They were eager and brash and willing to die for their country.

Fifty years later, nothing has changed.

Lee Hulett and Guy Whidden parachuted into France in 1944 as part of the huge Allied force that eventually defeated Germany in World War II.

Now the two Marylanders plan on joining three dozen other aging paratroopers and re-enacting their jumps in June as part of the Allied commemoration of the 50th anniversary of D-Day.

Mr. Hulett, who lives in Columbia, is 69. Mr. Whidden, of Frederick, is 70.

"What a show it'll be," Mr. Hulett says. "Guys who haven't jumped in 50 years. So a couple of us break a leg. The thrill of doing it will exceed the factor of the risk.

"A paratrooper's philosophy is: 'I'm not afraid to die. I'm afraid not to live.' "

The veterans range in age from 68 to 83. They were all young paratroopers in World War II who tumbled from shuddering planes into nightmarish combat.

Half jumped on D-Day as part of the greatest sea and air armada ever: a quarter of a million troops, 3,000 planes and 7,000 ships.

Now, in their twilight, they want to jump again -- for their buddies, their country and themselves.

"These are not old creaky guys," says Richard Mandich of San Diego, the 69-year-old veteran of the 101st Airborne Division's "Screaming Eagles" who organized the Return to Normandy group. "They are in good condition mentally and physically."

Mr. Mandich, a retired engineer who surfs, says the men want to jump in tribute to all soldiers -- men and women, friend and foe -- who served in World War II.

"It's a nice opportunity to pay tribute to all those people," Mr. Whidden says.

"I thank God that I'm physically capable of doing it. Ten years from now, none of us will be doing it.

"It will kind of close the door on an era, write the last chapter of a history."

The former paratroopers had to jump three times to demonstrate their fitness.

That was no problem for Mr. Hulett, a big-voiced insurance salesman who also teaches skydiving.

He has gone out of a plane more than 1,200 times, jumping in a Santa Claus suit for Christmas parties and in the buff for nudist conventions.

Mr. Whidden, tamer by comparison but no shrinking violet, is not so "jump happy," as he puts it.

In fact, says the retired teacher and wrestling coach, "I don't like it that much. It's contrary to human nature. We're not really sky people, are we?"

Nevertheless, because his desire to return to Normandy is strong, he jumped three times last year on his own and once in San Diego in February with the other veterans.

A runner and weightlifter, Mr. Whidden was rusty. So he flew with Mr. Hulett earlier this month for additional instruction, but did not jump.

"I've got one jump left in me," Mr. Whidden says, sitting in his living room. "I'm saving it for Normandy.

"Even if I knew I was going to break a leg, I'd still jump. I'm 70 years old. If I have to go I'd rather go. . . ."

He glances at his wife, Julie, across from him.

They've been married 44 years and raised two children. She looks horrified.

"Let me put it this way," he says. "I don't want to lie in bed and die."

A determined group

About 400 American paratroopers will jump into France June 5 on the first day of the two-day commemoration. D-Day was June 6, 1944.

The veterans want to jump immediately after the paratroopers.

They plan to do this even though the Pentagon has yet to decide whether it will sanction their jump, fly them to France, provide them lodging or even include them in its official program.

Lt. Col. Alfred Lott, spokesman for the 50th Anniversary of World War II Commemoration Committee, says the decision rests with the secretary of defense.

Colonel Lott says military officials are concerned about liability and the older men's safety.

Mr. Mandich bristles at the Pentagon's procrastination.

He says he asked in January whether the Return to Normandy group could jump. The veterans will go with or without Pentagon approval, he says.

He says the French government supports the veterans.

And the veterans have arranged for their own planes and parachutes and are willing to pay their own way.

"If they want to stop us, let them try," he says.

"What are they going to do, post armed guards to prevent us from getting on the planes?"

Unless you're the Pentagon wary of sky-high lawsuits, it's hard ,, to argue with the old paratroopers.

They're the men who, fresh out of high school, drank beer and bellowed the airborne's popular song, "Blood on the Risers," to the tune of "Battle Hymn of the Republic."

There was blood upon the risers, there were brains upon the 'chute / Intestines were a'dangling from his paratrooper's boots / They picked him up still in his 'chute and poured him from his boots / He ain't gonna jump no more!

"We were hell on wheels, I'll tell you," Mr. Hulett says. "It was drilled into us that we could whip any five sailors and any three Marines. Then we'd go into town and get our ass kicked.

"And then on the way back to the barracks, when there weren't any more Marines around to fight, we'd start fighting among ourselves. Yeah, we were something."

They're the men who, embracing freedom's cause at great personal peril, plummeted into an inky darkness where the jaunty spirit with which they sang "Blood on the Risers" turned into gruesome reality never imagined, never forgotten.

The mission of Mr. Whidden's regiment, an element of the 101st Airborne Division, was to secure two causeways leading from the beach.

'Complete chaos'

But the story of the 20-year-old paratrooper, like the story of every soldier, is personal and unpredictable.

"It was complete chaos," Mr. Whidden recalls.

He spent 35 harrowing days in France.

Scrambling into a crater during a mortar attack, he found himself with five dead Germans, dead several days. Trapped, nothing to do, he removed a wallet and looked through it. He found photographs of a German family.

"It suddenly hit me that this just didn't make sense," Mr. Whidden says.

"This guy was no different from me. He had people at home worrying about him, too. They didn't even know he was dead."

Relieved by fresh troops and sent back to England, where he had trained, Mr. Whidden learned again of the brutality of war.

Assigned the grim duty of sorting through barracks bags of paratroopers killed in France, he sorted out items to be sent home.

He found familiar keepsakes, more photographs of families.

Mr. Whidden was ordered into combat one more time, jumping into Holland about noon, Sept. 17.

Scurrying through a ditch by the side of the road, he says, "a big, hulking German grabbed me and threw me down. He straddled me and put his Luger to my head.

"We eyeballed each other. I could see he was an older man. Maybe in me he saw youth. He probably had a son back in Germany my age. He took his pistol, turned it around and surrendered it to me."

The next day a shell exploded and shredded Mr. Whidden's right foot. The concussion killed his two buddies a few feet away.

That ended Mr. Whidden's participation in World War II.

He married a woman from Thurmont and became a teacher.

He taught at elementary schools in Frederick County for 23 years and coached wrestling at three high schools.

"I never was a very violent person," Mr. Whidden says.

"If I thought I never killed anybody, that'd make me very happy."

Hooked on skydiving

Mr. Hulett did not jump on D-Day, although he fought in Italy before parachuting into southern France early on the morning of Aug. 15, 1944. He landed miles off course on the roof of a German officers' barracks.

He landed with such force that his right leg tore through the flimsy roof.

When he pulled it out, light flooded the hole. He peered in and saw panic-stricken German officers leaping out of bed.

Nineteen years old, Mr. Hulett rammed the barrel of his submachine gun into the hole, emptied one clip, rolled off the roof and tumbled one story to the ground.

He crawled into a vineyard as other paratroopers cut down the Germans running frantically out the doors.

In all, Mr. Hulett spent 18 months in combat in five campaigns. He was wounded twice.

He considers himself lucky -- "a fugitive from the law of averages," he says.

He doesn't like to talk about the haunting details of war.

Instead, he says, "Just say I was in the combat infantry. They'll know."

After the war he also became a teacher.

He taught junior high and high school physical education in Montgomery County for seven years. He quit to sell insurance.

Mr. Hulett married twice, fathered six children and then, 38 years after jumping into France, he jumped again.

He wanted to brag to his buddies at a reunion of the 517th Parachute Combat Team.

"I was scared to death," he says of his 1982 jump.

"So I jumped again because I wanted to know if I was going to be this scared the next time, and the next time, and the next time. And pretty soon I got hooked."

He became a skydiving instructor.

He hopes to jump several times over France, once with the veteran paratroopers and then on his own. He's confident he'll do all right, but he's not so sure about the others.

Does he think someone might get hurt?

"It's likely," he says.

L But so what? he says. They survived worse odds 50 years ago.

"I wish you could be there when these old guys get on that ZTC plane," Mr. Hulett says. "I wish you could look at the gleam in their eyes, that youthful spirit."

It's the spirit that persists. And now these aging paratroopers are determined to climb into an airplane, soar more than 10,000 feet into the sky, and jump.

It will be their last hurrah.