Crashing into France: 1st Sgt. Bill Lumsden

Ken Harbaugh:

I’m Ken Harbaugh, host of Warriors In Their Own Words. In partnership with the Honor Project, we’ve brought this podcast back at a time when our nation needs these stories more than ever.

Warriors in Their Own Words is our attempt to present an unvarnished, unsanitized truth of what we have asked of those who defend this nation. Thank you for listening, and by doing so, honoring those who have served.

Today, we’ll hear from 1st Sgt. Bill Lumsden. Lumsden served in World War II as a Paratrooper and Pathfinder. In this interview, he talks about the Pathfinders and the Invasion of France.

1st Sgt. Bill Lumsden:

I went in as an aviation cadet. Unfortunately, I had astigmatism, at that early part of the war, that kept me out of it, so I thought the next best thing would be to be in the parachute troops, which is very new then, so I enlisted to go into the paratroops.

Well, it was a completely new unit. It never happened before. It was the first unit that ever attacked the enemy from the sky, and so there was a certain amount of, maybe a little bit like the horse cavalry in earlier wars. It was quite adventuresome, new, and something to try. I think that's why we did it, pretty much.

We had one training flight. This was in Fort Benning, in which they were training Canadian paratroopers and one of the C47s actually came down rather than up, and he sheared part of the wing off and broke his back, but that's the first time I saw anything happen like that.

As you jump out, the plane in back of you is higher in the echelon so that you miss it, but this particular came a thermal or something, dropped the plane down, so that they hit the incoming jumpers and hit the edge of the plane and then broke his back, and he landed.

Pathfinder, I think, is a term which came up later, like many of the decorations, emblems, and so forth. At that time, it was normal for us in operation to be first, because it was our job to organize the unit when it was there, because the operation section is one who sets up all of the patrol action, dispersal of maps, and this is the core of the unit. That's why it'd be normal for us to be the first.

Men who made good pathfinders were people who were specialists in specific areas, those who were the best in what they did. In any unit, there were always these kind. You had your top machine gunners, your top people with mortars, people who did the best in working with maps, and so forth. These are the people you needed together, because you knew that they could do the jobs that they were trained to do under the most adverse conditions, and that was terribly important. So you chose the people who had the best training, had the best background, and who you could depend on to fulfill the job they were trained to do. We had different jobs, and the jobs we had were based on our own basic training, or the one things that we were best at. I think that's a very important part of a pathfinder, is to choose people who are experts in their own particular field. We think of soldiers as being just a broad aspect, but realize that each one of them has a training in a specific area, and that's why I think they were chosen as Pathfinders.

There was no training at all. We just knew we were going to be there. I had worked on the sand tables and on the operations map previous to that, and it was our job to get down there and see if our maps were anywhere near correct, and set up the beacons and things which had to be set up.` My main job was to do demolitions.

A sand table is a mock-up of the area in which you're going to work, showing all of the operational, the topography, and essentially where the units will be billeted or where they'll first be there, and what your positions will be as you move from one position to the other, so it's a mock-up to tell the people what it looks like, where they're supposed to meet and what the operation is supposed to do.

I'm explaining it usually through squads, 12 men and the squad leader patrol, the sergeants, and the job is to let them know where they're going to land and, after they land, precisely what their objective is as they land, where they're supposed to meet, and essentially their initial project and what they're supposed to do. This is the whole concept, so they're not jumping in an area which is completely strange. It's a lesson, if you will, in what they're supposed to do and hit the ground.

My preparation was mostly logistic, mostly working with maps, working out what we were supposed to do, and we knew precisely where we were supposed to jump, in an area called La Mie, or close to La Mie, in southern France. This was chosen, because both sides were highlands, mountain areas, and this was the best place that would give you access to the central part of France. This was the reason that we were to take it. We knew this, and this is what we planned to do successfully.

At the time, you had a job to do, you did it, and you didn't really worry what was there. You assumed that you would be attacked, but that's what you were trained to do. Like most operations, we figured they knew we were coming, and that we were properly prepared for us, but all we could do is the best we could do, which turned out in the final analysis be true. So we don't make any kind of prejudgment on that. I don't think you'd find any paratrooper who would think beforehand how it was going to be when he jumps, because that's what he's trained to do, and he would do it under any circumstances.

We were on a small airport called Massigiliano, which was north of Rome, and there were three planes. We were the original group that we were going in, with members mostly of the 509th Parachute Battalion, 551st and 550th glider group. We were supposed to take off slightly after midnight to reach the French Coast round three, because the initial invasion was going to be by the 509th at about 4:25 in the morning, so we needed an hour to set up our beacons and do our work. And so, this was pretty much the work before we got there, and so we laid on our packs waiting. The planes were idling, doing their thing, three planes consisting of about 72 men altogether. We loaded, took off somewhat after midnight, arrived at the coast at about 3:00 AM.

Our mission was basically, as operations, was to locate the area which the 551 was going to jump, to place beacons at those points to guide in the planes, although this really wasn't terribly necessary when you realize they were coming into the afternoon. Also, our job, my job was to set up the operations section. So we would have a unit right there, unit cell right there, where the battalion could coalesce about. The colonel and the rest of them could be there, and then my job was to sort of go off as individually and to do the mining.

When we flew over, because it was so full of fog, we could not see our drop zones at all. Fortunately, our jump master correctly assumed that we should get out of the plane, because the plane was in danger of being shot down by anti-aircraft, and so that we jumped much before we normally should have, having no idea that we would be miles away from our planned drop zones. I suppose I was about eight or ninth man out in the plane. Jump master was first.

It seemed like all of the work we had done on plane tables, and also on the operation maps was rather a difficult problem, but the major thing that I think faced us was we had so much equipment on us. We had over 70 pounds of equipment. I had a demolition kit with 24 quarter-pound blocks of TNT caps and paramechord. The thing that we worried about was the plane was going too fast, and because of going too fast, it didn't idle down because of trying to get out of the anti-aircraft fire, and as a result of that, we all worried how would our opening shock be?

Opening shock is when your chute opens over your head. When your chute opens, you stop, and you stop very abruptly. That's what we call opening shock, and it was great because not only the excess speed, but also of the tremendous weight that we were carrying. In fact, many of the shock was so great, it knocked the equipment off of them, so it was an adventure.

I've seen it so great that it would break the shoelaces. The snap is so great. In those days we didn't have the sophisticated gear that they have now. We just taped it on us or put it on us the best we could, and as a result of that, oftentimes they were dropped off. As our operations officer, captain, Tims Quinn, he lost all of his equipment on the jump, on that snap, yeah.

My opening shock was great, but I realized that we were quite close to the ground, and because we were being fired at from the ground, that we had to get to the ground as fast as we could. And so, in order to speed this up, when you're jumping from a parachute, you use what we call slipping. You collapse your shoes from the front, which brings you down much faster, is somewhat dangerous because you have to be able to know when to let it go to open up again, but in this way you have less chance of being hit. My great problem, of course, was that I was coming down quite rapidly, but all of a sudden I noticed I was coming down on high tension wires. The railways in the areas, and this was the electric wires over there, and so as I came down, I tried every way I possibly could, even to collapse my chute, and I knew I couldn't avoid it, so I hit it, and was quite shocked. I somehow wasn't killed, for some reason, and this collapsed my chute, and I fell from the wires down across the track.

When my chute collapsed, when I hit the wires, this meant that I felt what? 10 or 15 feet, free fall, right across the track, and as I fell across the track, I was dazed because that was quite a fall. I fell so hard that my field glasses, which I had taped at the small of my back, were smashed flat.

At that time, of course, the Germans thought that this must be a major operation, so a great pandemonium. They were all over the place, and one German captain ran up to me with a Schmeisser machine pistol and fired around across me, one going through my right elbow and he ran off to one side and being left-handed, which was very handy in those days, I was able to under-holster my 45 and hit him as he was running off.

At that time, there was quite a firefight, and I actually ran over to the sort of the woods that were in the side, along the side, and all of a sudden when I laid down there, I noticed that my reserve, which I still had on, had bullet holes all the way across the front of it, so when he had put his Schmeisser across, he had gone all the way through, and of course it saved my life. At the time, I cut a piece of my parachute because I was bleeding quite a bit, and rolled myself up in there, sort of to keep myself from being seen by the Germans. I still remember, very distinctly, laying there, having the German patrols going by me. And I still remember hearing one of the Germans say, "Mach Schnell," which means, "Make speed. Hurry up," and I still remember that, which is a rather interesting thing to remember.

I didn't have a great deal of feeling of security, because the Germans were all around me, but apparently not only did my common fly chute make me really not observable, but I just hoped that they wouldn't see me. That was the main thing. My arm was hurting me very badly, and I had put sulfur on it. I had a morphine serret, but I wouldn't use it. I thought that was not the thing to do, which I'm glad I didn't. We were issued morphine serrets too, if you're wounded, to inject yourself with them, which I didn't do.

Well, there was a firefight. I mean, I had to protect myself going into the woods, but once I was in the woods, they were running all about, assuming that there were people there, which weren't. So I guess they figured that that was just didn't happen, or it wasn't very much a thing, so that was it. They didn't do anymore, and so I just sort of laid there and waited for the 509th to jump. Because I had great faith in the 509, I assumed that when they jumped, then I could report into a medic, which is what actually happened.

I can do nothing, really, not only because I was wounded, but we had no idea where we were, and so I sort of stayed there out of sight until, in a short time later, the 509th made their major jump. At that time, when they jumped, I was able to report into their medics, so that was sort of the termination of my operation at the time.

In the hospital, my greatest feeling was to get back to my unit, because I had the strange feeling that the operations section couldn't run without me, which is rather silly. Fortunately, one of our rear echelon individuals smuggled in a pair of coveralls because they take your clothes away from you. I was able to go into a dressing room, change into the coveralls and take off. We went to the coast and got a trip with an English LSD to Marseille, and then I hitchhiked back to my unit. My arm was still in the sling, and I was very happy. The only problem was I was carried as a deserter until I found out I'd gone the wrong direction. I'd gone to the front lines, rather than home.

Well, I think there's a great danger, of course, because for the simple reason, the jump itself is dangerous, but not knowing what you're actually going to meet is the most dangerous. As an example, my particular one of hitting high tension lines, how often could that happen? I might add that the thing that saved my life there was apparently another trooper hit it just previous to me and probably broke the circuit, so I just got the shock. Otherwise, I'd have probably been electrocuted, and he must have been done in at that particular time, so it's a great danger, but I think it has great merit, because it does allow you to bring in the troops in a more orderly way, putting in beacons. In my particular specialty, also as demolitions, I could form abattoirs, which is essentially mining trees along the roads, which will then fall over each other, cutting out mobile reserve vehicles, so this, I think, was all an important operation.

I think the basic limitations were a complete lack of knowledge of what we were going to contact when we hit the ground. This was all, we had no idea where troop concentrations would b.e as an example, our jump zone may be a position in which was actually a troop concentration, so that we never knew precisely what the enemy was doing at the same time, and almost without exception on almost every operation, they seemed to know what was going on at the time. Very few of them were ever secret. Their intelligence was superb, and apparently, they seemed to have known that they could be prepared. So this was always a problem, that you knew the enemy would be well-prepared, and you were not going to surprise them.

I think the greatest danger is that they're the initial group, that they're the first ones. They will then normally, instead of having great numbers of people to decimate the problem, to thin it out, they are concentrated on by the enemy, so if you have a very few people jumping, but a large number of people on the ground greeting you, if you will, and so this is always a problem. You're always over-numbered.

Well, the greatest danger in that period of time is that the enemy doesn't know whether this is the main assault or not, and you're usually there an hour to a half hour before the main assault, such as the initial assault of the 509th, and so that you have to essentially take care of yourself in a vastly outnumbered group so that you are a very small number against a very much larger group. It isn't as when you have a whole unit jumping. Then, you're more or less one group against a relatively equal sized group. But as a pathfinder, you're vastly outnumbered. There's just a very few of you, and so it's a question of playing cowboys and Indians, keeping yourself alive.

Well, cowboys and Indians is playing completely non-military, but taking care of yourself as an individual, getting together with a buddy if you can, and keeping yourself alive and doing what you have to do, because you cannot do actually military operations, because you're working so overpowered by great numbers that have to stay alive, and that's sort of like playing cowboys and Indians, where you get one or two people together and you sort of work as a couple to hopefully stay away from the enemy. This idea of trying to meet them and fire on them, that's not the point. The point is to stay alive as long as you can.

My biggest fear was not doing what I was trained to do. At that time, most of us were inured to the idea that what we were doing was dangerous, and what we needed to do was to do the operation, which we were trained to do. And that was our most important venture. My important thing was to get the beacons out, to do my demolitions correctly, and get our unit organization set up where we could get the unit together and operate as a battalion. I mean, that was my most important thing.

The job we back then, I think, was outstanding. We had such a diverse group of people, very much more diverse than now. If you remember, this was the time of the depression, and our soldiers were in large manner from the south. We had a large number who had a choice of either going to jail or joining the unit, and they came to the unit. So you had a vast difference in people, but they all amalgamated into one unit. Our training was so difficult and so hard, that anybody who couldn't take it was no longer there. Those who couldn't jump were no longer there.

So what you ended up with was a group that you could depend on, and that, in action, is of the first importance. If I called in as an operation sergeant for artillery, for the mortar fire, or for my machine gun groups, they always did exactly as they were told, and would have maps sent to me immediately. So this was very gratifying. So there's such a diverse group. Most of them, professional military. Very few, we didn't have any draftees at all. Almost all professional military, and very competent in what they did. They'd gone through such a difficult training program, that they were tough.

I think the paratroopers per se and Pathfinders were exceedingly important to form frontal units to break through, to act as frontal units so that the other units could get organized. I mean, we were sort of the group which were the shock troops, if you will. I think this is terribly important, much like the cavalry in the Civil War, whatever. We hit first, and because our troops were well organized and we were hitting from above, we oftentimes could do very much better than those on the ground, and so I think our job was essentially as a shock troop. We set the pattern so that the units behind us, the infantry and whatever units they were, could organize themselves and get themselves in a position to actually move forward, so I think we were the initial troops, shock troops, if you will. I think most paratroopers disposition was at the shock type. They liked that. They like being first. They like doing something which other people don't do. They liked the idea that they were doing something which was dangerous, because after all, we were young. I hate to say foolish, but I will.

Ken Harbaugh:

That was 1st Sgt. Bill Lumsden.

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Warriors In Their Own Words is a production of Evergreen Podcasts, in partnership with The Honor Project.

Our producer is Declan Rohrs. Brigid Coyne is our production director, and Sean Rule-Hoffman is our Audio Engineer.

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