Sun, Nov 08 2009
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Published June 07, 2009 07:20 am - Jack Plotts was 400 feet above Normandy, France, praying for a soft landing. “I leaned back in the plane to relax, and I heard a hell of a thump,” the former paratrooper remembered Saturday. D-Day anniversary: Storm ends in silence Valley veterans reflective during visit to National WWII Memorial By Amanda O’Rourke The Daily Item WASHINGTON, D.C. — Jack Plotts was 400 feet above Normandy, France, praying for a soft landing.
“I leaned back in the plane to relax, and I heard a hell of a thump,” the former paratrooper remembered Saturday. “I looked down, there was a hole between my legs. A 40mm come up through — it was time to leave.” Plotts was just a teenager, 18, when he leapt into the blackness of the French coast on D-Day — June 6, 1944. “The flak,” he said of anti-aircraft fire, “was so thick you could walk on it.” He landed alone, tangled in an apple tree, and — against all odds — survived. In the plane with him before he jumped were 12 other paratroopers. He doesn’t know how many of them survived. He doesn’t know if any of them survived. He never saw them again. “Everyone was off course,” Plotts, of Milton, said Saturday while spending the 65th anniversary of the Allied invasion of France by visiting the National World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C. His immediate mission, he said frankly, was to kill people. His larger mission, to save France. “You learn to be an adult pretty damn quick,” he said. “Pretty quick.” Plotts, along with about 20 other Valley World War II veterans, visited the memorial during a trip funded by a community effort. Many of the veterans were impressed with their first sight of the memorial dedicated in their honor in 2004. Valley residents contributed more than $65,000 toward the construction of the memorial. Plotts, now 82, went on to fight 29 more days in France before being wounded, which put him in the hospital for six months and forever mangled his right hand. 
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