Major Henry "Duke" Boswell joined National Guard in 1940 at 16 years old and made four combat jumps with the 82nd
Retired Army Major Henry "Duke" Boswell returned to France to mark the D-Day's 68th anniversary. He was part of the three Airborne Divisions that parachuted into Normandy just after midnight June 6, 1944.
Henry Boswell enlisted in the North Carolina Army National Guard at the age of 16. In June, 1942 he volunteered for the paratroopers and was assigned to Company G, 505th PIR, 82nd Airborne Division. On July 10, 1943 Sergeant Boswell saw his first combat during the invasion of Sicily. A few months later he would parachute into Salerno, Italy and help liberate Naples in October 1943. During the invasion of Normandy, Boswell parachuted into Ste. Mere Eglise which would become the first French town liberated from the Germans. At Normandy he was assigned as a radioman, adding to the already heavy burden of rations, ammunition and weapons carried by paratroopers. The trim, 150-pound soldier was packing a 40-pound SCR-300 backpack radio, making his total burden equal his weight! "They had to help me onto the plane," he recalled. Following combat in Normandy, Boswell would jump into Holland during Operation Market Garden and later fight in the Battle of the Bulge until January 1945. By the war’s end, of the original 146 men of G-Company, only 13 remained (including Boswell), who were not wounded or killed. Boswell was discharged from the Army in 1945 but later reenlisted in 1946. After becoming an officer, he was assigned to the First Cavalry Division in combat in Korea. There, he fought in the breakout from the Pusan Perimeter until he was severely wounded by mortar fire. After recovering from his injuries, Boswell would remain in the Army until his retirement as a Major.
About the Normandy campaign he recalled: The official records of the 3rd Battalion of the 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment include his account and the bad luck of Boswell's unit has gone down in history. "They were shooting at us as we were coming down," he remembered of his first trip to the city as part of an early morning wave of paratroopers that landed hours before the massive amphibious assault at Normandy. "There was a fire in a building, and all the German soldiers in the town had come back out to guard the bucket brigade," he said. The job of the parachutists was to pin down Germans who would otherwise be sent to the allied beachhead and to seize key villages and road junctions to speed invasion forces. It was the kind of job Boswell was accustomed to. The then-staff sergeant had jumped into combat on the island of Sicily and Salerno, Italy. The mortar wounds took Boswell out of combat jobs, but not out of the Army. He retired from Fort Carson as a major in 1963 before starting a new life as a D-11 school teacher. While his group will go down in history as the "Greatest Generation," Boswell says the young people in uniform today are no different than the soldiers who drifted through gunfire into Sainte-Mère-Église. "I know they feel the same way we did," he said.
Interview
John Delaney: “The capture of Sainte-Mère-Église was a major airborne forces objective for D-Day. Some of the American paratroopers overshot their landing zones, and a number of them landed in the town itself. One of them, private John Steele, whose parachute got caught up in the Spire of the town's church, is commemorated today with this effigy. In the American Air Museum at Duxford, we tell a story about one of the paratroopers that landed in what was called drop zone O, just outside the town of Sainte-Mère-Église.”
Recommended by LinkedIn
Henry ‘Duke’ Boswell: “Our mission was to grab the crossroads and bridges that led to the beach to keep other Germans from getting to the beach to reinforce the ones that were there. We were fighting from the time we hit the ground until two days later when the troops from the beach got up to us.”
Craig Murray: “Henry Duke Boswell was one of thousands of soldiers who jumped out of a C47 transport aircraft on D-Day. He was part of a huge operation involving forces on land, in the air and at sea. As well as their combat role, aircraft were used for moving men and material around. Most Allied leaders did agree that the war cannot be won by bombing alone. They needed to get armies landed in Europe where they could defeat the Germans on the ground. The paratrooper, a soldier who arrives either by parachute or by glider was key to this. They will be dropped behind enemy lines where they be tasked to take vitally important areas. This in turn made it safer for the main body of attacking ground troops who had arrived behind them. Duke was looking out the door of his C47 as it flew to Normandy.”
Henry ‘Duke’ Boswell: “The ocean was full of ships. Big ones, little ones. That's where I think the rest of the row boats in there. But every kind of ship in the world was heading for, for France. And the sky was full of aeroplanes, all kinds, mostly. Fight other than ours, transport fighters protecting us. And I saw that, I thought: “Well, we must win this war with all this force that we have.”
Craig Murray: “Duke had one of the most dangerous jobs in the army. He enlisted age 16 and became a paratrooper in 1942. He carried out four combat jumps in Sicily, Italy, Normandy and Holland. When we jumped in Sicily, which was our first combat, we had 146 men in the company, Duke said. A little over two years later in Germany, when the war ended, we had 13. The rest had either been killed or wounded so bad they couldn't come back to the unit.”
Henry ‘Duke’ Boswell: “Your plane might get hit before you get there. It's very possible you might get killed as soon as you hit the ground. You just live from day-to-day. Because by that time you've seen so many of your friends wounded or killed.”