Chris Chettle from the UK sent me photos of this escape compass I have never seen before.
This escape compass is 15mm wide and only seems to have one big white arrow with a luminous paint tip. The glass has a beveled edge and is flat, not domed. The brass casing looks similar to the other British escape compasses, with a small dimple at the bottom, from the metal turning tool, no doubt. The brass casing has been crimped around the glass cover.
If anyone has more information about this variation, or if you have another type of escape compass that is not yet in my article, please send it over.
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:
Jack’s list of personal equipment carried on the Normandy jump
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.
This is a side-by-side picture of Jack’s and Jesse’s service pictures.
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.
This is a picture of G Company’s mortar squad taken in July 1943. Left to Right you have Lt, Norman Barker, Joe Garcia (KIA), F.K. Morrison, Jack Urbank, Clarence Klopp (KIA).
This is the C-47 that Jesse flew to the UK and then on D-Day. ‘Urgin Virgin’ of the 435th Troop Carrier Group was one of the few to have and retain its noseart. It was later lost in a training accident with another pilot at the controls.
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.
This is picture of Jack with another paratrooper from G Company. His name was Fred Orlowsky. The photo at right is from a reunion in 2001.
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:
April 30th, 2000 at Jack’s home in Peninsula, Ohio
The Akron Beacon Journal (Akron, Ohio) of June 24, 1990 had an article about Jack’s wife Edna Urbank, then 68 years old. While Jack was away jumping from airplanes in 1942, she took up a wartime production job at the Goodyear Aircraft company, leaving her former job at a local dry goods store.
Mrs. Urbank, then 21, was one of 13,000 women who worked for Goodyear at the peak of its war production, with women representing 46 percent of the labor force.
She remembers feeling good about her wartime work “because the war was on everybody’s mind, and most of us had someone, some loved one, in the war. So I guess we felt we were doing our duty, helping out this way.”
Edna installed air ducts in the wings of B-26 bombers, then worked on the rudders and elevators of the tail sections of the B-29s.
This picture appeared in an another article in the Akron Beacon Journal, on June 6, 2014. The article commemorates the heroism of local Akron veterans on D-Day, 70 years earlier.
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
Last weekend, spurred by the rebroadcast of Band of Brothers on TV, I was going through some reference books about Operation Market Garden and I came across several pictures of General Maxwell D. Taylor,
I don’t know why I never noticed this before: his M43 jacket has cuffs with 2 buttons instead of 1. The original cuff has been replaced entirely by a wider one with 2 buttons. I looked it up online, but can’t find anything about this particular jacket, but I did find confirmation that the airborne general was a tall man.
Does anyone know more about this jacket? Did he also have an M1942 uniform with extended cuffs? Later pictures from Vietnam show him with rolled-up sleeves.
I came across this New York Times obituary of General Taylor from April 21, 1987 that is worth sharing here. It briefly explains his carreer, and touches upon his daring reconnaissance for a possible jump on Rome, how he accidentally became a paratrooper, and went on to command the 101st Airborne Division.
Jaime Abreu sent me photos of a USA LITE crookneck flashlight that doesn’t have the TL-122-A markings, but instead has the USA LITE on both sides where you would have the TL-122-A designation. According to the gentleman he bought it from:
“This is one the earliest, if not THE EARLIEST, Brass-bodied Flashlights supplied to the USMC and the Army, designated TL-122-A by both USA LITE and EVEREADY. This is NOT an example made for the civilian market or a post-war production, but one of the first QMC Contracts that USA LITE rushed out before the model number ‘TL-122-A’ was required to be moulded into the cast alloy Angle-Head.”
It’s the first I heard about this, but I am inclined to go along with the idea that the branded versions pre-date the TL-122-A marked bodies. Indeed, they would have required a different die to press or cast them. If anyone has any evidence or stories to confirm or deny this, you are welcome.
I found this commercial booklet from the Reliance Manufacturing Company, a parachute manufacturer. It is not dated, but from the text inside it is clear that it must be from 1941 or 1942 at the latest. It discusses the exploits of the Russians and Germans and it speaks of the newly formed ‘winged infantry’ and speculates on how this force might be employed in the war.
Fun fact: Reliance also manufactured underwear shorts for the Army.
This wartime published booklet briefly describes the origins and development of parachutes. It refers to the use of parachutes for parachute troops and explains the idea did not originally come from the Germans, but from the Russians.
The short chapter 10 describes the then still brief history of parachute troops in combat in Finland, Norway, Belgium, Holland and Crete.
Interestingly, the author explains how US Army parachute troops might be used in a defensive role to protect mainland USA in case of a foreign invasion. He further explains how US training of parachutists differs from that of the Germans.
The rest of the booklet deals with other air force and commercial flight use and maintenance of parachutes.
Some photos of the index and contents of the booklet
On February 29th, I visited the WWII museums at Manhay and Diekirch with Yeomanry – the club of wartime vehicle enthousiasts. We went there by bus, so we had a lot of time to talk on the way about our jeeps and our collections.
The Manhay History 44 Museum in the Belgian Ardennes, which was opened in 2017 is one of many museums about the Battle of the Bulge in the Ardennes, but it is special in that it focuses on events that took place in that area. You may know the place from the Stug panzer that has a spot across the street from the museum. The owners of the museum were available for a chat and made recommendations of other places of interest in the area. I can really recommend it!
Diekirch military history museum
The Luxemburg National Museum of Military History at Diekirch was next on our list. This is an old museum, although I had never visited it before. I should have, because it’s an enourmous treasure trove! It has been upgraded a bit over the years, so it doesn’t look too old fashioned. But most importantly, it has many special weapons, vehicles etc. on display. They have the luxury of so much stock that they can put an original .50 Cal on each vehicle and real pistols in the holsters on their mannequins.
Further down the street from the museum, you can also see General Patton’s monument. His grave can be found at the military cemetery nearby, but unfortunately we did not have time to visit it anymore. So I will be back another time.
1942-1943 Luftwaffe intelligence report on allied airborne troops
Roland Marichal shared these photos with me from a very special 1942 and 1943 dated publication of the Luftwaffe. It was found in Belgium. It describes the uniforms, weapons, equipment and aircraft of the allied airborne forces.
Much of this report contains information about equipment that would never be used against the Germans. We see photos of the first type of jump suit (only used in training), a Reising SMG (USMC-issue and never used in the ETO), airborne troops with bicycles and skis in dropping containers… Also note the large leather reinforcement patches on the M1942 jump suits, which were only used for the Sicily invasion.
The level of detail is quite astounding though, given the allies had only formed actual paratroops since 1941 (and experimental units as early as 1940).
Loose segments describe the landing vessels that the Germans thought would be used by glider troopers for the allied invasion.
Does anyone have a complete issue of Yank 7/2/44 and can you check if it identifies the paratrooper on the cover?
Charlie Jump has been searching info on his cousin, Ernest Jump, who was a paratrooper in WW2. Frequently this photo shows up with no info. but he was finally able to link it to this issue of Yank magazine. A family story says his picture appeared in a magazine during the war.
Ernest (Johnny or Buzz, nick names) Jump (that’s his real family name, so he was destined to become a paratrooper…) was born in Rice Lake, WI. 2/1/1922 and died at Winthrop Harbor, IL. 10/1/1976. Using cryptic short local newspaper accounts, it appears he was in the National Guard at the start of the war and joined the 503 Parachute Infantry Regiment. The local newspaper says he jumped at Nadzab, New Guinea. When he returned home after the war, a short article says he spent 32 months in the war zone and made about 30 combat jumps his last on Corregidor. 30 seems a lot, but that is what the paper says. Family stories say he would volunteer and fought in both Europe and the Pacific. Those stories say he jumped on D-Day. Other than that, little is known and those who could fill in blanks are dead.
In September 2020, a reader sent me a link to a copy of this magazine on sale. It was outrageously expensive, but the description cleared up our question about who it was on the cover: it was Sgt. Joseph Goseme of 1st Battalion, 506th PIR, 101st Airborne getting on board of a C-47 on the evening of June 5th, 1944. I haven’t been able to find any further background information on Joseph Goseme, so if anyone knows more about him, please send me an e-mail.
After updating this post, the same reader brought to my attention that the identity of the paratrooper on the cover photo is apparently disputed. Mark Bando on his website Trigger Time explains that veterans told him that the trooper is T/4 Joseph F. Gorenc, ASN:16131251, of HQ/3, 506th PIR. Before D-Day, Joe worked in 3rd Bn S-3, doing training related functions like map making and constructing sand tables of the Drop Zone in cooperation with S-2. But…. after publishing this on his website, Mark Bando received further claims from other veterans and relatives also claiming to know for sure it was their buddy or relative in that famous photo. The names are listed here: https://www.101airborneww2.com/warstories4.html. I guess we’ll never know for sure.
3-44 is the earliest date for a Superior Magneto wrist compass
Ron Wouters from Holland sent me photos of a Superior Magneto wrist compass dated 3-44. This makes his compass the earliest dated of that type I have come across so far, and it also means they were manufactured before D-Day. However, there’s still no photographic evidence that this type was actually used on D-Day.
He also says he has several other compasses for sale if anyone’s interested.