for the next few minutes you will witness some highlights of a spectacular and the study of operation if you brief flashes on the screen will bring you the end product of years of training and planning and construction aircraft you will s you will see we had to pay the cost of those save lives and broken blondish parachutes self aviation gas and a thousand other items of supply and equipment this is not  that can be won by dollars and cents alone but neither can it be won without dollars and cents in money for gliders and parachutes yes in fact than it does come friday out of the war bonds if you buy beach american fighting men troop carriers paratroopers airborne infantry and guide him and we're already there this picture is a small tribute to those men living and dead who went in before a j day five hours ahead of the main force to start the destruction of the 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  its buildings were fashioned entirely from heavy boxes and shipping crate used in transporting thousands of gliders from the united states it was a growing community every time a glider moved out of its crate and were impatient tenants waiting to move in and 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 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 found riding into their marriage will say goodnight and i guess the glider guys are pretty much the same but we find out different they took us to a single airport when nobody was allowed in and none of us allo stories we kept in shape with regular exercises and then maybe a game or two when you know there was something cooking something and we spent any spare time we could find and writing letters from home or maybe writing handle all of us and clients signal markets so we can find a way they live on a steady diet of danger when i get through this we're all keyed up raring to 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 then the voice of the eighty second and one hundred first airborne divisions the men of faith one r a few of the outfits got the idea they ought to show the germans we had indians and american indians from the low from back bay and the bronx the ground like it was just another practice run by them i guess it was after all they were going to have to fly again and again fall night and the next day only under five and that's no fun when you figure that the forty seven seven any army no guns and have to fly all over the drop in zones straight is on a bombing run after we had the channel and started across every light went out  we had no idea where we were when we got the on the list stand up and hook up that came so quickly didn't have time to do much thinking before we were over the side  i guess we did plenty of damage that night yes late in plenty of damage blocking road junctions knocking out bridges capturing fields for air strips and all the while out in the channel behind the the troop carrier command was ready for its next meal 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  for the fighting men to use the the lives and 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 i'm broken 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 are as excited over flying across that english channel as blair a o must have been when  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 a lighthouses of england again slipping away beneath us and what about the german look was a this was a big chance our air forces that are stablished air supremacy sure we had our regular umbrella fighters over us but if there was ever a time that german flyers would try anything that breaks through this was that time but we never saw a german plane approaching the french coast the agony of gunfire seemed harmless and far away for those who are 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 to sitting up over them even getting our feet w the first line or we find out pretty soon what happened along we stretched our glides as much as possible that way we ended up near the edge of the field 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 h fifteen foot poles driven into the ground ripped off the wings and smashed through fuselage as 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