A D-Day eyewitness returns to Normandy
It’s hard to believe, but 70 years ago, on a dreary June morning, I watched a glider troop regiment slowly file out of their barracks onto the airstrip at Ramsbury, England, loaded with the paraphernalia of war. They entered their assigned gliders for a final trip into the hell that was to become their home for the next month, fighting in the fields of Normandy.
I was there in 1944, and returned to Normandy last month as one of the veterans attending the D-Day commemoration ceremonies there.
During the war, I was a cryptographer for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), predecessor of the CIA. My job was to make up the secret verification codes for the radio operators in C-47 transport planes. The codes consisted of five digits, changing hourly.
If an anti-aircraft battery on the ground challenged an aircraft overhead and the response was wrong by even one digit, there were no questions asked. They opened fire. This, unfortunately, happened earlier in the war when a squadron of our C-47s was shot down by the British over the Mediterranean Sea.
That June morning in 1944, among the troops I watched boarding a glider was Cpl. Eugene Levine, a weather observer who was assigned to two gliders — one for his jeep, the other for a high frequency transmitter. He carried his miniaturized weather instruments with him. Both gliders were towed by one C-47 (known as a double tow).
Levine was supposed to provide a communications link in Normandy, and send weather reports back. He chose to fly in the glider with the transmitter, which was fortunate for him, as the glider carrying his jeep was shot down.
Also, the main 32-man signal unit of the 82nd Airborne Unit, being transported in a British Horsa glider (a much larger craft), was wiped out, leaving Levine’s transmitter the only means of the unit’s communication with Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Forces in London for the first two days of combat.
Back to Normandy
Seventy years later, I and other veterans were winging our way to Paris on an Air France 777, courtesy of the French government, to a memorable D-Day reunion, joined by heads of state.
Among us is Dan Pinck, an unsung OSS hero, who spent a year behind Japanese lines in China, spying and supplying vital intelligence. Our select group also included survivors of the air war, as well as Navy assault craft crewmen and infantry.
The day after arriving, we were corralled into taxis bound for the Hotel de Lassay, the office of Claude Bartolone, president of the French National Assembly (equivalent to America’s Speaker of the House).
We were escorted up a dozen red carpeted stairs to pose for press photographers. A group of young French students suddenly appeared, and we urged them to pose with us, making for a fine, symbolic portrait of the old and new generations.
Bartolone presented each of us with an Assembly silver medallion to commemorate the occasion and, I presume, say “thank you” for our services.
At the reception that followed, we mingled with French parliamentarians and several members of the U.S. Congress, including Nancy Pelosi, minority leader of the House, and Howard “Buck” McKeon, chairman of the House Armed Service Committee, among others.
At the D-Day commemoration on June 6 at Colleville-sur-Mer Cemetery, President Obama made a dramatic entrance in a French helicopter, landing in a field just inside the cemetery. He lauded the efforts that we had made. “You men,” he said, “waged war so that we might know peace. You sacrificed so that we might be free.”
French President Hollande countered with “N’oublions jamais (let us never forget). When France was occupied, America was there to liberate it.”
To re-enforce this, a spectacular flyby of French Mirages passed over the site, emitting trails of red, white and blue smoke.
After the remarks, Pinck, who sat up front in the stands, traded remarks with President Obama. Meanwhile, I, sitting in the rear, met up with one of my former buddies, glider pilot Tom Kilker, Jr., of the 437th Troop Carrier Group.
He had safely landed his glider on D-Day in an open field near St. Mere Eglise, delivering the jeep of the commanding general of the 82nd, Matthew Ridgeway, with its driver, who suffered a dislocated jaw.
Kilker then dodged enemy mortar fire, taking some shrapnel in the leg (for which he received a Purple Heart) and linked up with paratroopers who presented him with 210 captured Germans. He and his co-pilot escorted them down to the beach, and got them on a landing ship tank going back to England, for their incarceration as prisoners of war.
Reliving the battle
While the presidential remarks were a highlight, the real D-Day celebration to my mind occurred later in the day, at Sword Beach, one of the five beaches targeted on D-Day.
The importance of this beach during the invasion must be remembered. A coup de main, or surprise attack, was initiated there the day before D-Day.
Elements of the Second Oxfordshire Light Infantry, commanded by the irrepressible Major John Howard — who had trained in England with these men for one full year on the technique of riding in British Horsa gliders — landed in pitch darkness. They overpowered the Germans guarding the Orne (later re-named Pegasus) and Caen Canal Bridges, and held off elements of a Nazi panzer armored tank division, driving down from Caen.
They kept them at bay until reinforced by British paratroopers, who were able to repel several counter attacks decisively. The action was consummated when infantry units from Sword Beach came up to re-enforce them.
Had the Germans been able to break through and get to the beach, they could have rolled up the entire British- and Canadian-controlled beachhead, and possibly gone on to throw the Americans back into the sea, changing the course of the war in favor of the Germans.
Hence the emphasis on this important ceremony. Queen Elizabeth and Prince Charles, along with Obama and Hollande, quietly watched the somber pageantry, which included a moving interpretive dance and pantomime performance evoking the living and dying young soldiers, with the sound effects of cannon, flashes of fire and finally a flyover.
Today, one cannot escape the sadness that prevails in the smallest hamlets of Normandy and Brittany, with the ever-present reminders of commemorative metal plaques that adorn the walls of buildings. Some simply state the loss of a local freedom fighter, with phrases such as “Ici Est Mort” or “Martyr de la Liberation” or “A la Memoire du Gardien de la Paix.” It is a grim reminder to future generations, one that somehow will never be erased.
And finally, there was a wonderful tribute to these “soldats anciennes,” old soldiers, for their resiliency — those who, after 70 years, now in their 90s, were able to survive the rigors of these events without any collapses or complaints. That might account for their longevity.
Vive les Veterans! Long life to them!
Paul Roberts lives in Silver Spring, Md. and is writing a biography of Frank Farrell, a Marine Corps captain and OSS investigator in China during World War II. Roberts also writes for the OSS Society Journal.