A D-Day veteran recalls his introduction to World War II and the invasion’s intense fighting

Keeping the Memory Alive
By Berge Avadanian

“These were my brothers—the real heroes.” A hero himself, AMVETS Past National Commander Berge Avadanian hasn’t forgotten his fallen brothers from D-Day and other campaigns. For more than 50 years, the Waltham, Mass., resident has made it a point just before Memorial Day to visit their gravesites in local cemeteries. The visits are special. At each grave, Avadanian leaves an American flag and personal note to the deceased. “Dear Old Friend Tom” begins one of the notes, which continues: “I will always remember you. Your great grandchildren visited me last week. They are beautiful.”

Avadanian started the annual ritual after the war, and he’s made it a practice ever since. To him, it’s all a matter of remembering and making sure others remember, too. Born on Flag Day in 1918, Berge Avadanian seems to have been a part of history all his life. Early in 1942, he was one of the troopers of the original 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 82nd Airborne Division, that jumped two years later into Normandy. Over the span of three years and seven major campaigns, he made four parachute jumps in 420 days. In addition to Normandy, he served in Africa, Sicily, Italy, Holland, Belgium and Germany. Here is his story.

My first combat assignment with the 505th Parachute Regiment was to parachute into Sicily where, as it turned out, we were the first American unit to stage an airborne assault into enemy territory.

Initially, on the moonlit night of July 9, 1943, our regiment was to have dropped on the German airfield at Gela. The enemy knew we were coming and had positioned a Panzer division to ambush us. Luckily, the pilots strayed off course, and most of us were dropped miles away. A couple of days later we captured the airfield.

Our next combat mission was at Salerno, Italy, where we parachuted in support of the beach landings, which were seriously threatened by German counterattacks. Our intervention helped to ensure the success of the campaign in southern Italy. Then, it was on to Naples as our troops moved north against heavy German resistance in early October 1943.

The following month, we departed Italy to train in Ireland for a month and then traveled on to England in February 1944 to train for the invasion of Europe via Normandy. My training as a pathfinder enabled me to play somewhat of a key role in the preparations for the invasion, since I was to be responsible for setting up and operating tracking lights and radar homing devices to guide the main airborne forces onto their assigned drop zones.

Up to two weeks prior to the landing, the 82nd Airborne Division was scheduled to land around Ste. Sauveur le Vicomte, a town 14 miles inland of the landings at Utah Beach. The plans, though, were quickly changed after we learned the Germans anticipated the operation. General Rommel had actually foreseen where we were coming in and ordered the countryside laced with anti-airborne defenses, ranging from armor and troops to mines and spiked poles.

As we neared the planned day for the invasion—June 5—the weather was foul, with high winds and crashing waves in the Channel. The operation, however, was delayed only one day. On June 5 around 11 p.m., we started boarding the planes for the flight over the English Channel. We flew at around 1,000 feet, and the view was simply beautiful. Approaching the Normandy Peninsula from the west, we could not see the thousands of ships coming toward the beaches from the east.

Carrying more than 150 pounds of equipment, 12 to 15 of us jumped out of each plane. Our mission was to seal the bridges and roads so that the Germans would not be able to strengthen their counterattack on the Utah, Omaha and Juno beach landings. As planned, I landed just south of Neuville Au Plain, on the edge of Ste. Mere Eglise.

Enemy anti-aircraft fire was intense. And I could see cows but at first, no people and no Germans. That changed in a hurry. I can recall a fine young lieutenant who had gotten a haircut from our company barber a couple of days prior to D-Day, just as I had done. The next time I saw him, though, he was still in his parachute hanging from a tree near the churchyard in Ste. Mere Eglise, with his throat cut. The Germans, who had bivouacked in and around the town, were merciless.

With a mission longer than anticipated, the 82nd Airborne suffered heavy casualties in 34 days of intense combat. Everything around us—wherever we fought in those once-quiet little Norman towns—became absolute rubble within days, sometimes hours. The airborne division spearheaded inland of the beaches with almost 13,000 men and returned to England with only 5,800—all the rest were missing, wounded or dead.

I remember seeing a large field near Ste. Mere Eglise , where eight of our dead, wrapped in mattress bags, lay. A year later, on the first anniversary of D-Day, I returned there, and 7,500 lay buried in that same field.

Memorials are always a sad experience for me. Maybe they wouldn’t be if I didn’t personally know so many of the dead whose names are engraved on cemetery markers. Thanks to their sacrifices, and the will of God, 59 years have passed, during which I’ve tried to keep alive this important chapter in our history. But it’s more than history to me; it’s a part of my life.

A life member of Massachusetts Post 41 (Watertown), Berge Avadanian was elected AMVETS national commander in 1973.