Paratrooper Ed Mauser never forgot the first thing he saw when he leaped from the doorway of his C-47 transport plane in the opening hours of D-Day, June 6, 1944. It was another plane, holding Lieutenant Thomas Meehan, the commander of Easy Company, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division, and 18 other paratroopers. “I thought the plane was going to make a landing, it hit the hedgerow and exploded. I knew all the fellows on it.”
Mauser had little time to think about what he had seen. After his parachute deployed, the strap of his leg bag yanked down to his ankle. “I thought I was going to break my legs,” he recalled. He reached down to adjust the strap, but the bag fell off. Within seconds he hit French soil. “It was one of my better landings.”
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