Green Light - Air Force Historical Studies Office

392 Storming Germany
gliders got off right away the tow plane crew might have a chance to stay
airborne. With a mild curse, Bill hit the rope release. I relaxed my hold on
the controls and he took over in a beautiful peel-off. The other glider cut,
too. A quick look backward gave me a last look at our tug as it disappeared
westward into the haze with the tow ropes still attached. They looked as
though they might make it.
Now we began to have glimpses of the ground through the smoke. The
Kraut, of course, had glimpses of us, too. We were gliding silently at eighty
miles an hour; we seemed to be able to hear every crack, crack of rifles and
every pup-pup-pup of machine guns aimed at us. You could see the gun
flashes, too. Later I heard that sight described as like flying over a junk yard
with hundreds of tin cans glistening back at you in the sun.
In our glider, our eleven airborne glider troopers began to sing, very
loudly, “Hail, hail, the gang’s all here!” and I joined in. But after the sec-
ond series of “hails!” a 20 mm shell exploded right in front of the
glider-and the singing had to stop. Shell fragments got me in the head,
face, and neck, and Bill was hit in the foot. The glider troopers thought we
had had it; but the glider wasn’t badly hurt, and the two of us were still fully
effective.
The smoke now was gone. The sunshine seemed brilliant. My God:
there, directly in front of us, was a tall transmission tower and all its wires.
No way to go over it at our airspeed; Bill dove the glider under the wires
and swept around the tower. This increased our airspeed-something we
truly did not need, now that we were about to land. But I yanked the red
handle for the arrester chute, and our speed once more was under control. I
pulled the yellow handle to release the chute as Bill flattened the glider for
a landing. We skimmed half across a large field-and we were in. We were
under fire; but there was no panic as all thirteen men on that glider piled
outside in an instant. (Roger Krey, glider pilot)
Just as I was circling for my final approach my glider was hit by flak. I was
able to land OK; and we came down in a freshly plowed field, which kept
us from rolling too far. But when we came to a stop the airborne troopers
there were just frozen in their seats. I yelled, “Get the hell out!” and the
glider emptied quickly-except for one lad who was dead. That flak had
exploded right underneath him. And the same shot had wounded the troop-
ers seated to his left and his right.
We got the dead and wounded out and did our best to make things
easier for the wounded until the medics arrived. (Thayer Bonecutter, glider
pilot)