By BILL WELCH
Morning News city editor
""In
war, before the battle is joined, plans are everything. The minute the shooting starts, plans are worthless.''
Gen. Dwight Eisenhower.
pThe D-Day plan for the 501st Airborne Infantry Regiment was to drop near
Ste. Marie DuPont,a small town a few miles inland from the beaches where the seaborne invasion of France would take place.
In strict security before the invasion, C Company of the 501st was briefed on its job. The men
were gathered around tables of sand done up to look like their drop zone.
A lieutenant colonel described to the men where they would land. He told them their job would be to block causeways, the slightly elevated
country roads that passed through a water-soaked land of swamps and marshes. Block the causeways and the Germans couldn't get reinforcements to the fight at the beaches.
The pilots of the transport planes would know
where to drop them because specially trained PAthfinder units would land first and would roll out large, white bolts of cloth. The following pilots would simply follow their course and watch for the white markers on the
ground.
""What if they're not there,'' a sergeant interjected.
In measured, firm tones, the lieutenant colonel answered, ""They will be there.''
So much for Sgt. Guy Sessions' question.
On
the black, moonless night of June 6, 1944, Sessions and 17 other Screaming Eagles of the 501st Regiment, 101st Airborne Division, jumped out of their C-47 into France.
Sessions was the last man out of the plane.
He jumped into blackness. The ground was 1,200 feet below, but he couldn't see it. He couldn't see the ring on his parachute rip cord when he pulled it. No sooner had his chute opened than he hit the
ground.
Over the course of the next few days, he would find out that the men from his plane and one other had landed nowhere near the drop zone. They were about 15-20 miles south of it. They found that out
from an elderly woman at a farm. They gathered around her and pointed to the battle map they had been issued. Using a mixture of the little bit of French they had been taught and gestures, they asked her,
Where on this map were they? She looked at the map, looked at them and shrugged. Please, could she show them where they were?
""So she stuck her finger at a spot about a foot below the bottom of
the map,'' said Sessions, now a retired marketing instructor from California. He and his wife, Marie live on Old Lake Road in North East.
""How did we screw up so badly? Well, that's war.''
When
Sessions dropped into the night, his thoughts were on what to do next. There was no time to think that this was the opening of the great campaign to liberate Europe from Nazi oppression, no time to wonder about
chances of survival on a risky mission.
""You were well-trained, physically and mentally,'' he said. ""Fear was not in it.''
And being the elite of the American Army, they were brash enough
to think no one could hurt them.
""You're not thinking so much of what might happen to you, you're thinking of what I do next.''
""We had been in that plane for about three hours. We're laden
down and it's hot and the thing you're thinking about is to get out of there and get on the ground and get rid of some of this stuff.''
What Sessions did after hitting the ground was put away his parachute and gather
himself up. He had 100 pounds of equipment. Some of that included a reserve parachute, gas mask, an extra rifle, ammunition and just two days of rations. He shed what he didn't need.
He was in a field. He heard
a noise and pulled out the clicker all airborne troops had been issued. He gave it one click and waited for the reply of two clicks. Nothing. He clicked again. Nothing.
""S I let out with a
burst from the Thompson (submachine gun) and then I heard this long ""moooo'' and then more moos. I had landed in a cow pasture and what I heard were cattle.''
He started walking to where he thought
the other men from his platoon would be, but found no one.
""Then I heard voices. They were German. I was alone, so I went in the other direction. Still, I'm thinking I'm near the drop zone.''
An
unexpected benefit to the Allies of the many misplaced drops like Sessions' planes had made was that the German army had reports of parachute landings all over northern France. For all they knew in those early
morning hours, each one could be part of the main parachute assault. As confusing as it was for the Allies, it was more confusing for the Germans. So much for their plans.
As he walked through another pasture in
the first light of day, Sessions stepped on something soft. It was Private Sanders from his platoon. He was sleeping. A little farther along, they came upon Sgt. Clive Barney from their unit. The threesome
would wander about until the third day - June 9 - when they came upon 18 men led by Capt. Philips.
""Philips was gung ho. He wanted to cause as much damage as he could on the way to our objective. One
day he decided to set up a roadblock. We had one .30 caliber machine gun. The privates had their M-1s, the captain and a lieutenant had carbines and I had my Thompson.''
They waited along a road much like Route
5 in the North East area where the Sessions now live. Along came a truck loaded with German soldiers.
""When they got close enough, we let them have it. The truck went out of control and crashed.
Some of them were killed. Some of them managed to get away. We knew they'd alert other units, so we took off.''
Over the next several days, the group unenventfully made its way back toward the Normandy
beachhead, getting hungrier as they went.
On June 12, the 21 hungry paratroopers were on the southern outskirts of the town of Carentan, a place that had been their backup target back on June 6. As they moved
down into the valley where the town sat, they could see across the valley that American troops were coming from the north, attacking the Germans in the town as they went. It was the 101st Division and the 2nd
Armored Division.
""We didn't know it was our division that was attacking, of course.''
""We had not taken Carentan yet. We were running into the Germans that were being chased out of
Carentan. That's when we suffered the only casualty we had the whole seven days. We got into a firefight with about 100 Germans. One officer, the lieutenant, got hit with a rifle grenade and he was killed
immediately.
Sessions credits Capt. Philips with getting the small, misplaced unit back to American lines with only that casualty. After the sixth day, they had all been reported to their families as missing in
action. Many other groups that had been dropped so far off their drop zones would eventually be reported as prisoners of war or killed in action.
""That afternoon, an artillery barrage was laid down on
us. It was our own. They had seen this movement from across the valley. They didn't know that we were Americans, so they laid down a barrage. It was amazing that no one was hit. It was like
firecrackers popping all around.
""That was the worst artillery barrage I was ever in and it was from our own troops.''
In the time after their two days of rations had run out, the paratroopers had gone
to farms asking for food, but there usually wasn't much to be had. At one farm, they were given a roast leg of lamb. It was for 21 ravenous men. The captain cut very thin slices for the men to share.
""I can remember tasting it, that's about all,'' Sessions recalled.
In Carentan, they met up with troops from the 2nd Armored Division. Sessions asked one of the passing tank crews to spare some food.
""He threw down a K-ration. It was the tastiest stuff I had ever eaten.''
The planned two days rations hadn't been enough. So much for plans.
Sessions was from San Diego, home of the Pacific Fleet up
until just a few months before Pearl Harbor was attacked. He volunteered to join the Naval air service but was turned down when he failed the aviator's physical. The Navy offered him a sailor's job, but
being from San Diego, he wanted nothing to do with that. That's for people from Nebraska. When he got home that day, his draft notice was waiting for him with orders to report immediately. He did.
Shortly after his induction, he volunteered for the airborne.Sessions, in his early 20s, knew as much about this war as anyone else, that the tyranny of Hitler and Japan had to stop.
""I knew something had
to be done. I suspected I could do something quicker this way.'' He's matter-of-fact about it - it was a job to be done and to be done right.
The airborne divisions were among the elite of the U.S. Army. They
would be used in Europe to be dropped behind enemy lines and hold positions until regular ground units could come up. After they were pulled out of the line, they were held in reserve to be used wherever a crisis
might erupt.
During the summer of 1944, more air drops were planned for them, but the ground troops by August were moving across France so fast that the paratroopers weren't needed. Once, Sessions, recalled,
their unit was embarked aboard their planes when they learned their objective had already been captured by Gen. George Patton's Third Army.
That was August. In September, British Gen. Bernard Montgomery came up with a
plan to get the Allies across the Rhine River and into the heart of Germany. He would need American and British paratroopers to do it.
It would be Sessions' last campaign. We'll pick up with that story in
September.
