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March 7, 1959 Page 2.
a minute walking on a very thick and spongey mattress. I was on someone's chute! Suddenly my reserve chute gave me a good belt under the chin; I had forgotten to retighten the buckles on my harness and it had me wedged for the rest of the way down. There were a hell of a lot of tracers, red, white and green as I remember, and the next thing I know I landed in a small field bordered by a six or seven foot tall hedges. Quickly I placed apistol, which one of the guards at the plane had given me, on my stomach and proceeded to unharness myself, then assembled my rifle and walked toward one of the hedges. I found a surfaced road on the other side of the hedge. I walked down the road about two or three minutes and, noticing some one coming toward me, I cocked my rifle and damn near fired, for he was hobbling along and somehow his uniform or something on his uniform seemed out of order. Anyhow, I quietly mentioned the password when he was about forty feet in front of me. He loudly countered with "Hey, Keller, is that you?”, and I recognized him to be Carl Beck. We joined up and went off the road into a field that appeared to be a little bigger than the one I had landed in, being unevenly and sparsely hedged. Here we joined a group of about fifteen or twenty men with an NCO and I saw a flare go up in the direction we were headed for. We came to a stream about five feet wide and had to jump across. Beck was behind me and due to his injured ankle landed in the stream. Several of us extended our rifles and hands to him and hauled him out. We assembled on who I think was Lt. Doeffler and together we all passed through a town. I believe
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March 7, 1959 Page 3.
this was the outskirts of St. Mere E[crossed out]n[end crossed out]glise as I remember seeing a sign to this effect. By this time I'd say it was about three AM, June 6th. We set up in a field south of St. Mere in reserve and waited for dawn to break. Up to this time there had been no enemy action, only scattered bursts of small arms fire in the distance and some barking dogs. I was told to take over a light machine gunf[crossed out]e[end crossed out] and take it to the far end of the field along with one other machine gun. There we set up in a machine gun nest that had been dug by the Germans. This nest could accomodate at least four guns. The time was then about eight or nine AM. After we had set the guns in position I went back to the east end of the field for more ammunition. I was able to get four boxes and one length of ammo. I started for the west end of the field with two boxes under my arms, one in each hand and the webbed band around my neck. I got about 3/4 of the length of the field when an 88 shell hit to my left knocked me ass over head. I recovered my helmet and scrambled into the ditch which led to the nest. Examining myself, I found I had a 3/4 inch hole in my helmet. This must have been about ten or ten-thirty AM. I spent the rest of the day in that nest. There was quite a barrage of artillery from the enemy that night. I took a walk to where Jim Levell was positioned and we were sitting on the edge of a German-dug trench at dusk when we heard a queer noise, a low whirring sound, and looking around could see the silhouette of a big glider coming toward us. We dove into the trench and there was an explosion. The next thing I knew we were digging through debris and helping out
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March 7, 1959 Page 4.
some of the crew, most of whom were pretty well banged up. On and off that night there was artillery although I must have had a few hours sleep. On the morning of June 7th either Lt. Coyle or Peterson told me to take up a position with my anti-tank rifle launcher in the corner of the field on the west and keep a sharp eye for the enemy was going to be with us shortly. We didn't see anything and I was in that position until about ten or eleven AM when Sam Durbin noticed planes (C 47’s) and they dropped their cargo of colored chutes, mainly equipment bundles, off in the distance. I had asked Lt. Coyle, at the briefing tables what would happen if the beach head failed to come through and he informed me of a great number of planes loaded with equipment and ready to take off for whoever needed them. Those colored chutes seemed to answer my question. Our morale took a sudden drop and we started to consider in which direction the beach lay. Shortly after that, about noon, we pulled out onto the main road and headed toward Neuville Au Plain. About mid-afternoon we encounted the Germans in pretty close combat and very heavy small arms fired was exchanged. Don't know exactly how long the fire fight lasted. Sgt. Sampson was using his mortar from behind the hedge where we were positioned and hitting very close to the immediate hedge to our front where the Germans were. Sgt. Burke was to my right and I noticed how close he was to the main road which was also to our right. Next I noticed he was standing up in the middle of the road blasting away with his Tommy gun. I ran up to him and saw a German running like hell down the road about 150 yards. I had a grenade on my rifle (H.E.) and let the bastard have it. It landed in front of him by some yardage but failed
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March 7, 1959 Page 5
to explode. Don’t know if I forgot to pull the pin or if it just landed on the fin end and skidded. At that he threw up his hands, turned and was walking back to us. Burke was running toward him and unthink[inserted]ing[end inserted]ly I follo[inserted]w[end inserted]ed. Shortly after that the Germans started to surrender by the dozens. By this time other troopers appeared and Sgt. Burke and another trooper were escorting at least seventy prisoners, three abreast, in front of me, heading to the rear. I had a colonel, I believe; a man slightly grey at the temples with a serious leg wound, who was being carried by two of his men. We hadn't gone too far when he asked me for a drink of water. I hesitated to give him one, as I didn’t trust him, but I did and I couldn’t help but notice in spite of his defeat and pain, a look of relief or gratitude in his eyes. I relieved him of his iron cross and we proceeded on our way. We came to a cluster of buildings where I had his men place him on a door. Here I searched him and took a Mauser pistol he had in his hip pocket and then rejoined my outfit at the front. In retrospect I can’t help but feel that in spite of the excellent performance of every man on the line, Burke's action, foolish as it may have been, triggered their forces into a mass surrender. I believe, considering the size of the German force we had engaged, this surrender eliminated a possible threat to the delayed beach head which reached us shortly thereafter, enabling our combined troops to push on to St. Sauveur le Vicomte under Vandevoort's unified command.
John Keller