D-Day remembered -- Iowan from Clinton jumped into France as part of Operation Overlord

‘I don’t like it, but we have to go.” With these words eighty years ago, Supreme Allies Commander, Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, issued the order to initiate Allied landings on the beaches of Normandy in northern France.

Operation Overlord was planned for June 4, but had to be postponed to June 6 due to storms over the English Channel. On that day, more than 5,000 ships would carry 160,000 troops across the channel to wade ashore tasked with capturing five beaches near the Cotentin Peninsula and then march overland to push the German military out of occupied Europe.

Before the troops could hit the beach, however, British and U.S. paratroopers would jump behind enemy lines and secure control of roadways leading to the landing site in order to prevent an Axis re-enforcement of Hitler’s armies guarding the coast.

The night before the invasion, close to 12,000 aircraft took off on sorties from England carrying the soldiers who were to seize and hold the bridges and roads inland from the amphibious attack. Charged with doing so was the 503rd Parachute Infantry Regiment and 325th Glider Infantry of the 82nd Airborne.

Attached with them were engineers whose skills with structures would allow them to know the strengths and weaknesses of the brides they were to find and defend.

One of these warriors aboard those C-47 Gooneybird transport planes and WACO gliders towed behind transports, was Henry Langrehr, of Clinton, Iowa. Growing up in poverty during the Great Depression, he and four of his nine siblings, participated in the National Youth Administration, a federally sponsored project that paid a minimal sum to all able-bodied students for remedial work, and, at the same time, provided classes to further their education. It was a division of the Works Progress Administration led by Sec. of Commerce Harry Hopkins, of Sioux City.

With the United States entering World War II in December 1941, many of these young volunteers enlisted or were drafted into military service, including Langrehr. Reporting for duty in May 1943 at Camp Dodge, he parlayed some of the engineering skills he had been learned in the NYA and was shipped out to England to be a part of the planned invasion.

As the squadrons of C-47 transport planes took off and headed south, they were met with intense anti-aircraft fire when they reached the shores of the peninsula, especially near the coastal town of St. Mere-Eglise.

Langrehr’s plane was struck multiple times by shrapnel (flasks of metal packed in a shell that was fired from the ground, then exploded in mid air sending hundreds of odd shaped bullets in all directions). Narrowly missing being hit himself, at least a half dozen of his fellow paratroopers were slashed by the sharp projectiles and killed on board the plane as they waited to jump.

Unfortunately, there was great confusion as to when exactly to jump and periodic cloud cover prevented many of the troopers from reaching their designated drop zones. As such, when Langrehr leapt out the door of the plane, he and his 10 other men, landed in places not intended and far from the bridges they were to secure.

Langrehr relished telling the story of how he, instead of setting down gently in a farm field, crashed through the glass ceiling of a greenhouse in the center of the city of St. Mere-Eglise.

Once on the ground, the sporadically placed troops were able to regroup and spread out to find their targets. Most of the bridges were discovered, including the one assigned to Langrehr, and if they couldn’t be secured, were blown up by explosive charges the troops had carried with them.

In daylight, regrettably, these troopers were easily exposed and the German Army, able to identify their locations, sent out infantry and artillery (tanks) to regain control of the roads from the American forces, in so doing, capturing thousands of soldiers.

On watch, Langrehr suddenly felt a stinging sensation, and, clutching his hand to his back, found that a tank shell had shred much of his pelvis and leg. Unable to run, he was grabbed by a German soldier and taken to an Axis occupied hospital.

There, he spent several weeks recovering until being assigned, in violation of the Geneva Conventions, to serve as a laborer in a coal mine in the Czech Republic.

The mine was about a mile away from the Prisoner of War Camp, Stalag 12A where he would be housed. In the march to it, he recalls passing through Auschwitz, in Poland, where the most notorious of Nazi extermination camps was located.

Looking back, Langrehr tells of seeing bodies piled on top of each other devoid of hair, but, he says, he recalls more than anything else, the stench of burning and decomposing corpses that permeated the air anywhere near it.

This put working in the coal mine in greater perspective, but still, he was forced to dig and breathe in dust choked air 2,500 feet underground with no breaks and very little food. Once, when he pointed out this was in violation of the agreement for fair treatment of prisoners that both nations had signed at Geneva, he was knocked practically unconscious with the solid stock end of a German rifle.

The march to and from the camp and mine every day, however, did provide the possibility of escape. Generally, six guards would accompany the prisoners on the march each trip. In April of 1945, the guard was short two soldiers.

With no one to watch the center of the line, Langrehr and a friend dashed to the side and disappeared into nearby shrubs and trees. Not far away was a barn and they made a run for it. Unfortunately, as they high tailed it through the fields, they were spotted by a civilian policeman who followed them to their wooden sanctuary.

Once inside, each took a board and tried to block the door, but the German gendarme busted through the fragile wood and ordered them to surrender. When they did not, Langrehr’s comrade was shot dead instantly. Langrehr says he then rushed the assailant, struck him with another board, grabbed the man’s gun, then headed west hoping to find American troops.

He then heard dogs barking and howling in the distance. Knowing they had most likely caught his scent, he waded or swam across a stream so the dogs would lose track of him. Langrehr continued heading west, using the gun to secure food along the way, until, finally, he relates with cheer, he detected the sound of Allied artillery fire.

Confirming it was from an American unit, he sneaked up behind a jeep when its radio man was speaking, and tapped him on the shoulder announcing how glad he was to see them.

Greeted with suspicion at first, then welcomed, he was brought to division headquarters, questioned, sent on to France, and eventually, back home to Clinton where he was greeted by Arlene, his girlfriend who ultimately became his wife.

Home again, turning to his engineering skills, he established a contracting business and helped build many of the modern schools and churches in Clinton. Staying occupied with that, there was precious little time for sharing stories of his wartime experiences until, slowing down a bit in his late 80s, he shared his accounts of bravery and valor with author James DeFelice, who recorded most of the stories and condensed them into a book.

The biography, titled, “Whatever it Took: An American Paratrooper’s Extraordinary Memoir of Europe, Survival and Heroism in the Last Days of World War II,” was released in 2020. Langrehr still is alive to tell the story personally. Arlene died in February 2023.

As we commemorate the 80th anniversary of D-Day this year, let us not forget either of them and the hundreds of others who were at Normandy, or the loved ones who, on the homefront, supported their service.

David V. Wendell is a Marion historian, author and special events coordinator specializing in American history.