Ep 203: Stephen Rabe on the Invasion of Normandy

Stephen Rabe, historian and author of The Lost Paratroopers of Normandy: A Story of Resistance, Courage, and Solidarity in a French Village,

Aaron MacLean:

Hi, I'm Aaron MacLean. Thanks for joining School of War. I'm delighted to welcome to the show today, Stephen Rabe, who held the Ashbel Smith Chair in History at the University of Texas at Dallas.

He taught there for 40 years, and won a bunch of teaching awards. He's written or edited 12 books. Most recently, he has written The Lost Paratroopers of Normandy: A Story of Resistance, Courage, and Solidarity in a French Village. Stephen, thank you so much for joining the show.

Stephen Rabe:

Thank you very much for having me.

Aaron MacLean:

Now, more importantly, frankly, than any of that, you're a Marine. Tell me about that.

Stephen Rabe:

Well, I was in the Marine Corps in the 1970s, at the end of the Vietnam era. I don't have combat experience, but I was an O-3-011, a grunt, a fairly highly educated O-3-011, and I became an NCO in the Marine Corps. Since I was an academic, I met very few Marines in academia. So, it always gave me a little bit of... Make me a little bit different, but the Marine Corps also gave me a good sense of how to teach and how to teach people who might've been first-generation college students.

Aaron MacLean:

You say you were highly educated for an O-3-011. Had you already gone to college or something? Or what does that mean?

Stephen Rabe:

I had graduated from college, yes. And I was then... When I was in reserves, I was getting both my master's and PhD at the basketball capital of the world, better known as UConn.

Aaron MacLean:

Wow. Well, I think the best three jobs in the infantry are squad leader, company commander, and battalion commander. I think those are the three places where you are...

Stephen Rabe:

Could be it. As I often say, keeping control of those 13 men under my command was often more difficult than lecturing a class of 75 students.

Aaron MacLean:

Well, you've now written this extraordinary book about the Battle of Normandy, which we're going to talk about today, and it's about an episode, a very dramatic episode within the battle. Before we get to that in the 82nd and everything that the book is about, what's the origin of your interest in Normandy in this episode?

Stephen Rabe:

Well, the origin is clearly with my father, Staff Sergeant Rene Rabe. My father was a paratrooper in the 82nd Airborne, and he jumped into Normandy with the 507th Regiment on D-Day landing, I think in the morning. And then, of course, he and his regiment would be seven weeks in Normandy. They were at the Battle of the Bulge. They jumped over the Rhine River, they fought in the Rhineland area. They freed thousands of slave laborers. And then my father did occupation duty in Berlin.

So, my father, as I learned, engaged in the most epic journey in Western Civilization history from Normandy to Berlin. So, there was always that interest in... But I'm not a military historian. I'm an historian of international relations, U.S. foreign relations. And so, I’d always had this sense that as I became a professional historian, I wanted to do something about my father's journey. But academic life was such, it was very pleasant. I got a lot of offers to teach abroad.

I had it here, so I did a lot of publishing in my field of U.S. Latin American relations. So, it was basically, I just had a box in which I was throwing things of ideas in, but it took until retirement before I really got to the issue of my father's role. And there was one thing that stuck in my mind, in that my father was unusual in that he did talk about his wartime experiences as a younger man. Generally speaking, I found that the paratroopers only began to speak to their family when they were in their 50s or 60s.

My father spoke about it in great detail with my uncles who were veterans but had not seen combat, and he would always let me listen in. He told me, I couldn't say anything about what he was telling them, but I absorbed it. And he would sit with me, and we would watch things like Victory at Sea and The World at War and he would answer my questions.

So, I had this knowledge base. In addition, they're one of my earliest memories of sitting on my father's lap, and he was back from work. He was reading the newspaper, he was smoking, and he would work his face, and he would show me that a small flick of shrapnel had emerged, this is when I'm five or six.

Aaron MacLean:

Wow.

Stephen Rabe:

And as I often say, I was destined to be a historian after that. And he had a lot of little holes in his face because his position had been hit by a mortar round on March 28th, 1945, in the Rhineland area. And then I have the medical report, and then of course, it was even more amazing to me, the company report. He came back for duty the next day, and the company report says, "Staff Sergeant Rabe is back with us."

Aaron MacLean:

What a remarkable story.

Stephen Rabe:

So, there were all these things, but there was one story that stuck with me, he said... And I couldn't quite figure out what he was talking about. He told me that he had been hidden for three days in the barn by a friendly French family. And then he later added that he was ravenously hungry and that the friendly French family brought downstairs, in the bottom of the barn, brought cabbage with melting butter, and he always said, "It was the best meal I ever had."

And we heard that story a lot because when one of the three of us children were not eating our meals that our mother prepared, he'd bring that homily back up about how he had eaten the cabbage with milk and butter. So, that had stuck in my mind, but he didn't quite understand how could it be in Normandy for seven weeks and be in this barn for three days. So, it was into an investigation of that that led me to the lost paratroopers of Normandy.

Aaron MacLean:

That's extraordinary. You quoted another writer in the book as saying that the invasion of Normandy is one of the greatest events in human history, of course, in the MacLean family with a little bit of a parallel to your own family story. D-Day is a bit of a sore point because Angus MacLean Sr, my dad on the 5th and 6th of June, participated in the liberation of Rome and had...

Stephen Rabe:

Had overshadowed.

Aaron MacLean:

He had a bit of a chip on his shoulder; I'm not going to lie. He had a bit of his chip on his shoulder about Normandy, and I actually, never went as a kid. One of us just to go toe to toe with you here, one of the most amazing experiences of my young life was I got to go to Anzio with my dad when I was a young teenager. And that was just extraordinary.

But I only went to Normandy as an adult. Actually, only in the last few years have I been there, and I haven't been as south... As far south as the village that your book is about, though I have been through Carentan, and it is the most... The beach complex itself. The whole of the battlefield in Normandy, which is a huge space, is just one of the most extraordinary places on earth. Naturally beautiful to begin with. And then when you picture what happened there, it's extraordinary. Everyone should go.

Stephen Rabe:

And I often tell people that to visit the American Cemetery of Colleville, sur-Mer is the most beautiful place in America because I think it actually is part of the United States, and it is just... People, when you see them with their hand over their heart and they start to cry. It's really quite an emotional experience to go there.

Aaron MacLean:

I'm at the stage now, like I said, I've only been going in the last few years, and when you're young, and I remember this about myself when my dad was still alive, and you think about things like World War II, you think about, "Oh, man, what could I do? Would I measure up? What would I be like under these circumstances?" Now, I go to that cemetery, which again, I agree with you, everyone should go to.

And last time I was there, I saw two tombstones next to each other, two crosses there next to each other with, well, obviously I looked it up to confirm, but were obviously two brothers, and all I can think about are my kids. I'm that age now where I think about it through that lens now, and it's an emotionally turbulent experience, which is crazy considering that you and I are a bit unusual here in 2025 and that we have dads who participated in the war, but this is 80 years ago. This is not exactly fresh, and yet as a place, it's just charged.

Stephen Rabe:

Well, all 2004 members of the 507th Regiment jumped, and after seven weeks, they have lost 61%. I had 61% actual rate-

Aaron MacLean:

Well, let's just...

Stephen Rabe:

... which is just incredible.

Aaron MacLean:

Let's start there then. So, tell me about the O-3-011, about the 82nd Airborne and about Jumpin' Jim Gavin.

Stephen Rabe:

All right. When people ask me, “summarize your book in one sentence,” I say, “ordinary people are capable of extraordinary things.” The 507th Regiment and the 82nd Airborne was made up of very ordinary people. People who were products of the Great Depression, and starts right with Jumpin' Jim Gavin, who was an orphan. His mother became pregnant in Ireland, came to the United States, gave birth, I think kept him for a couple years, couldn't manage, and he was adopted, and he was adopted by Kenzian parents who treated him very, very badly.

He was a good student in school, but home life was terrible. He wanted to go to college; they wouldn't do that. So, he went to New York, any friendly recruiting sergeant got him into the U.S. military. And then, when he was assigned abroad, I think he was in Panama, the officers noticed how bright he was, how brilliant he was, and they ultimately arranged for him to take the test to get into West Point. He studied at night. He didn't have money for paper, so he wrote mathematical equations out on toilet paper at night in the head.

So, he's just an incredible person who always had a working-class man's mentality about things. In that, the first thing... Whenever a new officer came into the 82nd Airborne, he rose very rapidly because of his embrace of airborne warfare. And whenever a new officer came into the 82nd Airborne, they would meet with Gavin, and he had two injunctions for them. He'd say, "Young man, there are two things that go here as an officer; you jump first, and you eat second... And you eat last, you eat last. You jump first and you eat last."

And it was a view that everybody in the 82nd was equal, but I don't know how to explain it, that Gavin was so popular with his men that in the post-war period, whenever he would attend a reunion, there would just be a riotous outbreak of enthusiasm and just incredible standing ovation. And then, he would get up on stage and say, "Gentlemen, thank you. Let's have a drink."

Aaron MacLean:

It's worth reflecting on how young he was.

Stephen Rabe:

He's the youngest Major General since General Armstrong of Custer's last stand. General George Custer. Is the youngest... Jumping is a young man's game, and General Gavin ultimately jumped, I think, 55 times in practice and in combat, and he ended up with a really bad back. So, he did everything his men did. There are all kinds of stories of him jumping into a foxhole with other men and taking watch duty for a while, sharing his coffee and then moving on, et cetera.

But the types of people that he was with were in a way like him, the 82nd Airborne, which is not to say that other military units weren't similar, were products of the Great Depression in that, a lot of the men only had 8th grade educations. They had to drop out of school to support their parents. There's one man who had to drop out of high school three different times before he joined the 82nd. He got a little bit of college and ultimately became a career military person and became a colonel.

People joined the 82nd Airborne more than any reason, for the extra $50. $50 a month. They really needed the money. They needed the money to send home, they... If you were in the 82nd Airborne and were in Europe or just before D-Day, you were getting $50 jump pay, you were getting $50 overseas pay, you were making about your $25 regular pay. You were making the level of a mid-level British officer.

See, I was really surprised. I thought that people had joined for the daring do, et cetera, but it was really the money that got most people to join. They needed the money; they needed to send the money home. Many of the men had pretty hard lives during the Great Depression, and so, they were intent on sending this money home. Now, in order to be a paratrooper, you had to score on the Basic Army Administrative Test, you had to score enough to qualify for Officer's Candidate School. You had to have a real high score. You haven't wanted intelligent men because he felt that once you're on the ground, you're going to be on your own.

Things are going to be not as planned, and you're going to have to show initiative. And so, the men he had were highly qualified men who had been poor, basically, poor and needed the money. I was very surprised when I was reading all the memoirs. I thought that they liked to jump. I found that perhaps the majority were indifferent, but a very high percentage admitted, "I was terrified every time I jumped."

Aaron MacLean:

Rational, to be honest.

Stephen Rabe:

Of course. And only a couple said, "I liked jumping." Most of them didn't like jumping. And the fact of the matter is... I don't know if parachutes are different today than back then. I suspect they were. But even when they did, their practice jumps, usually there'd be a fatality, and there would be a lot of men with broken bones. This was not something you took on very lightly. Why did they do it? They all said, "I did it for the money. I needed the money. I needed the money, and this would give me a life and money ability to send money home, et cetera."

Most of the men did not have high school degrees. Many of the men had dropped out, and basically, some had just an 8th-grade education, even though they were highly intelligent. It's interesting that most of the officers had one year of college, but a good number of the officers stayed in the military because the military offered them the opportunity to finish their college education, get graduate degrees. And so, many of the people who are in Grigna, the village we're speaking about, who are second or first lieutenants, they ultimately became lieutenant colonels or colonels.

Aaron MacLean:

So, one more question about the organization before we move on to the French and the Germans and talk about what actually happens to this. Ultimately, your story is really about a company in the 507th, but in distinction to other military training of the day or other infantry training, and you could apply this to today, perhaps, I'm not sure. That's an interesting question. Since time immemorial training an infantry organization had been about uniformity, an erasure of personality, an effort to get people to act as part of a machine because individualism tended to lead to bad results on the battlefield.

But something about what was going to be required of the airborne and of the individual airborne trooper, just the nature of what it was like to jump out of these planes in the middle of the night and where you might find yourself indeed entirely alone or in small groups or as in your case, essentially an isolated company, was going to ask something different of these men, which means that men like Gavin, were going to have to train them differently. How did that manifest itself?

Stephen Rabe:

Well, the thing that General Gavin emphasized the most was physical fitness. His idea of a good time was to take a 25-mile hike, first march, do routines, basic training, do training all day, and then take the 25-mile hike back. If you did... If you fell out, you’d be out of the paratroopers. He and General Ridgway agreed with this, the overall commander initially at the 82nd, that they wanted men who were as physically fit as Jesse Owens or Joe Lewis. They wanted people who were of Olympic style fitness.

Now, in terms of their personalities, General Gavin said, "I want you to think that there is no bed that is too soft for you, that there is no food that is too good for you, that there is no woman who is too beautiful for you, and I want you to be able to think individually, but you had to be... The thing that was most important. You have to be physically fit." He would often write acerbic comments about some officers that there was a little fat on their body and whatever. He wanted his men to learn to think for themselves, and he continually said that "I know that when we hit the ground, it's not going to be as we planned."

In addition, he erased a little bit of the difference between officers and men. I've had many officers say that what made us different is that I, as an officer, would sometimes carry part of a mortar. The... An 81-mm mortar weighed 135 pounds, 40 pounds broken into three. It's pretty tough to carry. Officers carry the mortar at times, everybody's share. So, there was a breakdown of that. The other thing, General Gavin was very explicit. I know a lot of people would find this difficult to accept.

He said, "My men are killers." And he told his men many times, "We go home when we kill all the Germans, so just kill, just kill." So, he was pretty blunt about that. All those attitudes made him beloved among his paratroopers.

Aaron MacLean:

So, let's talk about where they were going to assault, and let's talk about where the 507th or this headquarters company of the 507th was supposed to go. Just tell the listener who... If you are listening, you can pull up a map of Normandy. It might be helpful but give us a bit of a sense of the overall plan for overlord and where the 507th in the 81st fit into that.

Stephen Rabe:

As most people know a little bit about World War II history at D-Day, they know that most of the paratroopers, the 12,000 men who jumped from the 82nd and 101st, most of them did not land where they were intended to. However, this group of men, it is the headquarters company of the Third Battalion in the 507th Regiment, including also one, speak from the 101st, they were the farthest off target as a group, they were supposed to land...

The 82nd was supposed to land West of Sainte-Marie-Église out in a small village called Umphreyville, but they landed near Grenier, which is about 20 miles south of where they were supposed to be, south and east. As a group, they were the most off target. Now, when they landed, they hit water. Germans had backed up all of the rivers to the English Channel. And so, they had flooded the lowlands, which were normally flooded in the winter. They had flooded the lowlands.

So, there was probably two, three feet of water when most of the men hit. If a man hit in a drainage ditch, which would be six, seven feet, they could get tangled up in their parachute, and they could drown. And several men from this essentially company drowned when they hit Normandy. So, they're the most off target. They land in and around an ancient Norman village called Grenier, which is about 10 kilometers, six miles south of Carentan. Carentan lies between Omaha and Utah beaches. It's an inland port. They land near an unoccupied village. It's a village of about 900 people.

It has a magnificent 12th-century Romanesque church. The village itself is set on a hill about 50 meters up along this surrounding moray or swamp plant, which is flooded in the winter, but it's very, very fertile during the summertime for both Norman cows and growing apple work, et cetera. So, that's where they landed, and the men headed for that village as they got out of their parachutes, and those that slashed away at their risers to get out of their parachutes because many of them were underwater initially popped up when they landed.

And they headed for this village and then had to make the decision of what to do. They're 20 miles off target, and ultimately, there's about counting men from the 101st. There's about 170, 175 men, four or five men have died from drowning. What are they going to do? What should they do?

Aaron MacLean:

So, before we get to that decision and its consequences, let's talk a little bit about the French and the villagers here. Talk a bit about who lives here, about the role of the resistance, and about how life has been up until June the 6th, 1940.

Stephen Rabe:

All right. Probably for me as an historian, the biggest intellectual problem is, why did the villagers do what they did? Why did they come to the aid of the paratroopers? Normally, think of the resistance as being from people from the political left, socialists, communists, et cetera. But this is a socially conservative, almost entirely Roman Catholic village. Why did they resist? All right, here's some of the key things. One is that an unoccupied village makes a big difference. The people could grouse forever among themselves in the local cafe run by Madame Bossier about how they didn't like the Germans.

Why didn't they like the Germans occupying? Well, just traditionally, they're French and they're Roman, but the town is filled with middle-aged men who are veterans of World War I. One of the key figures in my book, Gustave Rigaud, had carried shrapnel from the Battle of Verdun. There are a lot of veterans there. Second, a lot of the young men are hostages in Germany. Out of the young men from the village had been in the French army, had been captured in 1940, and were being held as hostages to the occupation.

They don't like the rationing, they don't like the rationing, and the rationing gets worse as things get worse for the Germans, as the war goes badly. They also don't like that by 1943, the Germans are trying to find young men in the village and send them to Germany to work in the war factories. The other thing is that it is absolutely astonishing to them is that 170 men come floating down around this village that some of them described as being at the ends of the Earth, even though it's only 10 kilometers from Carentan.

If you go today, you have to go through all these little country roads and you think, "Where am I? I'm lost here. It's just a very isolated place." And then one key thing, all of these people are Roman Catholic. They believe that at times the Almighty speaks to people. They're very frustrated and getting increasingly frustrated by the occupation. The parish priest had told them not to confront the Germans, not to cooperate, but not to confront. But all of a sudden, these 175 men float down. To many of these very socially and religiously conservative people.

It appeared to them the Almighty had spoken to them, "These men are here. The Almighty has spoken to us. We must now do something. We must now act on our extreme frustration and anger." And the fact that they... Again, as I said, they've been grousing for years among themselves openly because the Germans are not quite there, that they will act, which leads to two things for the men of the village to meet the day after June 7th and meet in the church. And you don't have to say most of these men are World War I veterans and vote to aid the paratroopers.

Simultaneously, the woman of the village decided to conduct an around-the-clock cooking campaign to support the paratroopers if they would stay, both the men and women of the village asked the paratroopers to stay in the village and protect them. Now that then leads to the question is why did the paratroopers decide to stay? But one of the key things that I like to say and is that ordinary people can make history.

Ordinary people are making history here. They wanted the paratroopers to stay and defend them. The paratroopers are 20 miles off target in an area that is completely flooded. They've seen four or five of their own men drown on D-Day. So, what to do?

Aaron MacLean:

You make the case that their decision to stay ultimately does have significance. That is to say, operational significance because it relieves some of the pressure that otherwise would've been brought to bear on Carentan. I'm going to insist on pronouncing it how I learned to pronounce it in the miniseries Band Of Brothers. It relieves some of the pressure on Carentan that otherwise could have been brought to bear earlier, but sitting there on the 6th, it had been a little speculative to judge that that's going to be a positive effect of this. It'd be very rational to just pick up your stuff and march north while you can and try to find the rest of the division.

Stephen Rabe:

Correct. Here is what a furious and very surprising argument broke out between the executive officer who is the ranking officer of Major Johnston and the next ranking officer, Lieutenant Brummett, about what to do. Major Johnston ultimately decided that we're so far off target that trying to find Umphreyville across all of this flooded area would be impossible. What we should do is adhere to the villager's request and protect the village and wait for the men of Omaha Beach to make it to us.

Now, this had been further accentuated by the fact that the villagers had gone out in their flat boats into the marais and had found all of the parapacks. They brought in the two 81mm mortars ahead. They brought in the five machine guns. They brought in the ammunition, they brought in the medical supplies, et cetera, that had landed separately. They had done that on their own initiative. Now, there are weaknesses to Major Johnson's plan. You have no resupply; you have no artillery support. You have no air support; you have no tank support. Suppose you're hit by an overwhelming force.

Now, in terms of the ammunition, they thought they had so much ammunition that they would be fine, but of course, those are the other weaknesses. Now, captain... Ultimately, Captain Brummett. But... Yes, Captain Brummett at the time vigorously disputed to the shock and surprise of the other junior officers, started yelling at the major, saying "We can't do this. Our mission is to support our three infantry companies. We are a headquarters company. We are not an infantry company. We are not skilled at holding a position. We have a lot of medical personnel. We have nine medical personnel with us. Our men have not been trained in infantry tactics. It's our duty to complete the mission."

Now, the problem would be, of course, if that plan was affected, the area was still alive with German troops everywhere. Carentan was still held by the Germans on June 6th. That might've been a suicide retreat or goal to get back to Umphreyville. It's hard to say. There are good arguments on both sides. Now, as I relate in the book for a while, it seemed that Major Johnson's plan was going to work. The villagers did everything that they promised to do. They went out on reconnaissance missions. They provided scouting teams for the paratroopers. The woman held the thing. They surreptitiously went into other towns.

They collected supplies. They cooked around the clock for the paratroopers. And most interestingly, on Friday, June 9th, two men from the 29th Infantry who had stormed Omaha Beach, wandered into the village. They had gotten detached from their forces, and they just kept going forward. And I suspect what happend is that people in the surrounding area gradually realized there's a company of paratroopers in the Village of Grenier and probably escorted them to the Village of Grenier.

This suggested to them that the men from Omaha Beach are getting close, and then we'll be relieved, and we will be able to get back to the 82nd. The situation was also, of course, changing. Which would've made for Captain Brummett's idea better is that the 101st did liberate Carentan on June 9th. So, things are in a dynamic. I should also note to your listeners the level of communication that they had brought two carrier pigeons with them when they jumped, and they let one carrier pigeon loose with their coordinates attached to the leg of the pigeon.

The pigeon apparently was shot down, but someone from the 82nd Airborne found the pigeon and brought it to headquarters. But... And they put out all points, "Listen here, there is a company of paratroopers who are trapped. If you can help them, help them." But there's nobody there to help them. The second pigeon is making a lot of noise. And so, they sacrificed that.

Aaron MacLean:

That's the issue that they're so far south. They're so off course, but I... You, it's funny you say there are arguments on both sides. My concern and why my instincts are with the side of the argument that lost is... So, in the end, there's this tremendous, awful battle with awful consequences. And I think you make a strong case that it did matter, that these guys actually ended up by chance doing something really important for the overall operation. But you can't know that on the 6th or the 7th.

And my concern as an officer would've been, "There's this vast battle raging to our north, and we are completely irrelevant. Here we are sitting in our nice village with all these nice people, and it's lovely that they're taking care of us and they want our help, and it's all very touching, but we are missing the battle." And it's just like to me that that argument did not go out.

Stephen Rabe:

And I would tell you that Captain Brummett, who later became Colonel Brummett, as he became a Colonel Officer to the day of his death, felt he was right. And of course, Captain Brummett would lead a team of a group of 90 people back to safety, to Carentan, on June 12th, June 13th. However, what I'd say to Captain Brummett is the situation had changed dramatically in a week, in terms of where German forces are. There's good arguments on both sides. I think the key thing is that you are not only... As you say, missing the battle, you're leaving everything pretty vulnerable with no outside court.

Aaron MacLean:

No, of course, you're in a bad position if something happens, you're in a bad position. But actually, in a way, the bigger danger is nothing happens, and you have to account weeks later, not to mention for the rest of your life to yourself. No matter how you sat out, the Battle of Normandy.

Stephen Rabe:

The one thing Captain Brummett would later admit that he was wrong about was the fighting abilities of his headquarters company.

Aaron MacLean:

In the Marines, of course, we... As an expeditionary force, we hold our individual Marines, whether you're a cook or a driver or what have you, to a high standard. We want them to be riflemen. And I love these... You're probably familiar with this, Stephen, but these battle diagrams of... For example, the retreat from the chosen reservoir for the first Marine Division divisions would be 7th Marines were here, 5th Marines were here. And they'd be like, "Headquarters Battalion was here." And they give the Headquarters Battalion a section of the line, because you're a Marine and that's what you're an extremist expected to do.

Stephen Rabe:

Correct.

Aaron MacLean:

Was it the same? Tell me what the ethic was in the Airborne, because it would seem to be logical.

Stephen Rabe:

I really think that was the ethic in the paratroopers. But I think that Captain Brummett was unduly uneasy about the fighting abilities. Now, to be sure there are nine men who are not armed there. He had a lot of communications people, maybe Barnes jumped with a big phone exchange type thing attached to his leg. There were a lot of communications people. I think that he was a little bit over-worried about that. Beyond that, he had about 18 men from the 101st who were infantrymen. And he smartly put them on the flanks, feeling that that would be the most dangerous area.

So, he put his infantrymen on the areas. The two infantrymen from the 29th Infantry came in and he put them also way out on the flanks. And one of them had a BAR. So... And the mortar man, particularly well, the lieutenant who led the mortar man got up in the belfry of the church and was able to wreck fire very, very accurately. So, in terms of defending the village, the first battle in which they were attacked was on June 11th, but in this case, they were attacked by probably Ukrainian Forces who had been frag boomed into the Nazis. It was like the Battle of Agincourt. I think that they exacted something, close to 500 casualties and suffered none, suffered none.

The Ukrainians just came up the roads that they had prepositioned their aiming points at, and they just obliterated them. So, the first battle went pretty well, and things looked pretty good after the first battle. But the second and third, they were attacked by the 17th Waffen-SS Division, who were professionally trained soldiers who were also murderers. Then things have obviously gone quite south. Most important is after repelling, the second battle, the second attack in the afternoon of Sunday, June 11th, is they ran out of ammunition. After the second attack, the officers discussed withdrawing.

They essentially ran out of ammunition. But I think the major felt, "We just can't let the villagers down. They helped us in every way they could. They risked their lives for us." The ladies who are going into occupied towns, getting supplies surreptitiously, just driving by and wagons, horse-driven wagons with the food under blankets just right by German checkpoints, they were risking... Everybody is risking their life for them. And I think that played a big role in the major's decision. So, he decided to stay. But the third attack was, they brought up artillery, and they started pounding the village. They destroyed the church.

And then again, of course, the men had run out of ammunition. But as my story goes here, ordinary people doing extraordinary things, the villagers stayed true to the paratroopers. They helped them individually escape from the village. Once the order was given to withdraw, ultimately, they organized in a group of about 90, and then people in the village in the surrounding areas provided them with intelligence, showed them ways to go, and they maneuvered their way back to Carentan.

In another case, this friendly farm family hid 21 paratroopers for three days in their barn. Even as Germans were passing by the barn, the lady, Madame Rigaud, the matriarch of the family, would tell Germans as they were approaching the barn, "Oh, don't go this way. You'll get your feet wet, go over this way." And they'd go around the barn in knots. It was just incredible things happening. And I might tell your listeners that one of the survivors of the family last October. October 2024, received the Legion of Honor from President Macron for... And the Honor was given to the entire family for their bravery and dedication to the cause.

Aaron MacLean:

I want to talk about the Panzergrenadier Division, but I want to reflect, just as you lay out the story, just imagine what this best of all seemed like to these villagers. In the context of the day, maybe in the context of any day, this is almost science fiction, you have these American soldiers dropping from the sky. On the one hand, this marvel of modern technology is being brought to bear for war-making purposes.

Then you have Ukrainian troops attacking your village. This is a quiet farming community in Normandy where not much changes and not much happens for long periods of time. And you're at the center of this apocalyptic, cataclysmic, terrible event where the entire North America and Eurasia are just clashing in your village over the future of the world. I don't really think that's that much of an overstatement. It's just stunning. It's just astonishing. And it must have been astonishing to them.

Stephen Rabe:

It's astonishing to me because I've asked them, "Well, the Germans destroyed your church. The artillery destroyed your church. Ultimately, the Germans burned the town down. In Normandy, it is the most destroyed village. It took them a decade to recover." And so, I asked them the first question, "Why did you come to the aid of the paratroopers?" And they're dumbfounded by the question, "These people came to help us. Why wouldn't we help them?" That's their answer universally. "And do you think the price that you paid was too high?" They deny it.

They simply... They don't call them the paratroopers. They call them the liberators. Liberators. And I will tell you, Aaron, that I can go from bar to bar in the general area and say, "I'm the son of a paratrooper." And I'm not going to have to buy a drink. Still 80 years later, I wouldn't have to pay for anything. So... And they just bring out the Liberty, Equality, Fraternity. If we have life, liberty and pursuit of happiness, they bring out Liberty, Equality, Fraternity. I know it seems like in our somewhat cynical times that people would actually say these things, but they do. They do. They had had enough of the Germans, and they actually...

As I said, I think they believed the Almighty had spoken to them 20 years after the fact, in 1964, at the annual commemoration of what happened in the Village of Grenier. The parish priest at the time compared the paratroopers coming to their village to God sending his only son Jesus to earth. It seems like I'm making it up, but I'm a professional historian. This... All of these things that happen are absolutely true.

Aaron MacLean:

If you go to Normandy now, and it's the same in Colmar, it's refreshing to your point of not having to ever pay for a beer. There's American flags everywhere, and British flags too, in Normandy, but in the Alsace area where the battle of the Colmar Pocket was fought. It's American flags everywhere. Everyone loves America. Everyone speaks of the war in idealistic terms, like you describe, and there's obviously a tourism industry and stuff like that, but there's a genuineness to it that you don't encounter in Paris.

Stephen Rabe:

That would be another reason why I think people should go to Normandy is that sometimes they sense. Well, people abroad have not been appreciative of the U.S. post-war, World War II Aid, et cetera. Well, they certainly are appreciative of what happened in the past.

Aaron MacLean:

I want to be respectful of your time here, but in an efficient manner. Tell us about the 17th SS Panzergrenadier Division. We're going to go on to what they did, but who were these guys? Where did they come from? What does it mean to have been an SS Division?

Stephen Rabe:

The Waffen-SS 17th Division was a brand-new division that had been created in 1943, commissioned by both Hitler and Himmler. It was made up of some of their NCOs and officers had trained at places like Dachau. They were SS men. They had also been in the Russian campaign, et cetera. Most of the younger men were in the 16, 17, 18-year-old range. They were pretty raw recruits, and they trained in south-central France in the end of 1943, '44. They lacked certain things like vehicles. Only two of the regiments move forward. Their basic mission was to retake Carentan, which lies between...

As I said, between Omaha and Utah Beaches. They were given the orders to move forward on June 6. Carentan is considered significant, not only by the Germans, but also by General Eisenhower, General Bradley. They felt that you had to hold Carentan... General Bradley said to Maxwell Taylor, the 101st Commander, "I don't care if there's not a stone, lying upon a stone. You must take Carentan. You must take Carentan. We can't have the Germans bisecting our two landing beaches."

So, Carentan was extremely significant. It took them several days longer. They left on the evening of June 6th, started marching towards Carentan, but they had troubles because the P-51s were continually buzzing them, and they could only move at night and move on secondary roads. Now, lying on their march is the Village of Grenier. And I think what they felt, and I should note that we do have German documents and German transmissions, and that my wife was very expertly translated them for me, because she speaks German, is that they decided... I think they had to take Carentan after the Ukrainian forces failed because they didn't want to have a force in rear.

So, the significance here, even though it might not have been the best decision by Major Johnston, is that it slowed down by about a day and a half. The movement of the 17th Waffen-SS towards Carentan by a day and a half. It gave the 101st more time to... Gave them more time to consolidate their position in Carentan, which they had taken. So... And in addition, it tired out the battalion that would lead the attack on Carentan on June 13th. So, it had some strategic significance in allowing the 101st and then the Second Armored Division to hold the Town of Carentan.

So, that played a particular role. Now, I call them capable of terror war. They executed 19 American prisoners. They executed four villagers, the parish priest, Ezekielite and their two housekeepers. And they burned... The Germans burned the town down. My wife was able; in working through the transmissions, we had the toggle book or the daily log of the central command of the 17th Waffen-SS. And she was able to find and break through a code where they would say, "There was fog on the bridge." That the forces out on the field would report, "There's fog on the bridge."

Well, there wasn't any fog. It's code for, "We just murdered people. We just murdered people. We executed people." These people are killers. They are the same type of people that killed 85 people at Malmedy in America. And of course, just to the south in the Town of Oradour-sur-Glane, they killed 500... SS... Waffen-SS Division killed 550 people, packing people in the church and burning the church down, et cetera. But they fought a terror war. The Waffen-SS is not a regular military unit. They were held at Nuremberg to be a Criminal Organization.

Aaron MacLean:

So, there's this series of deliberate attacks on the village. Eventually, the ammunition runs low, effectively running out. So, the decision to leave is taken, and these 19 Americans stay behind. What... So, there's wounded here and medical personnel for the wounded, and that's the basic rationale for staying behind.

Stephen Rabe:

As best we can tell, the battalion surgeon made the decision to stay behind with his medics. They're all unarmed. And there are some accounts that the battalion surgeon came out and waved a white sheet or white flag, and said, "We're medical people." They murdered them all, murdered them all. And we, of course, have accounts in Normandy of German and American doctors working together. There's a small church just south of Utah Beach where the medics, the medical personnel, saved the lives of over 40 Germans and Americans in a little church. So, that was the expected thing to happen, that they would not, but they murdered the medical personnel, and they murdered...

They took... Because they said, "Well, you killed an officer of ours." Which was in normal combat. So, they marched off nine people into an adjoining village and had them kneel down and shoot them in the back of the head. I've been able to identify many of the nine because their gravest registration reports that they have, they're missing their mandible, their lower jaw, and they're missing their fingers, which they put behind their head, and then they had to kneel down and shot them. "This was not war, this was murder."

Aaron MacLean:

And the ones that couldn't move, they bayonetted?

Stephen Rabe:

Bayonetted. And I have first-person accounts from villagers of seeing them taken out of the pond with knives in their back.

Aaron MacLean:

Was there ever any accountability for these men?

Stephen Rabe:

No. No. They actually... One of the men ended up at Fort Hunt near Arlington, Virginia, which was this secret prison for Nazis that might have some information.

Aaron MacLean:

Really fascinating.

Stephen Rabe:

And the interrogators discovered that this man had been responsible for murdering people in Prague, et cetera. But because of the unusual and perhaps illegal nature of... The story of Fort Hunt...

Aaron MacLean:

I live pretty close to it, actually. That's just the world.

Stephen Rabe:

They couldn't prosecute him. I identified the person, and he was the NCO in charge of murdering things, but there was no accountability. Now, in terms of the 17th Waffen-SS Division, all of them were killed in battle.

Aaron MacLean:

That's better than they deserved.

Stephen Rabe:

So, there were very few people to prosecute again.

Aaron MacLean:

So, the bulk of the company, nevertheless, having... It turns out possibly through a degree of accident, but nevertheless, in no way to detract from their honor, having helped relieve some of the pressure on Carentan, they make their way back, including one. He's not a staff sergeant at the time, is he? But to include one staff Sergeant Rabe.

Stephen Rabe:

Right. He... Of course, he's one of the 21 in the barn who makes it separately, in which the family arranges for a large boat to come, and they maneuver through the [inaudible 00:47:06] and they get there pretty quickly. But that's by June 15th. June 16th, and so, there are 21 men saved. Now, of course, the ripple effect of all this, of the villagers, is they're relieving men. Ultimately, they saved about 110 men, and these 110 men basically made it right to the end.

General Gavin often said, "If you could survive your first battle, if you can survive the first one, you'll learn how to live. You'll learn how to survive." He himself had said, "I amaze myself how fast I can get under a flat rock when I hear a Howitzer shell coming in." So, these 110 men would be in Normandy for seven weeks. It would be in the Battle of Bulge for two months. They would jump over the Rhineland. They would free thousands of Eastern European slave laborers, and they... Some of them, like my father, would do occupation in Berlin.

So, there was this ripple effect of... It's ordinary people taking action that actually had fairly dramatic consequences. Now, I'm not going to say that all of the victories at the Battle of the Bulge or the Rhineland aerial wouldn't have taken place if these soldiers had not acted in the way they did, but the links are direct.

Aaron MacLean:

And in the aggregate, all these little things matter. When did your dad pass away, Stephen?

Stephen Rabe:

1982. As I was mentioning to you, they... He suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, and one of the more... Again, I, surprising results of tracing the lives of the men that I focus on in my book, in the post-war period, virtually all of them had some.

Aaron MacLean:

You had to dig that out, because one of the striking things about this generation of veterans, as opposed to say Vietnam Veterans or later, is the rate of claiming, as it were, disability support for things like that was much, much lower.

Stephen Rabe:

Now, part of this is what I think makes the book unique, is that my father was well-known in the Headquarters Company of the 3rd Battalion, the 507th Regiment, and I was talking to people who... The children of paratroopers, generally speaking, because most of the paratroopers had passed, and that was an entree that my father was a member of this, and he was well-known. In addition, a lot of the people I spoke to were children I met as a child. Because I would attend reunions, they opened up as a child.

I noticed that most of them drank way, way too much way, way too much. I was just shocked at how much they were drinking, and most of them, for a good deal of their lives, were functional alcoholics. Gradually, I think alcoholism took over. When men started going back in the 1990s or so, back to the Village of Grenier, the people of Normandy were just shocked at how much they drank, and so, there were a lot...

The men paid a pretty heavy price for what they did between 1944 and '45. Ordinary people, whether they were French or American, upheld the values of life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, liberty, equality, and it's not a made-up story.

Aaron MacLean:

Stephen Rabe, author of The Lost Paratroopers of Normandy: A Story of Resistance, Courage, and Solidarity in a French Village. Really, really interesting conversation. Stephen, thanks for telling this story and telling your dad's story. Thanks for coming on today.

Stephen Rabe:

Thank you very much.

Aaron MacLean:

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