At 0115 hours on June 6th, 1944, Lieutenant General Wilhelm pressed his driver to go faster. The roads were dark. The engine of his staff car groaned as it raced through the Norman countryside toward his headquarters at Chatau de Bernavville. Above him, the sky was filled with a sound he had never heard before.

 Thousands of aircraft engines all at once drowning out everything else. Fi had been in Rens 125 mi away playing a war game that simulated exactly this scenario, an Allied invasion. Now that invasion was actually happening, and he was racing to command his division against an enemy that was already behind him. He would never make it.

 What did not know was that 13,000 American paratroopers were already scattered across the Centin Peninsula. Some had landed in flooded marshes. Some had crashed through farmhouse roofs. Some had dropped directly onto German positions and died before their boots touched French soil, but many more were gathering in the darkness, cutting telephone wires, ambushing convoys, and seizing bridges that would determine whether the greatest invasion in history would succeed or fail.

 In the next 17 hours, the scattered chaos of those paratroopers would transform into one of the most decisive operations of the Second World War. And it would begin with a German general who never saw the ambush waiting at his own headquarters. The decision to launch the largest airborne assault in history did not come easily.

 For months, Allied planners had debated whether the paratroopers could accomplish their mission or whether they would be slaughtered before dawn. Air Chief Marshall Trafford Lelay Mallalerie, commander of the Allied Expeditionary Air Force, had opposed the American airborne drops from the beginning. He believed the Germans had positioned too many anti-aircraft batteries along the flight routes.

 He predicted casualties of 70% or higher for the transport aircraft and their passengers. In his estimation, the paratroopers would be scattered, isolated, and destroyed before they could organize any meaningful resistance. Lay Mallerie took his concerns directly to General Dwight Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied Commander.

 On May 29th, 1944, just 8 days before the scheduled invasion, he formally recommended cancelling the American airborne operation entirely. He called it a futile slaughter. Eisenhower listened carefully. He understood the risks better than anyone, but he also understood that without the paratroopers, the Utah Beach landings would face unacceptable dangers.

 The causeways leading inland were natural choke points. German defenders could concentrate their fire on these narrow passages and slaughter the landing troops before they could break out. The paratroopers were the only force capable of securing those causeways before the Germans could react. In the end, Eisenhower overruled lay malerie.

 The airborne assault would proceed as planned, but the decision weighed heavily on him. On the night of June 5th, he visited the paratroopers of the 101st Airborne at Greenham Common Airfield. He walked among the young soldiers as they prepared for their jump, shaking hands, asking where they were from, and wishing them luck.

Photographs from that evening show Eisenhower surrounded by men with blackened faces and Mohawk haircuts. Soldiers who knew they might not survive the night. After the visit, Eisenhower returned to his headquarters and wrote a brief statement to be released in case the invasion failed. It read in part, “If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt, it is mine alone.

” He tucked the note into his pocket and waited for news from Normandy. The problem facing Allied planners in early 1944 was not whether they could land troops on the beaches of Normandy. The problem was whether those troops could survive long enough to establish a foothold. The German defenses along the Atlantic wall were formidable.

 concrete bunkers, machine gun nests, artillery batteries zeroed in on every approach. The beaches themselves were killing grounds designed to trap landing craft in crossfire and slaughter infantry before they could reach cover. But the beaches were only the first obstacle. Behind them lay the Norman countryside, a maze of hedgeros, sunken roads, and flooded lands.

 German reserves stationed inland could counterattack within hours of any landing. If those reserves reached the beaches before the allies consolidated their positions, the invasion could be thrown back into the English Channel. Field Marshal Owen Raml understood this perfectly. He had spent months strengthening the Atlantic wall, planting millions of mines, installing beach obstacles, and positioning his forces for an immediate counterattack.

RML believed the invasion would be decided in the first 24 hours. If the Germans could contain the allies on the beaches and bring up their armor quickly, they could push the invaders back into the sea. If they failed to react fast enough, the Allies wouldestablish a bridge head that could never be dislodged.

 RML had personally supervised the construction of obstacles to prevent airborne landings. Fields suitable for glider operations were studied with wooden stakes, some topped with mines or artillery shells set to explode on impact. The Germans called these obstacles RML’s sparle, RML’s asparagus. Entire meadows were transformed into deadly forests of sharpened poles designed to impale gliders and kill their occupants before they could exit.

 The flooding of the lands was another Raml innovation. By opening slle gates and blocking drainage channels, the Germans had turned vast stretches of the Cotentin Peninsula into impassible marshes. The water was often only waste deep, but the soft mud beneath could trap and drown a man weighed down by parachute equipment. The flooded areas also made it impossible to determine safe landing zones from aerial photographs.

 Fields that looked solid from the air were actually underwater. Despite these preparations, RML was not confident. He knew the Atlantic wall was far from complete. Construction materials were scarce. Labor was diverted to other projects. Many of the concrete bunkers existed only on paper. The troops manning the defenses were often second rate, including older soldiers, men with health problems, and conscripts from occupied countries who had little loyalty to Germany.

 The elite units, the Panza divisions, and the SS formations were held in reserve far from the coast, where they could not intervene quickly if the allies achieved surprise. RML had argued repeatedly that the armor should be moved closer to the beaches. He wanted the Panza divisions positioned where they could counterattack within hours of any landing, but his superior field marshal Geron Runstead disagreed.

 Runstead believed the armor should be held back and committed only when the main Allied thrust was identified. The two field marshals had feuded over the issue for months, and the compromised solution satisfied neither of them. The armor was positioned too far back to respond quickly, but too far forward to be concentrated for a decisive counterattack.

 The Allied solution to this problem was audacious. Before a single soldier set foot on the beaches, they would drop thousands of paratroopers behind the Atlantic wall. These airborne forces would seize key bridges, block roads, destroy communications, and prevent German reserves from reaching the landing zones.

 The paratroopers would be outnumbered, outgunned, and surrounded by enemy territory. But if they could hold their objectives for just a few hours, they would give the beach landing forces the time they needed to break through. The American airborne assault would be the largest in history. The 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions, over 13,000 paratroopers, would drop onto the Cotentin Peninsula in the early hours of June 6th.

 Their objectives were spread across 39 square kilometers of Norman farmland. They would need to capture the town of Santair Egliss, secure four causeways leading inland from Utah Beach, seize bridges over the Murderet and Duva rivers, and destroy German positions that could threaten the landing forces. The causeways were perhaps the most critical objective.

 The Germans had flooded much of the land behind Utah Beach, transforming the landscape into an impassible swamp. Only four narrow causeways crossed the flooded terrain, connecting the beach to the dry ground inland. If the Germans held those causeways, they could trap the landing forces on the beach and destroy them at leisure.

 If the Americans secured the causeways before the beach landings, the fourth infantry division could push inland quickly and link up with the airborne forces. The 101st Airborne Division, the Screaming Eagles, was assigned to capture the causeways and hold them until relieved. Their commanding officer was Major General Maxwell Taylor, a tall, scholarly looking man who had served as the 82nd Airborne’s artillery commander during the Sicily campaign.

 Taylor was 42 years old, experienced, but still vigorous, and he had insisted on jumping with his men despite his rank. He believed that a general who asked his soldiers to jump into combat should be willing to jump with them. Taylor’s division would drop on three drop zones designated A, C, and D east of the flooded areas.

 From there, they would move west to secure the causeways before the Germans could react. It was a complex mission requiring precise timing and coordination, exactly the things that airborne operations rarely achieved. Every paratrooper knew the risks. They would be jumping into darkness, into enemy territory with no armor support and limited ammunition.

Many would land miles from their objectives. Some would land directly on German units. Others would drown in flooded fields or become tangled in trees. The expected casualty rate was over 50%. But they were the only force capable of doing what needed to be done.The training for Operation Overlord had been relentless.

 Since arriving in England in late 1943, the paratroopers of the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions had practiced night jumps, close quarters combat, and small unit tactics until every man could execute his role blindfolded. They studied sand tables showing their drop zones, memorized recognition signals, and learned to identify landmarks they would never see in daylight.

 Brigadier General James Gavin, the assistant division commander of the 82nd Airborne, was 37 years old and one of the most experienced airborne officers in the American military. He had commanded the 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment during the invasion of Sicily and the landings at Saleno. He knew what could go wrong during a night combat jump.

 Aircraft could be scattered by anti-aircraft fire. Paratroopers could land miles from their objectives. units could be separated and destroyed peacemeal before they could organize. Gavin had designed the Normandy operation to account for these risks. Instead of concentrating his forces on a few drop zones, he spread them across a wider area.

 If the drops were scattered, as they almost certainly would be, small groups of paratroopers could still accomplish local objectives. The key was initiative. Every man had to know the overall mission well enough to contribute, even if he never found his unit. The pathfinders would go in first. These specially trained teams would jump 30 minutes ahead of the main force, locate the drop zones and set up electronic beacons called Eureka transponders.

 Aircraft in the main formation were equipped with Rebecca receivers that could home in on the Eureka signals and guide the pilots to the correct drop zones. The Pathfinders would also set up Krypton lights, visible only from above, to mark the boundaries of each landing area. On the evening of June 5th, 1944, the Pathfinders gathered at airfields across southern England.

 Captain Frank Lillyman of the 101st Airborne led the team that would mark drop zone A near Sanja de Varaveville. He was 29 years old, a veteran of the Sicily jump and one of the first Americans to volunteer for airborne duty. At 2215 hours, Lilyman and his team boarded their C47 transport aircraft. They would be the first American soldiers to set foot in Nazi occupied France on D-Day.

 The Pathfinders carried over 50 lbs of specialized equipment in addition to their standard combat load. Each team had multiple Eureka transponders as backups since a single equipment failure could doom an entire drop zone. They carried Krypton lights which emitted infrared beams visible only through special goggles worn by the pilots.

 They carried smoke grenades, signal panels, and handheld lights for emergency marking. And they carried enough ammunition to defend their positions until the main force arrived. The flight across the English Channel was smooth. The pilots flew at low altitude just 150 m above the water to avoid German radar. As the aircraft crossed the French coast, the pathfinders could see the dark outline of the Cotentin Peninsula beneath them. Then the clouds closed in.

The weather over Normandy was worse than expected. A thick cloud bank obscured the ground and the pilots had to climb to avoid it. When they descended again, they were off course. German anti-aircraft batteries opened fire and the pilots took evasive action that scattered the formations further. Of the 18 aircraft carrying Pathfinders to the American drop zones, only one managed to deliver its team to the correct location.

 Lilyman and his pathfinders landed nearly 2 kilometers north of their assigned drop zone. They had minutes to set up their beacons before the main force arrived. Working in darkness under threat of German patrols, they assembled their Eureka transponder and activated it. The signal went out into the night sky, a radio pulse that would guide hundreds of aircraft to this patch of Norman farmland.

 But for most of the other Pathfinder teams, things went wrong. Some landed in flooded marshes and lost their equipment. Others landed on German positions and were immediately engaged in firefights. One team was dropped over the English Channel and never reached France. Of the six drop zones designated for American paratroopers, only drop zone O assigned to the 55th Parachute Infantry Regiment had its beacons fully operational when the main force arrived.

 At 2330 hours on June 5th, the main airborne assault began. Over 1,000 C47 aircraft took off from airfields across England, carrying more than 13,000 paratroopers into the night. The aircraft flew in tight formations, their navigation lights extinguished, their engines roaring as they climbed to cruising altitude. Inside each plane, 18 to 20 paratroopers sat in two rows facing each other.

 Their parachutes and equipment, adding over 40 kg to each man’s weight. The paratroopers were equipped for combat in ways that no soldiers had been before.Each man carried a main parachute on his back and a reserve shoot on his chest. Over that he wore a harness loaded with equipment, ammunition pouches, grenades, a knife strapped to his boot, a first aid kit, emergency rations, a gas mask that most men would discard as soon as they landed.

 Some carried additional gear like demolitions for blowing bridges or radios for calling in support. The total weight often exceeded 100 lb. The uniform itself was distinctive. The M42 jump jacket had large cargo pockets on the chest and thighs. The jump trousers had reinforced knees for landing impacts. The boots were specially designed with thick soles and ankle support to absorb the shock of hitting the ground at 15 mph.

 Every man wore a steel helmet with a chin cup that strapped tight to prevent the helmet from flying off during the drop. The weapons varied by assignment. Riflemen carried the M1 Garand, an eight- round semi-automatic that was the finest infantry rifle of its era. Squad leaders often carried the Thompson submachine gun, devastating in close quarters.

 Some men had Browning automatic rifles, heavy but capable of suppressive fire, and every man carried a 45 caliber pistol as a backup because in the chaos of a night drop, you never knew what weapon you might need. The mood was tense. Many of the paratroopers had painted their faces with war paint or shaved their heads into mohawk cuts, a tradition borrowed from Native American warriors.

 They joked nervously, checked their equipment for the hundth time, and tried not to think about what was waiting for them on the ground. Some men wrote letters home that they would never mail. Others prayed silently in the darkness. As the aircraft crossed the French coast, the cloud bank that had troubled the pathfinders engulfed the main formations.

 Pilots who had trained for months to fly precise patterns found themselves blind in a wall of gray vapor. Some climbed above the clouds, others descended below them. The tight formations that had left England dissolved into chaos. Then the anti-aircraft fire started. German flack batteries along the coast opened up on the aircraft with tracer rounds and exploding shells.

 The sky lit up with orange and red bursts. Pilots threw their aircraft into evasive maneuvers, banking hard, climbing, diving, anything to escape the murderous fire. The formations scattered further. Aircraft that had been flying wing tip to wing tip now found themselves alone in the darkness. Their pilots unsure of their position, their navigators struggling to identify landmarks below.

 Inside the aircraft, the paratroopers felt the planes shudder and lurch. Some men were thrown from their seats. Others gripped the static lines that would open their parachutes and waited for the green light that would signal them to jump. The pilots, desperate to escape the flack, began turning on their green lights early.

 Some paratroopers jumped while still over the English Channel. Others jumped miles from their intended drop zones. The carefully planned assault was degenerating into chaos before the first American boot touched French soil. Brigadier General Gavin jumped with the 58th Parachute Infantry Regiment at approximately 0151 hours. His aircraft had been scattered by the clouds and flack, and he landed several kilometers from his intended drop zone.

When he hit the ground, he found himself alone in a flooded field, waist deep in cold water. With no idea where he was, Gavin waded out of the marsh and began searching for other paratroopers. He found a small group from mixed units, men who had landed as scattered as he had.

 Together, they oriented themselves by the stars and began moving toward their objectives. Gavin would eventually gather over 300 men from various regiments and lead them toward the crucial bridge at Lafayette, one of only two crossing points over the flooded Murder River. The scattered drops created nightmare conditions for the paratroopers.

 Men who had trained together for months now found themselves surrounded by strangers. Some landed in the middle of German encampments and were killed before they could cut themselves free from their parachutes. Others drowned in the flooded lands, dragged under by the weight of their equipment. The Germans had deliberately flooded large areas of the Cotton Peninsula to prevent exactly this kind of airborne assault, and the water claimed dozens of American lives.

 But the scattered drops also created chaos for the Germans. The paratroopers of the 101st Airborne had been issued small brass clickers, devices that made a distinctive click clack sound when squeezed. In the darkness of the Norman countryside, where every shadow could be an enemy, the clickers provided a simple recognition signal.

 One click demanded a response of two clicks. If the response was correct, the approaching figure was friendly. If not, the paratrooper opened fire. The 82nd Airborne had declined to use the crickets, relying instead on theverbal challenge flash, with the proper response being thunder. Throughout the night, the clicking sounds echoed across the Centin Peninsula as isolated soldiers found each other in the darkness.

 Small groups formed, dissolved, and reformed as men moved toward their objectives or simply tried to survive until dawn. Some groups grew to platoon strength. Others remained just two or three men fighting their own private war against the German occupation. Sergeant Elmo Jones of the 82nd Airborne landed alone in a field near Santa Margles.

 He was one of the pathfinders dropped ahead of the main force to mark the drop zones. When his boots hit French soil, he looked around at the dark, empty countryside and said to himself, “Damn, I just cracked the Atlantic wall.” Jones was not wrong. He was among the first American soldiers to set foot in Nazi occupied France on D-Day.

 Within hours, thousands more would follow, and the Atlantic wall that Hitler had spent years building would begin to crumble. Lieutenant General Wilhelm Fal had left his headquarters at Chateau de Bernavville on the afternoon of June 5th to attend the war game in Rens. The exercise had been organized by General Friedrich Dolman, commander of the German 7th Army, to test German responses to an Allied invasion.

 The scenario they practiced was almost exactly what was now happening, an Allied airborne assault followed by amphibious landings. The irony was bitter. Fi commanded the 91st Luftland Infantry Division, a unit specifically trained to counter airborne operations. His division was positioned in the center of the Cotentin Peninsula, directly in the path of the American drops.

 When reports began coming in of parachutes in the night sky, Fall knew immediately that this was no drill. He ordered his driver to turn around and race back to his headquarters. But the roads of Normandy were no longer safe. American paratroopers were scattered across the countryside and small groups of them had set up ambushes at key intersections.

 Fley’s staff car raced through the darkness, passing burning buildings and distant gunfire. Above them, the roar of aircraft engines continued without pause. At approximately 0400 hours, Fi’s car approached the rear entrance of his headquarters at Chatau de Bernavville. He did not know that American paratroopers had already reached the area.

 A group of about a dozen men from the 58th Parachute Infantry Regiment, led by First Lieutenant Malcolm Bron, had set up an ambush near the chatau. They were lost, far from their intended drop zone, and had been searching for their objectives when they heard the approaching vehicle. Brandon called out for the car to stop.

 The driver did not comply. The paratroopers opened fire. The staff car, riddled with bullets, crashed into a wall. Lieutenant General Wilhelm Fi was killed instantly. His aid, Major Yo-kim Bartat, died with him. Fi became the first German general to die in the Normandy invasion. Killed not on a battlefield, but on the road to his own headquarters by soldiers who did not even know who he was.

 The death of Fley threw the 91st Division into confusion at the worst possible moment. With their commander dead and their communications cut by other groups of paratroopers, the German units in the area could not coordinate an effective response. They knew the Americans were somewhere in the darkness, but they did not know where, how many, or what their objectives were.

This confusion was exactly what the scattered drops had created. German commanders across the Cotentin Peninsula were receiving reports of parachute landings from dozens of different locations. Some reports placed the Americans north of Santa Glee. Others placed them south of Carenton. Still others reported landings near the beaches themselves.

 The German picture of the American assault was fragmented and contradictory. Making matters worse, the Allies had deliberately added to the confusion. Operation Titanic, a deception operation conducted by the Special Air Service and the Royal Air Force, had dropped approximately 500 dummy paratroopers at locations far from the actual drop zones.

 These dummies, nicknamed Roberts, were 3-ft tall figures made of Hessen cloth and stuffed with straw or sand. Each dummy was equipped with small explosive charges that simulated rifle fire when it landed, and some were accompanied by real SAS soldiers who played recordings of battle sounds and shouted commands. The British had named the dummies Roberts after the slang term British soldiers used for inexperienced officers. The irony was intentional.

These useless cloth figures would prove more valuable than many of their human counterparts in sewing confusion among the German defenders. Operation Titanic was divided into four separate missions. Titanic 1 dropped 200 dummies and two SAS teams near the base of the Cotentin Peninsula, simulating a division-sized airborne assault.

 Titanic 2 was planned for east of the Dives River, but wascancelled at the last moment due to air traffic congestion. Titanic 3 dropped 50 dummies southwest of Kahn. Titanic 4 dropped 200 more dummies near Maragnney, accompanied by additional SAS teams. The SAS soldiers who accompanied the dummies had one of the most dangerous assignments of the entire invasion.

 They jumped into enemy territory with orders to create as much noise and confusion as possible, then escaped back to Allied lines. They set up gramophones, playing recordings of gunfire and shouting soldiers. They fired their weapons at random intervals to simulate a larger force. And crucially, they were ordered to allow some German soldiers to escape so that reports of the fake landings would reach German headquarters.

 The six-man team of Titanic 4, led by Captain Frederick Fowls and Lieutenant Norman P landed at 10 minutes past midnight on June 6th. They were the very first soldiers of any nation to land in France on D-Day, arriving 10 minutes before Major John Howard’s glider force seized Pegasus Bridge. For the next 40 days, the SAS men would hide behind German lines, aided by the French resistance, before finally reaching Allied positions.

 Of the SAS soldiers involved in Operation Titanic, eight failed to return. They were either killed in action or executed after capture. Two of the short Sterling aircraft carrying the dummies were shot down, killing their crews. The human cost of the deception was real, but the deception worked.

 The Roberts fooled the Germans completely. Reports of parachute landings poured in from areas where no Americans had landed at all. The German 9115th Grenadier Regiment, part of the reserve force that should have reinforced the beaches, was diverted to investigate a phantom landing south of their position. The 12th SS Panza Division, one of the most formidable armored units in the area, sent elements to chase the dummy paratroopers instead of moving toward the real threat.

 By dawn on June 6th, the German high command still did not have a clear picture of what was happening. They knew the Americans had landed somewhere in the Centin Peninsula. They knew there had been casualties and confusion, but they did not know the scope of the assault, the location of the main objectives, or how to concentrate their forces for a counterattack.

 And they did not know that the most critical German commander was not at his headquarters to lead them. Field marshal Irwin RML, the man responsible for the defense of the Atlantic Wall, was in Germany celebrating his wife Lucy’s 50th birthday. RML had left his headquarters at Lar Roon on June 5th, confident that the weather was too poor for an Allied invasion.

German meteorologists had predicted continued storms over the English Channel, and RML believed he had time for a brief visit home. He had even purchased a pair of gray suede shoes in Paris as a birthday gift for his wife. When the invasion began, RML was in Stuttgart, hundreds of kilometers from the front.

 He did not learn of the airborne landings until after 1000 hours on June 6th when his chief of staff, Major General Hans Spidel, reached him by telephone. By then, the American paratroopers had been on the ground for nearly 9 hours, and the beach landings had already begun. RML rushed back to Normandy, but he arrived too late to influence the critical first hours of the battle.

 The man who had insisted that the invasion must be defeated on the beaches was not there when the moment came. The German response was delayed, confused and uncoordinated, exactly as the Allied planners had hoped. While the Germans struggled to understand what was happening, the American paratroopers were fighting for their lives.

 In Santa Margles, a small town on the main road from Sherburgg to car. The 5005th parachute infantry regiment dropped directly into a firestorm. A house in the town center had caught fire earlier that evening, and the flames illuminated the sky as the paratroopers descended. German soldiers stationed in the town saw the Americans floating down and opened fire.

The fire had started in the home of Madame Pomeier around 2300 hours on June 5th. The town’s people, under German supervision, had formed a bucket brigade to fight the flames. They were still working when the first paratroopers appeared in the sky. For the Germans, it was like shooting targets at a carnival.

The Americans were silhouetted against the flames, their parachutes glowing orange in the fire light. There was no cover, no concealment, nowhere to hide. Some paratroopers landed in the town square and were killed before they could cut themselves free from their harnesses. Others landed on rooftops, in trees, in gardens.

 One man landed directly in the fire and burned to death. The Germans shot them as they came down. As they hit the ground, as they struggled with their equipment, it was a massacre. Private John Steel of F Company landed on the church steeple in the center of the town square.

 His parachute caught on thespire, and he hung there, wounded and helpless. While the battle raged below him, a piece of shrapnel from a German anti-aircraft shell had torn through his foot during the descent. He could do nothing but hang there and watch his comrades die. Steel played dead for over 2 hours. He hung motionless against the stone facade of the church, listening to the gunfire below, watching the flames from the burning building cast shadows across the square.

 German soldiers looked up at him but assumed he was dead. Eventually around 0400 hours, a German soldier named Rudolph May climbed the church tower and cut Steel down. He was taken prisoner, but he would later escape and rejoin American lines. Steel’s image hanging from the church would become one of the most famous of the entire invasion.

 In 1962, the movie The Longest Day recreated the scene with actor Red Buttons playing steel. Today, a mannequin dressed in paratrooper gear hangs from the church steeple. A permanent memorial to the man who survived the longest night of his life, suspended above a battlefield. Despite the chaos, Lieutenant Colonel Edward Krauss of the third battalion managed to gather enough men to assault the town.

By 0430 hours, barely 3 hours after the first drops, the American flag was flying over Santia Eglles. It was the first town in France to be liberated on D-Day. But holding the town would prove harder than taking it. German forces counterattacked throughout the day, and the paratroopers fought desperate defensive battles in the streets and hedgeros.

 Lieutenant Colonel Benjamin Vandervort, whose ankle had been broken during the jump, refused evacuation and commanded his battalion from a commandeered cart, directing the defense of the northern approaches to the town. One of the most critical defensive actions was fought by Lieutenant Turner Turnbull and a small group of paratroopers at New Vilo Plane, a crossroads about 2 km north of Saint Mayor Egles.

 Vandervort sent Turnbull and approximately 42 men to establish a roadblock and prevent German reinforcements from reaching the town. Turnbull set up his position at first light and waited. He did not have to wait long. German forces from the 958th Grenadier Regiment, supported by artillery and armor, launched repeated attacks against his position throughout the morning.

 The Americans had no anti-tank weapons capable of stopping the German armor. They had limited ammunition. They had no reinforcements. For over 4 hours, Turnbull and his men held the line. They repulsed attack after attack, using every weapon they had, fighting from ditches and hedge rows, falling back when necessary and counterattacking when possible.

 By early afternoon, most of Turnbull’s men were dead or wounded. That evening, Turnbull led his surviving 16 men back to Santameir Eglles. He was killed the following morning, June 7th, leading a counterattack against a German advance. The sacrifice at Noville or plane bought precious time for the defenders of St. Margle.

 Without Turnbull’s roadblock, German reinforcements would have reached the town hours earlier before the American defenses were properly organized. The 42 men who held that crossroads changed the course of the battle. Further west, the battle for the bridges over the Murderet River was even more desperate. The Germans had flooded the lands around the river, turning the narrow causeways into the only possible routes.

 Whoever controlled the bridges at Lafier and Chef Dupont controlled access to the entire area. Brigadier General Gavin led his mixed force of over 300 paratroopers toward Lafayette. They arrived to find that elements of the 505th regiment had already seized the bridge, but German counterattacks were pushing them back. Two captured French tanks, Renault R35s now in German service, rumbled down the causeway toward the American positions.

 The paratroopers had limited anti-tank weapons. Bazooka teams moved into position and waited for the tanks to close the range. When the lead tank reached the bridge, they fired. The first tank exploded. The second tank continued forward and the paratroopers destroyed it as well. But a third tank appeared, and this time the Americans had no more rockets.

 Major Frederick Kellum, commander of the first battalion, and his deputy, Captain Dale Royden, saw the threat. They grabbed anti-tank ammunition from fallen soldiers, crossed the bridge under fire and ran toward the line of contact to resupply the defenders. Both men were killed before they could reach the front.

 The third tank was eventually destroyed by other paratroopers, but the cost had been high. The battle for Lafier would continue for four more days. German forces counteratt attacked repeatedly and the causeway became a killing ground for both sides. On June 9th, the Americans launched a desperate assault to break the German grip on the western end of the causeway.

 The 325th Glider Infantry Regiment, which had arrived by glider the previous day, wasgiven the mission. The plan was simple but brutal. The glidermen would charge across the 500 meter causeway in a frontal assault directly into German machine gun fire. The assault began at 1000 hours preceded by a 15-minute artillery barrage.

 Then the men of the third battalion stepped onto the causeway and began walking toward the German positions. They could not run because the road was too narrow and too cluttered with debris. They could only walk into the teeth of the German fire, watching their comrades fall around them. The Germans had positioned machine guns to sweep the causeway from multiple angles.

 Mortar rounds exploded among the advancing Americans. Men fell and were trampled by those behind them. The causeway became jammed with the dead and dying. At one point, a Sherman tank supporting the assault was hit by a mine and blocked the road, forcing the infantry to squeeze past the burning vehicle while under fire. General Matthew Rididgeway, commander of the 82nd Airborne Division, was seen on the causeway during the height of the fighting, personally removing a cable from the disabled tank to clear the road. His assistant division commander,

General Gavin, joined him. The sight of the division’s two highest ranking officers in the middle of the killing zone, inspired the men to push forward despite their losses. By noon, the Americans had broken through. The German defenders fled and the causeway was finally secure. But the cost had been staggering.

 The 325th Glider Infantry Regiment suffered over 200 casualties in the single morning assault. The fields around Lafayette were covered with American dead. When the fighting finally ended on June 9th, the Americans held the bridge, but the surrounding fields were carpeted with dead. military historian SLA. Marshall would later describe the battle for Lafayette as probably the bloodiest small unit struggle in the experience of American arms.

 By the end of June 6th, the American airborne divisions had accomplished most of their critical objectives despite the scattered drops and heavy casualties. St. Mirles was in American hands. Three of the four causeways leading from Utah Beach had been secured. The bridges over the Murderet and Duvet rivers were either captured or destroyed.

 German communications throughout the Cotentin Peninsula had been disrupted. The cost had been enormous. Over 2400 American paratroopers were killed, wounded, or missing on D-Day alone. Many units had suffered over 50% casualties. Some companies had been virtually wiped out. The 101st Airborne Division would report that only one in six of its soldiers reached their planned rally points.

 But the paratroopers had done what they were sent to do. They had prevented the German reserves from reaching the beaches during the critical first hours. They had created confusion and chaos behind the Atlantic wall. They had tied down thousands of German troops who should have been counterattacking the landing forces at Utah Beach where the fourth infantry division came ashore at 0630 hours.

 The German defenses were in disarray. The causeways that should have been choke points for the advancing Americans were already in friendly hands. The German units that should have been rushing to reinforce the coast were scattered across the peninsula, chasing paratroopers, investigating phantom landings, and trying to coordinate a response without their commanders.

 The troops landing on Utah Beach suffered fewer than 200 casualties, the lightest of any of the five invasion beaches. They pushed inland quickly, linked up with the airborne forces, and began the advance toward Sherborg. The contrast with Omaha Beach, where over 2,000 Americans died in the bloodiest fighting of the day, was stark.

 The difference was the paratroopers. The German commanders who survived D-Day struggled to explain what had happened. The official reports blamed the weather, the scattered response, and the death of key officers. But the fundamental problem was simpler. The Germans had been surprised, not just by the timing of the invasion, but by the audacity of the airborne assault.

 They had expected the Allies to land on the beaches and push inland in a conventional advance. They had not expected 13,000 paratroopers to drop behind their lines in the middle of the night, seize their bridges, cut their communications, and kill their generals before the sun rose. The Atlantic Wall had been designed to stop an invasion from the sea.

 It had no answer for an invasion that came from the sky. Major Friedrich Vanderhade commanded the German Sixth Parachute Regiment, one of the most elite units in the Cotentin Peninsula. His men were themselves trained paratroopers, and he understood airborne operations better than most German officers. When he learned of the American drops, he tried to organize a coordinated response, but the confusion was too great.

 His regiment fought scattered engagements across the peninsula throughout June6th, never able to concentrate its strength against a single American objective. Vonda would later write that the American airborne assault succeeded not because of its precision, but because of its audacity. The scattered drops, which seemed like a failure at the time, actually made the American force appear larger and more widespread than it was.

 German commanders could not determine where the main effort was because there was no single main effort. Every small group of paratroopers was fighting its own battle, creating chaos that no defensive plan could address. The allies had turned their greatest weakness into their greatest strength. Field Marshal Raml arrived back at his headquarters late on June 6th.

 By then, the beaches were secure. The paratroopers had linked up with the landing forces and the opportunity to throw the invasion back into the sea had passed. RML spent the following weeks trying to contain the Allied bridge head, but the momentum had shifted. The Germans were now on the defensive and they would remain on the defensive until the end of the war.

 RML himself would not survive the campaign. On July 17th, his staff car was strafed by Allied fighter aircraft near Soy de Montgomery. He was severely wounded and evacuated to Germany. 3 months later, implicated in the July 20th plot to assassinate Hitler, he was given a choice between suicide and a show trial. He chose suicide, he was buried with full military honors, and the German public was told he had died of his wounds.

 The paratroopers who survived D-Day continued fighting across France and into Germany. The 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions would make more combat jumps during Operation Market Garden in the Netherlands and Operation Varsity in Germany. Many of the men who jumped into Normandy would not live to see the end of the war.

 The 82nd Airborne remained in Normandy for 33 days, fighting without relief until early July. By the time they were withdrawn, they had suffered over 5,000 casualties, more than half their original strength. The 101st suffered similar losses. Some companies that had jumped with over 150 men on June 6th had fewer than 20 left by the time they returned to England.

 But their sacrifice had made the liberation of Europe possible. Maxwell Taylor, commander of the 101st Airborne, jumped with his men on D-Day and survived the campaign. He would later become Army Chief of Staff and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson. He remained an advocate for airborne forces throughout his career, always insisting that properly trained paratroopers could accomplish missions that conventional infantry could not attempt.

 Matthew Rididgeway, commander of the 82nd Airborne, also survived the war. He went on to command the 18th Airborne Corps, then the eighth army in Korea, where he reversed the course of the war after Chinese intervention. He later served as Supreme Allied Commander in Europe and Army Chief of Staff. He was known throughout his career for leading from the front, a habit he had developed during the desperate fighting in Normandy.

 Lieutenant Malcolm Bron, the young officer who had killed General Fall in the darkness outside Chateau de Bernavville, survived the war. He returned to the United States and lived until 1999, dying at the age of 88. He rarely spoke about the night he killed a German general. When asked, he simply said he had done what any soldier would do.

 The shadow where Fi died still stands. The wall where his staff car crashed has been repaired. A small memorial marks the spot where the first German general of the invasion fell to a group of lost paratroopers who did not even know who he was. Santare Egliss has never forgotten its liberators. The church where John Steel hung from the steeple now has a stained glass window depicting the Virgin Mary surrounded by American paratroopers.

 A dummy paratrooper hangs from the church to this day. A reminder of the night when the sky filled with silk and the liberation of France began. The airborne museum in St. Mia Eglles houses artifacts from the invasion, including original equipment, photographs, and personal effects of the men who jumped into the darkness on June 6th, 1944.

Visitors come from around the world to walk the streets where the first battle was fought and to pay their respects to the men who gave everything. Every year on June 6th, the town holds a ceremony to honor the paratroopers. Veterans, many now in their late 90s, return to stand on the same ground where they landed as young men.

 The crowd falls silent as the names of the fallen are read. The American flag still flies over the town hall, just as it did on that first morning of liberation. General James Gavin went on to become one of the most respected military leaders of his generation. He commanded the 82nd Airborne Division through the rest of the war, making combat jumps in the Netherlands and Germany.

 After the war, he served as the United Statesambassador to France and became a prominent critic of the Vietnam War. He died in 1990 at the age of 82 and was buried at West Point Cemetery, the military academy he had attended and that he called his Spartan mother. A memorial plaque at Lafayette marks the foxhole where he commanded during the desperate fighting for the causeway.

 The bridge at Lafayette still crosses the Murder River. A statue called Iron Mike, depicting a paratrooper in combat gear, stands nearby as a memorial to the men who fought there. The causeway, where so many died, is quiet now, lined with hedge and fields that show no trace of the violence that occurred there eight decades ago.

 The lessons of the D-Day airborne assault shaped military doctrine for generations, the importance of surprise, the value of decentralized operations, the necessity of initiative at every level. These principles were written in blood on the fields of Normandy. Every airborne operation since has built on the foundation laid by the men who jumped into the darkness on June 6th, 1944.

 The 82nd Airborne Division remains one of the most elite units in the United States Army. Their headquarters at Fort Liberty, formerly Fort Bragg, includes a drop zone named Santere Eglles in honor of the town their predecessors liberated. New generations of paratroopers train on that ground, learning the skills that their grandfathers and great-grandfathers used to breach the Atlantic Wall.

 The 1001st Airborne Division, the Screaming Eagles, also continues to serve. Their legacy includes not only Normandy, but also the defense of Baston during the Battle of the Bulge, operations in Vietnam, and deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. The division’s motto, rendevu with destiny, was coined before D-Day. But it was in Normandy that the words took on their full meaning.

 What happened on June 6th, 1944 was more than a military operation. It was a demonstration of what ordinary men can accomplish when they are willing to jump into the unknown. 13,000 young Americans, most of them in their late teens or early 20s, stepped out of aircraft doors into the darkness over enemy territory.

 They had no guarantee of survival, no certainty of success, only the knowledge that their mission mattered. Many of them never came home. Their bodies lie in the American cemetery at Collville Sumere overlooking Omaha Beach or in smaller cemeteries scattered across Normandy. Their graves are marked with white crosses and stars of David.

 Row upon row of young men who gave their lives so that others might be free. The German general who raced through the night to command his division never arrived. The paratroopers who ambushed him did not know his name or his rank. They were lost, far from their objectives, doing the only thing they could do. Fight wherever they found the enemy.

 That is how the invasion was won. Not through perfect planning or flawless execution, but through the determination of young men who refused to give up even when everything went wrong. If you found this story as compelling as we did, please take a moment to like this video. It helps us share more forgotten stories from the Second World War.

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