June 6, 1944 - 75 years ago

The Shower of Frogs - William J Stigall, Jr.

   [A first-hand look at D-Day and then the following day's invasion]

During the day of June 6, I drove to the airstrip where hundreds of gliders were packed-parked on the runways. I backed my jeep into the glider and watched the men tie the vehicle down. We came back to our tents, wrote letters, read, ate, and lay on our cots. Some men went to church services. During the day we were each issued 200 francs in newly minted money. Each piece was two and a half by three inches, bright, crisp, and colorful, and stimulated the imagination. We were also each issued an oilcloth American flag five and a half by four inches, shellacked, with instructions to sew it on our right arm at the shoulder. Across the body on the left arm was the Eighty-second Airborne insignia. We were well marked. We went to bed.

We were awakened in the dark on June 7. We ate, were transported to the field, walked to the gliders, got in. The pilots arrived; we chatted awhile. And then we waited. Shortly before dawn the C- 47s on our flanks warmed up, first one motor, then the other. Gradually they built up to full throttle, diminished the power, and began taxiing in from right and left in front of the massed gliders. One by one, with precision timing, the men, working in pairs, hooked the two ends of the tow rope to the glider and to the C-47 approximately three hundred feet away. The tow plane made taut the nylon rope and upon signal gunned wide open down the runway with the prop wash blasting against the glider, making it rise and bobble and filling it with a deafening roar. We lifted off the English earth

Glider after glider after glider left the ground, circled in the brightening day, and maneuvered into position. It was barely light and I could see eight hundred feet below me, as if through a gauze, the gentle, peaceful, beautiful English countryside, the small divisions of land, red-bricked houses, cattle, and now and then, the slow movement of early-rising people. No music in any form would ever be needed to accompany any film of such an event. The powerful music of hundreds of motors, of the mass gunning of plane after plane roaring wide open throttle pushing a potent prop wash against the fragile glider creating within it an enforced silence-this would be music enough. As always, only by shouting could I converse with Gerry beside me. Communication with the two men behind me was by gesture and facial expression.

It never occurred to me how long the flight might be. I knew the Channel was about 25 miles wide and that we'd fly at about 120 miles per hour. I did not know where in England I was, nor where in France we were going. We must have flown thirty minutes over English land, maneuvering into position. I was surprised when suddenly we were over the edge of water. I recall looking to left and right and seeing what I now remember as cliffs to the left and hundreds of small ships in dock to the right.

We were now in a long column, one glider behind one C-47. The line stretched as far forward as I could see past the pilot's head and as far back as I could view from the isinglass in the door at my left elbow. I never saw so many gliders at one time. Fighter planes peppered the sky. Thunderbirds and P-38s, like great stinging wasps, buzzed over us, under us, to right and left, shooting off in both directions. They twisted and turned, dived and swooped over the entire sky. None of us ever saw and probably never would again so crowded a sky. They were a protective shield of great and exciting comfort and completely swept the sky of festering Stukas. In a few moments out from the English coast as far as the eye could see front and back there was an unending flight in that bright dawn, "fifty miles in length," of C-47s and a football field's distance behind each one a slightly bobbing glider.

Eight hundred feet below was the historic English Channel, whose waters had supported and received so much of history. On its surface there were, near the English coast, a few scattered ships, but as we approached the coastline ahead the number of ships suddenly increased by hundreds and hundreds. There were more ships on the water than planes in the sky. The beach (Utah) was swarming with boats and behind them a thousand battle gray ships of many sizes and shapes.