"Then we came in over the landing zone. There was no mistaking it this time. Hollywood never made a scene like this. I was given a perfect tow over the center of the field at 500 feet. We had a bird's-eye view of the burning planes, smashed gliders, collapsed parachutes, shell bursts, -- men running, dodging, dying. The whole panorama of war - with our reinforcements being funneled into it, like circling down the cone of a tornado to the point of contact with the ground"  

A single staulk of Rommel's Asparagus is planted near Le Muy, France, August 15, 1944.  Field Marshal Rommel directed that thousands of these tall wooden poles be erected in open fields in Southern France so as to impede glider landings.