The Men of World War II

by Stephen E. Ambrose

  Gale laid on a major three-day exercise. D Company was assigned to capture intact three small bridges and defend them until relieved. It was a night assault, with much of the division landing all over the area. The glider troops rode in trucks to prang. Umpires, riding in trucks, told them when they had landed. There were four gliderloads. They pranged at 2300 hours and after a brief struggle with the paras guarding the bridges, D Company managed to capture the structures before they were blown. “We had a really first-class fight,” Howard recalls, despite the blank ammunition. Windy Gale and Hugh Kindersley and Nigel Poett were all there, watching.

  At the debriefing, on April 18, Gale praised the “bridge prangers,” as he called D Company, singling out for special citation the company’s “dash and verve.” That was highly pleasing for Howard and his men, of course, but what came next was even better. Colonel Mike Roberts called Howard into his office and began to bring him into the larger picture. Roberts said D Company would have a “very important task to carry out when the invasion started. You are to capture two bridges, intact. The bridges are about a quarter of a mile apart and each is fifty yards long.”

  Looking up, Roberts stared at Howard, then said, “You will be the spearhead of the invasion, certainly the first British fighting force to land on the Continent.” Usually a nondemonstrative man who spent most of his time worrying, Roberts was deeply moved. He told Howard it was a great, great honor for the Ox and Bucks to provide the company for such a task.

  Roberts warned Howard that all the information was Top Secret, and said he had been brought in only because Gale was laying on another, even larger exercise, code name Mush, which would in fact be a rehearsal for D-Day. Howard should approach the exercise with that in mind. Further, Gale had decided, on the basis of the previous exercise, to strengthen D Company from four to six platoons. Roberts told Howard to select any two platoons he wanted from the regiment.

  Howard selected two platoons from B Company, one commanded by Sandy Smith, the other by Dennis Fox. Both lieutenants were keen athletes, perfectly fit, boyishly enthusiastic about their sports, former Cambridge students who were popular with their men. Howard told Brian Priday to extend the invitation; Priday pulled Smith and Fox out of their quarters one evening “and said to us in great secrecy, ‘Would you like to join our little party which we’re going to do and we can’t tell you much more than that but are you prepared to join D Company?’ ”

  Smith and Fox looked at each other. They both thought the Army a bit of a bore, and they especially disliked regular soldiers, and most of all they hated the fanatics. John Howard was the leading fanatic in the regiment. Furthermore, Fox and Smith enjoyed “chasing women and having a good time. We were very high spirited and that bunch of D Company officers, they used to bore the living daylights out of us. Sweeney, Brotheridge, Hooper, Priday, Wood—that whole bunch of fanatics—we didn’t want to get near them. And come to that, they thought us very peculiar.” But to pass up a Top Secret special mission was unthinkable, and Smith and Fox joined up. To their surprise, they merged with D Company immediately and without difficulty.

  D Company was further reinforced by the addition of thirty sappers under Captain Jock Neilson. The sappers were Royal Engineers, but also paratroopers. Howard recalled that when they reported to him, “those paraboys were quite definite about not landing in gliders.” Howard explains, “There is a good healthy respect between the paraboys and the gliderboys, but I can’t resist saying that whereas a high percentage of us would willingly jump out of a plane on a chute into battle, you would have to go a long way to get a glider-load of paraboys to prang into battle in a Horsa.”

  • • •

  Before Mush was held, D Company got a two-week leave. Joy had by then bought a small house in Oxford, where John went to see his newborn daughter, Penny, for the first time. It was on this occasion that John left his dress uniform behind, and took Terry’s baby shoe with him. Laughing, Joy relates that back in 1940, when fear of an invasion was high, John had left her with a Luger pistol, after instructing her in its use. In April 1944, when he left, she noticed that he had taken the bullets with him. She assumed he was afraid that he might not come back and she would kill herself out of love for him. Laughing again, Joy says she couldn’t even lift the pistol, much less use it.

  Den Brotheridge too had a visit with his wife of one year, Margaret, who was seven months pregnant. Wally Parr was with Irene in London’s East End. Most of the other chaps managed to visit their families.

  At the end of April, everyone reported back to Bulford, all leaves were canceled until further notice, and operation Mush was held. D Company was to attack, capture, and hold a bridge until relieved by the paras. All six platoons and the sappers participated. They were driven to the site of the maneuver, then marched a couple of miles through the night to their supposed LZ, then told by the umpire with them to lie down and wait for his signal telling them they had pranged. They were only a few hundred yards from the bridge, which was being guarded by Polish paratroopers.

  With the signal from the umpire, D Company began to move forward silently. Tony Hooper was first through the barbed wire, and with his platoon rushed the bridge. The umpires declared the bridge had been blown. Howard recalls, “I saw Tony on the bridge arguing heatedly with an irate umpire who had put him out of action together with most of his platoon. The umpire won and the men sat disconsolate on the bridge with their helmets off.”

  The umpires declared that Sweeney’s platoon also had been put out of action, by fire from Brotheridge’s platoon. Sweeney had not recognized Brotheridge’s men as together they crept silently toward the bridge. Howard learned a lesson from the experience.

  Mush was a well conceived and conducted rehearsal. The exercise revealed problems, in short, such as mutual recognition in the dark, but it also convinced Howard, and his many superiors who watched, that if the Horsas pranged on the right spot, the coup de main would work.

  • • •

  The sine qua non, of course, was getting the Horsas down where they belonged. To that end, Jim Wallwork and the Glider Pilot Regiment were working day and night, literally, on operation Deadstick. In April 1944, Wallwork and his fellow pilots had done a demonstration for Gale, operation Skylark, landing their Horsas on a small triangle from six thousand feet. When all the gliders were safely down, the GPR commanding officer, Colonel George Chatteron, stepped out of the bushes. He had General Gale with him. Chatteron was boasting, “Well, Windy, there you see it, I told you my GPR boys can do this kind of thing any day.” Wallwork overheard the remark and thought, “I wish we could, but that is a bit of asking.”

  To make sure they could, Gale put them on operation Deadstick. Sixteen pilots of the GPR, two for each of the six gliders going in on D-Day plus four backups, were posted to Tarrent Rushton, a major airfield where there were two Halifax squadrons and a squadron of Horsas. The men of the GPR were treated as very special people indeed. They had their own Nissen hut, excellent food, a captain delegated to them—they were all sergeants—to see to it that their every want was catered to. As Oliver Boland recalled it, “We were the most pampered . . . group of people in the British Army at the time.”

  The pilots were introduced to their tug crews. This was an innovation; previously the glider pilots had not known their tug pilots. The tug crews lived near the GPR boys at Tarrent Rushton, and they got to know one another. The glider pilots had the same crew on each training flight, the crew that would tug them on D-Day.

  The training flights for operation Deadstick were hellishly difficult. Colonel Chatteron had the pilots landing beside a small L-shaped wood, a quarter of a mile long down the long end, and a few yards along the angle. The pilots landed with three gliders going up the L and three on the blind side, carrying cement blocks for a load. In daylight, on a straight-in run, it was a snap. But next Chatteron started having them release at seven thousand feet, then fly by times and courses, using a stopwatch, making two or three full
turns before coming in over the wood. That was not too bad either, because—as Wallwork explains—“in broad daylight you can always cheat a little.” Next Chatteron put colored glass in their flying goggles, which turned day into night, and warned his pilots, “It is silly of you to cheat on this because you’ve got to do it right when the time comes.” Wallwork would nevertheless whip the goggles off if he thought he was overshooting. “But we began to play it fairly square, realizing that whatever we were going to do it was going to be something important.”

  By early May, they were flying by moonlight, casting off at six thousand feet, seven miles from the wood. They flew regardless of weather. They twisted and turned in the sky, all by stopwatch. They did forty-three training flights in Deadstick altogether, more than half of them at night. They got ready.

  * * *

  1. The British equivalent of an American PX. The letters stand for Navy, Army, Air Force Institute.

  CHAPTER 4

  D-Day

  Minus One Month to D-Day

  On May 2, Howard was summoned to Broadmore, code name for Gale’s planning headquarters, an old country place full of rickety stairs and low beams, near Milston on Salisbury Plain. It was surrounded by barbed wire and had elaborate security precautions. Once inside, Howard was taken to Brigadier Poett’s office. Poett explained that D Company was being detached from the Ox and Bucks and given a special assignment, then handed Howard his orders, marked “Bigot” and “Top Secret,” dated May 2, and signed by Poett. The orders were “to seize intact the bridges over the River Orne and canal at Bénouville and Ranville, and to hold them until relief.”

  The orders contained information on enemy dispositions that Howard could expect to encounter. “The garrison of the two bridges consists of about 50 men,” the orders read, armed with four to six light machine guns, one or two antitank guns of less than 50-mm caliber, and a heavy machine gun. “A concrete shelter is under construction, and the bridges will have been prepared for demolition.” There was a battalion of the 736th Grenadier Regiment in the area, with eight to twelve tanks under command, and with motor transport. At least one company would be standing to as a fighting patrol, ready to move out at once to seek information. Howard should expect the enemy to be “in a high state of alertness. The bridge garrison may be standing to, and charges will have been laid in the demolition chambers.”

  At this point in his reading Howard may have wondered how on earth General Gale expected him to seize intact bridges that were prepared for demolition. All the enemy had to do was press a button or move a switch and up would go the bridges. Gale himself, in his 1948 book, The 6th Airborne Division in Normandy, explains his thinking about this problem: “There is always or nearly always a slip between the cup and the lip: orders are vague: there is uncertainty: has the moment arrived or should one wait? Who is the individual actually responsible both for working the switch and for ordering the bridges to be blown? These questions are age-old and on the doubts that might exist in some German mind or minds at the critical moment I based the plan. But a moment or two was all that I knew we would get. The assault on the bridges must, therefore, come like a bolt from the blue.”

  Howard’s orders of May 2 informed him that his initial relief would come from the 5th Para Brigade, which would drop northeast of Ranville at 0050 hours and then “move forthwith to take up a defensive position round the two bridges.” Simultaneously, 3d Para Brigade would drop on the high wooded ground south of Le Mesnil forest. At 0600, the British 3d Infantry Division would begin its landings west of Ouistreham “with objective Caen.”

  Attached to the 3d Division were Lord Lovat’s Commandos, who would move forward as rapidly as possible to establish a land link between the beaches and the paratroopers and gliderborne troops in and around the bridges. The brigade of Commandos could be expected any time after 1100 hours.

  To carry out his assignment, Howard was given his own D Company, plus two platoons from B Company, a detachment of thirty sappers, one wing of the Glider Pilot Regiment, and six Horsa gliders. Poett’s May 2 orders also gave Howard the general outline of how he should proceed.

  “The capture of the bridges will be a coup de main operation depending largely on surprise, speed and dash for success,” the orders read. “Provided the bulk of your force lands safely, you should have little difficulty in overcoming the known opposition on the bridges. Your difficulties will arise in holding off an enemy counterattack on the bridges, until you are relieved.”

  Turning specifically to the subject of counterattack, Poett’s orders continued, “You must expect a counterattack any time after” 0100 hours, or within an hour of landing. “This attack may take the form of a battle group consisting of one company infantry in lorries, up to eight tanks and one or two guns mounted on lorries, or it may be a lorried infantry company alone, or infantry on foot.” The most likely line of approach for the counterattacking force would be from the west.

  Howard was ordered to organize his defensive position immediately after taking the bridges, because “it is vital that the crossing places be held, and to do this you will secure a close bridgehead on the west bank, in addition to guarding the bridges. The immediate defense of the bridges and of the west bank of the canal must be held at all costs.” Poett’s orders envisioned more than a passive defense, however. “You will harass and delay the deployment of the enemy counterattack forces . . . by offensive patrols,” the orders read. “Patrols will remain mobile and offensive. Up to one-third of your effective force may be used in this role. The remaining two-thirds will be used for static defense and immediate counterattack.”

  Poett was also explicit in the orders as to the role of the sappers. He told Howard to give them “the following tasks only, in order of priority: neutralizing the demolition mechanisms, removing charges from demolition chambers, and establishing ferries.” He also promised that one company of the 7th Para Battalion of the 5th Para Brigade would “be dispatched to your assistance with the utmost possible speed after the landing of the brigade. They should reach your position by 0230 hours, and will come under your command until arrival of the officer commanding 7th Para Battalion.”

  Poett concluded his orders: “The training of your force will be regarded as a first priority matter.” He encouraged Howard to make “demands for special stores and training facilities,” and promised to “give you every possible help.”

  When Howard finished reading the orders, Poett told him verbally that he did not intend to interfere with D Company’s preparation for the coup de main. Howard would have the twin responsibilities of designing an effective training program and of making the detailed plan for the seizure of the bridges.

  Howard could scarcely keep his feelings to himself. He was concerned about the various challenges he faced, of course, and could imagine any number of things going wrong. But he was also exhilarated, as he had never been before in his life, and tremendously proud that D Company had been chosen to lead the way on D-Day.

  Poett gave Howard a green pass, which allowed him to enter Broadmore at will. Poett would not allow him to take away his orders, the reconnaissance photographs, maps, or even notes. “But,” Howard remarks, “that didn’t stop me from thinking. Being in the know was exciting, but a great mental strain.” He was not allowed to tell his second-in-command, Priday, about D Company’s mission, much less any of the rest of the officers.

  Back at Bulford, Howard concentrated on the training. He used tape to lay out a river and a canal, with two bridges over them, all at the exact distances of his real targets. Day and night, his platoons practiced capturing them; sometimes one platoon, sometimes three, sometimes all six. Howard felt that above all his plan had to be flexible. If only one glider hit the target, that platoon had to be prepared to do the job of all six platoons. Simultaneously, Howard worked on the men to use their voices, reminding them of the cost of silence in operation Mush. Howard told them that as soon as the first shot went off, they should all start sho
uting at the top of their lungs. Number 1 glider was Able, #2 was Baker, #3 was Charley, and so on. Howard wanted the men to shout out their identifications, over and over, both to identify one another and to give the Germans the feeling that the enemy was there in great numbers.

  From these exercises over the taped bridges and roads, Howard decided that General Gale’s plan for landing inside, that is between the bridges, rather than outside them, was correct. The LZs on the inside were awfully small, to be sure, and so situated that one group of gliders, at the canal bridge, would have to land facing north, toward the coast, the other group facing south, toward Caen, which required splitting the glider formations at takeoff. These disadvantages were outweighed by two major advantages: the inside landing sites were smack against the bridges, instead of some distance away; and by having all his platoons inside, Howard could call on them to support one another.

  Broadmore, meanwhile, was making its intelligence on the bridges and surrounding villages available to Howard. Thanks to Georges Gondrée and Mme. Vion, the Resistance in Caen, and the photo reconnaissance of the RAF, there was a rather fabulous amount available. Division intelligence was able to tell Howard who were the collaborators in Bénouville, who were Resistance. He knew that Georges Gondrée understood English, his wife, German. He was given a complete topographical report on the area. He knew that Bénouville contained 589 residents, that M. Thomas was the mayor, that the voltage was 110/200 three-phase AC. He was warned that from the roof of the Château de Bénouville, a three-story building that was a maternity hospital with fifteen beds and twelve reception rooms, the Germans would have a commanding field of fire over the valley of the Orne River for a considerable distance.