Cornelius Ryan WWII papers, box 008, folder 04: James M. Gavin

[inserted] Amer. Int. [end inserted] 82nd Airborne Div.

GAVIN, Lt. General James M.

[inserted] HQ 82nd

[illegible] returned 6/30/59 see special folder

Box 8, #4

LT. GENERAL JAMES M. GAVIN [inserted] - 11 Cliff Rd. Wellsley Hills, 82 MASS [end inserted]

I'm Lt. General James M. Gavin. I was a member of the 82nd Airorne Division during the Normandy operation. As a matter of fact for a year or two [inserted] before [end inserted] and afterwards. At the time of the operation, I was the assistant division commander. The division after finishing the Sicilian [crossed out] Sulano [end crossed out] [inserted] Salerno [end inserted] operation went to Northern Ireland and then to England to ready itself for the assault. I went up to London to be the airborne advisor to the supreme allied commander for the plan of the operation. Our plan went along in rather normal fashion. We had to make changes from day to day as the close steady which we were making of the intelligences information suggested changes had to be made. The dya of the operation I went around visit all the old veterans and our unit commanders to talk things over. The prospects that we had we thought were not bad at all although some people Air Marshal A. Mallory particularly advisted againsted the operation to the supreme allied commander. He anticipated very heavy losses. We didn't at all. [crossed out][iillegible][end crossed out] We thought having enough strength behind us to on which to base a judgment that losses would not be too bad, although it was going to be a pretty rough show. Everybody readied themselves and wrote the usual letters home and all that sort of thing and we were about ready to go. In my own case I took an M one rifle 156 round of ammunition for th episot 45 and equipped with ammo and 4 fragmentation grenades, a few days rations, toothbrush and comba dna raincoat. As a matter of fact that was about the load of the average individual. The [inserted] SOP [end inserted] [crossed out] opinion [end crossed] of the division was that if you wanted blankets or heavy clothing or better messagerget it form the Germans. They had lots of it and there were lots of them over there. It was a pretty good logiscal plan. As a matter of fact, psychologically it was pretty good too. The eschelon that I took off with was the 508 Parachute Infantry. The 505th went in first and jumped generally in the vicinity of Ste [crosse dout][illegible][end crossed out] Mere Eglise. I went with th 508th and we took off from Carter's Morn in the midlands of england went right on schedule as planned. As we flew over England the navigation lays that had been planned were clearly in evidence. The airplanes were flying V of Vs 9 across about 36 to 45 airplanes in each flying group, and it was a very reassuring start, I must say. We left the southern shores of England, went out over the ocean and began to turn the corner around Normandy. The islands, [inserted] [illegible][end inserted] that we had been expecting showed up out of the mist. Soon the flak begin to come up from them and burst in plumes of smoke and flames just short of the plane and the

LT. GENERAL JAMES M. GAVIN (continued) -2-

range arcs were just as we had anticipated they would be just short, so the Air Corps went through the island, turned to the back door of the Normandy peninsula and made for the mainland. As we reached the beaches it was the usual scene that we had seen in [crossed out][illegible][end crossed out] It and Sicily before. No evidence of human habitation, that is no people about or vehicles or anything of that sort, brown reddish countryside whtie roads standing out and occasional [inserted] OK See previous page last sentence ! 7 [end inserted] clusters of white buildings shining in the moonlight. There was no fire come up at all although the other commander told me later they came under quite a bit of fire when they hit the shore. Looking back, it was a very reassuring sight. As far as the eye could see the sky was filled with long, long calm [inserted] (column?) [end inserted] of aircraft in tight formation [inserted] (with flak arching upon beautifully.) [end inserted]. About a few minutes after crossing the coast, we hit a dense fog bank. As one always does, I first attributed it to the enemy, assuming that he had put up a smoke cloud to interfere with our navigation into the drop zone. Later it turned out that it actually was a heavy fog, but it was very very dense. In fact that we were entirely on our onw, which was rather disheartening after our past experience, this one seemed rather ominious indeed. We had studied very carefully the time of flight and in my case I knew that I was to jump to 7 1/2 minutes after crossing the coast line. More significant, however, was that after 12 minutes we went back out over the English Channel so we had to get out, between that 7 1/2 minutes period and 12 minutes to be near where we expected to be tod our fighting. We also had an SOP in the division I should say that every man jump and if the weather was so bad that you couldn't see you nevertheless jumped and it no airplanes came back with troopers so we had to get our before 12 minutes in any case no matter where we were. While we went along through the fog and finally we came out at about 7 mintutes, [inserted] there [end inserted] was nothing to be seen except a lot of flak and small arms.OFf to the right there was an enormous amount of flak coming up both high and low, huge bursts and small and it could only be effingwale (sounds like) which we had planned as one of the later obejctives of the operation. We knew there was a tremendous amount of flak there. However, looking ahead, there was a wide river that seemed to turn off to the west and I knew that no river on the map so wide only the Douve and if ti were the Douvre it was in the wrong place so it couldn't be it. It [inserted] later [end inserted[ turned out that the Germans had flooded to Merderet River and actually it was the Meredert I was

LT. GENERAL JAMES M. GAVIN (continued) -3-

looking out [inserted] at [end inserted] although I didn't know at the time. Anyway time was going by very quickly and small [crossed out] arm [end crossed out] [inserted] ARMS [end inserted] began to come up. No airplanes was hit yet, everybody standing up ready to go out. About 8 minutes the green light went on. I took one last precious look at the ground because once you hit the ground you can only see the edge around front of you. It's very important that you make the most of the last few seconds so I took one last look. Directly ahead there was terrific fight going on apparently and if all had been going according to plan that should be St. Mere Eglise. The 505th was due to jump up there and there was na awful lot of small arms rickashame up so it no doubt was a very heavy infantry fight on the ground. Well that was about the last look and I gave the command "let's go" and out we went. I landed with a pretty loud thud, it seemed pretty loud to me, in an orchard there were a couple of cows rather contentedly munching the grass. I got out of my equipment, made my wya tot he hedge [inserted] row [end inserted] [crossed out] roll [end crossed out] on the edg eof the field and ran into a Captain Price of my G 2 Office who was rather slipping along the hedge on the other side. Together we went along until we about 50 meters or so away when we came to a little trail - wagon trail. I had remembered where the river was so I turned, went towards it and as I approached the river bank I began to pick up one or two troopers. The water didn't seem to be too deep. There was rather bright moonlight and one could see about. We began to get together. I was looking for some antitank weapons particularly because i knew at daylight we'd have a very rought time with German armor. There were quite a few field entrenchments all along the edg eof the river, apparently oriented towards a defense of the river bank in looking towards the amphibious landings father away on the beaches. As we [crossed out][illegible][end crossed out] rounded [inserted] up [end inserted] our gear and got a few people together and then some of the wounded began to come in too and they were bit of a problem as usual and then some [inserted] jump [end inserted] injuries who couldn't get about had to be taken care of, small arms fire began to increase a bit in intensity. In about 15 minutes though a red light showed up on the far side of the swamp. Very shortly thereafter, a green light also appeared. If we had been operating according to plan those should have been assembly lights of the 507th and 508th parachute infantry regiments. I sent my aide, a Lt. [crossed out] U. [end crossed out] [inserted] Hugo [end inserted] Olson across the swamp to gain contact with whoever was manning the lights and then I began to get the equipment further organized

LT. GENERAL JAMES M. GAVIN (contiued) -4-

and together and get our people organzed for the fight that was sure to follow at daylight if not before. Olsen cam back in about an hour and reported that [crossed out][illegible][end crossed out] [inserted] there was a [end inserted] railroad directly across from where we were, direclty to the east and that the river was passable but that it was should deep. He also had run in to some of the 508th and understood that the commanding officer Col. Lindquist of the 508th was moving south towards Laviere bridge. So he was moving along on schedule. I had at that time about 100 to 150 troopers with me. They were scrambling to get the stuff out of the swamp. I remember seeing one of them who was an aide, a Lt. Devine, stark naked out in the middle of the river. He stood out like a white statue. I was wondering why he didn't keep his equipment on but that was the way he wanted to do it and he was swimming around trying to fix things out in the swamp. They were getting quite a bit in but a lot of that equipment hadn't been in the water that long really wasn't much good to us. Our radios and bazookas were the most precious items [inserted] that [end inserted] we lost. Gliders were to bring us our best antitank weapons and those were the six pounders as the British called them. There were British version of the 57 MM antitank gun. The gliders had a hard time. It was the first time we had flwon gliders [crossed out][illegible][end crossed out] at night and flying gliders at the end of a 300 ft. rope through heavy fog from aircraft in formaiton is quite an operation I must say. Despite all the difficulties quite a few [crossed out] of them got in. We got siz antitank guns in around Ste. Mere Eglise for the heavy fighting against armore the following morning but I had none with me. One landed about 100 to 200 yds away in the edge of the swamp and I sent a patrol out to help get the antitiank gun out. Well it didn't accomplish anything and then I sent a young officer who I had a lot of confidence in, a Lt.Green [inserted] or Crane? [end inserted] who had been with me in Sicily and Salerno to get out and get a look at it and they came in a very heavy fog. By then it was getting on towards daylight. The infantry with me, a lot of it was quite green and I was alittle uncertain about them I thought I'd go out and take a look at the glider myself and I got quite close as a matter of fact about 50 yards to it and it was as though you were walking along the rifle butts on the range. small arms were flying at a great rate. I remember one that went by look like the tail, light of a car going by, a tracer apparently. It was just no place