D-Day +60 Years

What follows is a small piece of history. It began in 1981 as an at­tempt to dis­cover what had happened to my uncle, Lieutenant Joseph J. Sullivan, who had been killed on the morning of D-Day while fly­ing as a navigator in a Douglas C-47, dropping the 101st Air­borne Di­vision in Normandy. After years of research I was to learn what did happen to my uncle and, in 1998,  to actually visit the crash site where he perished, along with nineteen other American soldiers. What happened after my visit to France in 1998 is the second story, which led to the writing of this book.

It is the story of two small groups of the young men who had been caught up in the world’s largest, most horrendous war. None of the main characters had reached his thirtieth birthday; many were teen­agers. The young men were members of two units of the United States Army that had not existed when the war began. Even the concept of what the units were designed to do was in its infancy when war was de­clared in December 1941, thirty-one months before all of the characters came together on June 6, 1944. These two units, the 77th Troop Carrier Squadron (TCS) of the 435th Troop Carrier Group (TCG) and G Company of the 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment (PIR), had been formed to participate in the liberation of Europe. De­spite stunning losses, they were successful in that mission.

We are going to follow the story of two small but distinct portions of those units...specifically, the paratroopers and aircrew who flew on the three airplanes that made up B Flight of the 77th TCS, and the third platoon of G Com­pany, 501st PIR. Most of the men on the three planes would not survive to see the dawn.

The men from G Company included Private First Class Donald Kane, a 24-year-old rifleman from West Haven, Connecticut; T/4 Raymond Geddes, Jr., a 19-year-old radio operator from Baltimore, Maryland; and 20-year-old Staff Sergeant John (Jack) Urbank, from Peninsula, Ohio. All of these men jumped into the Normandy countryside from an aircraft piloted by 21-year-old First Lieu­tenant Jesse Harrison, from St. Louis, Missouri.

Of the three planes in B Flight of the 77th Squadron, Harrison’s was the only one to return from the D-Day drop of G Company. The other two planes, piloted by the flight lead­er, Captain John Schaefers, from Detroit, Michigan, and First Lieutenant James Hamblin, of New­ark, New Jersey, were downed by antiaircraft fire near Picauville, France. Only three of the forty men on board those two planes sur­vived. You will meet one of those survivors, and the son of another.

The center of the story that follows involves a remarkable set of circumstances link­ing pilot Jesse Harrison and infantryman Jack Ur­bank...a story that resulted in the uniting of the men from the two units fifty-six years after the several hours they had spent together in 1944, and finally, fifty-seven years later, the placement of two plaques to honor the men who had paid the supreme sacrifice just as our story was beginning.

During the course of my research I met most of the men who are quoted in the story. Some, such as Colonel Henry Osmer, I have talked with on the telephone, and exchanged countless letters and e-mails. Others I met in person. Certain individuals stand out for what they told me, usually in private moments.

Perhaps the most personal event was related to me by Abe Fried­man, the lead navigator of the 77th Squadron. At the 1998 Squad­ron re­union, Abe asked me if I was the first child of my uncle Joe’s younger sister. When I said that I was, he smiled and said, “I re­member when you were born.” Joe was one of Abe’s navigators, and a fellow New Yorker; the men knew each other well. Abe re­counted that he distinctly remembered that when my uncle received a letter from his mother saying that his “little sister” had given birth to a baby boy, Joe had entered the Officer’s Club to buy drinks for all in hon­or of his new nephew. I must say that it is an unusual feeling to meet a total stranger who suddenly tells you he celebrated your birth fifty-four years earlier! Abe reminded me of the event when I met him again in 2000. On both occasions we toasted the memory of my uncle.

Others told stories that were not so pleasant. George Winard told me how he had been mesmerized by the sight of my uncle’s plane glowing red from the fire that started in the cock­pit and worked its way through the fuselage as the plane fell toward the earth, with the apparent loss of all onboard. Several years later a group of French citi­zens described to a group of visiting Ameri­cans the carnage associ­ated with the loss of the plane that had been flying next to that of my uncle.

Many of the stories that I heard told of courage, humor, and pas­sage into manhood of the young flyers and paratroopers involved. The story of Jesse Harrison and Jack Urbank would create the bond that led to the heart of this book.

All of the events that took place from 1942 through 1945, and the final chapters, which took place from 1998 through 2001, are, to­gether, just one small piece of history.