Presentation Date: September 23, 1999
Richard Reyes
D-Day, 82nd Airborne, Paratrooper near St. Mere Eglise. Reyes fondly recalls his training as an 82nd Airborne Army paratrooper and the huge aerial assault of Normandy on June 5th, 1944. Each jumper carried 150 lbs of gear through the C-47 door. D-Day, 82nd Airborne, Paratrooper near St. Mere Eglise. Reyes fondly recalls his training as an 82nd Airborne Army paratrooper and the huge aerial assault of Normandy on June 5th, 1944. Each jumper carried 150 lbs of gear through the C-47 door.
"Airborne!"
The O'Club was silent for an hour at the September dinner meeting, as Richard Reyes spoke of tight boots and silk chutes, his personal story of jumping with the 82nd Airborne over Normandy.
A native of Hayward, Reyes was drafted into the Army in 1943, and became one of the youngest paratroopers in World War Two. Richard's training came in Texas and Louisiana, as a medic in the paratroops. The latter stop provided the young Reyes with unforgettable memories about jungle training
"I have never been in any heat like there was in Louisiana. This was June, July, August of 1943. Don't you try and tell me something about heat rash - - I know all about it."
Stationed in Texas as a medic for a few months , Richard was finally shipped over to England. That's where the Army decided to do a reduction-in-force (RIF) of non-combatants, to swell the ranks of able-bodied soldiers for the pending European invasion. Reyes was sent to a pool for further infantry combat training and was scheduled to be part of the 16th Regiment, 1st Division the "Big Red One."
While he was there he had a life-changing decision when he saw some paratroopers. "These three 'gods' walked by, a captain, a staff sergeant and corporal. Jump boots, sharp uniform, and I said 'That's for me'."
Ashwell England, near Nottingham, became the latest training field. "I never did so many pushups in my life. And we had an instructor tell us 'You never walk, you never walk'. When you left a building, you were running to where you had to go. That was the toughest training I ever had in my life." Reyes says the instructor let the troops know they weren't kids any more. To prove it, they ran five miles several times a day for twelve weeks.
In April, 1944, Richard was assigned to the 505 Regimental Combat Team, 82nd Airborne, at Camp Corn. It was a true tent city, acre after acre of canvas, housing the paratrooper unit. His first jump was with a static line, "you put your leg out, the wind stream past the C-47 turning you toward the tail, and you look up and your parachute is open. Thank God. My first jump was the most beautiful thing in the world." Following jumps were more tense, as only five were made before a paratrooper was deemed ready for combat. On his fourth jump, Reyes sprained his ankle. While recovering, he was assigned to weld spar-strengthening kits to gliders, after the Army noted Richard's 201 file said he had welding skills.
Reyes' got his fifth and sixth jumps, mandatory night jumps, and he was transferred back to his unit, which had since been moved to Spanhole. Reyes says it was a pre-invasion holding camp, "frozen, with guards around it. Once you go in, you don't leave, you don't talk to the guards, you don't go near the fence."
Readying for D-Day, the paratroopers were shown sand tables for familiarization with the lay of the land and their objectives. They also continued to run every day to keep in top condition. June 5th, word came that the jump was on. Sequestered in huge hangars, Reyes, his "A Company" and the rest of the 505th were given 'escape kits' - - a map, a saw and French francs - - and they had a great meal.
"We got ice cream, we got pork chops, we got stuff we never had in the States," he remembers. "It was for a reason. Lights off at 10 o'clock." Before less than a good night's sleep, the rumbling of C-47s awakened everybody. The pathfinders were heading out. A half hour later, Reyes' unit rolled out and put gear and chutes on. They hustled across the tarmac to the transports, voicing their name and serial number as the paratroopers boarded.
"In our combat loads, we were carrying 150 pounds. You have an M-1, a uniform, a parachute, a gas mask, then you have your ammo, and rations for three days. Now, if anybody wants any extra ammo...my sergeant took a carbine with 800 rounds of ammo, and he took his M-1 with 160 rounds. Every man carried a 25 pound teller mine (as defense for a tank counterattack). Some of the guys carried extra grenades."
Somehow, with the help of the plane crew, the 'troopers climbed the steps into their C-47s. The engines started and Reyes' C-47 rolled out to join the great line of sister ships. Then a grenade went off in another of the transports, killing two soldiers and wounding just about everyone else on board. A few ships stopped, but the rest continued.
The parade down taxi ways and off the ground continued. Once aloft, the transports formed up and headed across the Channel to Cherbourg, where the planes banked northward, 21 miles from the drop zone.
Richard was sitting next to the cargo door, where he had a great view, "It was a beautiful night, a moonlit night, and I could see planes forever behind us. All the way to England. But as soon as we made that left turn, the small stuff (flak) came arcing at us. Pretty colors - - white, yellow, green and red." And between each of those tracers lighting up the sky were probably six more shells.
The C-47's bulkhead lit up with the red light, but before they got the green light to jump, the plane jinked up and to the left, the nearby C-47s scattering up, down and away from each other in the darkness. Reyes says they must have jumped from 800 feet instead of the designated 500 feet. When he hit the ground, there was nobody near him.
He couldn't see anything, much less any of his fellow paratroopers, and his ears strained to hear any voices in the blackness. He buried his chute, grabbed his weapon and headed cross country to a distant sound of battle. Later, he figured he must have traveled five miles in eight hours to reconnect with his company in St. Mere Eglise. Hearing two voices and the unmistakable sound of a rifle safety being released, Reyes teamed up with a couple of GIs from the 507th Regiment. Together, they worked their way through the hedgerows and down narrow dirt roads until they reached - - territory they would later find treacherous to cross due to the German's having zeroed-in target points for heavy machine guns and mortars.
At dawn, Reyes had not only reunited with his company, but had been a runner, helping track down and reunite other scattered units of the 507th. He says the 507th successfully kept Germans from getting through their zone and attacking the beachhead, but only at a high cost. Reyes himself was wounded within two days of his Normandy jump. He returned to the front lines and fought six months later in the Battle of the Bulge, but that's another story.