Cpl. Hank DiCarlo, H Company: “Cpl. John Purdie decided to give up his stripes. He just didn’t want the responsibility of making life and death decisions that could impact on his fellow squad mates. Someone had to do the job so our squad leader, Frank Padisak, chose me.”

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Tech. Fifth Grade John Gibson, Medical Detachment: “When you are preparing for a very dangerous mission you think of family and good friends. You don’t know if you’ll ever see them again—life becomes precious and you appreciate everything. The medical detachment seemed to do a lot of waiting and sitting around. I remember, just to take my mind off things, playing blackjack for hours with Sgt. Tom Newell—Tom cleaned me out real good. The amounts betted were small and I didn’t see any big money gambled in the marshaling area.” 

DiCarlo: “We were given emergency medical kits, arm flags, and mimeographed maps of the jump area. I still have my copy and to this day have never been able to decipher it! Our stay in the marshaling area built up to a fried chicken, steak, and strawberry ice cream finale, the first we’d had since coming to the UK. We were told we’d be taking off on the night of June 4, but this was later changed to June 5."

Pfc. Teddy Dziepak, I Company: “[The afternoon of June 5] we had all kinds of critiques telling us where we were supposed to go, when we were going to jump, what we were going to do. We were issued our ammunition at about 5 p.m. Then we started cleaning up our areas, sharpening knives, and blackening our faces.”

Around 8 p.m. on June 5 Colonel Wolverton asked his men to gather on the parade ground. A 30-year-old West Point graduate, Wolverton had a reputation for being forthright with his men, and was well liked for it. He said, “Men, I am not a religious man and I don’t know your feelings in this matter, but I am going to ask you to pray with me for the success of the mission before us. I would like you to get down on your knees and pray and while you do this do not look down, but look up, with heads held high to the sky. God almighty! In a few short hours we will be in battle with the enemy. We do not join battle afraid. We do not ask favors or indulgence but ask that, if you will, use us as your instrument for the right and an aid in returning peace to the world. We do not know or seek what our fate will be. We only ask this, that if die we must, that we die as men would die, without complaining, without pleading and safe in the feeling that we have done our best for what we believed was right. Oh Lord! Protect our loved ones and be near us in the fire ahead, and with us now as we each pray to you.”

Bennett: “Colonel Wolverton talked to us just like he was one of the guys and seemed genuinely concerned at the prospect of us not all getting back alive. No one spoke during the whole thing and you could have heard a pin drop. Afterwards he dismissed us and we returned to our own tents. I picked up my Thompson and all my gear and marched the squad out to join the battalion for the final parade. Then, loaded down like pack mules with all of our equipment, we made our way out to the planes.”

Shames: “Most of my team had gone out to the airfield. [Capt. Charles] Shettle [S3 operations officer] came in and I remember him setting his prismatic compass with a bearing for the road bridge…. Before the battalion departed I took down the maps and aerial photographs from the sides of the tent, crammed as much stuff as I could into my musette bag, grabbed my M1 and went out to Colonel Wolverton’s aircraft. I didn’t even have time to blacken my face.”

Capt. Barney Ryan, Medical Detachment: “I realized I’d left the airsickness tablets in my tent and rushed back to get them. I scooped some pills off the table and when I reached the aircraft gave them to the men. After putting them in their mouths they spluttered, ‘What the hell are you trying to do to us—these are salt pills!’ Luckily nobody got airsick.”

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