Nothing but Courage

Excerpted from NOTHING BUT COURAGE by James Donovan. To be published on May 27, 2025 by Dutton Caliber, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. Copyright © 2025 James Donovan

Nothing But Courage p119–123

2:14 a.m.
In the lead plane of the 508th’s second serial, Jim Gavin stood in the rear doorway watching the flak come up from the Channel Islands and “burst in plumes of smoke and flame just short of the plane,” as he’d anticipated they would. Their air cover had increased when they’d left England, and fighters had been weaving back and forth above them. Then the flak was behind them, and about twelve minutes later, he looked down to see the countryside of the Cotentin Peninsula as they reached the French coast. By the light of the nearly full moon high in the sky, the land appeared reddish brown, and roads and houses shone white in the moonlight as the plane and the others behind it dropped to 600 feet.

He had just given the order to stand and hook up when they entered a dense cloud bank and visibility dropped to zero. Gavin couldn’t even see the wingtips of his own plane, much less any others. His first thought was Is this a smoke cloud put up by the Germans? But as they continued to plow sightlessly through the fog, he realized it wasn’t. He felt as if he and the men with him were entirely alone.

Like every other jumpmaster, he knew the exact time between landfall and his drop zone— theirs was eight and a half minutes. He also knew that if twelve minutes passed, they would have overshot the DZ and be over the east coast— and seconds later over the English Channel. There seemed no end to the fog. He checked his watch and soon checked it again.

Seven minutes after landfall, the fog began to break up. Gavin looked out and saw not one other plane— just moonlight reflecting off a river straight ahead. Was it the Douve, several miles south of Sainte-Mère-Église? Or the Merderet? He wasn’t sure. Then machine-gun fire from the ground began peppering the plane, and the pilot started “a lot of jinking around,” Gavin remembered. Directly ahead a few miles, he could see a lot of small-arms fire and buildings burning— it had to be Sainte-Mère-Église, and that meant the 505th was already fighting the Germans for the town. Then the green light came on, Gavin took one last look at the land below, yelled, “Let’s go!” and plunged out the door into the slipstream amid thick tracer fire.

He landed hard but unhurt in an apple orchard. Cows grazing among the trees continued, unfazed. The general’s aide, Captain Hugo Olson, hit the ground nearby. They got out of their chutes and began rolling up the stick, following a narrow tree-lined dirt road east in the direction the rest of the men had dropped, and in a few minutes, all but a few of the troopers were with him. Four hundred yards on, the lane ended at a large body of water glimmering in the darkness that seemed to stretch to the horizon. He had no idea where he was— though, unlike the Sicily drop, this time he was sure he was in France. They watched as a C-47 in flames skirted low over the water. We’re in for a hell of a night, he thought.

After jumping from a plane in the same serial, Colonel Roy Lindquist, West Point class of ’30 and commander of the 508th, landed in two feet of water. Machine-gun fire and tracer fire were coming across the swamp and he lay prone while he got out of his harness. He had just freed himself when someone said, “Halt!” It was the colonel’s orderly, who had forgotten the challenge word “Flash.”

Some of his men thought the bespectacled Lindquist pompous, and Gavin had little respect for him as a leader; he didn’t think he spent enough time with his men. Unlike Gavin, who always wore his fatigues in the field, Lindquist would go out to check on his regiment’s training in his Class A uniform. But Lindquist had high standards, and he picked good people— and didn’t hesitate to replace officers who didn’t measure up. This operation was a chance for Lindquist to change Gavin’s opinion.

The colonel and his orderly waded through the swamp, twice stepping into water over their heads, which forced them to swim twelve feet— the worst way to encounter the drainage canals that ran through the fields and into the Merderet. Finally, exhausted and completely soaked, they saw an amber light— the 508th’s assembly beacon, where his 2,000 troopers were to assemble. A few minutes later, they reached the light. Twenty men were there. Lindquist sent out runners to round up others in the area and to retrieve parapacks. They returned with only a handful of troopers— some of them from the 507th— and almost no equipment bundles. They managed to find one of the few that hadn’t sunk in the marsh, and pulled a radio out. They couldn’t raise anyone on it.

Lindquist was uncertain what to do and where he was. Then someone said, “While in the water I’m sure I saw a railroad bank to the west of us,” and then the colonel knew his location and his course of action.

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2:10 a.m.
Private First Class Harold Kulju was a slender twenty-year-old from California’s San Joaquin Valley, where his Finnish grandparents had settled at the turn of the century to farm. He was in the California State Guard when war broke out, and when the Guard was activated, he volunteered for the paratroops— he’d never heard of them until another draftee told him about them, and they sounded like a good idea. The doctor who examined him thought he was a bit scrawny to be a paratrooper— Kulju was five foot ten but only 123 pounds— and wasn’t inclined to accept him, but after some discussion he relented. Kulju made the grade and became a radioman in the 508th.

Now he was number six in his stick, part of the 2nd Battalion’s HQ company. As his C-47 made landfall on Normandy’s west coast, the antiaircraft fire started up. He had never felt so helpless. Then the jumpmaster yelled, “Stand up and hook up!” and he and the other men staggered to their feet and hooked up and checked their equipment. A few minutes later the green light went on and the jumpmaster hurled himself out the door. He was followed by the next four men, and as Kulju stepped to the door, a shell exploded and the top of the plane disappeared.

While the plane dipped to the right and headed toward the ground, Kulju grabbed the outside of the door with both hands as they had been taught. It was all he could do to drag himself over the threshold and roll over it and fall out at about 500 feet. No one followed him. When his chute opened a second later with a hard jerk, Kulju looked up to see tracers ripping through it. He heard what sounded like a Gammon grenade explode below him; then he oscillated twice and hit the ground seconds later.

Thirty yards away was a German bunker. Another trooper must have just thrown in the grenade he’d heard, and knocked it out. He tore his trench knife free— he had taped it to his boot sheath— sliced through all his chute straps, picked up his carbine, and stood up. He looked around the field, but he had no idea where he was. He ran for the closest hedgerow and threw himself against the solid earth. He lay there for a while, gathering himself. Then in the moonlight he saw two Germans approaching on the other side of the embankment. He hadn’t loaded his carbine, and he hoped they’d go by, but he unscrewed the cap of his Gammon grenade just in case and waited.

When they reached a point just opposite him, they saw him and ducked down. He waited. One of them rose slowly, and he tossed the Gammon over the hedgerow. The German lifted his rifle and fired, and the bullet zipped harmlessly through the crotch of Kulju’s pants, but the rifle’s muzzle blast was so close, it knocked him senseless. When he recovered, his face was in the dirt embankment and his mouth was open and drooling blood and saliva. He tasted gunpowder.

He couldn’t hear, and he thought he was dead. Then his hearing returned, and he heard moaning on the other side of the hedgerow.

Soon the moaning stopped. Kulju began to move. He thought he heard two troopers approaching on his side of the hedgerow. One shouted, “Thunder!”— that was actually the counter reply. Kulju said, “Flash,” but not loudly enough, for a bullet hit his helmet and ricocheted off. He rolled away and started swearing. Another round was fired and barely missed him, going through papers in his left hip pocket. He swore louder, which seemed to work better than the password. The two men came over and they all talked for a while and decided to wait there.

Kulju must have dozed off— when he looked up, he was alone again. He ran for a brush-filled gully he could see and jumped into it and lay on his back.

He heard the creaking of leather and knew it was Germans. He reached for his carbine but it was off to his left somewhere. He lay still and closed his eyes. He heard them approaching through the grass until they stood over him. He felt the need to urinate and did so. He hoped that in the dim light, they might think it was blood.

After a while Kulju heard them move away. He slowly opened his eyes. They were gone. He crawled down into the gully as deep as he could and fell asleep, exhausted. Just before he did, he heard a glider approach, crashing through the trees.

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