SLIDELL, La. — A Northshore senior veteran is getting the opportunity of a lifetime.
He is reliving his days as a paratrooper nearly 50 years after his service.
And when he jumps out of the plane, he will land on a spot that has great, sentimental meaning.
June 6, 1944, the largest seaborne invasion in history. It happened on Normandy beaches, but first, there was an aerial assault. Col. Edward Krause, a battalion commander in the Army Airborne, was there.
“That battalion mission was to take, and hold the town of Sainte-Mère-Église, France, which they accomplished by 4:30 in the morning, and raised an American flag over that town, two hours before the invasion troops hit the beach,” said his son, Staff Sgt. Fred Krause.
He was in the elite special forces, in the Army Airborne in the 1970s. He has 45 jumps under his belt. His father's flag was donated by his family, to that French city's town hall. His late father never talked much about WWII.
“The paratroopers were teenagers. They were boys 18,19-years-old 59, and the pilots were just a couple of years older. So, they were just as scared as the jumpers.”
Now at 75 years old, for the first time, he is going to Normandy.
“When I came to the realization, yes, I could walk in my father's footsteps, and jump out of a C-47 over Sainte-Mère-Église, France, 80 years after my father did it, I jumped, no pun intended, but I jumped at the chance,” said Krause.
So, with other veterans, he went to the Round Canopy Parachuting Team in Florida and got recertified to jump. He says this training is saving the lives of old veterans, and giving them back the camaraderie of their service.
“Civilians just don't understand, but old veterans that they've jumped with in the past, they understand,” he said talking about the PTSD some of them experience after being in combat.
And Sgt. Fred worked in all of that training in Florida, in between his full-time job. You see, he was a medic in the army, and that led him to become a registered nurse, and he worked full-time at a local hospital.
“You going to do that again?” asks an Army Airborne Vietnam veteran meeting Krause for the first time.
“Yes, I’m going to jump in Normandy,” Krause answers.
“Cool,” replies the Vietnam veteran.
He relived how to jump from a helicopter outside of the American Legion Post 185, in his home of Slidell.
He feels no fear about his jump on Sunday, but rather just as a fellow veteran exclaimed how he felt.
“‘Airborne, reborn!’ I mean he felt alive again. He felt like a paratrooper again,” Krause recalls what a fellow veteran said after a jump.
Krause will jump with many others in France and then they will march to a celebration.
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