MEN AT WAR: 13 Paratroopers

Their faces were daubed with red, black, green and white war paint, their heads shorn except for a scalp lock. They squatted and waited before an incongruous background : a flying field in the smiling English hills. There were 13 men in this unique parachute unit — twelve Apaches, Mohaves, Navahos, Creeks, Blackfeet, Hopis, and one youngster from Brooklyn who "had become a tribesman by the ancient ceremonial of cutting a finger and mingling his blood with that of an Apache. Beyond the standard paratrooper’s armament, they carried the most bizarre equipment ever seen in modern Europe, including nylon garrotes made from stolen glider towropes (deemed more efficient for quiet strangulation than piano wire) and knives almost as thin as hatpins, for penetration of an enemy head just below the ear. One brave demonstrated the razor sharpness of his machete by clipping tough field grass with lazy swings. Another, carrying steel knuckles crested with sharp spikes, gave the points a final affectionate polishing with emery cloth as he waited for the take-off for France. Though the official maximum weight for a 24-ft. chute is 280 lbs., some of the Indians in full accoutrement weighed well over 350. No one was willing to make them lighten up. For a week before invasion they had been encamped near a Ninth Air Force Station, and their presence was perceptible from afar: they had taken an oath at Christmas time not to bathe until Dday. They cooked their own meals over campfires, slept on the ground without blanket or tent. Familiarized with jujitsu and dirty-fighting tactics devised by thugs of all nations, they feared no man on earth ex cept the few white officers who could lick them in hand-to-hand combat (barring knives, garrotes and guns). Among these were their own jumpmaster, a handsome golden-haired lieutenant who used to sell insurance, and their colonel, a 1938 West Pointer. When their C-47 troop carrier took off on Dday, a grimy mechanic waved and grinned. "Them poor goddam krauts," said he. The Indians’ D-day assignment was tough enough to match their blood lust— dropping on the peninsula behind Cherbourg and blowing up approach roads to airfields where later paratroopers would land. Word trickled back to their base last week that at least some of them were still alive—and therefore, of course, still fighting.