D-Day. The Battle for Normandy

nearby farmhouses and stone walls. The gliders had been loaded with Jeeps, anti-tank guns, and other weapons too large to drop by parachute. The cargo was strapped down and secured to plywood floors. Pilots and glider troops alike had only canvas and light wood to protect them.
    In a moment, the field was complete chaos, with gliders ploughing in all directions. Equipment broke away and catapulted through the front of the plane when it hit the ground, often crushing the pilots. Bodies and bundles were scattered the length of the field. Some of the glider troopers were impaled by the splintering wood of the fragile machines. ‘We immediately tried to aid the injured,’ wrote one of the paratroopers who had prepared the landing zone, ‘but knew we would first have to decide who could be helped and who could not. A makeshift aid station was set up and we began the grim process of separating the living from the dead. I saw one man with his legs and buttocks sticking out of the canvas fuselage of a glider. I tried to pull him out. He would not budge. When I looked inside the wreckage, I could see his upper torso had been crushed by a jeep.’
    British gliders, which were larger, carried the field guns of the 320th Glider Field Artillery Battalion. They were even more dangerous than the Waco gliders. On a hard landing the front wheel structure would smash up through the plywood floor, causing considerable injury. A lot of the crashes were caused by confusion and too many planes coming in at the same time. A number were shot down by ground fire from nearby German positions. ‘The troop-carrying gliders came like a swarm of ravens,’ wrote the Obergefreiter from the 91st Luftlande-Division, ‘and then the war really got started.’ Among the casualties was Brigadier General Pratt, the assistant divisional commander of the 101st Airborne. He too was killed by a Jeep smashing through the front of the aircraft when it came to an abrupt halt on hitting a tree. Within twenty minutes, enough glider troops had landed to allow them to start caring for their own injured. Medics were working frantically, administering morphine, sulfa pills and whatever bandages they had.
    A number of the gliders missed the landing zone altogether. One came down on a landmine and blew up. Some came in on the flooded areas, which at least softened the landing. Pilots had to remember to take off their heavy flak jackets before cutting their way out through the side panels. The water could be deep in places.
    Glider infantrymen were extremely vulnerable at this moment if within range of German positions. ‘Upon landing,’ wrote one pilot, ‘we discovered the source of the ground fire which nearly got me. It turned out to be a bunker containing about a dozen conscripted Polish soldiers with one German in charge. After the glider infantrymen from several gliders, including ours, directed a hail of rifle-fire at the bunker, the resistance ceased. There was silence in the bunker, and then a single shot. Then there were shouts and laughter, and these Poles emerged with their hands held high. They weren’t about to fight the Americans so they simply shot the Kraut sergeant.’
    Reactions among the French civilian population could also be unpredictable. While many made omelettes or crêpes for the paratroopers and offered them swigs of Calvados, others were frightened that this operation might just be a raid, and that the Germans would return afterwards to take revenge. But such fears did not stop farmers’ wives from rushing out into the fields and grabbing as many parachutes as possible for their silk. Not surprisingly, the rather stolid Norman farmers, who seldom travelled far from their own villages, were confused by this extraordinary intrusion. A trooper in the 101st recounted that when they stopped to talk to three Frenchmen, one of the farmers said to his companion, pointing to the blackened face of a paratrooper, ‘You’ve now seen an American negro.’
    Despite the intensely vicious skirmishes, the fighting had hardly started. As dawn approached, the paratroopers knew that the Germans would launch counter-attacks in strength. Their prime concern was the possible failure of the main invasion. If the 4th Infantry Division did not secure Utah beach and break through across the causeways to join them, then they would be abandoned to their fate.
     
    After seeing the 101st Airborne take off from Greenham Common, General Eisenhower had returned