What was it like waiting for the Allies to launch the invasion of occupied France?
Shames: Never a dull moment. We had practice jumps, navigation, field operations, weapons training, everything. I had become the operations officer for the battalion, and I made the sand tables for our jump into Normandy. The tables showed exactly where we would get together on the ground. I had to brief every platoon, every special guard and every company. It went on like this from the end of September to June 5, 1944, the night before D-Day. MH: After all the preparation, did things go as planned? Shames: It didn’t work out that way. The guy in front of me on the Douglas C-47 fell down at the door, and I had to help him get up and get out the door. They scattered us all over the place. I jumped seven miles from where I supposed to land, and I ended up in the barn of the Carnation milk factory, with the cows. I didn’t know where I was, and I was supposed to know everything! Fortunately, we had a tracer plane going over us every few minutes, north and south, sending signals to tell us
