A BET LOST, THE BATTLE WON
The morning sky was gray on Saturday, March 24, 1945, when paratroopers of the U.S. 507th Parachute Infantry Regiment’s 1st Battalion started gearing up. The Allied airfield in France, designated A-40, was packed with rows of twin-engine C-47 cargo planes.
At each aircraft the men had divided into pairs for the practiced ritual of donning their parachutes. The ordinarily straightforward process was complicated by having to route the harnesses around canteens, shovels, medical aid bags, map cases, demolition packs and firearms of all sorts, mostly rifles, submachine guns and carbines.
As they shrugged on their equipment, their commander, Col. Edson Raff, drove up the flight line. He stopped at each cluster of troopers to stand in his jeep and deliver a short but direct sermon: “Give the goddamned bastards hell, men! You know what to do. Cut out their goddamned guts!”
Raff had the personality and résumé to back up his bravado. The tough 37-year-old West Point graduate was an ardent believer in strong leadership and had commanded the Americans’ first combat jump into North Africa as well as battled through the bocage in France. As a result of those experiences he embraced the brutality of his profession. “Forget good sportsmanship on the battlefield,” he wrote in his wartime memoir. “And if for one moment you feel soft toward that Nazi shooting at you, remember he’s trying to kill you, and if he had the chance, he’d drive your dad into slavery, cut your mother’s throat and rape your wife, sister, sweetheart or daughter. You’ll get no quarter from him. Give him none!”
Raff had taken command of the 507th in June 1944 after the Germans captured the original commander a few days into the Normandy campaign. The outsider’s assignment disgruntled the regiment’s rank and file, and his popularity dropped even more when he introduced the men to
