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Charges,
bail amounts heap upon accused panty raider
Making the transition to the outside
world, with a little help from school
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D-Day as told from a local perspective |
Roland Gleason survives as a paratrooper parachuting
behind enemy lines |
By Schellene
Clendenin, Newberg
Graphic reporter
E-mail Schellene at
sclendenin@eaglenewspapers.com
|
Roland “Ron” Gleason thought he was preparing for just another jump
on June 6, 1944.
The 130-pound, 18-year-old Garibaldi native left his station in
England in the wee hours of the morning, boarded a C-47 cargo plane
and was toward the front of the line of 82nd Airborne Division
paratroopers waiting to leap from the side door into one of the most
memorable battles of World War II.
Historians would call it the turning point of the war. Sunday, June
6, 2004, marks the 60th anniversary of D-Day.
Evergreen Aviation Museum in McMinnville is hosting an outdoor
celebration of D-Day on Sunday, starting at 1 p.m. One of the
handful of speakers is Gleason, who promised to be brief. He said he
will probably just say who he is and what he did and take as many
questions as time will allow.
But does he ever have stories to tell.
* * *
Readers of The Newberg Graphic in the weeks leading up to the
battle saw ads for war bonds with statements such as: “The jungle is
definitely Jap infested ... but your war bonds can be a mighty
effective Jap insecticide.”
Gen. Dwight Eisenhower was unknowingly taking blood pressure pills
with his cold medication, according to historian Mark Bowden. His
doctors feared that telling the supreme commander about his high
blood pressure might further distress the man in charge of roughly 3
million Allied troops from across the globe. Eisenhower was also
smoking about four packs of cigarettes per day, drinking 15 cups of
coffee per day.
Eisenhower knew that for the invasion of Normandy in France,
which by this time was held entirely by the Germans, to be
successful many operations would have to occur simultaneously. One
of them was securing the inland city of Ste. Mere Eglise, from which
the Nazis would send backup troops to fight off the surprise attack
on the shores of the English Channel.
This was to be done by the 82nd and 101st Airborne divisions.
Bowden said British Air Chief Marshal Trafford Leigh-Mallory, a top
commander for Eisenhower, told Eisenhower that dropping the units
would be sending them to “futile slaughter.”
Gleason remembered the light on the C-47 turning from red to green.
He’d jumped maybe 14 times before in training, but never into
combat. He’d joined the 82nd only a couple days before, which was
why he was toward the front; if he froze, the old-timers behind him
would give him a push.
What would have been dark skies were illuminated by buildings
burning in Ste. Mere Eglise. Anti-aircraft fire (“ack-ack” or
“Triple A” as soldiers of the time termed it) dotted the skies with
explosions.
Ninety percent of Gleason’s initial worries ended when he heard the
snap of his chute opening. Two or three minutes later he found
himself in a tree. He was alone. The burning city was within sight.
Above him the skies were dotted with more airplanes. Gleason
witnessed other paratroopers’ parachutes melt in the heat wafting
above the city; their chutes failed while still 50 to 100 feet in
the air, he estimated.
Had Gleason landed with his troops his job was to be a machine
gunner; an assignment during D-Day, he later heard, with an average
life expectancy of five minutes.
Presently Gleason was stuck in the tree. He threw his M-1 Garand
rifle to the ground. He climbed upward, alleviating the pressure
from his dangling parachute, and unhooked himself from his harness
and the grenades and additional ammunition it held. He was still
alive when he found the ground.
“I didn’t know where my troops were,” he said. “All I had there was
my rifle and one clip of ammo.”
That day, with eight bullets in his one clip, Gleason would walk
away from a battle that left dead about 5,000 men, mostly from
nighttime jumps and the attack at Omaha beach. Others in the 82nd
Airborne Division wandered, lost, for days.
At home, The Newberg Graphic, then a weekly paper published on
Thursdays, ran front-page story on June 8, 1944, headlined “D-Day
jump is observed here Tuesday.”
“The majority of citizens of Newberg were a bit ‘groggy’
Tuesday morning after spending most of the night with their ears
glued to the ‘Invasion’ news over the radio networks of the world,”
it began.
“Although Newberg’s old National Guard unit is in
another theater of war making history,” the story read, “many sons
and some fathers of this community are also on the newest battle
front facing the arduous task of liberating France and marching into
Berlin.”
The German’s seemingly impregnable lines had been breached. Allied
troops poured in. By March 1945 the Allied forces had won the
Battle of the Bulge and Adolph Hitler had committed suicide.
* * *
When Gleason had successfully freed himself from the tree, he
headed first to the burning city and found only citizens trying to
extinguish the flames. There were no German soldiers in sight; nor
did he see any members of his squad.
He finally found another American soldier driving to
Normandy. He hitched a ride, although today he can’t tell you which
of the five beaches the Allied forces hit, and returned to base in
England.
“To me it was just another battle,” Gleason said it felt at the
time.
Gleason made several more jumps in Holland and France and could
never bring himself to kill anyone, although he had the chance. He
received a Purple Heart after enemy fire hit his shoulder and
lightly grazed his forehead; he wasn’t seriously injured. He was
discharged in 1946.
Gleason returned to McMinnville, where shortly before he’d been
drafted his parents had moved from Tillamook. He moved to Newberg in
1948.
He doesn’t remember being scared on D-Day although he commented he
saw many horrible sights — piles of dead soldiers, for instance. He
doesn’t have nightmares.
“It was just an event,” he said. “Like a dream.”
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From
June 5,
2004, Newberg Graphic
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