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HomeMy WebLinkAboutParatroopers on D-Day . ~ , ~ t Q ~',.. Page F21 . "a"ryaii-~Colie# St'ation-E-ag~' J .' I SundaUy;-jJ~'~'{'1 '~94 .. Remembering World War II Paratroopers first to arrive on French soil on D-Day By ROBERT C. BORDEN Eagle staff writer When American troops stormed ashore on the bea. ches of Normandy at dawn on June 6, 1944, Louis Hud- son and his fellow para- troopers were waiting for them just a few miles inland. The 82nd Airborne Divi- sion had parachuted around the town of Ste. Mere Eglise east of Cherbourg around midnight to blow up the bridges over the Merderet River, mine the roads and set up roadblocks to keep the Germans from rushing rein- forcements to the beaches of Normandy. For Hudson, a Somerville native, it was his first jump in actual war conditions. Little more than a year be- fore, he was still in the Corps of Cadets at Texas A&M. Hudson entered A&M in the fall of 1940 to study ani- mal husbandry. Life had set- tled into a routine of study and drill on campus, but Sunday afternoons were free for the students. "We could either go ride the artillery horses or go to the movie," Hudson said. On the after- noon of Sunday, Dec. 7, 1941, Hudson had chosen the mo- vies at the Campus Theater for his entertainment. "They stopped the movie and cut on the lights. A man came on stage and said he had just heard on the radio that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor. He said we would probably go to war with Japan," Hudson said. "The place was packed and it suddenly got quiet. Sud- denly, somebody hollered, 'Let's go get those Japs' and everybody started hollering and ran out of the theater." In an effort to prepare the Aggies as quickly as possible for the war, A&M went on a year-round trimester sched- ule. There wasn't time for Hudson's Class of '44 to go away to summer military camp, so those students would have to attend Officer Candidate School when they graduated. "So many of my friends joined the Marines or the Navy because they didn't want to miss the war," Hud. son said. Like his buddies, Hudson was anxious to get into the fighting as soon as possible. So, in late April 1943, "with- out telling my parents," Hudson, 21, went to the regis- trar and resigned his com- mission. On an earUer Sunday out- ing to the Campus Theater, Hudson had seen a short fIlm on paratrooper training at Fort Benning, Ga. "I was so impressed I went to the li- brary and read everything I could about it," He said. Hudson asked to join the paratroopers, but was told no. Instead, he was sent to ar- tillery school at Fort Sill, Okla. "They tried to get me to go to OCS or pilot training, but I kept saying no. Finally they let me go to paratrooper school," Hudson said. He arrived at Fort Benning in the early fall of 1943. "Par- atroopers had to volunteer and then they tried to make you quit," Hudson said. The only thing the Army made easy was for the prospective paratroopers to quit. "If after two or three weeks you didn't quit they'd move you over to jump school at Fort Benning for four weeks of gradual training. " After three weeks of train- ing, Hudson made his first jump. "It was just so beau. "The Army ended up with people you couldn't drive off. It paid off because we had the bravest men I had ever known. Most of them paid for it with their lives." LOUIS HUDSON 82nd Airborne Division tiful. I had never been in an airplane until I had to jump out of one," Hudson said. "After the fifth jump, you couldn't quit the para- troopers unless you died or were wounded so badly you couldn't function or unless the war ended. The Army ended up with people you couldn't drive off. It paid off because we had the bravest men I had ever known. Most of them paid for it with their lives," Hudson said. Hudson was assigned to Gen. Matthew Ridgway's 82nd Airborne Division, which had made the fIrst massive airborne assault ever on July 9,1943, at Sicily. The division was transferred to the English Midlands in January 1944. Everyone knew the paratroopers were in England to prepare for an invasion of Europe, but no one knew when or where it ...:. '''~4..c:~ would come. "England was full of spies:' Hudson said. . "The British didn't want to use airborne troops," Hud- son recalled. "They con- vinced us we'd be annihi- lated. " Three or four days before D-Day, the paratroopers were rounded up and put inside a barbed wire stockade and told their objectives for the invasion. The time element still was kept secret. There were guards with orders to shoot any paratrooper who tried to speak to anyone out- side the fence. "We couldn't even speak to the cooks who brought us our food." Hud- son said. "Everybody was edgy and cross," Hudson said. "The guys who had been in Italy said, 'Ain't nobody coming out of this one.' " By the after noon of June 5, everyone knew the time to leave was near. Chaplain Wood gathered the men and told them to get down on their knees and ask God for forgiveness of their sins. "I don't know anybody who didn't get down," Hudson said. Brig. Gen. James M. Gavin, who later commanded the 82nd Airborne, read from the book of Isaiah: "And the young men will mount up like Eagles and run and not be faint." "We began loading up right after dark," Hudson said. The planes carrying the paratroopers flew through "lots of ground fIre" over Cherbourg. "We could see a lot of tracers." Hudson said. Hudson didn't know at the time, but his half brother Iloyd DuPree was serving on the USS Raven, the first minesweeper to sweep the waters off Utah Beach, where the Americans would land in a few hours. Allied bombers spent the early part of the night drop- plng their loads up and down the French coast, as they did many nights. That night, the bom bs set fIre to part of Ste. Mere Eglise. Some of the paratroopers dropped on the city by accident and they were illuminated by the blaze, making easy targets fer the Germans in the area as they floated earthward. "They killed so many of us," Hudson said. The Germans had flooded much of the surrounding countryside as a precaution against invasion. Many of the paratroopers landed in the flooded fields and quickly drowned because of the weight of their heavy packs. Hudson landed on dry land Photo courtesy of Louis Hudson Louis Hudson, right, and his half brother Lloyd DuPree both participated In D-Day, Hudson parachuted into France hours before the first troops came ashore, just outside Ste. Mere Eglise. "I was just exhausted from emotion, but I was still run- ning on adrenaline:' Hudson said. The men of the 82nd Air- borne kept three German di- visions from reaching the Normandy beaches. The Americans held on for three days before the fIrst of the troops that came ashore at Normandy reached them 30 miles inland. On Sept. 17, 1944, the 82nd Airborne jumped in Holland and captured the bridge over the Rhine River at Nijmegen. The 101st Airborne Division took the bridge at Eindho- ven, but heavy resistance prevented the British First Airborne Division from cap- turing the fmal bridge at Arnhem. When the Germans tried to break out at the Bulge in Bel- gium in December 1944, the 82nd and 101st Airborne di. visions were trucked 150 miles from their base at Rheims, France, to join in the fight less than 24 hours later, allowing trapped Allied forces to escape. Later, the men of the 82nd moved into the Ruhr area of Germany where they lib- erated the Wobelein concen- tration camp at Ludwigslust. Hudson still has difficulty talking about the horrors he saw there. Bodies were still in the camp ovens. The sur- vivors were little more than skin and bones. Gen. Gavin was so appalled by what he found that he forced the townspeople to dig up the mass graves of the Jewish victims and give them proper buri~s. The 82nd Airborne then was pulled back into France before the Germans surren- dered. Gavin wanted to vol. unteer to fight the continu- ing war in the Pacific. "He said, 'Every man who'll jump on Tokyo with me take one step forward.' Everyone did," Hudson said. But instead the 82nd Air- borne was sent to Berlin and for those brave men the war was over. Hudson was sent home on the cruiser USS Philadelphi- a, arriVing in New York har. bor on Christmas Day 1945. By New Year's Day, Hudson had been discharged. He was shipped to Fort Sam Hous- ton, where he caught a bus for Brenham and then Somerville. He returned to A&M in the fall of 1946. He was a teacher and administrator for the next 37 years before retiring as principal of Bryan's Ste- phen F. Austin Junior High School in 1985.