The Conservative Cave
Current Events => The DUmpster => Topic started by: Delmar on August 02, 2020, 03:00:22 PM
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Sun Aug 2, 2020, 03:05 PM
Star Member CTyankee (56,753 posts)
WW2 buffs, can you help me with some information, please?
I'm looking for more information about where my cousin Bill would have been dropped as a paratrooper jumping into France. The only relevant information is that he was lost for several days before finding his company. They literally didn't know where a number of men were. He said he just walked til he found what I guess was a farm house. This is all I know really, except that he came home with a little stray dog he found and called "toot sweet" (toute de suite - "right now".
My guess is that these men were equipped with compasses and an English-French list of helpful words/phrases and a map of the general area they were dropped. He didn't mention what training was given to the paratroopers for managing to find their way to their HQ in France (such as it was). And what was to follow the drop, specifically?
He didn't mention whether it was night or day.
He seemed pretty laid back about it. Sadly, he died of alcoholism about 10 years later (don't know if this was in any way war related).
I'd love to read some books related to these forces, what happened when they were lost in France (apart from what we saw in "The Longest Day".
https://www.democraticunderground.com/100213845019
All the other primitives made an effort to give helpful suggestions, but not Laeith.
Response to CTyankee (Original post)Sun Aug 2, 2020, 03:27 PM
Star Member Laelth (26,264 posts)
7. He may not have wanted to find his unit.
It would have been a lot safer just to “hang out” for a while in the French countryside.
-Laelth
That is maybe what a primitive would do but it's not something an American airborne paratrooper would do.
Laeith just got in trouble a couple of weeks ago for defending the BLM guy who kneeled on the neck of a little kid.
The rest of the primitives will probably let him get away with any damned thing as long as he doesn't bad mouth democrat candidates.
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One guesses that since he's been a member here and left, the Georgia attorney Laelth's a different person now, his balls having been snipped off by Jugs, the BainsBane primitive, during a primitive discourse on abortion three or four years ago.
I'm sure that at least his voice changed.
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That has got to be one of the most stupid comments I’ve read on DU, and that’s saying a lot.
Can you imagine parachuting into France on D-Day, not being able to find your company, not being exactly sure where you are, not absolutely sure where the Germans are or if you’re walking to a French farm that’s pro- or anti-German occupation, and thinking “Maybe I’ll just hang out here for a while and let the war pass me by while I stay safe.”
Laelth is a total moron.
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Response to CTyankee (Original post)Sun Aug 2, 2020, 03:27 PM
Star Member Laelth (26,264 posts)
7. He may not have wanted to find his unit.
It would have been a lot safer just to “hang out” for a while in the French countryside.
-Laelth
Uh, no. It is not safe anywhere during Vichy France. No one know who is friend or foe.
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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.
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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.
Maybe the butter bar was in charge of the map showing his land nav prowess. :-)
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One guesses that since he's been a member here and left, the Georgia attorney Laelth's a different person now, his balls having been snipped off by Jugs, the BainsBane primitive, during a primitive discourse on abortion three or four years ago.
I'm sure that at least his voice changed.
Speaking of Jugs, has anyone heard from her lately?
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Speaking of Jugs, has anyone heard from her lately?
I thought of her often during the riots in Minneapolis.
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I thought of her often during the riots in Minneapolis.
I would hate to see the size of the ventilator that has to fill those lungs. :-)