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Sent to me by Howard Huebner, 507th PIR, 82nd Airborne Division:
507th veterans center of attention as World War II hangar opens
Gene Rector, grector@macon.com
More than 300 local dignitaries sat in the presence of history and heroes Friday as the Museum of Aviation officially opened its World War II Exhibit Hangar.
Some 40 members of the 507th Parachute Infantry Regiment, steely veterans of the D-Day assault more than 64 years ago, attended a luncheon in their honor and toured an expansive exhibit featuring the Georgia unit. The veterans were visiting from Atlanta, where the regiment was holding its annual reunion.
The two-day museum event continued with a gala reception and dinner Friday evening. A free concert today at 6 p.m. will headline recording artist Lee Greenwood and the Air Force Reserve Command Band.
Although a number of officials and museum supporters spoke at the Friday luncheon, the 507th - formed in 1942 at Camp Toccoa - was the center of attention. More than 2,000 paratroopers from the unit, flying on 117 C-47s, jumped into the murky blackness of June 5, 1944. Only 700 returned to England after 35 days of combat.
The unit assisted the Army's 82nd Airborne Division in taking the La Fiere causeway and cutting off the Cotentin Peninsula, greatly assisting the much larger June 6 assault on the beaches of Normandy, France.
The exhibit features a depiction of the planning room where Supreme Allied Commander Gen. Dwight Eisenhower gave the D-Day launch order. A cutaway view of a C-47 offers a look into the fully manned transport as it flew to its landing area, complete with lighting effects and the noise of grinding engines, flak and tracer shells.
A C-47 suspended from the ceiling shows the workhorse transport flying over a replica of the Cauquigny chapel, a rallying point after the 507th took the causeway at great loss of life. The chapel, displaying the shell damage of the original building in the French village, is the host for two films: "Down to Earth" and a movie commissioned by the museum titled "Papa Said: We Should Never Forget." The latter depicts the experiences of two French girls who lived under German occupation and learned the importance of freedom.
The exhibit also displays memorabilia from the war, including uniforms and weapons donated by 507th members.
Howard Huebner is 85 now, but he has no trouble remembering that June 5 evening, particularly the red and yellow tracer shells meeting the aircraft as it approached the landing area.
"That's the quickest I've ever wanted to get out of an airplane in my life," he admitted. "I wanted to get on the ground."
The Leesburg, Fla., resident parachuted into a farm field about four miles from the beach. "I could hear the Germans hollering," he said. "They were yelling about the Americans."
He survived that day and many more battles that followed. "And I've thanked the Lord every day I've been home," he acknowledged.
Huebner said he was overwhelmed by the exhibit: "It's history for generations to come. It's so unusual."
Ed Jeziorski, 87, remembers how overloaded the twin-engined C-47s were that fateful night. The normal maximum weight was 27,900 pounds, but the parachutists - some with packs that weighed as much as they did - pushed some takeoff loads to 34,000 pounds.
"When we were taking off, I felt we would never get off the ground," Jeziorski said. "I guarantee the pilot had to use everything on the runway except maybe for the last 50 feet. Then all of a sudden the tail pushed up and I thought, 'Ah, we're airborne.' "
Gazing at the C-47 suspended from the ceiling with a paratrooper exiting from the side brought back a perilous memory for the Ruckersville, Va., resident.
The overloads forced C-47 pilots to fly faster than normal to prevent stalling. "That meant guys would jump out at a high rate of speed," Jeziorski said, "and sometimes the prop blast would drive them into the tail. If they were flying slower, the pilot could raise the tail so that you could get under it without danger."
Robert Ochsenbein was in England on D-Day, but his unit was held in reserve. "We were told that the rest of the outfit was at the staging area ready for a big operation," he remembered, "but they wouldn't tell us what it was. All they said was they'd ship us in if they needed us."
He received plenty of feedback following the June 5 assault. "There was fog and a lot of disorientation," he was told. "They had a tough time finding each other and getting folks together. The planes were stretched for miles."
The Germans also had unexpectedly flooded some of the landing zones creating havoc for the heavily loaded paratroopers.
"Some of the water was over their heads," Ochsenbein said. "Guys jumping into the water couldn't get out of their equipment and they drowned."
Chesley Crews, a flight engineer on one of the C-47s carrying the 507th that night, said the cargo workhorse was a great airplane.
"It was particularly good because it had a 19-to-one glide ratio," the Greenville, S.C., native said. "That meant if the engines went out, you could glide 19 feet for every foot of altitude you lost. That gave you time to hunt a spot to set it down."
He also remembered the tracer shells and told his pilot how much they upset him. "He said they didn't bother him at all," Crews volunteered with a hearty laugh. "What bothered him were the four shells in the middle he couldn't see."
Retired Army Col. Roy Creek, now 90 but then a 26-year-old captain, led the charge on the Merderet River bridge near Chef-du-Pont.
"We fought for the bridge all day," the Lawrence, Kan., resident said. "We really didn't have a unit. It was a mixed group of people who showed up. But we won. We captured the bridge."
Perhaps the most poignant exhibit is also the simplest. At the end of the retelling of heroic D-Day events is a video screen that flashes youthful pictures and names of 507th veterans, including many who attended the grand opening.
Gone were Friday's wheelchairs, canes, the faltering steps, the gray hair. They were - and will forever be - as they were then: youthful, exuberant, heroic.
Pat Bartness, the Museum Foundation's president and chief operating officer, watched the aging veterans as they clustered around the video, exchanging quick stories about the faces that appeared. He saw the looks on their faces as they left the display.
"It's great to honor these guys while they're still around," he acknowledged, still emotional after the hours-long event. "We wanted to honor them today and I think they feel honored. So it was a success."
To contact writer Gene Rector, call 923-3109, extension 239.
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