of taking part in combat jumps with his paratroopers.
The tall general turned from where he was standing at a wall map.
Werner stood at attention, saluted, and said, “Staff Sergeant Angress reporting.”
“Okay, Sergeant. Shoot.”
“Sir, I have been assigned to the division as an interrogator with the understanding that I’d be given jump training. For reasons mostly having to do with the weather, I did not get that training. But I request permission to jump with the division.”
By the time Werner finished, the general was looking at him with a trace of a smile. “Well, my chauffeur has never jumped in his life. Besides, he’s overweight. But I need him in France, so he’ll jump. If he can go, so can you. Tell your superior officer you have my permission.”
Werner snapped a smart salute and raced back to the barracks. He told the surprised regimental officer how well his meeting with the general had gone, and soon was on a bus headed to the airfield.
Typical of the army’s hurry-up-and-wait policy, Werner’s regiment spent the next several days in a giant hangar at Royal Air Force Station Saltby in Leicestershire, ninety miles north of London. Four U.S. troop carrier squadrons had flown in from Sicily, and their C-47 Skytrain transports, which would soon be taking them over France, were parked outside on the tarmac. Hundreds of folding cots had been set up in the hangar for the paratroopers, who played cards and dice with new invasion currency they valued like Monopoly money. A military band played every afternoon and a movie was shown each evening.
Werner read much of the time, a favorite being his slim, well-read volume of Kipling’s Barrack-Room Ballads, especially “Gunga Din” and the other army poems about the Boer War. He wrote letters to his Gross Breesen friends, several of whom were also in the service, and to Curt Bondy in Virginia. He would have liked to update his parents, but he had been out of contact with them since his mother’s letter two years ago telling of his father’s imprisonment in Berlin. All the letters he had written since had gone unanswered. He did not know if his mother and brothers were still in Nazi-occupied Holland or if they had been taken elsewhere.
Werner kept himself busy cleaning and oiling his weapons, over and over again. He had been issued an M1 carbine, which was favored by many paratroopers because it was lightweight and easy to carry, but the tradeoff was that it didn’t have much stopping power in a firefight. He had bought from a British officer a German Luger pistol, which U.S. soldiers weren’t authorized to carry, but Werner decided to take it with him for D-Day, thinking it might come in handy.
On the morning of June 4, they again went on alert, and rumor had it that D-Day would be the next morning. They packed their extra gear in duffel bags that would be delivered to them after the invasion. That afternoon, they learned their destination: the Cotentin Peninsula in Normandy. The division’s paratroopers were to land between the Douve and Merderet rivers hours before the assault forces hit the beaches and capture the key town of Sainte-Mère-Église, eight miles inland.
Werner was assigned to a C-47 with a group of thirty troopers, called a “stick.” Their jumpmaster was a sergeant and veteran of many parachute jumps. When he heard Werner had not gone to jump school, he began calling him “Chicken.” He decided Werner needed some training in the hangar. He showed Werner how to push his steel helmet back on his head before he jumped so he would be able to look up to see if his twenty-eight-foot canopy had been deployed by the static line attached to the cover on the pack holding the parachute. He explained that the fifteen-foot line was designed to pull open the parachute pack, then break free and remain attached to the aircraft. If Werner’s chute hadn’t opened automatically within three seconds or if any panels had been ripped out of the silk canopy, which would dangerously increase the speed of his fall, he was to pull the handle on the smaller reserve chute, which he wore in a chest pack. The jumpmaster also showed Werner how to keep his legs slightly apart when he hit the ground so he wouldn’t break a leg. Pulling on two of the risers connecting the main parachute to his harness would reduce his midair oscillation so he could land securely on his feet. For a finale, the jumpmaster had Werner scramble atop a large wooden crate and jump as if he were leaping from a plane. He landed nimbly on the balls of his feet and in the correct position. That “jump” and those fifteen minutes were the extent of Werner’s parachute training.
The invasion set for the next day was called off due to bad weather over the English Channel. The following morning, the paratroopers awoke to clear skies and knew nothing would stop the invasion now.
In the afternoon, they sat on the ground outside the hangar, dressed in their olive-green fatigues and polished jump boots, as General Gavin addressed them. He gave them an overview of the area where they were to be dropped and their mission. The general did not sugarcoat things. They were being dropped ten miles behind enemy lines to soften up German defenses and to secure targets that included bridges, towns, and road crossings. They would be at the far western flank of the invasion beaches and were to stop any counterattacks from that direction against the seaborne forces as they waded ashore. If the sea assault failed to secure a foothold and the invasion forces withdrew to England, there would be no rescue for the paratroopers. Gavin instructed the men to not take any German prisoners initially, as under the circumstances they would be an unmanageable burden. He closed with a cheery, “Good luck and good hunting!”
Werner was alarmed by what he heard. Take no prisoners? Wasn’t that a violation of the Geneva Conventions? Turning to the Ritchie Boys seated next to him, Werner asked why the hell any of them were going if they weren’t interrogating prisoners? One of them speculated that this was only temporary, and typical for the early hours of an airborne operation, which required speed and stealth behind enemy lines. They couldn’t very well take the time to build and guard prisoner cages.
Army cooks had set up a mobile kitchen outside the hangar. At the end of the long chow lines stood the officers, a rule of General Gavin’s: officers in the 82nd Airborne always ate after their men. The night before, the cooks had served steak, what they thought was a fitting final send-off for the men. Now, because of the weather delay, they had to prepare a second final dinner on short notice. They produced a watery macaroni and cheese, which all agreed did not taste like the Last Supper. Afterward, the soldiers used the grease and ashes from the portable stoves to blacken their faces so they wouldn’t shine in the moonlight. Werner thought they all looked like something out of a costume ball.
About midnight, they moved slowly out to the parked planes, each man loaded down with fifty to seventy pounds of equipment. Werner sweated under his load. Two parachutes, one on his back and the other on his chest. A gas mask was tied to one leg, a small hoe for digging foxholes tied to the other. Clipped to his chest harness above the reserve chute were two fragmentation hand grenades. He wore a web belt from which hung a canteen of water, a bayonet, a first-aid kit, extra ammo, and a trench knife. Strapped under the chest chute was his musette bag, containing a phosphorus grenade, a compass, chewing gum, bouillon cubes, water purification tablets, Hershey bars, a shaving kit, extra underwear and socks, and his volume of Kipling.
As his stick lined up at the bottom of the ramp to their plane, Werner noticed a name painted boldly on the side of the fuselage: SON OF THE BEACH.
Above it was a cartoon drawing of Donald Duck in swim trunks.
There was a lot of chatter back and forth between buddies in other sticks as they waved, wisec
racked, and in one way or another said their good-byes to one another.
“Chicken, stop!”
Werner stepped out of the line already starting up the ramp.
“You board last,” said the jumpmaster.
“Last?” Werner couldn’t imagine the reason. “Why?”
“You’re going out the door first.”
6
NORMANDY
By the time Werner Angress boarded the plane, most of the paratroopers, wearing steel helmets and burdened like packhorses, had plopped into metal seats set in facing rows along either side of the cabin. Near the door were equipment bags containing a machine gun, a mortar, ammunition, and food rations. They were strapped together and attached to a parachute pack with a static line that would connect to a wire cable running along the cabin’s ceiling.
By then, all the razzing had ceased. With the interior of the aircraft lit by red lights so as to preserve their night vision, it was as if the men had entered another world. Their darkened faces now looked a ghostly blue.
The silence was broken by the pilot’s voice on the intercom reading a D-Day message from General Eisenhower to all Allied forces.
“You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you. The hopes and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you. In company with our brave Allies and brothers-in-arms on other fronts, you will bring about the destruction of the German war machine, the elimination of Nazi tyranny over oppressed peoples of Europe, and security for ourselves in a free world. Your task will not be an easy one. Your enemy is well trained, well equipped and battle-hardened . . . We will accept nothing less than full victory. Good luck! And let us all beseech the blessing of Almighty God upon this great and noble undertaking.”
The sound of the plane’s engines starting up soon went from backfiring and sputtering into a reassuring drone. They taxied in single file with other C-47s loaded with 82nd Airborne paratroopers to the takeoff runway. When it was their turn, the heavily laden aircraft rolled down the runway, rattling and shaking as it gained speed until it lifted off the ground, clawing for altitude.
This was Werner’s first time flying, and it struck him that he was about to experience several others. First parachute jump. First night jump. First combat jump. At the moment, he wasn’t thinking about what he might face in Normandy, although it occurred to him that as the first man out of the plane he would be a choice target for any Germans waiting on the ground to shoot U.S. paratroopers floating down under their parachute canopies. He hoped he didn’t freeze up when it was time to jump, that his chute would open, and that he’d land in one piece.
They flew circles over the blacked-out English countryside as the aerial armada formed up. Werner saw other planes joining them, their red and green wingtip lights sparkling against the night sky. When they straightened out, they proceeded in formation over the Channel toward the French coast. To avoid overflying the Normandy invasion fleet of hundreds of ships and chance being shot at by jittery ship gunners, the planes circled wide over the German-occupied Channel Islands, thirty miles off the coast of France. They flew at low altitude to evade enemy antiaircraft guns set to shoot at high-flying bombers and passed over the islands without a shot being fired. Within thirty minutes they reached the French coast and climbed to the jump altitude of one thousand feet.
“Stand up and hook up!” roared the jumpmaster.
The men rose and formed a single line facing rearward. They all snapped the ring-end of their static line into the overhead cable.
“Equipment check!”
Everyone checked the static line of the man in front of him to be sure it was securely attached to the cable and not looped under an arm or fouled in a strap or webbing, which could prevent the parachute from opening properly.
They came under enemy fire as they crossed the Cotentin Peninsula.
Looking out the wide-open exit door, Werner saw rising in the sky countless orange tracer rounds from antiaircraft fire, which helped gunners on the ground adjust their aim. At first, the fireworks display looked almost beautiful. Then the plane next to them took a direct hit and burst into flames. Horrified, Werner watched as it cartwheeled out of sight without a single parachute emerging.
Suddenly everyone on Werner’s plane heard a sickening thud and felt a lurch, which were their first indications that their own plane had been hit. Werner saw the red light next to the exit door go out. The pilot was supposed to illuminate an adjacent green one when they were over the jump zone, but the strike had caused an electrical failure in the cabin.
The jumpmaster cursed. With the lights not working, he would have to go up to the cockpit to get the jump order from the pilot, and he began squeezing past the men in the aisle to make his way there.
The plane twisted and turned as the pilot tried to evade the anti-aircraft fire that pockmarked the sky with fiery, red explosions, and the men swayed with the wild gyrations, struggling to stay upright.
“Whaddaya expect?” said the guy next to Werner. “SNAFU as usual.”
When the jumpmaster came back from the cockpit, he yelled for Werner to help him push the equipment bags out the door, and as soon as that was done, he turned to Werner again and yelled, “Here we go! Jump, Chicken!”
Werner pushed the metal ring along the cable that connected his parachute to the static line above him as he moved to the doorway, then stepped out without a moment’s hesitation.
The time was 2:15 A.M. The date was June 6, 1944.
Werner had been told to count aloud “one-thousand-one, one-thousand-two, one-thousand-three,” then to look up to see if his main parachute had opened. If it hadn’t, he was to yank the handle on his chest pack to manually deploy the reserve. He got as far as one-thousand-two when he felt the painful jerk of the harness against his groin and shoulders. Looking up, he was relieved to see all the silk panels intact. Spinning round and round, he pulled the risers to reduce the oscillation. There was no sensation of falling, only floating.
The moon was bright but ducking in and out of clouds. He wondered why he didn’t see any other canopies in the sky. Neither were there lights on the ground nor any indication of people shooting at him. It was so quiet he even heard a horse neighing in a pasture below.
He saw he was going to land in an orchard. As the ground rushed toward him, he yanked on the risers and altered his direction enough to miss hitting a tree. But even so his parachute got caught high in the branches, abruptly halting his descent a foot short of the ground. He unhooked himself and dropped down the rest of the way.
He quickly checked his surroundings and didn’t see anyone nearby. He looked at his compass and set off to the east, the direction they had been told to go to reach their planned assembly point. All around him were apple trees, separated every hundred yards or so by rows of tall, thick hedges rather than fences.
Werner arrived at a set of railroad tracks and cautiously crawled over them. A nearby highway ran parallel to the tracks, and as he hid in some bushes, he watched the light traffic, mostly motorcycles, pass by. He could tell from the shape of the drivers’ helmets that they were German soldiers. He had known he’d be facing enemy troops in Normandy, but he never thought he would be alone when he did, and it now seemed unreal.
Werner waited for a break in the traffic, then crossed the road and took a narrow path into a forest. After walking for ten minutes, he came to a moonlit clearing. As soon as he entered it he saw on the other side, about thirty yards away, the silhouettes of three German soldiers standing in a dugout with a mounted machine gun pointed into the center of the clearing.
Werner kept moving very quietly, hoping to pass without being seen, but one of the Germans yelled out for him to identify himself.
“Unteroffizier auf Patrouille!” Werner answered.
As soon as the words left his mouth, Werner knew he had made a mistake. Although he had spoken perfect German with his slight Berl
in accent, he had claimed to be a corporal on patrol duty. But he knew from one of his Camp Ritchie courses that Wehrmacht corporals didn’t generally go on patrol alone. One of the enemy soldiers ordered Werner to come closer.
His M1 was slung over his shoulder, and by the time he swung it around, they would have plenty of time to cut him down. In any case, his carbine peashooter was no match for a machine gun. It was too late for him to turn back, so Werner strolled into the clearing in front of the pillbox, unhooked a grenade, pulled out the safety ring, heaved it in their direction, and, without breaking stride, turned and ran like hell, which wasn’t at all fast because of all the equipment he was lugging.
In sports, throwing had never been his strong suit. As he ran, he heard the surprised Germans yelling just before the explosion. Werner looked back, and that was another mistake. The grenade had bounced along the ground and exploded in front of the pillbox. And one German had already climbed out of the dugout and was aiming a pistol at him.
Certain he was about to be shot in the back, Werner leapt into the brush at the edge of the clearing, desperate to disappear in the foliage.
At the single crack of the German’s gun, a bullet struck Werner’s helmet with a reverberating clang. He dove to the ground with his carbine at the ready and waited. Panting heavily and his heart pounding in his ears, he lay perfectly still. He heard more yelling and cursing; he could make out that one of the machine gunners had been wounded by the blast. To Werner’s surprise, no one came after him, and he crawled away deeper into the woods. After he put a distance of perhaps a quarter mile between him and the Germans, he decided against further thrashing about in the dark, and settled in to await sunrise.
Sons and Soldiers Page 17