By Mark Schieldrop Independent Staff Writer

It was just past sunset on June 6, 1944, and W. Chris Heisler peered out the window of the C-47 that was flying him and his fellow members of the 507th Parachute Infantry into the hostile skies over Normandy, France.

“The beach looked so nice and peaceful,” Heisler, 89, said two weeks ago from his house in Matunuck, where spring’s first flowers were popping out and the smell of his freshly tilled garden hung in the air.

“‘This is going to be a cakewalk,’ I thought,” Heisler said of that fateful night. “I expected a wall of machine gun fire to greet us once we neared the coast, but all I saw was the peaceful beach.”

He also saw the red engine glow from the armada of Allied planes as he peered through the jump door. The sight of the massive swarm of planes was reassuring.

Five minutes later, machine gun fire began to arch toward the plane. The fourth man in the jump line fell to the floor.

“I didn’t know if he had been hit or just fainted,” Heisler said.

The light above the jump door turned green and they leaped out into the air above the French countryside and into the hearts of the French citizenry, beginning the largest invasion in modern history.

Heisler was captured by Germans just three days after landing alone in a field, unable to find any of his men, and spent the rest of the war in a prison camp with fellow soldiers.

For many, Heisler’s war experience is an astounding example of bravery. But for Heisler, there are two war stories to tell. The first began with his leap from the C-47 and ended with the liberation of his POW camp by Gen. George Patton’s men in Hammelburg, Germany. The second story, according to Heisler, will never end.

“The really interesting part of my experience is the time I’ve spent in France,” Heisler said. “My connection to the French people has meant so much to me.”

Heisler departed for France last week to take part in an hour-long documentary that will air on Channel 10 on June 6. He also is continuing an annual pilgrimage to the small villages in Normandy to reconnect with the French citizens, who, Heisler said, express their gratitude in overwhelming fashion.

“All the people of Normandy are so thankful for what we did. You cannot describe the love and gratitude,” he said. “If the Americans hadn’t ended the war, they’d know they’d still be under a dictatorship. They go all out.”

He came home Monday with plans to return to Normandy in June to participate in the D-Day celebration.

“I won’t be here to see the documentary, but that’s OK,” Heisler said yesterday. “They treated me like a hero. I tell them I’m just a survivor - the real heroes of the war are under all those white crosses.”

When he walks the streets in his military uniform, Heisler said, the French treat him like royalty. They stop him on the street and ask for autographs and line up to take photos. It’s not uncommon for one person to ask to take a photo and a crowd to form shortly afterwards.

“Next thing you know six people want to take pictures of you,” he said.

Heisler said he has about 500 such photos that have been mailed to him.

Once, while riding a bus in Paris, a few police officers on the same bus noticed Heisler.

“One of the officers approached me and asked if I was one of the D-day soldiers,” Heisler said. “I told him I was and he took off his badge and handed it to me. You can’t top that. In America, I’ve only received compliments.”

He meets with schoolchildren, who clamber onto his lap after he speaks and ask for autographs. He also visits a monument in Amfreville, where a parachuter, carved in stone, hangs above the words “The Beginning.”

“I go back to keep alive the memory,” Heisler said. “To keep alive that sacredness of democracy and freedom.”

The casualty rates in the 507th were staggering. Of the 2,200 paratroopers, 835 were lost in the early days of the Norman invasion. Four men who jumped out of Heisler’s plane had faulty chutes. The plane itself was shot down shortly after the jump was completed.

Complicating matters was the fact that the men who jumped found themselves scattered wildly throughout the countryside instead of in the 10-acre landing site that had been planned.

Heisler, alone, was determined to find some of his men.

He landed with his toes just scraping the ground, his parachute snared in the limbs of a large tree. He cut himself loose, with a house about 200 yards away.

“All I can remember is creeping on my elbows because I could hear voices nearby,” he said.

There were many excited Germans in the area, shouting. He could hear ground-based machine guns firing at Allied planes. He watched troop movements and even tried to ambush a slow moving truck, lobbing grenades until the shouting stopped.

It didn’t take long before he was finally caught by a group of Germans who had decided to station themselves in a nearby field.

He was stripped naked in the corner of a small village in sight of women and small girls watching from windows. He was placed in solitary confinement and questioned before being shipped deep into German territory, where he spent the rest of the war.

It took many years before Heisler was able to come to terms with the war. Eager to fight, he was frustrated by the feeling that his division failed to land and assemble properly.

“I blamed the Air Force for squandering our chances,” Heisler said. “I felt that if only the planes hadn’t scattered and we had landed where we should have, things would have been different.”

Heisler returned to the States and started a long and fruitful career in education. He became a superintendent in Michigan and served as a superintendent in the Westerly school district before joining the faculty at the University of Rhode Island in 1962, where he taught for 25 years.

Still, it took nearly 55 years for Heisler’s bitterness about the war to soften, beginning with his trip to Normandy in 1999 for the D-Day celebration.

“My own experience of never being able to find my own men or, in fact, any American troops, plus knowing we had spent more than two years to become one of the finest fighting forces in the army, was very disheartening,” wrote Heisler in a short memoir he compiled. “It was years before I could even sit at a bar with an Air Force pilot without ‘throwing it in their faces’ about how they had so disastrously let us down.”

Heisler said he resented the fact that he wasn’t able to serve in the war with the men he loved and respected. He was frustrated that his men had been scattered.

“I especially resented being captured and spending my time in a prison camp when I should and could have been fighting with the men I trained with,” he said.

But Heisler soon learned that his division managed to complete its objectives in spite of being one-third as powerful.

During his trips to France, he realized that the Air Force planes were under orders to keep audio silence. Lack of communication made flying difficult. Many planes also either had no navigators, or navigators who were inexperienced with night flying.

“I finally realized that the bitterness that I had carried for over fifty years was questionable, to say the least.”

Since that trip in 1999, Heisler said, his annual visits to France have become an essential part of his life. By meeting the citizens, participating in celebrations and visiting monuments, he has realized the true significance of the war and the contributions made by the 507th.

He also returns to the beach in Normandy - the same beach that greeted him as he hung from the jump door on D-Day - to collect shells.

“I spread the shells in my garden,” he said. “It’s a symbolic thing. It represents my connection to the French people. It represents what we did.”