Cornelius Ryan WWII papers, box 009, folder 07: George Goodridge

101st Airborne After Action Reports Div- notes on 506th PIR, Co. Box 9, #7

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Here are some excerpts from the Chapter which is a proposed history of the Fighting Fox Company written by a gentleman called George Goodridge.

Company F 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment 101st Airborne Division

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The Fighting Fox Company is Company F of the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment of the 101st Airborne Division. It's not very well written. The author certainly does not claim that it is accurate but it does give some items of color.

"As Fox Company piled into trucks for the Hungerford Station, again the ladies and the 'not-quite ladies' of gentle alled bourne came to wave and kiss their boys goodbye. They, too, knew there would be no quick return as from the exercises at Tourques or Newbury. They noticed that everyone wore a jump suit, not the usual mixed ensembles of parts of different uniforms. "Oh, look at the helmets. They're sewed!" one fascinated girl cried. Netting covered every helmet and they bore a freshly painted white spade, the identification symbol of the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment. The ladies knew and they became almost feverish. More of them showed up lining the gateway and the street than had ever been seen before by Fox men in gentle auburn. And for nine months they thought they knew the whereabouts of every pretty thing in skirts. The hedgerow commandos to differentiate them from the Piccadilly commandos of London, broke through the hedgerows that border the camp, the better to say their goodbyes. Audrey Townsend, lovely, well-stacked, taxied up from the other end of town to hold her Joe Hogan Miller in her arms. An unusually muscular girl knocked at the door of a Nissen hut asking for Ray. She soon became the center of attraction because when she stood up straight the front of her dress sagged way below her knees. More than enough Rays answered her call. Some climbed on the truck tailgates for a last minute kiss of good luck. The old women cried, waved their handkerchiefs and head shawls solemnly from their windows not caring whether or not a soldier happened to see this bit of touching kindness or answered it with a sweep of his arms. Goodbye gentle . Goodbye Helen, Bertha, Martha, Sophie. Goodbye too, Swindon, London, Birmingham. Goodbye for a while."

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They were there for eleven days, during which time they were briefed. Continu- ing the narrative:

"Monday Fox officers were briefed. Captain Movey, Lieutenant Andrew E. Tuck, Fleeling Colt, Russell Hall, Thomas 'Dusty' Rhodes, Charles Simone, Crail McDonald and Alvin Brooks who joined Fox only a few days before. Tuesday morning these officers in turn briefed the non-coms. In the afternoon the men got all the dope. It was France all right. Normandy in particular. From then on for nine days, morning and afternoon the Company, Platoon, Squadron and individual was shown, told and retold what their and his job would be. An excellent fantable depicted every hedgerow, house, road and stream so that a man could see how to orient himself after landing and see where he was. The little 30-house hamlet of Pouppeville became as well known as Chicago or Los Angeles. It would be Fox Company's job to capture Pouppeville and clear and keep cleared the causeway leading from a section of Omaha Beach into Pouppeville. (He means Utah there, I believe.) The second platoon was to flush the houses on the left side of the main and only street. Manning Paney, the best friend a machine gun ever had would have his gun placed to the south end of the street while pointed toward the center with orders to fire on anything that moved on legs or wheels. In fact, Fox ’s job was in miniature the job of the 101st Airborne Division to clear all causeways leading from Utah Beach so that seaborne infantry and tanks pouring out of LCIs and LSTs could get a flying start in their dash to cut off the Cherbourg peninsula and overrun as much of Normandy as possible. The 82nd Airborne and the 9th Infantry would race up the main highway via Montebourg, etc.

"This is no time to be bashful about asking questions. Those asked the most were: 'How many Krauts were over there?' 'What kinds of weapons do they have?' 'Will the air force and navy bomb the spot just before we jump?' Above all the question 'How long will we be in there?' Nobody could answer this one.

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The GI manual states that 'Airborne troops are not expected to remain in action more than 72 hours after landing in enemy territory. Why not? Because it is ex- pected that in this period of time seaborne forces will have arrived to relieve the parachute and glider troop troops. You who have written these words in a nice plush office, what do you know about etc. Seventy-two hours you say. All Fox Company joins in with a hearty, forgiving guffaw. That was a long, long 72 hours in Normandy. Over 20 days in fact. Later over 70 days in Holland. Each man received a map of the region. A very good map with a scale of one to 100,000th of France showing Cherbourg to . Sheet 6E. The world's most important maps were placed inside helmets for safekeeping along with pictures of Varga girls out of old Esquires. Joe 'Pete' Droogan, Fox's Company's Chief Medic tried to bag or steal a red head for his helmet but couldn't.

"How do the men feel? Were they excited and all that kind of stuff? Hell, no! In the first place they were kept so busy with those eternal briefings, dis- tribution of ammunition, inspections, etc. they had no time which to call their minds their own. Besides there was a G.I. truck giving out with music at all spare hours of the day and everyone went to the movies in the evenings and would have been glad to see over again Northwest Passage and Northern Pursuit with Errol Flynn and Ann Sheridan. On June the 1st the men were paid in French invasion currency. These colorful notes with high "500" figures create quite a sensation. A certain Edgar Bishop was so tickled with them that he went over to show them to the marshalling area cooks who job it was to cook and were not supposed to know what was going on around them. You can’t be too careful about such a monstrous undertaking as the Airborne invasion of Normandy dropping thousands of men who love to live smack into the laps of the enemy. Well some of the fellows found out that Bishop showed these notes to the cooks and they took turns smacking hell out of him behind a tent. Nor was he allowed to make the jump. A , Roland Hale