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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