If chaos reigns : the near-disaster and ultimate triumph of the Allied Airborne Forces on D-Day, June 6, 1944

533 Pages·2011·7.77 MB·English

by  Whitlock

If Chaos Reigns
The Near-Disaster and Ultimate Triumph of
the Allied Airborne Forces on D-Day,
June 6, 1944
By
Flint Whitlock
CONTENTS
Foreword by Martin K.A. Morgan
Preface
Introduction
Chapter 1: The Germans’ Brilliant Idea
Chapter 2: Training a Brit Paratrooper
Chapter 3: America Joins the Fight
Chapter 4: Canada: Standing on Guard
Chapter 5: Getting Gliders Off the Ground
Chapter 6: The Germans on the Defensive
Chapter 7: The “All Americans” Prepare
Chapter 8: Pathfinders and Paradummies
Chapter 9: The British/Canadian Preparations
Chapter 10: The Sharpening of Knives
Chapter 11: The Decision to Go
Chapter 12: The British/Canadian Take-Off & Drop
Chapter 13: Target: Sainte-Mère-Église
Chapter 14: The Canadian Drop
Chapter 15: The 101st’s Jump
Chapter 16: Shootout at the W-X-Y-Z Complex, the
Fight for Brécourt Manor, and Other Skirmishes
Chapter 17: Battle for the Orne Bridges
Chapter 18: Disaster at the Merville Battery
Chapter 19: Securing Pegasus Bridge
Chapter 20: Death at the Château, Battle at the Crossroads
Chapter 21: Battle of Sainte-Mère-Église
Chapter 22: Coming in on a Wing and a Prayer
Chapter 23: Hell in the Hedgerows
Chapter 24: The Battle for Chef-du-Pont & La Fière Bridge
Chapter 25: D-Day Plus 1—And Beyond
Chapter 26: The Battle for Bréville
Chapter 27: Final Fight for La Fière
Chapter 28: The Battles for Carentan & Graignes
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Sources
Bibliography
FOREWORD
OUR LADY OF LOURDES Cemetery in Slidell, Louisiana is small and
sits a block away from Bayou Bonofouca amid live oaks draped in
Spanish moss. Of its 200 graves, one headstone stands out by virtue of an
American flag that is always there—month after month, season after
season. The little flag marks the final resting place of George Baragona, a
Slidell native whose life ended violently during the closing weeks of its
25th year. The headstone leaves only a few clues regarding the
circumstances of his death, but the likeness of a pair of U.S. Army
parachutist's wings and the words “507 P.I.R., 82nd Airborne Div.—
K.I.A. D-Day June 6, 1944” offer at least a basic overview.
George Baragona met his fate far from home on a hilltop in Normandy
next to an old Roman Catholic Church that was never supposed to be a
battlefield. It happened on June 11th, not D-Day, June 6th (as his
headstone says) and it happened in a village called Graignes. As the
opposing sides of the Normandy battle struggled during the Sunday after
D-Day, a vicious battle swept over this village and reduced it to ruins. But
the dramatic last stand of U.S. soldiers on that hilltop and the consequent
destruction of Graignes is a story that existed outside of the traditional
narrative of the D-Day invasion for many decades. With so many
thousands of remarkable human dramas unfolding simultaneously during
an epic battle, some D-Day stories achieved legendary status while others
were practically forgotten. Historians needed those decades to sort out the
details and begin bringing these stories to light.
In the example of George Baragona and the battle of Graignes, the story
that only recently emerged is one of a mission gone horribly wrong from
the start. It is a story of 186 men dropped 20 miles south of their intended
drop zone during the largest mass tactical airborne operation the world
had yet seen. It is a story of resolute officer leadership under the most
challenging circumstances imaginable and individual bravery in the face
of modern combat. They were outnumbered, behind enemy lines, and they
faced a highly skilled enemy determined to push the Allied invasion back
into the sea. Despite the odds stacked against them, they held their
positions until the bitter end with many, like George Baragona, paying for
that Norman hilltop with their lives.
But Graignes is not alone among the stories of great drama that played
out on the drop zones, landing zones and in the hedgerows of the
Normandy invasion. The general character of the combat experienced by
Allied airborne forces throughout the battle was in and of itself dramatic,
intense and decisive. This subject, sensitively chronicled by Flint
Whitlock in the chapters that follow, has been approached by many
authors in a segregated and exclusive way. But with If Chaos Reigns: The
Near Disaster and Ultimate Triumph of the Allied Airborne Forces on D-
Day, June 6, 1944, the subject has at last been organized using an
inclusive structure.
As a former U.S. Army officer and paratrooper, the author has a unique
understanding of airborne operations that thoughtfully informs his
examination of the topic. This, his latest book, meaningfully contributes to
the existing scholarship of the Second World War by providing a
synthesis combining U.S., British, and Canadian airborne operations into
a single, coherent narrative. Although these operations have been dealt
with separately by countless previous titles, it is only when they are
analyzed in the aggregate that the various crucial aspects of their
contribution can be fully evaluated. Flint Whitlock succeeds brilliantly in
this undertaking through an astute use of primary sources and an extensive
familiarity with a rich body of secondary literature.
Although this book is full of exciting descriptions of combat guaranteed
to remind the reader of John Keegan's The Face of Battle (1976), it also
reaches a thought-provoking intellectual conclusion. In response to recent
writings downplaying their importance, the author advances a powerful
argument in defense of the crucial role of Allied airborne forces in
Normandy. By emphasizing certain tactical successes that could only have
been achieved through the use of vertical envelopment tactics, Whitlock
reaches the verdict that the invasion would not have succeeded without the
airborne. Commendably, his narrative features not just paratroopers and
glidermen but also the true unsung heroes of the airborne: the sky soldiers
of the Troop Carrier units that flew the ground forces to battle.
If Chaos Reigns brings the Normandy airborne experience—in all its
chaotic totality—into focus as never before. With a cast of characters that
personalizes the story throughout, the book avoids bogging down in a
recitation of battalions maneuvering on the battlefield. Although the
author handles operational military history details with skill, he
nevertheless maintains focus on the individuals who fought and died
during the Allied invasion of northern France in June 1944. To Flint
Whitlock, the “cold, hard, pitiless statistics” represented by anonymous
casualty figures fail to convey the anguish suffered by each mourning
family who lost a sky soldier in Normandy. But men like George
Baragona nobly advanced the war against totalitarianism during the
summer of 1944 and turned near disaster into ultimate triumph. Flint
Whitlock captures their spirit in this book with an eloquence that honors
their memory.
MARTIN K.A. MORGAN
Author, Down To Earth: the 507th Parachute
Infantry Regiment in Normandy
PREFACE
YOU ARE AN American paratrooper.
You are riding into your first battle inside the belly of a C-47 transport
plane along with seventeen of your fellow troopers—young men with
whom you have trained for over a year. Even though it is shortly after
midnight and the interior of the plane is as dark as the night outside, and
the faces of your buddies have been blackened with burnt cork, you still
know who they are. For over a year you sweated with them, cursed with
them, drank with them, laughed with them, went whoring with them. They
are closer to you than brothers.
Across the narrow aisle of the transport plane you can see their eyes
shining in the dark. You can make out the dim outline of all the equipment
that is strapped onto their bodies and you silently marvel at the fact that
some of them are burdened down with gear that weighs nearly as much—
or more—than they do. No one talks, because talk is impossible in this
roaring aluminum container of noise that is being assaulted by the
constant blast coming from the two Pratt and Whitney engines outside.
Any communication that must be done—stand up, hook up, check
equipment, move to the door, go!—must be performed with hand signals
by the jumpmaster kneeling by the open door on the port side near the rear
of the aircraft.
You are suddenly engulfed in a foul odor; one of your buddies has just
up-chucked his pre-invasion meal all over the floor in front of him, a
trigger that causes a few others to do the same. You fight to keep your
own meal down; try to take your mind off it. You think about home—your
mom and dad and best girl—and wonder what they are doing at this exact
moment. Probably sleeping. When they wake up, news of the invasion
will be all over the newspapers and radio. No one will be able to talk
about anything else for days. You wonder if your folks and your girl will
wonder if you are a part of it, as you haven’t been able to let them know
by letter for the past few weeks that you were preparing for the greatest
aerial and amphibious invasion in the history of the world. You just found
out it is called “Operation Neptune,” the initial assault portion of the
overall invasion plan “Operation Overlord,” and here you are, on the
leading edge of it. You are both scared and exhilarated.
Then another thought hits you as you try to calm the waves of bile
cresting in your stomach. You wonder if you will make it out alive.
Rumor has it that the airborne casualties are expected to be high, very
high. You heard seventy or eighty percent. You shake the thought out of
your mind. It’s the Germans who are going to die by the bushel full, not
you and your buddies. No army has ever been as well trained or as well
equipped as you and your buddies. Even if some of you get killed, it won’t
be you. You’re too strong, too smart, too good a marksman, too good-
looking, too lucky for that to happen. Plus, you have the element of
surprise on your side. That big storm the day before has probably lulled
those Nazi bastards into thinking the Allies won’t attack now—not for
several days. Or weeks. Yeah, those Jerries don’t stand a chance. You
touch the combat knife strapped to your boot. Why, the first one you see is
as good as …
Suddenly, the small red light above the open door goes on and
everyone’s head swivels toward it. It means that you are just minutes from
the drop zone. The jumpmaster, the lieutenant in charge of your platoon,
gets to his feet and, facing you, raises both arms—the signal to stand up.
All of you struggle to your feet in the rocking plane as the lieutenant
makes a hooking gesture, and you click your metal static line hook onto
the steel cable above you that runs like a clothesline down the interior of
the fuselage. You check your equipment and the equipment of the buddy
in front of you to make sure that everything is as it should be. The
jumpmaster then cups his hands behind his ears—a signal to slap the man
in front of you on the arm and yell “OK!” in his ear to let him know that
his equipment looks all right.
Everyone’s eyes are on the red light, tensed up, waiting for the moment
it will change to green and the bodies begin streaming toward the door,
almost pushing and shoving to get out and get this damned invasion
started and over with. But then it happens. A giant flashbulb of light goes
off outside and your plane is rocked as though a giant fist has just punched
it, followed by what sounds like rocks being thrown against a metal roof.
Flak! Anti-aircraft shells are being thrust up at you from the ground
below! Through the windows and the open door you see a massive
illuminated cats cradle—tracer bullets—coming up to knock your plane
out of the sky. Still, the green light does not come on. You want to
scream, “C’mon! Let’s go!” but you know that no one will hear you.
Then, someone in the line ahead of you goes down; he’s been hit by a
bullet or chunk of shrapnel. He slumps to the vomit-covered floor, his
mouth open in an unheard cry, drowned out by the sound of the engines
and the explosions outside. Somebody unhooks his static line from the
cable and pushes him aside to free the aisleway for the rest of you. You
can’t worry about him now. He’s the lucky one. Like the flight crew, he’ll
be going back to England and maybe he’ll survive.
Now, after an eternity, the green light comes on and you and your
buddies charge forward in single file, pushing toward the open door and
the brilliant fireworks display blazing across the night sky. You are in the
doorway momentarily, the jumpmaster slaps you on the ass and you
spring out instinctively as you have done hundreds of times in training.
But no amount of training has prepared you for this moment. All around
you are other planes, other jumpers, explosions—a glimpse of hell.
You are just above the treetops when your parachute opens with a
strong tug against your groin and shoulders, and you see tracers flashing
past you like crazed lightning bugs, each one snapping angrily as it zips
by. Before you have a chance to blink you are suddenly on the ground,
your feet and legs being absorbed into a cold, wet, squishy marsh. Now
the rest of you is in the water and you lie prone as the bullets dash over
you in all directions and you struggle to release yourself from the
imprisonment of your parachute harness.
All around is darkness punctuated by flashes of munitions, black sky
scraped by razor-thin streaks of light, the smell of grass and mud and
water and torn-up earth. You look around for your buddies, the men who
jumped from the plane with you, but there’s no other friendly face around.
You are all alone in a strange, hostile land surrounded by people whose
one goal is to kill you, just as you have come to kill them. You hear the
gutteral sounds of German being spoken somewhere near and the metallic
racking of a round being chambered. Your breath comes in fast, tight
clumps as the reality of the situation sinks in. You know you are not going
to make it out alive.
YOU ARE A British glider pilot.
You are at the controls of a Horsa glider being towed to the northern
coast of France under the cover of darkness. For over an hour you have
been straining to keep your engineless craft under control as it has been
towed along, and your arms, legs, and eyes are weary from the intense