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 The Invasion
Interactive feature of the most complex attack ever conceived
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E-mail your letter to the editor
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John Robinson, 344th Bomb Group |
IN HIS OWN WORDS: JOHN ROBINSON
Posted Sunday, May 23, 2004
A pilot with the 344th Bomb Group, Robinson, 24, flew two successful sorties over Normandy on June 6
We flew Martin B-26 marauders, which were, without any doubt, the best bombers in the whole wide world. Several weeks prior to June 5, the squadron doctor had passed out a small pill to each crew member. He said the pills were intended to keep the crews awake in case we had to work around the clock. Everybody knew that this was in preparation for D-day. I don't know how they worked on anybody else, but they kept me awake for three nights and three days, completely unable to sleep.
It was our job to prepare the ground to enable the infantry to get ashore, to stay ashore and fight and win. We also hoped that they'd kill a whole bunch of those damned antiaircraft gunners for whom we had no love and no pity. A couple of hours after dinner on June 5, someone came into the hut and said quietly, "Get to bed early tonight, fellows." We'd all seen the loading list on the bulletin board. From the size of the list, it looked like a maximum effort. I climbed into bed and went right to sleep. It was probably 2 a.m. when some guy who had the duty that night shook my shoulder and told me to get up, have breakfast and report for briefing. We got dressed, and as I was walking past the bunk of Hank Avner, who wasn't going that day, he raised up on one elbow and said, and I quote exactly, "Bite them on the ass for me, Johnny."
We rode our bicycles down to the mess hall, had breakfast and rode the bikes to the briefing room. It was dark, and it was raining, and the cloud cover was complete. We just sort of felt our way around. Inside the briefing room, the crowd was quiet. The big map at the end of the room was covered as usual with its drawstring curtains. Pretty soon, in came the colonel, and he went to one end of the curtains. A captain went to the other end and held the drawstrings. They looked at their watches—looked at each other. The colonel nodded his head to the captain. The captain began to draw open the curtains, and Colonel Vance said in a quiet voice, "Gentlemen, this is it."
And, by George, there it was, all laid out with ribbons leading from our base to a point on the English coast. From there, the ribbons led to the French coast, then along the coast to the drop zone described as Utah Beach. Someone asked if we could expect much fighter opposition over the target. The colonel answered that one very simply by saying, "There will be approximately 3,500 Allied fighters over the beach this morning." That brought a big sigh of relief from the group.
We gave our personal things such as wallets and other identification to the guys in the security room, picked up our parachutes and steel helmets, got into the trucks and rode out to the planes. It was still raining and quite dark, and we knew there would be no delay on account of weather on this day. It had begun to sink in that we were involved in what was to be one of the greatest moments in history.
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