SSgt Charles F. Word, paratrooper of the 3/501st PIR’s G Company, took off from station 474 in Welford, UK in C-47 43-30734 to drop with 16 other paratroopers over DZ-C as part of Operation Albany during the Normandy invasion. Their target time was 0120. Their plane was the last of five waves to cross the Cotentin, over air defenses now on full alert. To complicate matters, there were heavy clouds at 1500 feet, gone unreported due to the strict radio silence. Some pilots decided to pull up and find their DZs with the Eureka-Rebecca system, others went low to obtain a visual of their DZs, and a rare few stayed the course through the cloud bank. While approaching DZ-C, flak hit the last three planes, including the 43-30734, no doubt killing the navigator. Another shell exploded in the tail section, throwing the entire stick, already attached to the static line, to the ground. Some were wounded, others not. The order was given to jump. Two soldiers made it out before the plane went into a nosedive, flames engulfing the aircraft. Pvt Morin clambered over the dozen bodies of his comrades to hurl himself out of the plane, seeing it crash 250m away before landing with a twisted ankle. Only two other paras survived. Word was one of them. They encountered a few French families and at that point Word headed off by himself to try and rejoin the Allied lines, which he eventually did.