FUBAR: An Eagle in Chains
June 6, 2025
“Anyone says he isn’t afraid is telling a g**damn lie.”
He was honed to a knife’s edge, and ready to go. His motivation was to return home, and return with honor. For him, that meant to fight his way through the war and know that he actively participated in the inevitable victory. His first disappointment arrived when he failed in his assigned mission.
He was part of two “sticks” of the 101st that landed in the flooded coastal zones between Utah Beach and St. Mere Eglise. Utah was the northernmost of the beaches designated for the invasion. The dark, flooded coastal plains were filled with Rommel’s “asparagus;” a nickname the GIs gave the metal obstacles positioned across the landscape. They were designed to maim and kill paratroopers. Plenty of paratroopers drowned in the soaked fields that sat alongside the elevated causeways that gave troops easy access to and from the beach. These men died because of the weight of their gear, or because they were tangled up in chutes and aptly named “shroud” lines.
Who won the causeways mattered! The 101st Airborne, 82nd Airborne, and the British 6th Paratrooper Divisions were ordered to “disrupt and confuse the Germans”, and secure those causeways. This would prevent a concentrated German counterattack against the Allied invasion forces coming in from the beaches, especially Utah and Sword. It would also allow Allied men and war materials to move inland rather than being bogged down on the beaches.
My father landed near the important node of Ste. Mere Eglise and was slogging his way through the flooded fields that surrounded an all-important road - a causeway. He was alone. Men were scattered and lost all over the place, many wounded, captured, and killed. Others were finding themselves alone or in very small groups without any command structure. Some were able to scramble and assemble in a tossed salad bowl of various units and ranks. This created a hodge-podge of men, self-organized into units formed from different companies, regiments, and divisions. These men seemed to figure out ways to inflict pain on the enemy by simply doing something. They made decisions at every level to go this way or that, or to fire on any German soldier who crossed their paths. When they could, they cut power lines, disrupted communications, logistics, and the very lives of the enemy whenever an opportunity presented itself.
His job was to disrupt German defensive efforts by assaulting and killing men, while they slept, in their barracks. There was so much confusion that the only thing that seemed predictable was that everyone, German and American, was experiencing the timeless military operational truth of chaos otherwise known as FUBAR (F*ed Up Beyond All Recognition). Despite the confusion of a messed-up night jump behind German lines and landing practically in the middle of a German encampment, he knew he still had a mission. It was no longer an assault on a particular barracks. Now, it was to survive and avoid capture. Disheartened, humiliated, and defeated, he had to figure out what to do.
American soldiers seemed to be falling from the sky everywhere. This disorganization created confusion for the German forces. To add to the confusion, many Germans thought Rick and his pals were psycho-killers released from prison to unleash murderous havoc on behalf of Roosevelt. Few of the defenders seemed to grasp that the full-on invasion of Europe was underway. The confusing and disorganized reports of American soldiers dropping out of the sky was merely the beginning of what in a very few hours would be the greatest invasion force assembled in all of history. The morning would soon reveal that truth. My father described the planes rolling in with the morning light, like a huge apocalyptic shadow that covered the sky. He watched in awe, terrible awe, to realize the power that was following his entry into France.
Opposite of these crazy American “psycho-killers” sat the German paratroopers of the 6th Parachute Regiment. The “Sixth” was responsible for clearing the way from Carentan to Ste. Mere-Eglise in order to stage an organized counterattack against any beach landings. These crack soldiers were under the command of Colonel von der Heydte. Early on the morning of D-Day, von der Heydte’s men were deeply shaken when the U.S. Navy finally let loose the terrible power of her guns. German soldiers have since reported the utter terror they felt as they hunkered down in desperate efforts to endure what seemed to be a storm from hell. The fury of this devilish barrage just seemed to keep coming and coming with no end in sight. Colonel von der Heydte was in Carentan and bravely decided to drive the approximate seven miles to the village of Ste. Marie-du-Mont. He needed to see for himself rather than rely on the incoming reports. He climbed a church steeple. From there he could look down upon Utah Beach and out over the sea. What he saw was stunning. (Stephen Ambrose, D-Day)
Much like my father, he was awestruck.
“All along the beach,” he recalled, “were the small boats, hundreds of them disgorging thirty or forty armed men. Behind them were the warships blasting away with their huge guns, more warships in one fleet than anyone had ever seen before.” (Ambrose, D-Day) The colonel quickly ordered a battalion to be summoned to shore up the defenses. It was these men of the 6th Parachute Regiment who my father would soon encounter.
Alone, disoriented and lost, dad was hoping to find some friends with whom he could re-group. He wrote that “I managed to stay away for a full day. I was completely alone.” He stressed being alone often in his many conversations with me, and even in his notes. It was a very long night. Throughout the years, he often reminded himself and me that, for other soldiers, the night lasted for a mere moment, and then they were gone.
He spent a good part of that first day of D-Day with his government issued cricket in one hand and whatever weapons he still had in the other. The cricket was the famous clicker used by the paratroopers to identify one another among the thick hedgerows and flooded fields of Normandy. He really needed to find a buddy.
One click to let someone know you were there. And someone was there. He could hear and see some movement. It was time to figure out if it was friend or foe.
His cricket went, “Click, clack”
“Click-clack, click-clack, click-clack,” was the response.
Then he whispered in the darkness, “flash.”
“Thunder! Hoff, that you?” It was “Jimmy” Sheeran, a soldier from his plane, same Company, 3rd Battalion. A friend.