She watched the Shakari Valley shrink beneath them, a jagged, hostile scar on the earth.

3 days later, Amber sat in a stark, brightly lit debriefing room at Bagram Airfield.

She wore crisp, clean utilities.

The cut on her cheek was sealed with surgical glue.

Across the metal table sat Major John Caldwell, the JSOC intelligence officer who had recruited her.

He was reading through a thick file, occasionally nodding to himself.

The surgical strike on Tariq Al-Sharmi was flawless, Lieutenant Caldwell said, closing the folder.

The extraction of the platoon was a success.

Jenkins and Hayes are both recovering at Landtool.

Command is exceptionally pleased.

It wasn’t just a surgical strike, Major Amber said, her blue eyes piercing him.

You used a marine rifle squad as tethered goats to draw Tariq out.

You knew the jammer would isolate them.

You knew they would be slaughtered without intervention.

Caldwell didn’t flinch.

I knew Tar’s tactics.

I knew he couldn’t resist a vulnerable medical target.

And I knew you were there to prevent that slaughter.

The Phantom Protocol was a theoretical concept, Lieutenant Reed.

a highly specialized operator embedded as non-combatant medical personnel to counter high value asymmetric threats.

You proved the concept works.

I am a nurse, major, Amber said, her voice dangerously quiet.

I took an oath to do no harm.

And you took an oath to defend the Constitution against all enemies, Caldwell countered gently.

You saved 20 marines in that valley, Amber.

You did it by taking life, yes, but you preserved it.

That is the burden of the dual vocation you chose.

Amber stood up.

She picked up her cover, adjusting it perfectly.

“Where are they sending me next?” she asked.

Caldwell allowed a small, grim smile to touch his lips.

“There’s a forward operating base in the Helmond Province.

They’ve been taking heavy sniper fire.

They are in desperate need of a good corman.

I’ll pack my medical bag, Amber said.

And the heavy case.

She turned and walked out of the room.

Lieutenant Amber Reed walked onto the sunbaked tarmac.

The heavy olive drab pelican case clutched securely in her hand.

The roar of the waiting C13 O transport plane drowned out the noise of the base around her.

To the untrained eye, she was just another field nurse, a symbol of mercy, heading into the meat grinder of modern warfare.

But beneath the red cross on her shoulder beat the heart of an apex predator, she existed in the gray violent space between preserving life and ending it.

A silent guardian angel armed with a scalpel in one hand and a suppressed rifle in the other.

They thought she was just a combat medic, a soft target meant to be exploited.

But the enemy had learned the hardest lesson the battlefield could teach.

Sometimes the hands most capable of healing are the ones most terrifyingly qualified to

 

 

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June 5, 1944, 9:30 p.

m.

13,348 men from two American

paratroop divisions, the 82nd and the 101st Airborne were about to climb into

nearly 1,000 engines, that would drop them on Normandy.

Until then, no one dared to launch

an airborne operation of this scale.

These paratroopers would make

up the first wave of the American landing.

Their mission, secure the right flank

of the ground attack, open the roads so that
the foot soldiers could quickly penetrate inland, maintain the intersections, bridges
and roads in the area at all costs, annihilate enemy defenses and face the probable

German counterattacks.

The Allied General Staff

expected huge losses.

Some forecasts predict that 75%

of paratroopers will fall in combat and they were not far off.

The operation was on the verge

of being a dismal fiasco.

However, on the evening of 6 June, the paratroopers of the 82nd

and 101st Airborne had completed most of the missions

that were given to them.

Despite the bad weather, the dropping

errors, the ravages of the cannons German anti-aircraft, crashes
and drownings in the tides, they succeeded in opening the way

for the troops that landed on Utah Beach.

Who were these men most of which were jumping

into operation for the first time? How did they achieve
this insane feat? Why did the Germans fail
to stop their attack? Journalist and historian, I wanted
to know the exact contribution of American paratroopers

landing in Normandy.

I went through time.

I collected testimonies.

– The guy was hiding there

and when he saw us he said: “I didn’t think I would make

it through.

” I collected clues.

– It’s the hubcap

on General Falley’s car.

Living history enthusiasts

have recreated for me the fighting conditions.

To understand, I followed the active

parades in the field of the second foreign parachute

regiment of Calvi.

These large-scale parachute actions remain for us a bit the myth and the

supreme grail that we want to reproduce.

Beyond myths and legends,

I tried to decipher this rather poorly known phase of the Allied landings in Normandy.

It is there, between bocage and tide,

that American paratroopers wrote one of the most beautiful pages

in the history of airborne troops.

Despite all the dangers and

in conditions that are often appalling, these soldiers played an essential role

in the success of the D-Day landings.

They will forever be

the angels of victory.

June 6, 1944, at Omaha Beach.

At 6:35am, the first wave of American

assault would land here.

One of the five goals of operation

Neptune, the institution’s code name of a bridgehead on

the coast of Normandy.

The British and the Canadians

would dock on three beaches to the east of the device.

Code names, Gold, Juno, and Sword.

The Americans would launch an assault

on the two most western beaches, Utah and Omaha.

In Omaha, it would be hell.

90% of the men in the first wave

would be killed or injured.

Those of the following waves

would be stuck on the beach, caught under German fire, whose defenses would not have

been damaged by the bombings.

The situation of the disembarked

troops was so catastrophic that the Allied High Command would
consider having them re-embarked, taking the risk of causing

the entire operation to fail.

At the end of the day, the toll

would be overwhelming.

Of the 35,000 men disembarked,

nearly 5,000 would have been killed, injured or missing.

Omaha will be nicknamed

Bloody Omaha, Omaha the bloody one, becoming one of the major symbols of the American landing

on the shores of France.

Legend has it that

the operations on Utah, the other beach
in the American sector, went so well that they would

have saved the landings.

General Bradley, commanding

the First American Army, will even dare to talk about

a health walk in Utah.

Régis Giard is one of the French

specialists in the Battle of Normandy.

He has been roaming the field and

excavating archives for over 20 years.

– Hi Regis.

– Hello Serge.

– We’re on Omaha, here, and on June 6, 1944,

the landing went very, very badly.

The first wave is being chopped

on the beach.

It went better on Utah Beach,

how can we explain it? – Maybe just by thinking that
the first wave on Utah Beach, didn’t take place at 6:30

in the morning like here in Omaha, but rather at night, inland, or even in the tides.

– Are the parachutists

in this first wave? – Exactly, yes.

Even though the beach areas

between Omaha and Utah are different, the defense is different,
the terrain is different, we didn’t have the same

type of defense.

It’s not the same terrain, but

the fundamental, essential difference between Utah and Omaha, it’s because

in Utah, we have an airborne component of 13,500 paratroopers.

It means that if we consider this vertical envelope,

in military terms, this force from the sky, like the first wave of assaults
finally on Utah Beach, We get about the same

result as in Omaha.

The losses are comparable.

– But why didn’t we send paratroopers

behind Omaha? – It’s mainly a question

of resources.

The front Plan Neptune was

an 80 km coastal sector and you can’t put paratroopers

on 80 km.

Not enough paratroopers already.

And planes to transport them.

The paratroopers have been sent

to very strategic points.

We have parachute drops

at both ends of the bridgehead, where it is most fragile,

the most vulnerable to counterattacks.

So in the English sector, it will be

the 6th Airborne that will blow up in north of Caen.

And in the American sector,

it’s the 82nd and 101st divisions, behind Utah Beach.

-13,500 paras, that’s still

a lot of paratroopers.

How many planes were there? That’s 800 planes for paratroopers,

dropping during the night of 5 to 6 June.

After that, it’s a hundred planes

in the morning and about 200 more planes in the evening to tow and bring

the principles to the reinforcement, in men and equipment.

– So that means there’s

a parachute operation and then, an airborne operation.

– The main operation was

the dropping of six parachute regiments.

Then, there was a wave

of reinforcements at 4 am by gliders and a wave in the evening at 9 pm,

also by gliders.

However, it took a long time before

the Allies made up their mind to parachute men a few hours

before landing on land.

And for good reason.

The previous airborne operations

in 1942 and 1943, in North Africa and Sicily, didn’t go well.

In Italy, 3,400 paratroopers

from the 82nd Airborne scattered over an area of 80 km in diameter.

The jumps were made

in broad daylight, which had made men

particularly vulnerable.

Of the 144 British gliders,

70 were lost, destroyed by the German DCA, victims of crashes or damaged at sea.

If General Eisenhower

supported the operation, some members of the Allied General

Staff were still very reticent.

If the initial assault was based

on the dropping of paratroopers, A reinforcement of 4,000 infantrymen would be airborne by glider
that could directly be grouped on the ground,

men and equipment.

These devices are of two types.

The Horsa glider, of British design, 3,800 units were manufactured

between 1942 and 1945.

Most of its cell is made

of canvas-backed plywood.

If it breaks on the ground,

the splinters are sharp and dangerous.

With a capacity of 25 equipped

men or two jeeps or a jeep and a 57 mm anti-tank gun, It is a heavy aircraft,

requiring clear landing areas.

For unloading, its fuselage

separates in two.

But the Horsa seems less suitable

than the American model for night landings in

the Normandy countryside.

The CG4 or WACO, lighter

and more maneuverable, but just as sturdy with its steel
tube structure, 14,000 units were manufactured

by 16 different companies, between 1942 and 1945.

Suitable for transporting both

infantry and artillery support units or engineers, it can carry 13 equipped

soldiers or a 75 mm howitzer or a light bulldozer.

Unlike the Horsa, the Waco is equipped

with an articulated tilting nose just behind the cockpit.

Today, as in 1944, the air transport of equipment

remains essential.

It is necessary to deliver as quickly

and in the best possible conditions.

To the men parachuted the means

necessary for the smooth running of their land operations.

A most delicate intervention.

– It’s the kind of parachuting that was

already being done in the years ’40-’44, at the time of the Normandy landings.

– Exactly.

At that time, the dropping of small

packages was often used, so burdens of 50 to 225 kg.

– And today, you can drop

a really big deal.

– There you go.

The very big one, now, we can

carry up to 8 tons, for example, a medical surgical unit, where
there will be operating theaters in a single burden, in a single pass, and

we can come and put that on the ground.

– It’s an action process that

is very delicate nonetheless.

By airdropping,

small loads, even large loads, It must be very tricky to parachute.

– Yes, it requires fairly high

technical skills.

As much for the coping

of the burden itself, especially for very large loads that have

a large volume and a lot of weight.

As much as for the parachuting

system, that is to say the choice parachutes according to wind speed,
how the aircraft flies, At what altitude, of course,

and at what pressure point we want to dump it.

– It’s all very calculated, actually.

– Exactly.

There is a team from the Army’s

technical section doing its calculations of wind and surface,

and which gives us charts.

From these charts and employment

charts, we will be able to create our conditioning, according to
the needs of the ground troops, to precisely allow them to have

their equipment at the right time and in the right place.

– In fact, you are like super postmen.

You can deliver,

you are UPS international.

– That would describe

super postmen well.

Emergency Brigade Super postmen.

So we are part of the 11th parachute

brigade, called the emergency brigade,

precisely because we are able to do stuff like that.

Released between midnight

and one in the morning, American paratroopers
will have to wait several hours before being able to

retrieve equipment and reinforcements.

However, it will be necessary

to complete as soon as possible a mission whose goals changed

several times before D-Day.

– What are the goals of the American

airborne operation in the end? – When the 7th Corps chose
to land at Utah Beach, its objective was clearly to go and take the deep-water port
of Cherbourg and to do that, he must first cut off

the Cotentin Peninsula.

– But is that the role of

the paratroopers on this peninsula? In the original plan, that’s it.

There is a postponed division,

the 82nd, that must jump between Saint-Sauveur-le-Vicomte

and the west coast of Cotentin.

And the 101st is postponed, it must jump

between Sainte-Mère and Carentan behind Utah Beach.

– Does that mean the plan

had changed? – That’s right, 15 days before,
on May 24, radio intercepts showed, aerial reconnaissance confirming
that German reinforcements positioned themselves in the areas

planned for the paratroopers to drop.

So it’s a force of 8,000 men,

it’s the 91st Luftlande division.

It was reinforced by 3,500 German

paratroopers of the Fallschirmjägerregiment 6.

So yes, the allies were forced

to change their plan.

And so on May 27, 1944, they would

publish the final plan, the plan that we know

for the Overlord assault.

And they would concentrate all the

paratroopers behind the Utah Beach area.

-In fact, they would protect beach

exits in Utah.

– Mostly, yes, and start taking

bridgeheads beyond the Merderet rivers

to initiate the cut-off.

The 82nd Airborne must take over

Sainte-Mère-Église, Baudienville and Neuville-au-Plain.

It will have to destroy the bridges

over the Douve in Étienville and Beuzeville la Bastille, Take and hold the bridges
in La Fière and Chef-du-Pont in order to establish positions

west of the Merderet River.

The 101st Airborne will have to secure

the 4 causeways leaving Utah beach, silence the heavy battery

in Saint-Martin-de-Vareville.

The 40-year-old bridges over the Douve,

to the north, will have to be destroyed.

Two bridges, at Brévands and another

at the Barquette lock, would have to be conquered.

But lo and behold, here, the terrain

is particularly unfavorable.

The bocage is made up

of tangle of hedges unfavorable to gliders landing.

The Germans mostly set up traps.

In particular, they flooded

the tides.

Erwan Patte is a technician

at the Cotentin Tide Park.

He explains to me how

the Germans managed to maintain part of the region under the waters

of high tides.

– Erwan, here we are on the La Barquette

bridge, it’s a strategic crossing point for the Allies, June 6, 1944.

It was also a strategic location

for the Germans after all.

– Yes because the management, the control

of this bridge, the understanding of this bridge

allows you to manage water in fact.

Because the Barquette bridge,

before being a crossing bridge, which was very recent, was a bridge
with floating doors that prevents seawater

from flooding the swamp since the 18th century.

– How does it work? – It works with the pressure

of the water, the sea rises, it closes the doors, the sea goes down, fresh water

reopens the doors again.

– Is it automatic?

– Yes.

The Germans will understand

that by flooding the swamp, by controlling this water, they can control 28,000 hectares
of wetlands, fill them with water, and they’re going to use
the cofferdam, elements which are intended for door

maintenance only.

You slide these cofferdams,

these huge pieces of wood, on each side, and you can intervene on the doors.

But if you slide them just in the lower

part, you can control the water level.

If fresh water doesn’t go over

the pieces of wood, it cannot open doors.

Therefore, for four years,

without flooding homes, a constant level is maintained

in the marsh.

– Because it feels like they did it

in an anarchic way, but in fact no, it was very well thought.

– It was well-thought-out.

There is a bad local rumor that

they had blocked the doors.

But no.

If they had blocked during

the entire occupation, it would have ended up overflowing and flood everything around,
beyond the swamps, the water would have
accumulated, especially with the rainfall

that we have in Normandy.

– But what level did the water reach? – You can see the tracks

on the bridge.

There, when the lichens stop,

the water is rising, because it washes the bottom

of the bridge.

So we can see that it can go

up another 2–3 meters.

– And all of the land is underwater? – Yes, it is land that is, in places, below sea level, in addition.

But more than the flooding

of the swamps as such, and above all what
it allowed them to do, that is, when areas are flooded, you have to go through certain

roads, causeways, bridges.

So now you control the bridges,

the causeways and we are in a strong position

to control everything that is crossing.

– It’s as if the Germans had built

a huge water rampart.

There are only small passages

left that you just need to control.

– That’s it, they had a tool in place

to do a great deal of natural protection.

And strategically,

it’s going to play out.

– And that must have been a constraint

for the airborne troops as well, some that fell into these areas

that were flooded.

– That’s it, because depending

on the precision of the drop, the points of reference
that the pilots had, because we are in conditions
that were not favorable in June ’44, if there were any discrepancies
with the drop zones, they found themselves in flooded

areas rather than on dry feet.

If you find yourself in the middle

of the large flooded area, the risks of drowning are significant

and that is what happens.

On the night of 6 June, this landscape would be transformed

into a vast battlefield battle from which sometimes emerge,

70 years after the events, moving remains.

During filming, my guide,

Régis Giard, calls out to me.

He has just made

a fortuitous discovery.

– You never stop.

What is it? – It’s a parachute.

It’s a parachute piece from ’44.

It’s guaranteed.

It’s washed out,

but it’s valuable.

– You’re kidding? – I guarantee you, I’ve seen it before.

It looks like that.

I just stumbled upon it while

walking by chance.

– It’s impossible.

– I swear to you,

it’s an American parachute.

– It’s crazy.

Does anyone have anything here? – I don’t think it’s a big piece,

but it’s a good one.

– A clue.

– There you go.

– An American parachute piece.

It’s crazy, it’s crazy.

– You have your souvenir.

– Yeah, a hell of a souvenir.

It’s huge.

It’s huge.

– Live history.

– Live history.

An American parachute piece.

Not too far from

the Pont de la Barquette.

– Right next door.

– It’s huge.

If Drop Zone helpers, the width areas

marked with different letters, were defined and distributed among

the six parachute regiments of the two airborne divisions.

Two landing zones, the Landing Zone

or LZ, were also chosen for gliders, in the center

of the area of operation and near the national road 13.

The entirety is located in an area

of approximately 57 km².

The operations must take place

one after the other in Normandy.

Starting at 9:50 p.

m.

, the first

aircraft would take off from England.

These are the coded Boston operations

for the 82nd Airborne and Albania for the men of the 101st Airborne.

Starting at 4 am,

gliders would join the dance.

These are the Chicago operations

for the 101st and Detroit for the 82nd.

In the early evening, on 6 June 1944, additional reinforcements would

be carried by gliders.

Elmira and Keokuk Operations.

Two hundred pathfinders,

the scouts of the airborne troops, would have the mission

of marking the jumping areas.

Dropped alone, in the middle of

the night, in enemy territory, they would be the first soldiers

of the day on Normandy soil.

Captain Frank Lillyman, chief

pathfinders of the 101st Airborne, would be the first Allied soldier

to jump in Normandy.

The technology that pathfinders

use is classified as top secret.

The teams, generally composed

of 18 men, have seven Holophane lamps which would be placed on the ground

in order to form a T.

The base of the T indicates

the direction of the jump, the crossbar, the point of arrival.

The pathfinders were also equipped

with Eureka post-transmitters, that would send picked up radio
frequency pulses by the Rebecca receivers, installed

under the fuselage of the aircraft at the top of the formation.

Pilots would thus be able to orient

themselves to the drop zones.

To experience the intensity of a jump

in operation, that’s what I wanted.

I had to try to understand how

men parachuted in enemy territory could constitute an effective force capable of destabilizing

the adversary, or even defeat him.

First observation, only the equipment

and the planes have changed since 1944.

The jumping instructions

and the atmosphere seem the same.

During the night, the scouts of

the Second REP reached the drop zone which they marked out while avoiding

being spotted by the enemy.

They established a connection

with the airplanes.

The aim, to gather the parachutes

in the smallest possible space, concentrate intervention forces.

On the plane, meeting the eyes

of the soldiers, I find the dull apprehension described by American paratroopers

in June 1944.

Jumping from an aircraft launched

at 200 km/h is nothing natural.

It takes a lot of courage.

The minutes go by,

and the pressure is on.

After an hour of tactical flight designed

to put the men in the bath, I feel that everyone has only one
desire left, to go through the door, get rid of this carlingue that locks
them up, jump and start the operation because

the mission would actually only begin when the paratroopers hit the ground.

When the doors open

and the men get up, close to each other, broken by the weight of their loads

and the straps that constrain them, the tension is at its peak.

Then the siren finally sounded.

Once on the ground,

the skydiver is left alone, possessing nothing else only its own armaments

and a limited quantity of ammunition.

He is particularly vulnerable.

The rest of the operations

was repeated dozens of times.

Nothing was left to chance.

First you have to come together,

rearticulate, so that the scattered men reconstitute a real battle force.

– Now, we’re on an exercise in which

there are 200 staff, let’s say, approximately.

– 280 in total.

– We imagine, in 1944, that several

thousand of them jumped at night, with means of communication

that were inferior to what you have today.

It must have been very complicated

for them.

– It’s good for this reason that

they have repeated and repeated for months the operation.

It’s so complicated that it needs

to be rehearsed in detail so as not to be surprised

when the surprise comes.

Our work, is to make sure that we all meet

up as soon as possible and that we have the people

who have trained together, who can resume their mission.

Each company,

depending on the elements, from their area of deployment,

their action, they group together.

There are what are called

initial points, that is, countries.

We group by country, we pass

the country, then behind the country, further on, we have an area
of articulation out of sight, allowing the country to count everyone,

because that’s a bit of the problem when you jump, you are disorganized.

So we all know where we have to go,

knowing that we took a flight, one hour, it was light, but when you can do 2, 3, 4 hours
in the heat, in the cold or other, in stress,

we are quickly disoriented.

What is simple on paper becomes

complicated to implement.

So rearticulate and make sure that

everyone, from the last soldier all the way to the boss,

go to the right place.

And everyone in their right

place is complicated.

Each element has its initial point,

its area of articulation.

It goes to the initial point where

we count everyone, It is re-articulated as the name says, where we’re going back to

the fighting position.

We will be able to reform the sections,

the groups, the company, and once everyone is ready

and reporting on the radio we start the mission.

But the zone part, the jump part,

it’s a technical part, where you have to go very quickly.

We jump, we take our parachutes

because we don’t leave them, plus the bag, so quickly

we’re at 30–40 kilos.

We have about 1500 m to do

in less than 9 minutes to get out of the way as quickly
as possible, leave the jump zone because it’s a field,
a flat piece of land in which we are very vulnerable

to go to areas of rearticulation where we will be somewhat sheltered.

Afterward, we have one hour to do 8 km more because
it is estimated that one hour, is how long it takes
for a fairly ready unit to complete an area of 8 km

in diameter.

It allows us to say that we can

leave the zone and be outside the ability

to react of an enemy.

Once your parachute is opened

and checked, first, where are the other guys? And only then, where am I? More than 70 years after
the American paratroopers dropping above Cotentin, Men commemorate the event by jumping under almost

the same conditions.

Listening to the instructions,

I understand.

Jumping out of a working plane

is not natural.

The danger is real.

Why take such a risk? One of the participants, Thomas Keller,

of German nationality, challenges me.

– Where do you come from? – I am from Germany, and I am

a former paratrooper, what we call Fallschirmjäger.

– Your presence here today

is very symbolic.

– Yes, absolutely, for two reasons.

We have been in France, we have

fought against each other.

And today, we are united

within Europe.

The second reason is that we’re

here to honor those who freed us, especially the parachutists

who were in the lead.

– But you’re doing this jump for someone

or something in particular or for fun? It’s not for fun, it’s a part
of our history and we’re doing this

to honor skydivers.

To honor all these young men

aged 18, 20 who died here and who were not prepared

to fight for Europe.

It’s our story, and we feel

close to it.

We jump with Americans, British,

French comrades that we love.

It’s like a big brotherhood

it’s really special.

– How do you feel? It’s not really a sensation.

It’s a visceral feeling when

we see these elders, these 47, from where we jump.

It’s a part of our history.

It’s not Hollywood.

It’s not a movie jump.

You see, we’re training,

we’re following orders.

It’s still dangerous.

That way, we experience the story.

– All I have to do is wish

you a good jump.

On D-Day, the transport fleet

consisted of 821 planes Douglas C-47 Sky Trains,

the sky train.

A civilian aircraft put into

service from 1935 and adopted by the US Air Force

as early as 1942.

Like all Allied aircraft,

it bears identification marks of D-Day in order to avoid

friendly fire.

Three white and two black stripes.

The aim is to avoid

the Sicilian fiasco.

In July 1943, half of

the reinforcement planes had been hit by the fire of the Allied fleet.

– Charles Donnefort is an aeronautical

engineer and pilot.

He has an unlimited passion

for everything that flies, and particularly to military

aircraft of the Second World War.

– Charles, is this C-47 a good plane? – Yes, it was the best plane

of the time for transport.

It’s much better than its German

equivalent, the Lunker 52.

It’s also an airplane

that is sturdy, simple and not very expensive

to manufacture.

– However, it still seems

particularly vulnerable.

It has no weapons.

This plane doesn’t really

seem to be made for war.

– It’s basically a civilian plane,

the DC-3.

This is its military version,

the C-47.

It doesn’t have an armor system

at all.

It’s relatively slow compared

to a hunter.

It’s not protected by any defense.

It’s therefore very sensitive

to Flak fire and small arms fire.

– This means that the flight

conditions for the pilots had to be quite challenging.

– Yes, it’s quite challenging.

They didn’t have escorts.

And over Normandy, it was even worse.

The flight was done at night,

under instrument flight conditions and without any light.

The pilots were focused on

the leader’s position lights.

And arriving above the Cotentin, they arrived in a complete fog

that they didn’t expect.

So the groups dispersed,

and each pilot had to find individually his drop zone.

– They really had to be

very courageous.

– Of course, and find the drop zone

under these circumstances, with Flak some of which they had never
encountered, the anxiety of the pilots, the anxiety of the paratroopers,
and the enemy fire, the poor visibility and especially the risk of being shot
down, of not finding the drop zone or possibly having to improvise

in case the drop zone was busy.

– It must have been vibrating inside,

it must have been a very trying flight.

– Yes, they were comparing Flak’s

impacts to hail.

Nevertheless, the drivers had

to keep their cool to find the DZ.

Whatever happens and let

the paratroopers go at all costs.

– I can’t wait to fly in and see what

it looks like in real life.

The C-47 formations will take off

from England to complete a loop above the Cotentin Peninsula,
passing in turn off the islands from Guernsey and Jersey,

over the drop zones, then from the beach in Utah.

Each parachutist infantry regiment

embarks on board 3 to 4 formations, composed according to the cases

of 36, 45 or 54 C-47.

These formations, called Serials,

are spaced 6 minutes apart on the jump zone.

On board, paratroopers are made up

of sticks of 15 to 18 men, depending on the equipment

transported.

The endowment of paratroopers is very

different from that of foot soldiers.

Their outfit is even very specific.

They wear a modified helmet with

a chin strap, a jacket, a pair of pants and jumping boots.

Paratroopers are equipped

for a very particular mission.

They will fight behind enemy lines

in small autonomous units.

In addition to their diet,

a survival diet of super vitamin chocolate was added, which provides the necessary

energy for three days.

Their first aid kit is enriched with

a tourniquet and a dose of morphine.

Their weapons are adapted

on a case-by-case basis.

But they all carry ammo, grenades, and even additional

light mines.

Stewardship does not seem to be

too careful about the supply of daggers or machetes, nor necessarily

strictly enforce the rules on handguns.

Some, even before equipping

themselves with their parachutes and their life jackets, already

carry more than 40 kg of equipment.

Anything that’s not carried

directly by men is stuffed into drop containers, the parapacks, loaded into

the units or directly stowed under the C-47s.

At dawn on 5 June 1944,

the invasion fleet, composed of more than 5,000 boats,

set sail.

Direction the Normandy coast, which

it must reach 24 hours later.

On the same 5 June,

at the end of the day, the Chief of the Allied General Staff,
General Eisenhower, visited the 502nd Parachute

Infantry Regiment of the 101st Airborne.

Unlike those of the 82nd, a unit

already dropped over Sicily and from Italy in 1943, most of

these men never jumped in operation.

But they were apprenticed

to elite troops.

37 weeks of intensive training.

The 40 km walks in 8 hours,

the short morning jogs with a 15 kg bag on your back,
the live ammunition exercises and lack of sleep have become

their daily routine.

They had forged their corps spirit

and were a great troupe.

They were ready for any challenge.

That was good news.

The operation in Normandy would

give them the opportunity to shine.

The latest estimate of losses

was chilling.

One in two could be killed

or injured in the coming hours.

After skipping during the day, the paras

of the 2nd REP will repeat the operation, in total darkness this time,

as their elders did on the night of 5 to 6 June 1944.

– This evening, a special atmosphere

for you.

I guess that the night jump

is completely different.

The constraints are completely

different from a day’s jump.

– Yes.

At first, the darkness and the night

create a slightly different atmosphere.

People are very focused, getting

a little bit more into their jump.

The skydiver is very isolated, even more isolated than when

he jumps during the day.

Both during the jump,

during the descent under sail and during rearticulation.

– It also complicates the deployment

of troops and the smooth running of the mission

in some respects.

– Technically, we have to prepare

differently to regroup, orientate and fight at night.

And we’re very well-equipped

for that.

And tactically, we’re taking more time

and getting ready to attack the mission with some of the personnel who
didn’t join the unit, or even legionaries who joined the
neighboring unit because they were lost and that they hooked up
with another paratrooper or another non-commissioned officer

who picked them up.

– So you start your mission,

and you think that the objective can be reached from what percentage
of paratroopers gathered on the drop zone? – We generally considered that 75%

of the mission can be attacked.

– The overall state of mind is ultimately

the same or it looks a lot like it to what the fighters of 1944 lived

and what they thought, I suppose.

– Yes, because when you go through

the door of an airplane launched at 200 km/h at night, it’s probably always the same

effect on the skydiver.

When you are plugged into a tree

without knowing where you are, Even in 2016,
it’s the same isolation, that you are asking yourself
“How to join my comrades?” “Where is the North?” “What are these signals?” “Does this guy I see passing by
in the shadows belong to my unit?” Today like yesterday, the parachutist,
the fighter par excellence of isolation, of initiative and lightness, must be daring, sense of initiative and ability

to adapt, aggressiveness.

And that’s what undoubtedly makes

him a bit different from the others.

At 9.

30 p.

m.

, Captain Frank Lillyman’s

C-47 and his pathfinders, were the first to take off

from England, heading for Cotentin.

Starting at 22:48 and every 11″,

the other planes carrying the big of the airborne troops took off

from 14 English airfields.

Paratroopers were now flying

to France and to their destiny.

Veteran Dan McBride of F Company of the

502nd Regiment of the 101st Airborne remembers the feverish hours that

preceded his parachuting into France.

– What memories do you have

of your flight to France, before and during the flight? – We took off around 22:25, On the evening of June 5th, and we started training,

and we went to the coast.

We went through the Channel

in a very tight formation, and everything went well

during the flight.

We flew over the invasion fleet,

and I didn’t know that there could be so many boats

in the world.

Our plan was to shoot off the islands

of Guernsey and Jersey, in the direction of the coast.

Hard to imagine the atmosphere

in the C-47s en route to France.

Many paratroopers are doped

with the drapomine drug against air and sea sickness.

Above the islands of Guernsey

and Jersey, German anti-aircraft guns

were waking up.

The cabins are shaken

by the explosions.

Through the windows,

soldiers could see burning C-47s.

They broke the formation before

coming down like shooting stars, leading to death men and crews.

– We were asked to get up, to hang on and to keep us ready to go By the time we passed the coast,

in case we were hit and for a chance to get out of it.

And then, if we were to be hit

by German gun fire, we wanted to die standing like men.

So everything was fine until

we reached the coast.

There we went into a fog band

and all the drivers were afraid of colliding

with each other and they went their separate ways.

The pilots were doing their best

to reach the goals, but above the Cotentin the engines penetrated
a huge cloud mass and a thick fog masks

the ground.

Impossible to orient

yourself correctly.

Yet, the airdrops were

going to take place.

– Our pilot, who was a kid like us,

started zigzagging between the shells while we were standing

with our SOAs hooked up and that we try to keep our balance.

He went one way and the other,

dodging the shots.

And instead of slowing down and letting

us jump, he dove and accelerated.

We were not very happy

with this maneuver.

He flew too low and too fast

when he turned on the green light.

And since I was jumping in third

position, I had to swing a container before jumping.

So he turned on the green light,

the lieutenant jumped, the sergeant jumped, I went to the door and I had just

had time to release the container when the plane swerved again.

So much so that I lost my balance

and found myself thrown head first into the void.

So I hit the plane.

I was half stunned and so I had

a hell of a shock when my parachute opened.

Between midnight and quarter past

midnight, Lillyman and his men landed in the field behind the church

of Saint-Germain de Vareville.

The captain issues his signal

between 00:20 and 00:30.

Twenty minutes later, C-47 waves

drop the paratroopers on drop zone A.

In this sector, the pathfinders’ mission

was accomplished.

Unfortunately, this was not

the case everywhere.

Only three parachuting areas

had been properly marked out.

The other Pathfinders bands

had been dumped too far.

Some were massacred, others captured.

This first phase of the airborne

operation was a failure.

And that has dramatic consequences

for the rest of the airdrop.

A map is enough to understand

the extent of the disaster.

In blue, the DZ of the 82nd Airborne.

In red, those of the 101st Airborne.

The blue and red crosses represent

the real places where the sticks of both divisions had landed.

In Normandy, the Allies were

on the brink of disaster.

Generally speaking, only men

from the 505th Regiment of the 82nd and those of the 506th regiment

of the 101st landed on the planned DZs.

The others were totally dispersed.

The paratroopers of the 508th

were scattered all over Cotentin.

Some are lost 40 km

from the initial objective.

Paras fell into the tides where

they drowned in 50 cm of water because of the weight of their equipment
and entangled in their parachutes whose harnesses were almost impossible

to unfasten without cutting the straps.

Some sticks were dropped into the sea

where men disappear body and soul.

Much of the radio equipment

has been lost or destroyed.

Inhabitant of Saint-Germain-

de-Vareville, Auguste Robiole was 10 years old when American

paratroopers jumped over Normandy.

He was in the front row

of this incredible show.

– So you lived in this house

on the evening of June 5-6.

– Exact.

Absolutely, I was even born

in this house.

And on the evening of June 5 to 6,

we were there.

And it was from that moment

that the bombing took place on Saint-Martin.

And since it went on

for quite a while, And that it slammed hard,
my father said don’t stay in the house and we went with the neighbors

into this ditch a little bit lower.

– To protect you, was it some

kind of trench? – In his idea it was protection.

In his idea that was it.

And we heard the end, of course,

of the bombing… until the arrival of planes from which the famous

paratroopers emerged.

– You are in your ditch,

what time is it? – I put that around one o’clock

in the morning.

– Alright.

– We’re still in the ditch

around 1am.

– Were there a lot of planes? – A lot.

Oh yeah, yeah.

It was full.

It was a blanket of airplanes.

They went out of the planes non-stop,

and then it opened up.

– And you really saw them

with the naked eye? – Yes, when they were

lower, of course.

Unfortunately, some of them

were falling into the trees, they are everywhere, of course.

– They really came across

the village.

– And then, yes, there were

everywhere, everywhere, Of which the closest, in the tree here.

One in the tree here.

– Who hung on to this tree? – Hanging in the tree, on the left he was.

On the left.

And it was my father and the village

priest who unhooked him.

The second, closer, on the chimney

of the house in front.

I can still see him, the guy.

I can still see him fighting

to get unhooked.

I can still see it.

I was there.

And the third, there, at the end of

the garden, of the house, over there.

It was the three closest.

Afterward, they were everywhere,

of course.

– It must have been extraordinary

for you, at the age of 10, to see these men fall from the sky? – We didn’t expect that.

We couldn’t imagine.

The very first, the very first

ones that emerged, there were five or six who had

come into the house.

They were standing there,

all smeared, with all the junk, and they were putting candy

on the table for us.

– Did those who fell here stay here

or did they leave? – Oh no, they left.

There were some who stayed

for a while, but they didn’t linger.

– They were off to the rest

of their mission.

– Well, I was going to say,

they had their mission.

Just like those who came

into the house, their mission, was Saint-Martin.

They had to go.

So they asked my dad

for a lot of information to go to Saint-Martin.

To identify themselves in the dark

night, the paratroopers of the 101st have a clicker, a chromed brass blade that makes

a clicking sound when pressed.

The identification

code was simple.

Two clicks should respond

to the one-click identification request.

Other ways of recognition have also been developed,

including a voice code.

On the night of June 5 to 6,

the paras must say “thunder”, “thunder”, when they were called up with

the word “flash”, “lightning”.

On paper, the instructions

were simple.

On paper only, because some

parachutists are alone in areas infested with enemies.

This is the case with Dan McBride.

– It must have been one o’clock

in the morning.

I walked by myself, very slowly,

trying to find someone and at the same time not

to be detected.

After about three-quarters of an hour,

I heard someone walking very fast in the grass,

but I couldn’t see him.

It was too dark.

And in my head, I imagined

a two-meter German coming at me.

I was going to shoot.

But again, I pulled

out my clicker.

And then I heard at least

10 clicks in response.

I saw this guy, one of the comrades.

He hadn’t seen anyone either.

He was lost like me and we almost kissed.

We went forward together

and noticed traces in the grass, as left by a cart.

We thought they would

lead us somewhere and we started following them.

And as it was getting darker,

we were walking faster and faster.

And I told myself that everything

was quiet around.

And all of a sudden,

we heard “flash.

” And we said “thunder.

” Those were our passwords.

He was a lieutenant and two other

paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne.

– And they were lost like you? Yes, yes.

And when I asked him, “Lieutenant,

where are we?” He answered, according to my map

and from what I see around me, I think we are somewhere in Europe.

We had narrowed it down.

Most of the time, American paratroopers

would have to complete their mission without means of communication, with

less than one third of the planned staff.

Yet, they would have to move forward,

attack, hold on and not let go until the landing by sea takes place.

At two o’clock in the morning on 6 June

1944, the 1,000 boats of Force U, For Utah, are about fifteen
kilometers away from the beach of Saint-Martin
de Vareville, Where will more than 30,000 GIS

from the 4th Infantry Division land and 3,500 vehicles.

Half an hour later, at 2:29, the USS Bayfield, carrying

the captain from Utah beach, Major General Collins,

dropped the anchor.

Despite the scattering, the goals of the paratroopers of the 82nd

and 101st Airborne remain unchanged.

The four causeways leaving Utah Beach

must be secured as soon as possible.

This would be the primary mission

of the 101st men, who must also silence the battery of Saint-Martin-de-Vareville,
destroy the bridges over the Douve, North of Carentan, seize

the bridges facing Brévands and the Barquette lock.

The paratroopers of the 82nd must

take and hold Sainte-Mère-Église, Baudienville, and Neuville-au-Plain, conquer the crossing points
on the Merderet River and destroy the bridges

over the Douve.

After regrouping, American paratroopers were engaging

in combat almost everywhere.

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