He parachuted into history

This wasn't the way paratrooper Ed Mauser planned to hit France on D-Day.

Floating backward across a countryside filled with the light of anti-aircraft fire and tracer bullets, Mauser couldn't turn his parachute to make a head-on landing.

Overloaded with about 100 pounds of weaponry and gear, Mauser also carried a 25- to 30-pound ammunition box wrapped inside an Army blanket strapped to his right leg. Paratroopers with leg bags were to pull a cord to untie the cargo and allow it to fall to the ground moments before landing.

But the opening shock of Mauser's parachute dislodged the bag and it slipped down his leg to his ankle. The release cord was out of reach.

“I expected to break a couple of legs when I hit ground,'' Mauser said.

Still floating backward, Mauser cleared a hedgerow. Instead of landing hard on his heels, he felt his boot tips skidding gently across a farm field. He toppled into Normandy as his parachute collapsed.

It was the best landing I ever did,'' he said.

A nearby cow wandered over and stared at the midnight visitor, still flat on his back.

“I thought ‘Good. This isn't a mine field.' ''

Pfc. Mauser didn't realize it at the moment, but the 27-year-old Illinois watch inspector's ugly landing parachuted him — as part of an elite airborne regiment — into history: the Allied invasion of Nazi-occupied Europe during World War II.

Mauser, now a 92-year-old Omahan, was a member of the 101st Airborne Division's 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment. He was a rifleman in the 2nd Platoon of E Company — the unit chronicled in the Stephen Ambrose book and HBO miniseries “Band of Brothers.''

After spearheading the June 6, 1944, attack and fighting in Normandy, members of Easy Company supported British forces in Holland as part of Operation Market Garden. A few months later, they fought a desperate defensive battle on the Belgian-German border during the Battle of the Bulge. And in the last weeks of the war, Easy Company rolled south to the Bavarian Alps and liberated Adolf Hitler's Eagle's Nest mountain retreat.

Mauser and his buddies were volunteers. Their training tested endurance, stamina and courage. They became experts in marksmanship, close combat and parachuting before earning their silver jump wings. Then came a D-Day assignment to jump out of a low-flying C-47 aircraft in the dark of night behind enemy lines.

“I was just one of the guys,'' Mauser says.

* * *

Born in Peru, Ill., in 1916, Mauser was working in the wristwatch department at the sprawling Westclox clock factory in LaSalle, Ill., when the United States entered World War II after the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor.

He was drafted into the Army about six weeks later at age 25. Within two years, more than 600 Westclox workers were in the armed forces and the company was retooled to produce mechanical fuses.

Mauser's first Army outpost was with the horse cavalry at Fort Riley, Kan., which quickly transformed into a mechanized cavalry unit. Mauser was sent to Fort Benning, Ga., for reassignment when he saw paratroopers training.

“That kind of fascinated me. So I volunteered,'' he said.

Soldiers initially jumped while attached to harnesses and then progressed to jumping with parachutes from 30-foot, 45-foot and 250-foot towers. Each man was required to make five jumps from a C-47 during a week to earn his wings and the right to tuck his trousers into his boot tops for a bloused look.

Mauser used rubber bands to achieve the paratrooper style.

“When you're in the plane, you wonder what you're doing there,'' he said of training. “It was a little scary, but after it was over, it was fun.''

Mauser took his jump wings and moved on to Fort Bragg, Ga., where he joined the 101st Airborne and Easy Company.

Mauser said his path to Easy Company bypassed the runs up Currahee Mountain and other excruciating physical training in Georgia at Camp Toccoa depicted in HBO's “Band of Brothers.'' But continued training at sites across the American southeast honed the elite fighting unit. Members jumped with full kits, including machine guns, mortars, explosives, grenades, maps, ammunition and rations. They were issued new weapons, clothing and jump gear.

The men of Easy Company sailed out of New York Harbor and past the Statue of Liberty for Europe on Sept. 5, 1943. Ten days later, they arrived in England.

Nine months later, they would be fighting in Normandy.

* * *

Mauser said the flight across the English Channel in the early hours of D-Day was uneventful.

“It was pitch dark but a smooth ride. It was a nice night,'' he said. “They said that when we'd pass between Guernsey and Jersey (islands), we'd probably get some flak from the Germans there. But we didn't.''

The paratroopers passed the time in their own ways.

“I wasn't scared. You'd think I'd be scared,'' Mauser said.

He smoked a few Winston cigarettes. He and others in the platoon littered the floor of the C-47 with smoked-down butts. He took off his reserve parachute to lighten his load.

“Some guys were staring. Some were making the sign of the cross. Some were quiet; thinking and praying,'' Mauser said.

As soon as the aircraft crossed the French coastline, the paratroopers stood and hooked static lines to deploy their parachutes immediately after leaving the plane.

They heard the rumble of anti-aircraft fire. They saw bursts of flak.

“It was after 1 o'clock by the time we got to France,'' he said. “Everything was quiet until we hit the coast. Everything broke loose. It went from midnight to daylight.''

Easy Company's headquarters plane took a hit and exploded when it crashed.

“They lost about 20 guys on there. I knew all of them. That happened 65 years ago, and I still remember it like it was happening right now,” Mauser said.

Mauser rattled off names. “Lt. Meehan was on the plane that got hit. The first sergeant, Evans, he went down. Murray went down. Roberts went down. Wentzel went down. Miller went down. Collins went down. McGonigal went down. Riggs went down. I knew them all.''

After witnessing the crash, Mauser was eager to jump from his aircraft. He landed about three miles inland.

Mauser soon met up with an Easy Company sergeant and then Capt. Herbert Sobel, the company's first commanding officer. Sobel was ill-liked by his troops. Mauser still laments that Sobel was the second comrade he met on the ground. “I had to go with him.”

Finally, 30 to 40 Easy Company troops found each other and went in search of the enemy.

“The first fighting we had was a French home with Germans inside,'' Mauser said. “They were firing at us. I crawled along a stone wall and there, next to the gate, was a body. They had him covered.

“It was the first guy I seen killed,'' he said.

Mauser said the Easy Company troops eventually flushed out the Germans after U.S. hand grenades started fires inside the structure.

After sporadic fighting for about 18 days, including liberating the village ofCarentan, the regiment shipped to England to recuperate and prepare for its next mission.

Three months later, the regiment was part of the largest airborne fleet amassed as it made its second and last combat jump of the war at Zon, Holland, during Operation Market Garden. The Allies planned to capture bridges across the Rhine and quicken the march to Berlin. Easy Company's job was to liberate the village of Eindhoven and protect a 50-mile supply route between Eindhoven and Arnhem.

“It was a Sunday afternoon, and it was a real peaceful parachute jump,” Mauser said. “People came out with beer and giving hugs. I got no hugs. I got some beer, though. I was bashful back in those days.''

Mauser helped in a night rescue mission of British aviators at Arnhem. The aviators had been shot down and isolated for a month on the other side of the Rhine, in danger of German capture.

“We had two boats with one officer and six men in each boat. One boat went on the left and one on the right flank. We got 'em across and we got a citation for it,” Mauser said.

After Holland, the outfit returned to France for rest. Mauser has a portrait taken during a four-day pass to Paris.

Then the Germans counterattacked in December and the Battle of the Bulge broke out in Belgium. The regiment was called up as reinforcements at Bastogne, in the Ardennes Mountains. Heading into the battle with little preparation, Easy Company troops took leftover ammunition from other U.S. troops retreating from the front.

Two days later — Dec. 18, 1944: Mauser's 28th birthday — the regiment was surrounded. The men had no winter clothing. Soldiers wrapped gunnysacks around their feet for warmth. They lived in foxholes and cut pine boughs to lay on the snow for insulation.

“You can't spread shaving cream very well with cold water,'' Mauser said.

Soldiers were down to about 11 rounds of ammunition each, he said, when headquarters called and asked for the regiment's status.

“We said ‘Visualize a doughnut. We're the hole,' ” Mauser said.

Mauser said Germans didn't attack the hilltop position but bombarded it with artillery around the clock. Easy Company Sgts. William Guarnere and Joseph Toye each lost a leg to the bombardment.

During the siege, Mauser and a few other soldiers returning from a night patrol to the village of Foy safely ducked bullets fired by U.S. troops who mistook them for Germans.

After about 10 days under siege, Allied airstrikes and Gen. George Patton's Third Army ended the German offensive.

After Bastogne, Mauser's outfit spent time in Belgium. The men came upon a farmhouse and went into a barn to rest. A German mortar shell burst through the roof, exploded and cut the little finger on Mauser's right hand to the bone.

By the time he got out of the hospital 30 days later and returned to his outfit in France, Mauser said, Germans were surrendering en masse. Easy Company got on the Autobahn and went through Germany to Hitler's mountain retreat in Bavaria.

Mauser didn't go up the mountain to Eagle's Nest with other Easy Company soldiers.

“The sergeant said to take three guys to a nearby farmhouse and check it out. There were two scared women up there. I looked out a window and saw an older guy running toward the barn. I didn't know if he was a soldier or not. The war was over. I wasn't going to kill someone when the war was over.''

* * *

Mauser and Easy Company spent the summer in Austria expecting to be shipped around the world to help end the war against Japan in the Pacific Theater. But the Pacific war ended in August 1945, and Mauser sailed to the United States in September after two years in Europe.

He received an honorable discharge at Fort Sheridan, Ill., on Sept. 21, 1945. He had earned a Purple Heart, two Bronze Stars and several other citations.

He went back to work for Westclox.

“And that was the end of the war for me.”

Until “Band of Brothers” came along.

* * *

Mauser moved his family to Omaha from Illinois in 1960. He repaired watches and learned the jewelry business at the Time Center shop.

Now 25 years retired, he visits buddies a couple mornings a week at a local Hy-Vee. He's a member of the American Legion in Millard. And he's waiting around for the Cubs to win the World Series.

Mauser recalls that he was mowing his yard in Westside's Paddock Road neighborhood when he was approached by “two fellas” who said they were writers for the “Band of Brothers” project. They interviewed him and took his picture. The series aired in 2001, but Mauser wasn't personally featured.

Then the letters started coming. So did the memories.

“After the war, I kind of forgot about it for a while,” he says. “(The miniseries) just brought the war right back. Now I think about it every day. I think about the airplane that got shot down, some of my buddies that got killed . . . .”

And his past has made him a celebrity of sorts. Since the airing of “Band of Brothers,” Mauser has received about 200 letters from across the country requesting his autograph. He keeps the letters in his basement. He's also sold autographed cards online. He was on the final Heartland Honor Flight to the National World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C., in April.

Although he would like to see Normandy again, he is weary of the “Band of Brothers'' attention and plays down his part.

“I did my duty, that's all.”

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