82nd Airborne - Paratroopers

Recently while on a trip I was driving in the middle of the night, sometime between 2 and 5am. The hardest part of the day for me to drive. Even after a good 6 hours of sleep! Anyway, I was flipping channels on my Sirius satellite radio and came to the Discovery Channel and heard some stories of the 82nd Airborne Paratroopers in World War II.

Of course, when I think of paratroopers, I automatically think they're a bit mentally unstable because they're willing to jump out of a perfectly good airplane! But my grandfather, Gerald Sabes was a paratooper in the 82nd airborne. He jumped out of a plane and he was one of the most sane men I know! But knowing my grandfather was part of the 82nd airborne division, kept me awake and listening for the next two hours to the stories of all the 82nd airborne did to help eventually secure the Omaha and Utah beaches on D-day in Normandy from the Germans.







These guys floated down and had to caputure objectives behind enemy lines to interrupt supply lines to the front and help box the Germans in once the beach was secured. Talk about jumping from the frying pan into the fire.

Once these guys landed they were automatically surrounded, just by their location and had to fight hard just to get to their objectives, then had to fight even harder to keep the guys back they just fought and try to capture a bridge or something essential to a Normandy D-day victory.



My grandfather never told me many stories about his time fighting as a paratrooper. I know that until the day he died, he carried German shrapnel in his shoulder that would bother him occassionally, but wasn't worth the risk of having it removed. He was injured, shot, as he floated down on a jump behind enemy lines.

All I know is we can be very thankful for the men of the 82nd division, actually of all the regiments of all the branches of the military that volunteer to keep our country safe!

Hip Hip Horray - Hip Hip Horray - Hip Hip Horray!!!!