PVT. DAVID GINSBURG

September 12, 1916 – June 6, 1944

502nd Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division

KIA parachuting into Normandy on D-day

[This David (no middle name) Ginsburg, serial number 32069853 and born in Camden County, New Jersey, is not to be confused with David Harry Ginsburg (b. 27 Nov 1915), who was also born in Camden County and later moved to Los Angeles. This story is about the David Ginsburg who was in the 101st Airborne Division and is buried at the Normandy American Cemetery.]

Private David [no middle name] Ginsburg was born in September of 1916 to Henry (“Harry”) and Rebecca (Bella) Ginsburg of Camden County, New Jersey. David enlisted in the U.S. Army (Service Number 32069853) in Trenton, New Jersey on March 18, 1941. He died at 27 years old during the Allied invasion of Europe – D-day, June 6, 1944.

David’s parents were Jewish immigrants from Austria. They immigrated in 1907, and all their children (two daughters and five sons) were born in the United States. They settled in Gloucester, New Jersey. At one point, David’s father Harry was working as a merchant, and later a presser in a tailor shop. By 1940, it appears he had his own tailoring business.

David attended Gloucester High School until his sophomore year. He was single, lived with his parents and his jobs included being working retail in a food store and a salesman in a washing machine company. His draft card of October 16, 1940, describes him as having a light complexion, blue eyes, and brown hair, and being 5’ 10” tall and weighing 150 pounds.

Once David enlisted in the Army in Trenton, New Jersey on March 18, 1941, he entered the medical service. More than two years later, he asked to be transferred to a paratrooper division and was sent overseas in January 1944. Although David was initially drafted into the military, he ended up choosing to be in an elite fighting unit, part of the Regimental Headquarters, 502nd Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division – the “Screaming Eagles”. The 101st Airborne would become one of the most highly decorated formations in United States history.

We do not know why David decided to join the Airborne; some recruits signed up because of the extra $50 per month they were offered. If anyone needed an idea of what it would be like in the division, the first commander of the 101st, Major General William C. Lee once declared, “The 101st Airborne Division, which was activated on 16 August 1942, at Camp Claiborne, Louisiana, has no history, but it has a rendezvous with destiny…We shall be called upon to carry out operations of far-reaching military importance and we shall habitually go into action when the need is immediate and extreme. Let me call your attention to the fact that our badge is the great American eagle. This is a fitting emblem for a division that will crush its enemies by falling upon them like a thunderbolt from the skies.”

David would have joined a division that had already been in either Wiltshire or Berkshire, England for two months. While waiting for D-day and H-hour, they trained by doing parachute drops, hikes, close combat exercises, first aid, map reading, chemical warfare, and demolitions.

On the first of June, five days before D-day, David wrote a letter home to his family in New Jersey. He told his parents that he was “seeing plenty of action and asked them to pray for him,” according to the Camden Courier-Post.

On Monday, June 5, 1944, the evening before D-day, the 502nd Parachute Infantry Regiment of 101st Airborne received a special guest – General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Forces in Europe. David’s unit was not pictured in the famous photograph, but it is possible that he may have seen his commander that day, who wrote to all of his men, “You are about to embark on The Great Crusade…The eyes of the world are upon you.”

Later that night, David’s 502nd Regiment and the rest of the 101st Airborne Division put on all their gear, weighing at least 125 to 150 extra pounds, and helped each other into the C-47 Skytrain transport planes that would drop them behind enemy lines. David’s 502nd PIR was in the first wave to depart from RAF Membury Greenham Common, England.

As a whole, the Airborne’s mission was to parachute behind the beaches of Normandy, into occupied France, at night, ahead of the landing of Allied troops the next morning. The paratroopers were to secure bridges, causeways, footpaths, gun batteries, and other Nazi strongholds so that the Allied infantry could safely push forward off the beaches, moving inland, and also so that the Germans who were there could not fall back or receive reinforcements. David’s regiment’s specific mission was to secure two causeways leading inland from Utah Beach and neutralize a Nazi howitzer battery near St. Martin-de-Varreville. 13,000 American paratroopers piled into 1,000 C-47 planes that night. All planes were airborne by 11:30 PM. They headed across the The English Channel, toward France.

This was Operation Neptune and the members of the 101st and 82nd Airborne Divisions were just the “tip of the spear” – the beginning of what would become the largest amphibious invasion in world history.

To begin with, at least three of the C-47s were lost before or during the jump. All of the aircraft – and the descending paratroopers – fought a nasty combination of low clouds, fog, heavy anti-aircraft flak, machine-gun fire, and small arms fire. “When a plane neared its drop zone the pilot turned on a red light near the open back door,” states warfarehistorynetwork.com. “At the order ‘stand up, hook up, equipment check,’ the paratroopers stood up, hooked their static lines to the anchor cable running down the length of the cabin, and checked the gear of the man in front of them. They then waited for the red light to turn green… When the light flashed green the jumpmaster shouted “Go!” and the men pushed out the open door.” One 101st Airborne Division paratrooper later said, “I shuffled up, glancing down and stopped, dumbfounded. All I could see was water, miles and miles of water. But this was D-Day and nobody went back to England, and a lot of infantry riding in open barges…were depending on us to draw the Germans off the causeways and gun batteries, and so … I grabbed both sides of the door and threw myself out.” (warfarehistorynetwork.com)

Wanting to evade the heavy fire coming from below, many of the aircraft turned off target, causing some of the paratroopers to blow miles off course. Some jumped while still over the Channel and drowned. Most others made it to land, but they were not with their unit or close to their intended target. Some were in occupied territory without weapons because the pilots did not slow down before the paratroopers were released, and the power of the prop blast when they jumped disarmed them of weapons and equipment they would need later. Others landed directly on top of, or close to, enemy strong points and positions.

The 502nd Parachute Infantry Regiment lost at least 60 men that first day. One of them was Private David Ginsburg, 27 years old, of Gloucester, New Jersey, who died without firing one shot. Right around midnight on the morning of June 6, 1944, David was killed as he left the door of his plane to jump on France near St. Germain de Vannerville, according to “Strike History” of the 101st Airborne on lzsally.com.

Harry and Bella Ginsburg received word of their son’s death around three weeks later, about the same time that they received what was his last letter to them.

David’s body was recovered, and he was buried at what is now the Normandy American Cemetery in Colleville-sur-Mer, France. Records from the Headstone and Interment Records for U.S. Miltary Cemeteries on Foreign Soil note that he was posthumously given a Purple Heart, although we could not confirm that through other sources. He is remembered by the city of Gloucester by being listed on their monument that immortalizes the names of all of the city’s war dead. The memorial on which David Ginsburg is listed states, “In solemn tribute to those who made the supreme sacrifice in World War II. The glory of their deeds will live forever.” A reporter wrote a story about David in the local paper, the Camden Courier-Post dated July 1, 1944. The evening headline stated that there was another local man killed in action, five were wounded, and one was missing. The morning headline, solely about David, read, “Chute Soldier of Gloucester Slain by Nazis.”

**This story is part of the Stories Behind the Stars project (see **www.storiesbehindthestars.org). This is a national effort of volunteers to write the stories of all 400,000+ of the US WWII fallen here on Fold3. Can you help write these stories? Related to this, there will be a smartphone app that will allow people to visit any war memorial or cemetery, scan the fallen's name and read his/her story.

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Sources:

U.S., Headstone and Interment Records for U.S., Military Cemeteries on Foreign Soil, 1942-1949 https://search.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/sse.dll?indiv=1&dbid=9170&h=640&ssrc=pt&tid=175640654&pid=302278860742&usePUB=true

U.S., World War II and Korean Conflict Veterans Interred Overseas https://search.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/sse.dll?indiv=1&dbid=4283&h=53062&ssrc=pt&tid=175640654&pid=302278860742&usePUB=true

American Battle Monuments Commission http://www.abmc.gov/decedent-search/ginsburg%3Ddavid

1920 United States Federal Census https://www.ancestry.com/discoveryui-content/view/20130187:6061?ssrc=pt&tid=175640654&pid=302278860742

1930 United States Federal Census https://www.ancestry.com/family-tree/person/tree/175640654/person/302278860742/facts

1940 United States Federal Census https://www.ancestry.com/discoveryui-content/view/132828273:2442?ssrc=pt&tid=175640654&pid=302278860742

U.S., World War II Draft Cards Young Men, 1940-1947 https://search.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/sse.dll?indiv=1&dbid=2238&h=302043138&ssrc=pt&tid=175640654&pid=302278860742&usePUB=true

WWII Army Enlistment Records https://www.fold3.com/record/85964450-ginsburg-wwii-army-enlistment-records?xid=1945

U.S., World War II Jewish Servicemen Cards, 1942-1947 https://search.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/sse.dll?indiv=1&dbid=2125&h=43477&ssrc=pt&tid=175640654&pid=302278860742&usePUB=true

War Monuments in New Jersey http://www.dvrbs.com/Monuments/g-city/GloucesterWW2-DavidGinsburg.htm

101st Airbornehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/101st_Airborne_Division

502nd PIR https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/502nd_Infantry_Regiment_(United_States)

502nd PIR on D-day https://www.dday.org/2020/03/13/edwin-funk-and-the-502nd-on-d-day/

Airborne on D-day https://www.dday.org/june-6-1944/

101st in WWII https://www.ww2-airborne.us/18corps/101abn/101_overview.html

Eisenhower’s speech on D-dayOur Documents - General Dwight D. Eisenhower's Order of the Day (1944)

Death of Pvt. Ginsburg, page12 https://lzsally.com/archives/Historian/STRIKEHistoryfor2June-8June2013.pdf

Airborne on D-day and in Carentan https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/101st-airborne-carentan-mitch-yockelson

David’s death in hometown paper https://www.newspapers.com/image/480443273/

https://www.newspapers.com//image/480450393/

01 Jul 1944, 1 - The Morning Post at Newspapers.com

01 Jul 1944, 2 - The Morning Post at Newspapers.com

502nd PIR deaths The 502nd Parachute Infantry Regiment(PIR) - Roll of Honor E - G

Airborne stories of D-day The WW2 Paratrooper: First-Hand Accounts of the D-Day Invasion