Little known fact, in the two US airborne divisions of that time, the PIR (Parachute Infantry Regiment) soldiers were volunteers, the GIR (Glider Infantry Regiment) soldiers were not, they were just assigned like to any other line unit. Each of the divisions had both types of regiments (Three regiments to the division) but off-hand I forget the ratio, 1:2 or 2:1.
I've been around the block in the military long enough to know that such things did happen, and in all armies; at the time of the Battle of the Bulge, for instance, there was estimated to be as many as 15,000 deserters hanging out in Paris running their own underworld operation, making a serious nuisance out of themselves hijacking trucks and other such hi-jinks. But to jump to 'Probably' on that about a single soldier's story that ended with him finding his own unit eventually is a ridiculous leap.
The Normandy drop was the first real big drop for the US airborne and it was at night, so kind of a clusterf#ck (Not counting the smaller drop in Sicily which was also a clusterf#ck, but at least they got the troops onto dry land in Normandy). Like most armies, the squad soldiers didn't have maps or any particular knowledge of local geography, and once they were on the ground in that country, it all looked pretty much the same in every direction...small fields and farmhouses with hedgerows around everything, no landmarks visible from a distance except perhaps a church tower in the next unknown town, and even if they found a village (Not already full of Germans) the roads are, to put it mildly, not the north-south/east-west grids of central Iowa, no, in general they don't go straight to anywhere.
