Behind Hitler's Lines (11 page)

Something was stronger than even tension as the clock ticked down on D Night. Currahees felt beyond ready to do what training had exhaustively prepared them for. For eight months they'd been at it in England, a year before that in the States. They had reached the peak, with no further to go be-
fore falling on the Wehrmacht, the most feared and infamous force in the world. The whole world would be watching.

The 101st had no combat experience, but that didn't preclude a cocky attitude. They'd be rushing in, but that didn't make them fools. Youth and testosterone were big parts of it, but the biggest part of all was the unwavering will to fight to the death for your buddy, the death of either or both of you because you knew he felt the same way. That feeling was the strongest, but unspoken.

The overarching motivation was that Overlord must not fail. If it did, everything had to start over, with thousands fewer buddies. The Wehrmacht too had its ultimate motivation— that if they couldn't repel the invasion, they didn't have a chance of stopping the Red Army that had pulsed out from Stalingrad like schools of piranha attacking a bleeding crocodile. If the Russians weren't stopped, that meant the end of Germany's version of civilization. That was evident enough even at Joe's level, though in one briefing he learned that some of the static troops the Blues might fight were Russians who had thrown in with the Germans.

D NIGHT COUNTDOWN RESUMED
fretfully after Channel storms caused the false start. Like a temporary reprieve before execution, the weather delay deflated much of the bravado and some of the emotional high. Eisenhower's army had hurried up only to start waiting again. The face painting, the Mohawk haircuts, the whole metaphor of war dance subsided for its inability to sustain energy.

Two Screaming Eagles, David Webster of the 506th and Tom Buff of division headquarters, noted the waning hours contrastingly. Webster mulled how the June sun didn't go down until 9:00
P.M.,
how he could sit watching the soft hills of England darken and wonder about the time of day in the States. Gripped by solitude, he gazed south down a valley winding to the sea. That's where the Germans were, over the southern horizon. What are they thinking? he mused. Of their own homes, their chances of ever returning to them?

“When will it get dark?” Webster wrote. “What chance
does a paratrooper have then? Stay light, stay on forever— and we'll never have to go to Normandy.”

Buff noted an entirely different attitude among his buddies who would
not
be jumping into Normandy:

President Roosevelt was also composing a prayer, his for a radio message to America on D Day: “Almighty God— Our sons, pride of our nation, this day have set upon a mighty endeavor.”

After those words resounded, the nation came to a halt. The stock exchange, courtrooms, school classes, professional baseball games, traffic in every city and activity elsewhere froze to mark the moment as America collectively prayed as never before—nor since, till September 2001. Church bells began to toll, perhaps in contemplation of the many American lives that had already ended in Normandy before Roosevelt announced the invasion's site.

As it so rarely has in all of history, on D Day oratory matched the occasion. To his corps and division commanders of three nationalities, Montgomery had restated the mighty endeavor with verse from the marquis of Montrose:

Colonel Sink's message to the 506th was read inside C-47s:

Tonight is the night of nights.

Tomorrow, throughout the whole of our homeland and the Allied world, bells will ring out the tidings that you have arrived, that the invasion for liberation has begun….

The confidence of your high commanders goes with you. Fears of the Germans are about to become a reality…. Imbued with faith in the Tightness of our cause and the power of our might, let us annihilate the enemy wherever found.

May God be with each of you fine soldiers. By your actions let us justify His faith in us.

With such words in their ears, Currahees were pawing to “put it to the touch.” The feeling was that their chutes couldn't get to the ground fast enough so they could start working over the Wehrmacht. That feeling intensified as Joe watched the first wave of transports slowly climb into an aerial armada.

Here was the big roll of the main game, even though it had been Japan that had shoved the United States into World War II. Joe could see that priority right in front of him, behind and all around. He saw I Company on the tip of an immeasurable, irresistible spear. It was hurled from the heart and arsenal of democracy—Rosie the riveter, war-bond drives, around-the-clock shifts throughout Michigan—the entire wholehearted American effort at its zenith, circling to poise over the dark and choppy English Channel. Minutes before him, thousands like Joe were already flying off to their rendezvous with destiny.
Rendezvous with Destiny
became the name of the 101st's march and the title of its book recording the Screaming Eagles' wartime history. The rendezvous began with troopers strapped onto bucket seats in a surreal state
of mind where more was to be won than could be lost with their lives.
^*

That was how Joe, Jack, and Orv felt, representing the bachelors. Family men had more on the line. Their bedrock sentiments were expressed, if at all, during some earlier time of contemplation, like those of Phil Wallace, Joe's buddy in a sister regiment:

SUNDAY, MARCH ICJTH, 1944, NEW YORK CITY

My Dearest Jo,

You are now reading my last letter from NYC. All letters after this will be censored, so—if there is anything to be said I must say it now.

You already know that my heart and thoughts remain with you there in New England. No matter what happens to me overseas, believe that your Phil has given all because of deep love for his wife and baby. To die for you both would be an honor, far surpassing the Jap's honor to die for his emperor.

But to live would be an even greater achievement—and to this end I shall strive. Jo, you never need fear for my safety for it is far better to believe that God takes care of these things. What happens will happen, beyond our understanding. That's the way it goes and will.

If it is written in the Book of Fate that I shall return to you then we will forget our worries, our sorrows, our heartaches, and forever enjoy that God-given day when your Phil comes home to spend the rest of our lives in happiness. This war will make me appreciate that so much.

So your husband must leave you and Baby Sue for now. He has a job to do, a job that is not to his liking but he must do it to the best of his ability. You will see him again, even if not in this life. No power can keep us apart.

I am not alone in my travels. Millions of American soldiers are crossing the waters this spring. May most of us return, God willing.

AT THE DEPARTURE AIRFIELD A RADIO WAS PLAYING THE
MOONLIGHT
Sonata. Oh, brother, Duber muttered, is that telling 'em we're coming by moonlight? There had been other music, live music by bands playing favorite marches, as Third Battalion assembled. This seemed a breach of security, a tip-off that something special was in the air or soon would be, but instead it reinforced Duber's hunch that such obvious activity must be to provoke German reactions for study. So he began taking bets that this run-up would be another dry run rather than the end of a weather delay as had been announced (the rain hadn't been too bad around Exeter where they'd marshaled).

Wagers like that revealed some amazing sangfroid among the paratroopers. Even when they blackened their faces with charcoal some did Al Jolson imitations. Banter between sticks continued up to the C-47s' ladders. English villagers had also been deceived into nonchalance. They'd just waved and given thumbs-up to each truck convoy as they had during the many, so many rehearsals.

Consequently a good number of Blues were feeling deja vu when they reached the airfield but had second thoughts when they saw all the VIPs there. That's when Joe became convinced this was it; others were still smokin' and jokin', which seemed to cheer up the VIPs but also puzzle them. Don't these troopers know what they're going into? Didn't we
make the training serious enough? The Currahees took then-cue from Sink, who didn't seem at all worried.

Before wrestling into his chute Joe ran over to the next ship for an encouraging handshake with Bray and Vanderpool. However, they had already loaded, so he just waved at portholes, hoping they'd see him. Their jumpmaster, Lieutenant Johnston, was the last to climb aboard. “Good luck, sir!” Joe yelled. Johnston nodded and confidently returned his salute.

Like all the others, Captain McKnight's stick was so heavily loaded that they had to be boosted up one by one into the narrow fuselage. Now even jokers were quiet. Several men popped airsickness pills as soon as the propellers turned over, were snoring by the time they reached altitude, and remembered nothing of the ninety-minute flight to their rendezvous with destiny.
^*
Every trooper was in some degree of sleep deprivation because of the twenty-four-hour weather delay. They jumped at around 1:00
A.M.
on June 6 but, except for catnaps, hadn't slept since the night of the fourth.

The moon was a fluorescent lamp, illuminating a sky jammed with planes, many of them pulling gliders. Joe had seen pictures from the Pacific war showing ships spread from horizon to horizon. The heavens over the Channel were filled the same way but in three dimensions and more tightly.
Awesome
didn't nearly describe it, even though Joe's porthole was no more than a peephole. Inside, the only light was from pulsing cigarettes. Joe's mind was in four places—the past, present, future, and a little of the beyond. He tried to take the best from them all.

Not much from the present; that was all watching and waiting as the armada turned south. The past was about his parents and people who he wished could be watching him now. The future was not far away, a product of his training that required a leg-locked exit, tight body position, and counting to four. If the main chute didn't open then, pull the rip cord of the reserve. It wasn't much to remember but it was everything that mattered during those first four seconds, then would come a bent-leg landing, sorting his gear, finding McKnight, and moving out to the company objective.

With everything at stake, such unique concentration was unforced but set off a riptide of thoughts in all directions. More than anything else, the mind, even the most highly disciplined mind, needed distraction from an overload of concentration. As chewing gum for their thoughts, men hummed or silently whistled vacuous tunes of the times like “I Want a Zoot Suit with a Drape Shape.”

Joe indulged in such mind occupation but kept his thoughts close to what he knew he could do, not what luck could do to him; at the same time he realized that the future was no promise, only potential to continue. The priorities of the immediate future had to be taken in sequence, or the sequence would end.

Beyond was what would happen if the sequence did end. How he'd be killed didn't matter much. He imagined two doors. If he couldn't get through either one, it didn't seem he would suffer—he would instead be whisked away to a new reality.

CROUCHED AT THE HEAD
of the stick was McKnight, the jump-master, who checked off landmarks and bellowed them back so that if the plane got hit, his stick would know where they'd be bailing out.

“The English coast's behind us, men … here come the Channel Islands … whoops, they're shooting at us.”

There was a German division stationed on Guernsey and Jersey. The aerial armada skirted them with enough distance so that antiaircraft guns were ineffectual, though it seemed sure that their fire would alert batteries on the Norman coast. That didn't happen—there was only a dribble of tracers from Cotentin—perhaps because the coastal batteries were fooled into thinking that the initial wave of the armada was just another of the big bombing raids that had become so common they flew over unopposed.