 For the next few minutes you will witness some highlights of a spectacular and decided operation. A few brief flashes on the screen will bring you the end product of years of training and planning and construction. The aircraft you will see took decades to develop. The men who jumped from them had to become experts in a matter of months and they did. The operation was a great success. It saved thousands of American lives that might have been lost in bloody frontal assaults. But as you will see, we had to pay the cost of those saved lives in broken blighters, parachute silt, aviation gas and a thousand other items of supply and equipment. This is not a war that can be won by dollars and cents alone, but neither can it be won without dollars and cents. The money for gliders and parachutes, yes, and for bandages come partly out of the war bonds you buy. Number one, June 6th, Allied Headquarters. Under command of General Eisenhower, Allied naval forces supported by strong air forces began landing Allied armies on the northern coast of France. The greatest news story in 1944, D-Day, H-Hour. That fateful moment for which the whole world held its breath. But in the night hours of D-Day minus one, long before these first assault boats nosed onto the beach, American fighting men, troop carriers, paratroops, airborne infantry and glidermen were already there. This picture is a small tribute to those men, living and dead, who went in before H-Hour on D-Day. Five hours ahead of the main force to start the destruction of Fortress Europe. Their story begins in a village in England, not the kind of village that you ever saw or read about, but a strange, unsightly place. One that had sprung up almost overnight and was known to its citizens as Shanty Town. Its buildings were fashioned entirely from heavy boxes and shipping crates used in transporting thousands of gliders from the United States. It was a growing community. Every time a glider moved out of its crate, there were impatient tenants waiting to move in and set up housekeeping, or perhaps a business establishment. And everyone in town was there for one purpose, for the day when they would join forces with the British to make the big jump. The jump that would carry them not only across the English Channel, but across an almost solid wall of steel and iron and guns and ruthless determined men trained for generations in the art of death and destruction. What impregnable as these defenses appeared, we had a plan to surmount them. The wall of fortifications stretched along the entire coast of Europe. Part of the plan called for our air forces to carry an army of paratroops and airborne infantry over this wall. The Chiefs of Staff wanted them to drop deep in German held territory to establish defense areas and block the movement of the enemy reserves. Then they decided the invasion spearhead was to strike enormity. Immediately troops began to be dispatched to special takeoff points all over England where they would stand by until the final word was given. Heroes in the making rode the highways of England that day. Bus loads of them. As to how they felt riding into their first real battle, well we'll let one of them tell you. It was just another ride at first, taking us somewhere for another training hop maybe. After 18 months of training you get so you don't expect anything else, at least that's the way we paratroops figured. I guess the glider guys felt pretty much the same, but we found out different. They took us to a sealed airport where nobody was allowed in and none of us allowed out. This didn't bother the hot lake swingsters. We kept in shape with regular exercises and then maybe a game or two. We knew there was something cooking now, something big. And we spent any spare time we could find and read and let us from home or maybe riding one of the folks in that special girl. Invasion markings painted on every ship and glider brought the whole thing even closer to us. We'd soon be on our way. Money was passed out. The kind you can spend in France. They hadn't forgotten the thing we'd need. Neither had we. But when these were taken care of, not many of us forgot that for our kind of guys knives and guns aren't enough. I don't like nearly tourist pants stepping over the barbed wire, but he didn't care. He wanted to talk to us. I can't a lot of questions to ask. What's your name, soldier, he says? Where's your hometown? Who's the toughest man in the outfit? We told him we'd given the answer to that last one when we got back. He inspected a few of the boys who really have to be tough, the pat finders. They go in ahead of all of us and plant signal markers so we can find a way. They live on a steady diet of danger. When I got through this, we're all keyed up, rare in the go. And then it was time. Most of these men had never seen real combat, but remember them. Look at their faces. They've seen plenty of action since. They're the boys of the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions. The men who faced von Rundstedt and Belgium stopped them cold at Bastogne in Stavolo. Parachutes. And I remember one little guy saying he wasn't worried none about him opening because the company that made him was in his hometown and his mother worked there in final inspection. A few of the outfits got the idea they ought to show the Germans we had Indians in America. Here they are. Indians from the Loop, from Back Bay, and the Bronx. The ship some of us were loaded so heavy that we had to be shoved on board by the others so we'd have never made it. The ships began hopping off, following soon after. That takeoff was something I'll never forget. Sure we'd all made a lot of training hops, but this was different. Like the first time you ride a bicycle. Only with a whole lot farther to fall if anything goes wrong. Nothing did though, not with those troop carrier guys at the controls. Talk about making trains run on time. You could have really set your watch by the split second way those guys took us off. They took those ships off the ground like it was just another practice run. But then I guess it was. After all they were going to have to fly it again and again. All night and the next day only under fire. And that's no fun when you figure that these C-47s have nanny armor. No guns. And have to fly low over the dropping zones. Straight as on a bombing run. After we hit the channel and started across, every light went out. We had no idea where we were when we got the order to stand up and hook up. That came so quick we didn't have time to do much thinking before we were over the side and starting that 400 foot drop into France. Thousands of us. Your gliders. It seemed forever before they hit the ground. They were like clay pigeons for the German snipers. The glider pilots really had their hands full bringing those babies down in the dark that way. There were darn few signalized to help them find their way. The Germans had caught a gun with crossfire almost from the minute they set down. They had to do their work lying flat on the ground. But those gliders got down. And the troops and guns inside them got into the fight. The pilots fighting right along with them. I guess we did plenty of damage that night. Yes they did plenty of damage. Blocking road junctions, knocking out bridges, capturing fields for airstrips. And all the while out in the channel behind them. Navy guns kept slamming away at the beaches. Softening things up for the big push that would begin at dawn. Clearing the way for the biggest invasion in history. The greatest movement of men and supplies. Their command was ready for its next move. They had massed hundreds of British and American gliders in preparation for the most gigantic aerial towing job ever attempted. Each held a full cargo of jeeps and guns. And the fighting men to use them. It was in success of those who were already in France. Depended on the flight of this vast armada. They were greatly outnumbered and desperately needed these reinforcements. How they got them. A story of two-way air traffic. And an unbroken chain of planes and gliders stretching from England to France and back again. Is best told by a man who was a part of it all. Maybe we glider pilots didn't show it. But we were as excited over flying across that English channel as Blereo must have been when he flew it for the first time. Years before most of us were born. He didn't have much of an airplane under him. But then there weren't any German guns waiting for him on the other side. We did a bit of wondering about those guns as we started out over the channel. And the lighthouses of England began slipping away beneath us. What about the German Luftwaffe? This was its big chance. Our air forces had established air supremacy, sure. We had a regular umbrella of fighters over us. But if there was ever a time the German fliers would try anything to break through. This was that time. But we never saw a German plane. Approaching the French coast the ACAC and gunfire seemed harmless and far away. For those who were right in it it was different. It gave us a feeling of pride to be a part of it all. Looking down at those men on the beaches of Normandy. We felt a little guilty too, sitting up over them. Not even getting our feet wet. The Germans flooded entire areas to slow us up if a beachhead was established. We kept watching for those who had gone in during the night. But we only saw their parachutes. There was no sign of them. The first glider, we'd find out pretty soon what had happened. Roger, so long, stretched our glides as much as possible. That way we ended up near the edge of the fields where we could run for cover as soon as we got out. Not everybody came down exactly where they wanted to. One glider went right into a German field headquarters. And what was that I said about not getting our feet wet? This bunch was lucky. The Germans were under control in this section. But more than one tow ship and glider made its last flight that day. Guns didn't do all the damage. 15-foot poles driven into the ground ripped off wings and smashed through fuselages. The men who stepped out of this glider will never know if their first mission was successful. But it was...plenty. Yes, their mission had been successful. But this down payment on freedom ran very high. These broken wings served the highest purpose. They carried an army into Normandy. An army which spearheaded the Allied invasion carried the fight for freedom right to the front door of those who had challenged it. A ring of steel and iron and guns and determined free men was closing in. Months and miles of battle lay ahead. But D-Day minus one was the beginning. Where do we go from here?