EVERYONE WAS SCARED
By Greg Edwards & Mark Morrison
The Roanoke Times
June 4, 1994
Joe Comer knew the dangers. He, too, shared the thought.
Nonetheless, in the dark sky over Normandy, in the hours before the invasion, Comer napped.
He slept sitting upright and shoulder-to-shoulder with his fellow paratroopers in the pitch dark interior of an airplane. The night air whipped around him, blowing from an open door where he would soon make a plummeting exit. The plane's twin engines hummed like a lullaby as it flew in a V formation with two other planes, also carrying paratroopers.
Comer had a parachute on his back. A second parachute was strapped across his belly in case the first failed. His face was blackened with burnt cork, his hair cut "Geronimo-style." In his fingers, he gripped a small clicker that he had been told could save his life.
He awoke at 1 a.m. His paratrooper group was approaching its drop zone outside a small French town, Sainte-Mere-Eglise, a few miles inland from the Normandy beaches. Their mission was to take the town from the Germans and disrupt communications so the Germans couldn't call for reinforcements when the invasion force landed at dawn.
Joe Comer knew the dangers.
Below, there were few lights marking the landscape, only the streaking comets of incoming anti-aircraft fire. Comer would jump into unfamiliar territory, behind enemy lines, and he knew his parachute might land him anywhere. In a minefield. Mangled in a tree. Drowned in a canal.
Or shot dead on the way down.
But Comer believed the paratrooper creed, that any good paratrooper could whip five Nazis by himself. He wore his Geronimo haircut like a badge of honor, and this bravado allowed him to sleep, even if it was restless.
"I heard guys say they weren't scared, but I say everybody was at least a little bit scared."
. . . . .
D-Day was a hugely complex undertaking -- with a simple goal.
The goal was to invade France and establish a foothold against the German army. The foothold was crucial because, without it, there was no way to assemble, support and supply a military force strong enough to drive the Germans from their occupation of Europe.
The invasion itself, however, involved a complicated plan to secretly ferry 150,000 soldiers from England to France under the cover of night and then unleash them on the shores of Normandy.
Surprise was critical.
The Germans knew an invasion was imminent, but they didn't know where or when or exactly how it would come. They knew only that their goal was equally simple. They had to stop their invasion at the beach.
If they didn't, it would be a turning point in the war, the beginning of the end. more...
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