Colonel Sink came round, saw the haircutting going on, smiled, and said, “I forgot to tell you, some weeks ago we were officially notified that the Germans are telling French civilians that the Allied invasion forces would be led by American paratroopers, all of them convicted felons and psychopaths, easily recognized by the fact that -they shave their heads or nearly so.”
First Lt. Raymond Schmitz decided to ease the tension with some physical activity. He challenged Winters to a boxing match. “Come on, Winters, let’s go out there behind the tents and box.” “No, go away.”
Schmitz kept after him. Finally he said, “O.K., let’s wrestle.” “Dammit, enough, you’ve been egging me long enough, let’s go.”
Winters had been a wrestler in college. He took Schmitz down immediately, but he threw him too hard. Schmitz suffered two cracked vertebrae, went to the hospital, and did not get to go to Normandy. His assistant leader of the 3rd Platoon, 2nd Lt. Robert Mathews, took his place, with Sergeant Lipton as his second in command. The rest of that day and night on up to the time the men strapped on their parachutes, Winters had a constant line of troopers asking him, with smiles on their faces, to break their arms or crack their vertebrae.
General Taylor circulated among the men. He told them, “Give me three days and nights of hard fighting, then you will be relieved.” That sounded good. Three days and three nights, Winters thought to himself. I can take that. Taylor also said that when the C-47s crossed the coastline of France, he wanted every man to stand up; if a trooper got hit by flak, he wanted him to be standing and take it like a man. There was a point to the order that went beyond bravado; if a plane got hit the men hooked up and ready to jump would stand some chance of getting out. Taylor told Malarkey’s platoon to fight with knives until daylight, “and don’t take any prisoners.”
That night, June 4, the company got an outstanding meal. Steak, green peas, mashed potatoes, white bread, ice cream, coffee, in unlimited quantities. It was their first ice cream since arriving in England nine months earlier. Sergeant Martin remembered being told, “When you get ice cream for supper, you know that’s the night.” But a terrific wind was blowing, and just as the men were preparing to march to their C-47s, they were told to stand down. Eisenhower had postponed the invasion because of the adverse weather.
Easy went to a wall tent to see a movie. Gordon remembered that it was Mr. Lucky, starring Gary Grant and Laraine Day. Sergeants Lipton and Elmer Murray (the company operations sergeant) skipped the movie. They spent the evening discussing different combat situations that might occur and how they would handle them.
By the afternoon of June 5, the wind had died down, the sky cleared a bit. Someone found cans of black and green paint. Men began to daub their faces in imitation of the Sioux at the Little Bighorn, drawing streaks of paint down their noses and foreheads. Others took charcoal and blackened their faces.
At 2030 hours the men lined up by the planeload, eighteen to a group, and marched off to the hangars. “Nobody sang, nobody cheered,” Webster wrote. “It was like a death march.” Winters remembered going past some British antiaircraft units stationed at the field, “and that was the first time I’d ever seen any real emotion from a Limey, they actually had tears in their eyes.”
At the hangars, each jumpmaster was given two packs of papers, containing an order of the day from Eisenhower and a message from Colonel Sink, to pass around to the men. “Tonight is the night of nights,” said Sink’s. “May God be with each of you fine soldiers.” Eisenhower’s began, “Soldiers, Sailors and Airmen of the Allied Expeditionary Force!
You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you. . . . Good Luck! And let us all beseech the blessing of Almighty God upon this great and noble undertaking.”