When Everything Goes Wrong

I love everything about American History-especially World War II. I just finished a book that had a story that I really wanted to write about.

On June 6, 1944 the Allied Forces launched their attack on the Germans in Normandy, France. We have come to know this infamous event as "D-Day". So many of our "boys" sacrificed their lives that day storming those cold beaches. There are countless stories of heroism but one of my favorites is that of the 101st Airborne-particularly the paratroopers.

The 101st's mission was to fly over 20,000 British and American paratroopers behind the "atlantic wall" as the German stronghold had been titled, and parachute in behind enemy lines. We used
 C-47 airplanes to fly the soldiers in; it took 432 planes stretched over 300 miles of airspace to bring the paratroopers in. The C-47's were 100 feet wide from wingtip and were not equipped with guns nor armour; they were flying greyhound buses bringing our soldiers to war. They flew in a V formation composed of 9 planes. Both the pilots and the paratroopers they were carrying were really just kids. Most of them in their early 20's or younger.

None of them had ever fought in any real battle; just simulations in training. The pilots had not been trained to fly during the nighttime or in bad weather; they were now executing their mission under both conditions. I'm sure that everyone was terrified, I would have been.

As the planes approached the coastline of France, they encountered significant clouds. Because they were flying at night, the pilots worried about colliding so they broke formation. By the time they were out of the clouds, they were too far separated to try and regroup. Almost immediately, the pilots starting encountering gun fire from German artillery.

The pilots had been trained to slow their planes down so that the paratroopers could jump but once they were under fire, many of the pilots sped their planes up to avoid being hit. They had also been instructed to fly below 500 feet in altitude to avoid the radar detection; the clouds and gunfire had caused many of the pilots to change altitudes as well. In short, the allied invasion by air was turning into a chaotic disaster. The planes were flying too fast and at the wrong altitude to properly execute the mission. The paratroopers jumped anyway.

Many of them hit the ground within seconds of their chutes opening. Because of the speed of the airplanes, the paratroopers were spread over a huge amount of distance; in some cases miles away from their assigned groups. By all calculations, almost nothing had gone as planned; it was a near disaster.

However, the one thing that our soldiers had been trained to do was fight. And so as they landed, whether they were in the right place with the right people or not, they started fighting the Germans. As it turned out, because paratroopers had been dropped all over the city, and were now engaged in battle, the Germans assumed the number of allied forces to be many times larger than what it actually was. This assumption caused hesitation and confusion in their leadership and was a huge contributing factor to the Germans losing their strongholds in Normandy.

What struck me when I read this story was how a completely disastrous situation had turned out to be a huge positive.

Three months after starting Spartan Companies, my former employer filed a civil lawsuit against me. Having never been involved in anything close to a lawsuit, this was a terrifying. I can remember asking my civil attorney if there was any chance this would turn criminal. He assured us that less than 1% of civil cases go criminal; particularly if they are settled. Shortly after I settled with them for not only for an amount that made them whole, but covered damages and fees; they filed criminal charges.

As we consulted with our attorneys, they felt that because we had settled it civilly and they were owed nothing more, my history, etc., the chances of any time served were very, very small. In fact, my legal team could not find a single case where full restitution had been paid and the defendant was given a prison sentence. A few months later, I was sentenced to five years in prison.

Sallie and I have talked about this time of our lives often and agree that anything and everything that could go wrong, did. There was not one small thing that went our way during any of the legal proceedings; not one. No matter how much we prayed and fasted, we could not catch a break.

I suspect that anyone reading this has been in situations where everything goes wrong. It's terrible to go through and a lot of times it just doesn't make sense. One thing that helps me is the hope that many years from now, I will be able to look back and say that out of something so devastating and so bad; came something good. A flower can grow through cracks in cement, certainly we can as well. I don't know what that flower will look like or when it will grow, but deep down, I truly feel something good will come out of this entire situation.

       *Our first family photo from the Colorado Department of Corrections.*

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