In a post on July 2015, I first wrote about SSgt. John (‘Jack’) Urbank after buying his binoculars. I haven’t been able to find out a lot more about him since then, except for the well known packing list for the Normandy jump that has been published by various websites:

The binocular case clearly dates from after Normandy, because he was not yet a Staff Sergeant at the time.

Interview in 1964

This is from an interview with the Akron Beacon Journal on June 7, 1964:

John T. “Jack” Urbank was a pink-cheeked 21-year old in 1944. He was a sergeant in the 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment attached to the 101st Airborne Division.*

Plans called for the 101st, one of two U.S. airborne divisions in the Normandy Invasion, to capture and clear four causeways leading off Utah Beach. They were to drop into France shortly after midnight June 6. They would be the first Americans to invade Europe.

…

“Our staging area was in Berkshire County, near Newmarket in England. The night before we gave ourselves Indian-like haircuts. They told us it would be safer that way if we were wounded.”

“About 7 p.m. June 5 we went to dinner. They served greasy pork chops, peas and potatoes. A colonel told us not to eat the pork chops. He thought we would get airsick.”

“About 9 or 9:30 we started getting into our chutes. It was just getting dark. Eisenhower and Bradley had been through to wish us luck. We wore long underwear, OD suits and jump suits. We could hardly squeeze into the harnesses. They were very tight. It proved to be fatal for some troopers who got hung up in trees. They couldn’t get out of their harnesses and they were hanging ducks for the Germans.”

“Some Red Cross girls came around with coffee and doughnuts. I’m afraid we weren’t very nice to them. We were in no mood for it. We loaded on our C-47s. We were grim. Some made sick jokes.”

“All of us had butterflies in our stomachs. We knew something big was up. There was a lot of cussing and carrying on. We took off about 10 p.m. There were 17 in my plane. We circled over England to get into formation. About midnight we headed across the Channel. It was quite noisy in the plane. The moon was in the last quarter high in the sky. The flight was smooth.”

“I was jumpmaster and was standing up. I could see little lights blinking on the ground as we neared the coast of France. All of a sudden anti-aircraft fire came at us. It came up in red, green and blue puffs which exploded near the planes.”

“We also were getting machine gun fire coming up in white tracers. It looked like a hose watering a lawn. Streams and streams of it. Some of the guys thought it was the Navy shooting at us because our planes had been hit that way in Sicily. We hadn’t thought of the Germans shooting at us. We were between 1.200 and 1.500 feet. The plane in front of us was hit and exploded. We lost 18 men in it. The plane on our right was hit and went down in flames. Three men survived from it.”

“We were near the drop zone standing up, ready to jump. The pilot panicked and started circling. The formation was scattered all over. Flares were lighting up the sky. The green light went on. We were at 800 feet. We started out the door. One guy was killed as he went out. As I went out I wondered why the pilot was dropping us into all this machine gun fire. We could hear the Germans hollering and screaming on the ground. I took a white phosphorus bomb in my hand. I figured if I landed in a tree I’d at least get to take some Germans with me.”

“We were supposed to drop at Pouppeville. We didn’t know it then, but we were far away from Pouppeville. Bullets were cutting our shroud lines. One line fell and hit me in the face. I didn’t know wat it was until I looked at my chute.”

“I lit in in a cow pasture. I guess I was excited. We were carrying our rifles in three parts in cases. I found two parts and put them together, but I couldn’t find the trigger housing. I had forgotten where I put it.”

“The Germans were shooting at us and making a lot of noise. Finally I found the missing part and got the rifle together. We were supposed to assemble on the equipment bundle. I saw it about 50 yards away, but a German machine gun was covering it. That discouraged me. I thought I’d better try to find someone else. I crawled behind a hedgerow toward what I thought was one of our guys. I gave the passwords and I heard guttural mumblings so I backed away. Later I learned that it was one of our guys who broke both legs in the jump. I met another guy who asked me if I wanted to charge the machine gun nests. I said no and he said that was fine with him because he didn’t want to either.”

“Soon the Germans assembled and marched down the road. I didn’t know what to do. I had no idea where I was. I found a large field of wheat and cat-napped in it until about 5:30 a.m. About eight of us got together and assembled a rifle squad. I figured we should head southeast. We ducked away from the Germans. It was a big game of hide-and-seek. Each field was a natural fortress. We came to a beautiful farmhouse about 9 a.m. I knocked on the front door. A maid opened the door. She took on look at us, screamed and slammed the door. A little Frenchman came to the door. We told him we were Americans. He got real happy and brought bottles of wine for us. We drank it and stayed in an outbuilding until noon.”

“Another patrol from the 506th Regiment came up and we joined them. We got our bearings and headed for our objective. We fought together the rest of the day keeping the causeways open for the 4th Division.”

“Of the 118 men in our company, only five were not killed or wounded. We say troopers who had landed on artillery emplacements and were cut into pieces. Others got hung up in trees. The Germans put machine pistols under their chins and blew their heads off.”

* This was a mistake: it should have been 501st PIR. The 505th was part of the 82nd Airborne Division.

Opening night of ‘The Longest Day’

Again in the Akron Beacon Journal, on Sunday February 24, Jack appears with other veterans posing for a picture with an 81-mm mortar in the lobby of the local cinema:

Gary Grand’s family tree

This summer, his cousin Gary Grand contacted me and shared some of his family tree research with me.

Jack was dropped on D-Day right in the middle of Drop Zone C around Hiesville, France. It turns out that there was an anti-aircraft battery very close to their drop zone. The C-47s on either side of his plane were shot down, killing many of G Company’s paratroopers. The only reason Jack’s plane made it was that the pilot pulled off of the drop run to avoid the incoming fire. The pilot then did the unthinkable and reversed course and went on a second run in the opposite direction. This time the drop was made and Jack ended up in the middle of a cow pasture. He spent the first day just trying to reunite with his unit.    

As stated in the previous post, Jack was not the jumpmaster on D-Day. This was Lt. Norman Barker, who was the Executive Officer of G Company. However, this is contradicted by Jack’s interview with his local newspaper (see above).

The pilot, Jesse Harrison

The pilot’s name was Lt. Jesse Harrison, who later earned the Distinguished Flying Cross and would later meet Jack again.

Jack and Jesse ended up meeting again in a hospital in the UK. Jesse had been shot down over the drop zone in The Netherlands, but was able to save all on board and make his drop. He was badly burned and it was not expected that he would live. I have different stories of what happend to Jack. One version has him wounded, his hands so badly burned that he could not even load his rifle. He did not want to leave his unit, but he was ordered out. He ended up in the same ward as Jesse and helped nurse Jesse through the worst of his wounds. And it says he was sent back to his unit just prior to Bastogne. The other version is more prosaic: he was not wounded but had scabies, requiring him to be hospitalized during the Bastogne operation. Maybe one version doesn’t even exclude the other, but I haven’t been able to determine this for sure.

G Company mortar squad members

Jack was one of just 5 of the original members of G Company to finish the war. Gary says he believes the overall casualty rate was about 85% for G Company.

Reunited after the war

The Akron Beacon Journal of Sunday, February 24 1963 has Jack and some other members of his mortar squad attend the opening night of ‘The Longest Day‘ at the local Strand Theater. A picture has them posing with an 81mm mortar in the theater lobby. When interviewed, Urbank recalled “I dropped about 5 miles from the zone where I should have landed. When we had fought our way to the beach, I found it hard to believe there were so many ships in the world”. He also remembered the use of crickets and the ‘Flash’ and ‘Thunder’ challenge.

On June 7th, 1964 Jack appeared in the same newspaper on the occasion of the 20th anniversary commemorations of D-Day. Some interesting details gained from that interview are that their staging area was in Berkshire County, near Newmarket in England and he tells how they all got indian-style haircuts the night before June 5th because they were told they would be safer that way if they were wounded. Interestingly, Jack says that he was the jumpmaster. Other than that, the interview mostly matches the other sources. After landing, he says he couldn’t manage to reassemble his rifle because he forgot where he had put the trigger housing, but he did find it later.

Jesse and Jack reunited many years later after the war and the two visited each other several times before Jack passed in 2005. You can see several photos of this below:

I am glad for Gary and also Dan Coy (Jack’s son in law) sharing their information that would have been impossible to find otherwise. I tried looking up more information about Lt. Norman Barker, the other trooper mentioned as the jump master at D-Day, but no luck there.

Let me finish with a link to another article on the Trigger Time forum about the adventures of Lt. Jesse Harrison. His name is spelled differently, and the article mentions Urbank as the jump master, but it is a worthwhile article.
https://www.101airborneww2.com/troopcarrier3.html