Wife of D-Day Paratrooper Shares Stories Before C-47 Flight

June 6, 2019 marks the 75th anniversary of D-Day, or the Allied invasion of Normandy.

NBC Palm Springs spoke with the wife of one of those soldiers who parachuted into Normandy. She exposed the intimate details of what it was like for her husband, Francis “Russell” Snell, before, during and after that historic day.

“When he jumped, it was two o’clock at night, it was dark but he wanted to have something to show his value for life,” Marjorie Snell, Russell’s wife, said as she held a piece of tattered material. “He took his army knife and cut a big hole out of his parachute and this is what is left.”

“Rus” was a WWII 101st airborne paratrooper who waited a year in England before the invasion. He passed away June 20, 2018.

Marjorie said before he died, he started giving away some pieces of the parachute to people who appreciated the significance of it but he had a hard time sharing stories about D-Day.

“He could not talk about the war, he could not see movies about the war, it was just too hard because there was a sense of survivor’s guilt,” Marjorie said.

That is, up until Steven Spielberg’s movie, “Saving Private Ryan.”

“He said, I will see the movie but just you and I when we rent it,” Marjorie said. “I don’t want anyone else with us.”

She said it was just too hard for him.

“Within a minute, he was crying because that movie was about his very company.”

That same night, he told her something he’d never told anyone before:

“His buddies were getting killed all around him and he came up over a mound in Sainte-Marie-du-Mont and the sight that he saw in his dreams was the sight that he actually saw in the Battle of Normandy and the experience was so traumatic to him that that’s why he just could not talk about the war because he said no one would believe him anyway. They wouldn’t believe it was actually as bad as it was.”

After that, Marjorie said he opened up about Normandy and the reasons for his PTSD, one story at a time. Through the years, Marjorie transferred the reality of D-Day to paper and into a book called, Lest We Forget.

On Thursday, June 6th, or D-Day, Marjorie will strap in and take a ride in a C-47 at the Palm Springs Air Museum. The same aircraft her husband jumped out of into Normandy. She said it will be an emotional day filled with even more stories.

Follow NBC Palm Springs for full coverage.