Robert Schaefer, a retired lieutenant colonel with the U.S. Many spectators wore war-era uniforms, and music of the time played over loudspeakers. Other parachutists jumped with Second World War souvenirs, some carrying items their grandfathers took into battle. Still buff and sprightly, and having prepared for six months with a physical trainer, Rice swooped down with an American flag fluttering beneath him and landed to a wave of applause from the crowd of thousands that gathered to watch the aerial display. His jump on Wednesday was an altogether different story.
“I got my left armpit caught in the lower left hand corner of the door so I swung out, came back and hit the side of the aircraft, swung out again and came back, and I just tried to straighten my arm out and I got free,” he told The Associated Press in an interview. He called the 1944 jump “the worst jump I ever had.” Army’s 101st Airborne Division on that momentous day 75 years ago, landing safely despite catching himself on the exit and a bullet striking his parachute. He said it was dark in 1944 when he hit the ground in hostile territory and he can’t be sure exactly where he was. Rice, of San Diego, jumped into roughly the same area he landed in on D-Day. Their landing zone Wednesday was fields of wildflowers outside Carentan, one of the targets of the airborne forces that were dropped in darkness on perilous missions to take strategic objectives and disrupt German defences so that the greatest amphibious invasion in history, on the D-Day beaches, would have a greater chance of success. The clouds of jumpers, with round ‘chutes akin to those used by D-Day soldiers, were honouring the thousands of paratroopers who leapt into gunfire and death 75 years ago. “It went perfect, perfect jump,” Rice said after catching his breath. “I represent a whole generation,” Rice said.Įngines throbbing, C-47 transport planes dropped string after string of parachutists, a couple of hundred in all – including Rice, who jumped strapped to a partner, not alone and laden with weapons as he did on June 6, 1944. “Woo-hoo!” the ex-paratrooper yelped after hitting the ground, carrying the memories of comrades lost in battle and on a new mission – of remembrance this time – for the ever-shrinking numbers who sacrificed so much in the Second World War.
This time, 75 years almost to the hour after he parachuted into Nazi-occupied France, Tom Rice again found himself floating down through Normandy’s skies, now a grizzled 97-year-old thrilled as a little kid.
No D-Day objective that had to be taken, whatever the cost.
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