June 6: A Brutal Day
January 2024
“We marched down… to the airport in the dark of the night. Standing along the country roads were hundreds and hundreds of British people cheering us on and wishing us well. – How they knew I’ll never know.”
PFC Rick Hoffman’s journal
On the night of June 5, 1944, the men were on the move and heading towards the airfield. For Rick, the time had finally arrived, and his readiness and training helped him manage his fears. He was on his way. Ike was there to see the men off. The general, burdened by his weighty decision, was surely not going to sleep well this night. Being with his paratroopers seemed to cheer him a bit, and in turn, his presence was an encouragement to them. He wrote later of his time there, “I stayed with them until the last of them were in the air, somewhere about midnight. After a two-hour trip back to my own camp, I had only a short time to wait until the first news should come in." (Crusade in Europe, Dwight D. Eisenhower)
Lieutenant Colonel Robert Wolverton was the commanding officer of 3rd Battalion. He too, wanted to share some words with his young warriors before they enplaned. He bore direct responsibility for my father, and the officers and men under his command. So, he called them over to gather with him in an English orchard.
"Men, I am not a religious man and I don't know your feelings in this matter, but I am going to ask you to pray with me for the success of the mission before us. And while we pray, let us get on our knees and not look down but up with faces raised to the sky so that we can see God and ask his blessing in what we are about to do…” (Eisenhower Foundation website under “Ike’s Soldiers”)
3rd Battalion’s after-action report states that “Enplaning took place 5 June at 2230. First planes taxied at 2310 and took off at 2320…at the time the Battalion combat group comprised 630 men and 50 officers.” It was time to move out.
Upon landing, my father’s orders were to assemble with his assigned team, and then carry out a commando-style raid on a German barracks and kill every enemy soldier he could. His drop was from such a low altitude that there was no time to think. It was just jump, watch the chute open, and hit the water. Despite the challenge of a “wet” landing in a flooded field, he managed to survive. He wrote that he “landed 200 yards from a German command post. I could hear them talking when I landed.” He expected to rendezvous with his team and set out on the assigned mission. No joy. He was lost. He quietly pushed away from the enemy’s position, reporting that he “tried to walk away but I had to be so careful because the water made noises.” Unlike some poor souls who were illuminated as they descended and were killed, Rick was covered by darkness. He “was able to get about 500 yards away from the Command Post” before he stopped to re-group.
For many, the landings were even worse. One paratrooper, a pathfinder, arrived early to help guide his countrymen to the right landing zone. He watched helplessly while enemy soldiers, aided by the illumination of a barn fire, killed his brothers as they floated to earth. “I’ll never forget the sadness in my heart as I watched my fellow troopers descend into this death trap.” (D-Day, Stephen Ambrose)
Some soldiers were dropped from such high altitudes that they were exposed for too long to enemy fire. Others, like my father, reported very low altitude drops. Donald Burgett, a paratrooper from Dad’s regiment and the author of “Currahee” chimed in: “From the time I left the door till the chute opened, less than three seconds had elapsed. I pulled the risers apart to check the canopy and saw tracers passing through it; at the same moment I hit the ground and came in backward so hard that I was momentarily stunned.”
Burgett continues, “Then I saw vague, shadowy figures of troopers plunging downward. Their chutes were pulling out of the pack trays and just starting to unfurl when they hit the ground. Seventeen men hit the ground before their chutes had time to open. They made a sound like large ripe pumpkins being thrown down to burst against the ground.”
While my father scrambled to find his way, men from his Battalion and Company were scattered across the land and even the sea. One plane crossed the peninsula twice trying to find a place to drop its human payload. While banking out over the English Channel it took serious damage from enemy fire. The last sighting of the aircraft reported that it was in flames and crashing into the sea. My father’s friend, Sgt. Bev Manlove, and thirteen other men he knew from India company, died when that plane went down over the channel. In a French orchard near St. Come-du-Mont, my father’s Battalion Commander, Robert Wolverton, was killed by German machine gun fire as he hung tangled in an apple tree. He was found days later hanging still from that same tree, mutilated and bloated. (Tonight We Die as Men, Ian Gardner and Roger Day)
For Colonel Wolverton and Sgt. Manlove, the war was over. For my father and General Eisenhower, it was just beginning. The first day was brutal. Getting home was going to be hard.