The townspeople of Vierville-sur-Mer awoke around 3 am on June 6, 1944, to the sound of bombs. Vierville Civilians Recall Allied Pre-Invasion Bombings- By Kevin Hymel.To the best of my knowledge, no one in the 508th saw Herb Batcheller or his radio operator alive after the drop.” … Apparently he had absorbed a 30-40 round MG 42 burst in the chest…. Herbert Batcheller’s body and that of his radio operator had been found together next to a hedgerow. Warren said later, “I heard by word of mouth on that Lt. Herbert Batcheller, West Point Class of 1935, was killed by a German machine gunner on June 6 or 7 a few days later, command of the battalion passed to Major Shields Warren, the unit’s executive officer. Nobles and his comrades fought for six straight days in the hedgerows. Paratroopers of the 82nd Airborne Division take a break during the fighting in Normandy. As a result, the regiment-like virtually every other airborne unit-was wildly misdropped Nobles and his stick landed 10 miles from their designated drop zone. The surviving pathfinders managed to set up only two signal lights and a single Eureka. Pathfinders were specially trained paratroopers who jumped prior to the bulk of the unit to set up guiding lights and Eureka transponders that communicated with the aircraft-mounted Rebecca airborne transceiver sets that told the pilots carrying the follow-on troops when and where to drop them.īut the 508th’s pathfinders had jumped into the midst of the German 91st Infantry (Air-Landing) Division and took heavy casualties. Nobles had no idea where he was, but he was not alone–many WW2 stories are similar in that most of the 508th paratroopers had missed their drop zone after the unit’s pathfinders had run into trouble. “I’m from Kokomo, Indiana! I forgot the password!” Nobles just laughed at the panicked soldier. “Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!” shouted the man. Relieved of this equipment, he took off on foot until he came across another paratrooper. He threw away his gas mask, correctly thinking he would never need it. He then removed the reserve chute on his chest, which was blocking him from his rifle. Nobles landed in a farmer’s field all alone and immediately unhooked himself from his parachute. “By the time my chute opened up, I was on the ground,” he said. Nobles could see tracers coming up and trees below him, but he did not have time to take it all in. Then the red light went off, replaced by a green one, and the men charged out the door. When the red light by the fuselage door lit up the cabin shortly after midnight, Nobles and his 16-man stick stood up and hooked their static lines to the anchor cable running the length of the cabin and checked the preceding man’s equipment. A lieutenant walked the aisle, talking to everyone, trying to both cheer the men up and calm them down, but Nobles did not appreciate it. The flight over the English Channel was uneventful. The men in Nobles’ stick then loaded onto a C-47 that belonged to the Ninth Air Force’s 313th Troop Carrier Group and roared off the tarmac shortly before midnight, heading for Normandy along with hundreds of other planes. In the late-night darkness of June 5, after receiving doughnuts and coffee from Red Cross Doughnut Dollies at RAF Station Folkingham, (Bob) Nobles and the rest of the men in the 508th’s 1st and 3rd Battalions strapped on their gear and weapons Nobles also packed four letters from Bette. From Paratrooper to POW: Bob Nobles of the 82nd Airborne- By Kevin M.The diverse experiences they present capture the intricacies of Operation Overlord, the complexity of heroism, and the ubiquitous, horrific nature of war. But what was it really like to live through Operation Overlord? Here’s a glimpse at five stunning eyewitness WW2 stories, from the survivors themselves. Operation Overlord landed 132,715 soldiers on the beaches and dropped approximately 20,000 paratroopers behind enemy lines. Nearly three million Allied personnel would participate in or support the Normandy operations. The invasion of Normandy was one of the most audacious military campaigns in history.
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