Chapter Forty-Six
Pointe-du-Hoc, France - June 6, 1944
“One man with courage makes a majority.”
Andrew Jackson (1767 - 1845)
Johnny Kilroy dove out of the plane at a bad angle and knew he was in imminent danger of fouling his shroud lines. The snapping impact of his parachute opening jarred him breathless. He groaned as his lungs expelled his air. Despite the shock and pain, he looked up thankfully to a full canopy.
Before he could feel relief he looked down to see only the wide, angry moonlit ocean. He was about to experience a paratrooper’s worst nightmare; a night water landing.
He had to work fast. He only had moments before plunging into the roiling sea with his 130-pound load. Under this extreme burden, it would only take seconds to sink like a rock.
First came the reserve chute since it was easy to unbuckle. With it went the M-1 Garand in its Griswold case. Next he slid his Schrade-Walden switchblade knife from his breast pocket, snapped out the razor sharp blade and cut one riser. The other one would be cut just above the water so his parachute wouldn’t settle on top of him and keep him submerged. He began to spin wildly, suspended by one riser, and saw the spit of ground he had nearly landed on. It was jutting out into the ocean like the pointed prow of a ship. It was a steep and high cliff with an escarpment that ran back into the Normandy countryside and he cursed his bad luck for just missing it.
No time for recrimination! He quickly cut the straps on his ammo bandoliers and they dropped into the sea. With his left hand he began pulling the heavy Gammon grenades from hispants side pockets and dropping them into the water hoping they would not somehow detonate. With his right hand he fumbled to find the pull-ring on his Mae West life jacket, careful not to pierce it with his knife. When he finally found the ring and jerked it, the vest inflated with a controlled explosion of air. He cut loose his musette bag as he neared the water and saw Buzz Buggy crash and cartwheel into the dark ocean. He took a deep gulp of air just before cutting the second riser.
The icy cold water was yet another shock to his system and in spite of the inflated life vest, he sank to the bottom quickly under the remaining weight of his load. He knew he only had thirty or forty seconds to find the surface. He desperately looked for something else to cut off of his body, only to realize that in the shock of the water landing he dropped his safety knife. By kicking his feet he would barely leave the bottom.
He had neutral buoyancy at best and had to lose more weight quickly if he was to reach the surface. The water was dark and murky and he couldn’t see much. He began to work by touch.
Keep your head. Think. He willed himself to take action as he fought off the panic that was an impulse away from taking over. Grenades! He pulled and dropped six fragmentation grenades from his harness where they were hooked in by their spoons. Gas Mask! It was attached to his web belt but would not come free. Trench knife! He reached down to his boot and pulled out his razor sharp trench knife. He had no difficulty slicing off his web belt, which took the gas mask and his water-filled steel canteen with it. His .45 was in a shoulder holster under his life vest so he slipped his hand beneath the vest and dropped his pistol. All the while he was kicking his feet slowly and he began to rise slightly. At least he thought he was rising.
It was hard to determine his orientation in the dark waters. He felt his pockets and pulled out and dropped some K-rations as he slowly breathed out the bubbles from the deep breath he had taken before he hit the water. He only had a few seconds before the unstoppable urge to breathe would take over and he would suck water into his lungs and drown. Hoping he was at least oriented upward, he dropped the trench knife and began to kick and pull his arms violently toward the surface. He pulled and kicked relentlessly and just before he was about to suck in a lung full of deadly seawater, he broke the surface and gasped hungrily for air.
