Cathy in the Wright

Witness to a Reunion

I was privileged—and I mean that—to take my father-in-law, Frank, to a reunion of his WWII unit, the 437th Troop Carrier Group, in Phoenix. Now well into their 80s, these are the guys who took the 82nd Airborne Division to Normandy on D-Day in gliders and C-47 transports and were at Bastgone when clearing weather allowed critically important resupply from the air during the Battle of the Bulge. They also participated in Operation Market Garden (A Bridge Too Far) as well as other airborne/glider operations in France and Germany. Frank was a witness to the invasion buildup from the ground. He had been named a paymaster of the unit—because he was an anomaly—a guy, 20, who could type. I talked to a number of air crew, including Charles, 91, who piloted one of the first gliders to land in France, but was more interested in telling about an escapade in Paris. He and a friend took a small observation plane on a joyride, circling the Eiffel Tower several times and landed on a tennis court to meet some girls who waved at them. After an enjoyable afternoon, including lots of wine, “I got sober enough to remember we had to take off.” They did so, with the girls helping take down some tennis nets to gain takeoff space and holding the small plane’s tail off the ground, which helped gain just enough momentum for the plane to bounce into the air off some bushes. Then, a crew chief on a C-47 returning to England told of flying over one of the invasion beaches, where a shot-up C-47 had crash landed in the surf, leaving only the top above water. The crew of four was sitting in a circle atop the plane, playing cards, while the invasion progressed around them, and they waited for pickup by a landing craft heading seaward. Next year, the 437th is meeting in Washington, D.C., because “it could be the last chance some of us have to see the World War II Memorial.”