By Rick Steelhammer
BEECH HILL, W.Va. — As they waited to watch more than 150 82nd Airborne paratroopers drop to a landing zone in a hayfield near this Mason County community on Thursday, veterans of the legendary U.S. Army division recalled their own experiences descending into harm’s way.
During the D-Day invasion on June 6, 1944, Raymond C. Wallace Jr. of Lancaster, Pa., was 13th in a line of 18 paratroopers preparing to alight from their aircraft, flying over Normandy nearly 20 miles from its planned drop zone.
“We were flying at about 300 feet, and one engine was aflame,” he said. “No one hesitated getting out.”
Wallace said his regiment was the last group of paratroopers to jump on D-Day, hitting the silk at about 1:30 a.m. “The Germans were awake and ready for us,” he said.
Far from Allied lines, Wallace and other members of his company fought German troops defending positions near Le Grange for several weeks before they were cornered and eventually captured.
“I was one of the lucky ones,” he said. “Only 45 men of the almost 200 people in my company survived. Of the 2,100 men in my regiment on D-Day, only 700 made it.”
Wallace and his son, Kevin, who served in the 82nd Airborne from 1977 to 1981, are among nearly 1,200 men and women now in Charleston to attend the annual convention of the 82nd Airborne Division Association, open to both active duty members and veterans of the division.
“We have 96 chapters, with 37,000 members across the country,” said association president Bill Eberle of Hilton Head, S.C., making it the largest of all similar U.S. Army associations.
Thursday’s parachute drop at the West Virginia National Guard’s drop zone along the Kanawha River near Beech Hill was the opening event of the annual convention.
Wallace wore a replica of his 1944 jumpsuit to the drop zone.
To honor fellow paratroopers who didn’t return from the European invasion, he’s worn his jumpsuit every June 6 since 1946. He said he is attending the convention for the camaraderie of spending time with other veterans of the 82nd Airborne, and for the chance to link up with members of his old unit.
“I met two guys here today from my regiment,” he said. “I didn’t know them from before, since they were in different companies, but it’s good to make connections with people with so much in common.”
Wallace said he decided to volunteer for airborne training after watching a movie in Macon, Ga., where he underwent basic training.
“It was a movie about parachute ski troopers, and since I liked to ski, I thought, as long as I was in the Army, I might as well be doing something I liked.”
Needless to say, Wallace didn’t do any skiing in the years that followed jump school. “It turned out there was only one battalion of ski troopers who spent the war testing cold-weather equipment in places like Idaho and Alaska.”
Two years ago at the age of 83, Wallace returned to parachuting, mostly to honor his fallen comrades, but partly, he said, because “it was getting to the point that I couldn’t march in parades any more.”
The former paratrooper said he was gung-ho about jumping again “until I crawled out to the step on the strut of that airplane and thought to myself, ‘What am I doing here?’ But after that jump, I was good.”
In the past two years, Wallace and his son, Kevin, have made six static line jumps together.
“I made 51 jumps when I was in a combat engineer unit in the 82nd Airborne,” said Kevin Wallace. “But jumping with Dad was the greatest thrill of them all. He’s always been a hero to me and my siblings.”
The number 13 turned out to be lucky for Wallace in more ways than one.
“I have 13 children — 7 boys and 6 girls,” he said.
Among other World War II vets attending the 82nd Airborne Division convention is Walter Hughes of Port Jervis, N.Y., who parachuted into Holland during Operation Market Garden of “A Bridge Too Far” fame, and helped capture the Nijmegen Bridge.
Hughes also fought in the Battle of the Bulge in Belgium, where a photograph of him carrying a Thompson submachine gun and charging a German machine gun position appeared in many U.S. newspapers. The image also appears on a Belgian stamp commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Battle of the Bulge.
When World War II broke out, Hughes was serving in the Merchant Marine, but volunteered for airborne training, he said, for two main reasons: girls liked the Army uniform much more than his Merchant Marine garb, and paratroopers got an extra $50 per month in jump pay.
Hughes also said the Army also operated its own fleet of harbor tugs, which he was anxious to work on. But he had to wait until after the war ended to launch his tugboat career.
Like Wallace, Hughes took up parachuting again long after the war.
“I tried some skydiving in 1968,” he said, “but the chute collapsed and it almost killed me.”
Among current members of the 82nd Airborne parachuting on Thursday was Sgt. Richard Sloan of Barboursville, one of three paratroopers taking part in a demonstration HALO (high altitude, low opening) jump.
“Not much has changed with paratroopers since World War II,” said Sloan, who will soon begin a tryout with the Army’s Golden Knights parachute team, after landing from a 3,500-foot jump. “They’re still hard chargers and so are we.”
By the end of September, all units of the 82nd Airborne now in Afghanistan and Iraq are scheduled to return home. It will be the first time the entire division has been in-country since 2004.
The 130th Airlift Wing of the West Virginia Air National Guard provided the aircraft and aircrews used by 82nd Airborne paratroopers on Thursday.
Reach Rick Steelhammer at rsteelham…@wvgazette.com
WOOH I WAS PART OF TEAM “UF” !! a lot fun and really was organized! thanks!** -M40A3 Fayde