Elmo E. Bell retired from the US Army as a full colonel. His Mississippi National Guard retired grade is brigadier general. At the start of the Normandy operation, his unit [Annotator's note: Company C, 1st Battalion, 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 82nd Airborne Division] departed from an airfield in Great Britain. They had been briefed and knew the conditions in Normandy and where the drop zone was located. Sometime during the flight, they received antiaircraft fire from the right side of the aircraft. They were not aware that the Germans had occupied the mid Channel Islands. This confused them because they thought that they were approaching Normandy but had turned north and were flying parallel to the coast rather than to the drop zone. Sometime later, the jump master was watching the door and as soon as he could see land, he ordered the troops to stand up and hook up. While they were in the process of doing that, the plane was hit and the engine on the right side was knocked out, causing the plane to wing over sharply. There was a mad scramble to get to the door and get out of the crippled plane. The plane was listing to the right and nobody could get to the door. Bell was the number two man in the stick and was able to get to the door first but when he got there he saw that they were at treetop level and too low to jump. Sergeant Zeitner was the jumpmaster and was in the tail of the plane. He got to the door and they locked arms to keep the others back. Everyone had one thought in mind and that was to get out of that crippled plane. Bell kept yelling that they were too low and the men began to push harder. The pilot got control of the plane and released the equipment bundles. He was able to restart the engine but there was a tremendous vibration. The propellers were bent. Bell thought that the vibration would rip the engine loose. The roar drowned out all other sounds. The first sergeant shouted in Bell's ear to watch the ground and let him know if they gained enough altitude to drop. There was intermittent cloud cover, but Bell could see the ground. He could see after a while that they were gaining altitude but thought they were still too low to jump. He wanted to let the jumpmaster know that they were gaining altitude. When Bell leaned over to tell him, the jumpmaster jumped. Realizing that he had set off the jumpmaster's premature jump, Bell followed him. He thought that the rest of the stick was going to follow him. Nobody in the stick was hurt and they all landed extremely close together. There is no record of the plane after Normandy and there is every reason to believe that it did not make it back across the channel. This was sad to hear as the pilot did a superb job of regaining control of the plane. Remarkably, after being hit and traveling another 22 miles with the pilot having to stay in formation and maneuver with the lost engine, they were right on the drop zone. They rolled up the stick and were ready to go. Many of the planes were hit, mostly with small arms fire and 20mm cannons which were used a lot. He thinks 20mm or 40mm cannon shot is what hit his engine and bent the props. They normally assembled on the equipment bundles. There were bays on the bottom of the planes that carried equipment bundles with battery operated lights that were bright colored. There was a set of toggle switches by the door for each equipment bundle. They would tape a pencil across so that they would all work together and they would designate a man in the middle of the stick to flip the switch to release all of the bundles. That way when all of the men landed on the ground, they could move toward the center to gather on the equipment bundles. This served several purposes. It enabled them to quickly assemble and have everyone there to share the burden of carrying the additional equipment within the bundles. On the Normandy jump, the bundles were dropped earlr so it did not work for them, but they were so low jumping that there was no chance to separate and it was a matter of minutes before they assembled.

[Annotator's Note: Elmo Bell served in the Army as a sergeant in Company C, 1st Battalion, 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 82nd Airborne Division and jumped into Normandy in the early morning hours of 6 June 1944.] After they assembled, they started off toward Sainte-Mère-Église. When they reached the river they realized that it was flooded. The commander of Company C decided that they needed to reinforce Battery A [Annotator's Note: Company A] to defend the bridge. Short of the bridge there was a German strongpoint. The woods that Bell and his fellow paratroopers were in separated them from the Germans by 500 or 600 yards. There was open ground between them that the Germans had covered with automatic weapons. Any paratrooper who showed himself got picked off. Bell's company commander went forward to see what the problem was and was hit by machine gun fire. He was shot through the middle of the chest and the bullet came out between his shoulder blades. They found a cart, loaded him aboard, and five men headed toward the beach [Annotator's Note: Utah Beach] with him. Bell did not know until months later that the five men were successful in getting the captain to the beach and aboard a ship. He survived to make the jump into Holland for Operation Market Garden. Bell and his fellow members of the company were still held up by the German strong point so he climbed a tree and had a good view of the German strongpoint. He climbed down and gathered two or three mortars. He placed them near the tree so that he could give corrections and adjustments when firing on the strongpoint. When they fired for effect on the strongpoint, the Germans dropped their weapons and came out with white flags. As they approached the bridge, they began to draw sporadic fire from the area on the Sainte-Mère-Église side of the river and the up current side of the bridge [Annotator's Note: the La Fière Bridge]. This was the manor, a large two story stone house with numerous outbuildings behind a wall. They occupied positions along the river. There were still 25 or 30 Germans in the manor, but the primary concern for Bell and his fellow Company C members was the bridge. Company A had already arrived and had occupied positions along the river bank. They could see a floodplain across the river and there was water on both sides of the causeway. The causeway extended about 600 yards and then the road gradually turned back to the left and disappeared around a curve into some timber. They could hear tracked and wheeled vehicles coming from the area of the curve. Bell and his outfit rushed over to set up a defense and sometime around noon, three tanks pulled into sight, followed by about a battalion of German infantry. They came toward the bridge with ten or 12 captured American paratroopers marching ahead of the tanks with their hands behind their heads. The commander of the lead tank carried a submachine gun and was directing the paratroopers to pick up the mines and throw them off of the road. The Germans came closer and still a shot had not yet been fired. Bell had a mortar on the foot of the bridge and a shell in hand waiting for the command to drop the shell in, but it never came. When the lead tank got to the bridge, Bell was afraid that no one had assumed command and that no one was going to give the command to fire. He was ready to start the show by dropping the mortar round. A 57mm antitank gun down the road fired a shot that knocked the tread off of the tank. The tank immediately turned sideways across the bridge. The second tank was close behind and used the first as a shield. It was following so closely behind the first tank that it climbed up on the rear of it. Bazooka gunners dug in beneath the bridge fired into the belly of the tank. The third tank started back down the road and the infantry ran for cover. The 57mm anti-tank gun was hitting the tank backing down the road. These were light tanks, French Renaults. The small tank had enough armor on the front that the 57mm gun did not knock it out and it backed down all the way to the curve in the road. Sometime after the Germans had withdrawn, a motorcycle with a sidecar pulled up near the bridge with an officer who was holding a white flag and a megaphone. He asked for a truce for 30 or 40 minutes to recover the dead and wounded and it was granted. That was the end of the first German counterattack. Bell and his fellow paratroopers stayed in their position. They were constantly battered by artillery and mortar fire.

Elmo Bell and the men of Company C, 1st Battalion, 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 82nd Airborne Division repelled all three German counterattacks on the east end of the La Fiére bridge. The Americans held the bridge until the amphibious forces arrived from the landing beaches. After the first German counter attack, Bell realized that his unit was short on mortar ammunition. He told Lieutenant Johnson that he was going back to the drop zone to look for mortar ammunition. Lieutenant Johnson told Bell to take a radio operator with him as his radio had been damaged in the landing. Bell and his radio operator went back to the drop zone, but found no ammunition. On the way back, the radio operator was killed by German artillery or mortar fire. Bell made his way back to the bridge and as he approached, he saw a group of paratroopers marching parallel to him. One of the troopers shouted at Bell and instructed him to approach the group. As Bell got close, he realized that the trooper was Colonel Mark Alexander [Annotator's Note: Lieutenant Colonel Mark Alexander assumed command of 1st Battalion, 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 82nd Airborne Division on 7 june 1944]. Colonel Alexander asked Bell where he was headed and Bell informed him that he was returning to the bridge. The colonel inquired about the details of the fighting there and Bell described it. When Bell came closer to Alexander, the colonel recognized him and apologized for the ambiguous questions and explained that the group of troopers with him consisted of men he had found sitting in a ditch from the 506th or 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment [Annotator's Note: Bell could not remember which]. Alexander was taking the troopers to the bridge in order to get them into combat and asked if Bell would lead the way back. Alexander knew that Bell was a mortar squad leader and asked if he knew anything about artillery. There was a French 75mm gun with close to 100 rounds of ammunition back behind a hill, but had no sight or fire control equipment. Alexander asked if the gun could be of any use, and Bell informed him that the Germans had an assembly area across the river that the gun could fire on if it was positioned up on a hill as to see the German position directly. Bell, however, refused to fire the gun if he could not see where the shells landed. Alexander then ordered his men to position the gun up on the hill and gather up the ammunition. Once the gun was in place, Bell zeroed it in on a patch of woods in which the Germans were assembling and began firing rounds in a checkerboard pattern across the area. He fired every round of ammunition available. The smoke trails which rose from the area indicated that the barrage had some affect. Upon returning to the bridge, Bell found numerous dead American troopers who had manned a 57mm anti-tank gun during the first German counter attack at La Fiére.

[Annotator's Note: due to a technical problem, audio for this segment was lost].

Elmo Bell fought all the way across France. His unit [Annotator's Note: Company C, 1st Battalion, 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 82nd Airborne Division] was given its own section of the line for the advance across France. While in the hedgerows, it was not difficult for foot soldiers like the paratroopers to keep up with the mechanized units on their flanks. Once the advance burst out of the hedgerow country, however, it became increasingly difficult for foot soldiers to keep pace with the mechanized units. When the rainy season hit, the entire advance bogged down as the mechanized units were confined to travel on paved roads, air support was ineffective, and sighting targets for mortar and artillery crews became increasingly difficult. As the Germans assumed a defensive posture, the American advance all but halted completely. When the weather finally broke, it took a mighty push from the Americans to kick start the advance again. Bell was wounded on 7 July 1944, the day that the advance renewed. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer realizes a technical mistake earlier and directs Bell to retell a previous incident.] In Normandy, at the crossing at La Fiére, Lieutenant Colonel Alexander [Annotator's Note: US Army Lieutenant Colonel Mark Alexander commanded 1st Battalion, 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 82nd Airborne Division] ordered Bell to man a 57mm anti-tank gun at the edge of the bridge. The gun had been vital to the Americans' defense of the bridge against a German counter attack and had damaged an enemy tank during that battle, but at the cost of many American casualties. After that first counter attack, the role of the 57mm anti-tank gun was relatively minor. Bell used his mortar to great effect in harassing the German retreat across the causeway. Since the causeway was so narrow, the retreating Germans were packed into a mass of humanity and Bell dropped mortar rounds directly into that area until he had only 20 or so mortar rounds remaining. He then ceased fire despite the numerous Germans remaining on the causeway in order to preserve ammunition for another inevitable German counterattack. Bell's mortar fire on the bridge resulted in the wholesale slaughter of the retreating Germans. Bell never witnessed any instances when American troops tried to cross the causeway in the face of enemy fire as the American mission was defensive. They were to defend the end of the causeway on the Sainte-Mère-Église side of the river. The German counterattack on La Fiére consisted of almost an entire battalion which followed the lead German tanks, but the lead tanks were light tanks and were less capable than some of the heavier tanks that the Germans had at their disposal. The Germans were unaware that the causeway at La Fiére was one of only two ways across the flooded Merderet River, and had they known that, they more than likely would have made a stronger push to recapture the crossing. By the time the 325th Glider Infantry Regiment pushed across the bridge, the pressure from the Germans had largely subsided and Bell's unit had been pulled back. After the beachhead was established, Bell's involvement at the La Fiére crossing was over.

Elmo Bell's 1st Battalion commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel Mark Alexander, was always worried about the business of the entire regiment and was very interested in everything. Before D-Day, Bell was a mortar team commander, but thought that the field manual methods for mortars and artillery practiced by the US Army were extremely clumsy and totally bogus. Bell discarded the Army issued aiming posts in favor of an aiming system that he devised himself. Since mortar ammunition was always in short supply, Bell did away with the aiming posts in order to conserve the rounds wasted in determining the range of the target. In a traditional mortar crew, four men carried all of the necessary material to operate and fire the mortar. Bell figured that the crews could function with less equipment and Colonel Alexander instructed Bell to try his new method. Alexander authorized the ammunition for the practice and Bell did away with difficult range cards for each round of ammunition, did away with the sight, and eventually began to fire the mortar using only the tube. He used fewer rounds to lock on target without all the excess equipment. Colonel Alexander was impressed and, on his orders, Bell eventually taught all the other mortar squad leaders in the regiment his new program. Alexander was a thorough leader and did whatever was needed to get the job done, including allowing his men to devise improved combat tactics and then teaching those tactics to all the men in his command. When the paratroopers were introduced to the recoilless rifle, a light anti-tank weapon, Colonel Alexander ordered Bell to demonstrate how to fire it. Once the weapon became jeep mounted, however, the paratroopers were never issued any. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer and Bell discuss the restoration of the Douglas C-47 Skytrain cargo aircraft during a brief dialogue at the end of segment.]

One of Elmo Bell's superiors [Annotator's Note: he does not specify who] doubted the effectiveness of the pathfinder troops to light and mark the drop zones for the paratroopers since the drop zones were often crawling with Germans who would be alerted by a low flying plane. The troopers were instructed, when in doubt of their location, to drop near and head towards fires, since the French resistance was to light fires at strategic locations for the troopers to use. Many pilots used the fires as targets for the drop, but the fires then illuminated the troopers and their parachutes as they descended from night sky which led to many troopers being killed in the air. In Bell's view, however, the pathfinder troops who dropped ahead of the main airborne invasion did an excellent job lighting the drop zones and setting up the transmitters which the planes used to zero in on the drop zone's location. Bell expresses that most all of the commanding officers involved in the battle for the causeway at La Fiére deserve commendation for their actions. In one example in particular, however, Bell accidentally ran into General Gavin [Annotator's Note: US Army Lieutenant General James M. Gavin, commander of the 82nd Airborne Division] and knocked him off his feet as Bell was sprinting for the chow line. The general easily forgave the mishap after some conversation and told Bell that if he ran like hell, he still might make it near the front of the chow line. Regarding the German counter attacks at La Fiére, Bell clearly remembered the first and most violent German counter attack, but his memory has blurred the two later attacks, which made it difficult to differentiate them and explain their particular events in the interview. As an enlisted soldier, Bell had a very limited knowledge of the overall situation in the war. Enlisted soldiers generally understood the situations of their companies, battalions, and, sometimes, their entire regiment, but they had limited knowledge of the entire war situation. After the war, Bell consumed the military history of the war as much as he could in order to fit the pieces of his personal experience into the greater framework of various battles. Despite learning much of the greater history of the war second hand, Bell limits his responses in the interview primarily to his personal experiences during the war, which is hard to do after having read so much secondary material on the war. [Annotator's Note: For the remainder of the interview, Bell shows the interviewer his collection of awards, trophies, medals, photographs, and war memorabilia.]