First to Jump by Jerome Preisler Page A

confusion, they were strongly entrenched throughout the peninsula and well primed to be “sitting at their arms” once the alarm got out.
    The German defenders at Drop Zone D were among the best positioned in the early going. They opened fire on the Pathfinders from the hedgerows even as they made landfall, using flare pistols to light up the field around them, hitting them with a fusillade of machine-gun fire and mortar shells—and that wasn’t the only punishing surprise in store for the invaders. After sloshing gasoline all over the farmhouse at the edge of the pasture, the Germans had stood ready to start it on fire as the C-47s arrived, meaning to blind their aircrews with the glare and immolate the troopers who might be unable to avoid plunging down on top of it.
    With the Pathfinders’ jump having occurred so late, there was only minutes between their arrival and the rumbling sound of the 506th PIR’s main wave transports approaching in the western sky—the Germans’ cue to put their torches to the farmhouse. It went up instantly, gripped by a giant orange claw of flame.
    Although their planes had come in low, the troopers felt as if their descent took a hundred years. With the German guns turned skyward, bullets riddled some of the men’s silk as they dropped into the swirling inferno of the field. Others were killed before their feet touched the earth, and still more were mowed down as they landed. Those who crashed into the trees at the fringes of the pasture had to cut themselves out of their harnesses under heavy fire. At least one jumper, Stanley Suwarsky, who’d leaped from Plane 6, was shot to death as he dangled helplessly from a bough. He would be the first American soldier to perish in the Normandy invasion.
    In the middle of the field, the Pathfinders at first lay still to avoid the bullets and tracers sizzling through the tall grass around them. But they knew they could not stay out in the open, where they were easy targets. Within a few minutes they began inching toward the hedgerows amid the flames and machine-gun salvos, their chins down in the dirt, crawling on their stomachs to avoid crossfire over their heads. They had to find cover and set up their lights and beacons.
    Amid the chaos of the landing, a group of them managed to collect themselves and sneak up on a couple of German machine-gun emplacements. Getting their grenades loose, they tossed them into the nests and hit the dirt. The explosions took out the enemy soldiers at their posts.
    With those guns silenced, Lieutenant Watson got a needed opening to rally several of his men. Among them was Joe Haller, the self-anointed King One, who also held the distinction of being one of Watson’s Eureka operators. The Germans spraying him with fire from several directions, Haller dragged his unit into the shrubbery, fully aware it could have slowed him down enough to get him killed.
    Watson knew it would be impossible for his signalmen to lay out their T with machine-gun rounds and mortars coming at them from all sides. Moreover, the light from the blazing farmhouse across the field would be far brighter than the panels, rendering them almost useless to the pilots. The radar beacon was now Team D’s best bet for guiding in the formation.
    Haller rushed to set it up, getting the antenna out of the oilskin’s outside pocket, connecting it to the unit, and then telescoping it to its full eleven-foot height. The sound of the planes was so loud he could almost feel the vibration in his bones. They were close, almost on top of the field. But he could only hope there was still time for the lead plane’s Rebecca to zone in on the radar beam.
    Slipping on his headset, Haller powered up the Eureka, calibrated its dials to the designated signal frequency, and began transmitting. Without lights to mark the drop zone, he used the device’s added radio Morse code function to send out a dash and two dots for