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In the velvety darkness before dawn, fresh winds blew across dozens of airfields in France and England. By the thousands, sleepy-eyed, yawning warriors climbed into their big-pocketed jump suits and pulled on high combat boots. For the airborne troops it was another fateful morning of: "Well, here we go again!" This time they were going beyond the Rhine.
For breakfast there were fresh eggs. But many a tight-stomached trooper passed up this crashing luxury and wanted only scalding black coffee. Soon they were at the airstrips, piling aboard the transport planes and gliders, stacked nose to tail in neat, herringbone formation, with their towlines carefully coiled on the ground.
Once started, the take-offs had to be run with stopwatch accuracy. At ten-second intervals the tow planes moved in from the sides, gently tautened the line, then poured on power and roared down the runway and off into the sky. By then the day had dawned clear and bright, with a near-perfect ten-mile wind.
Big Parade. It was Saturday, March 24, 1945. The western Allies had launched the biggest push, the drive for Germany's throat. General "Ike" Eisenhower was moving more than a million men into action. To the broad picture of overall strategy, the First Allied Airborne Army was contributing its own ultramodern specialty: vertical envelopment of an enemy position.
Flying in double column, two great aerial task forces were converging on a target. Near Brussels the forces joined—the British 6th Airborne Division flying from England, the U.S. 17th Airborne from France. There were more than 3,000 transports, towing gliders and carrying men and equipment. They had 2,000 fighter planes and bombers running interference. If the planes had been strung out in single file they could have stretched in unbroken line from Paris to Berlin. The Allies' big parade was over its German objective for three hours.
Hit the Silk. On the roads below the roaring air fleet, guns, trucks and marching men were raising dust clouds. Farther ahead were smudges of black smoke where heavy bombers were still beating up the target area. Suddenly, out of the smoke, the now bridgeless Rhine appeared, flowing placidly. In the lead transports gum-chewing paratroops were tense. From the jumpmaster in each plane came a curt command: "Stand up!" Then, "Hook up! . . . Stand in the door! . . . Go!" They went tumbling out, 15 men in ten seconds.
To transport pilots and correspondents flying as observers it seemed that the operation was moving at the unreal pace of a speeded-up movie. Within 30 seconds the drop had begun, German flak opened up, colored equipment parachutes dotted the ground, a white parachute was hung up in a tree, a big Hamilcar (British) glider lay on its back, broken and burning.
Fighter pilots saw concealed flak positions open up on the plump transports; one ship exploded in the air, others tumbled and burned. The fighters, in rocket-firing P47 Thunderbolts, cursed and went in on the deck, taking desperate chances to silence the enemy ack-ack. One low-flying pilot had to weave his plane through a group of parachuting soldiers. He launched rockets against a flak emplacement, looked up and saw a paratrooper directly in front of him.