The Victors: Eisenhower and His Boys

by Stephen E. Ambrose

  Later that morning, Wood and Smith were evacuated to a regimental aid post in Ranville, where they were also shot at and had to be moved again.

  • • •

  Parr, Gardner, Gray, and Bailey were in the gun pit, trying to figure out how the antitank gun worked. Howard had trained them on German small arms, mortars, machine guns, and grenades, but not on artillery. “We started figuring it out,” Parr recalls, “and we got the breech out, all the ammo you want downstairs, brought one shell up, put it in, closed the breech, now, How do you fire it? All right, it’s got a telescopic sight on it; it’s got a range chart on the side with various points along the canal bank sighted in, one thing and another.”

  The four soldiers were standing in the gun pit. Because of its camouflage, the snipers could not get at them. They talked it over, trying to locate the firing mechanism. Parr continues: “Charlie Gardner said, ‘What’s this?’ It was a push button. He just pushed it and there was the biggest explosion, the shell screamed off in the general direction of Caen, and, of course, the case shot out of the back and if anybody had stood there it would have caved their ribs in. That’s how we learned to fire the gun.”

  After that, Parr gleefully admits, “I had the time of my life firing that gun.” He and his mates were certain that the sniping was coming from the roof of the château. Parr began putting shells through the top floor of the building, spacing them along. There was no discernible decrease in the volume of sniper fire, however, and the snipers’ locations remain, forty years later, a mystery.

  Parr kept shooting. Jack Bailey tired of the sport and went below, to brew up his first cup of tea of the day. Every time Parr fired, the chamber filled with dust and smoke, and loose sand came shaking down. Bailey called up, “Now, Wally, no firing now, just give me three minutes.” Bailey took out his Tommy cooker, lit it, watched as the water came to a boil, shivered with pleasure as he thought how good that tea was going to taste, had his sugar ready to pop into it, when suddenly, “Blam.” Wally had fired again. Dust, soot, and sand filled Bailey’s mug of tea, and his Tommy cooker was out.

  Bailey, certain Wally had timed it deliberately, came tearing up, looking—according to Parr—“like a bloody lunatic.” Bailey threatened Parr with immediate dismemberment, but at heart Bailey was a gentle man, and by keeping the gun between himself and Bailey, Parr survived.

  Howard dashed across the road, bending low, to find out what Parr was doing. When he realized that Parr was shooting at the château, he was horrified. Howard ordered Parr to cease fire immediately, then explained to him that the château was a maternity hospital. “So,” Parr says today, with a touch of chagrin, “that was the first and only time I’ve ever shelled pregnant women and newborn babies.”1

  Howard never did convince Parr that the Germans were not using the roof for sniping. As Howard returned to his CP, he called out, “Now you keep that bloody so-and-so quiet, Parr, just keep it quiet.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Only fire when necessary, and that doesn’t mean at imaginary snipers.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Soon Parr was shooting into the trees. Howard yelled, “For Christ’s sake, Parr, will you shut up! Will you keep that bloody gun quiet! I can’t think over it.” Well, Parr thought to himself, “Nobody told me it was going to be a quiet war.” But he and his mates stopped firing and started cleaning up the shell casings scattered through the gun pit. It had suddenly occurred to them that if someone slipped on a casing while he was carrying a shell, and if the shell fell point downward into the brimful ammunition room, they and their gun and the bridge itself would all go sky-high.

  • • •

  By 0700, the British 3d Division was landing at Sword Beach, and the big naval gunfire had lifted to start pounding Caen, en route passing over D Company’s position. “They sounded so big,” Howard says, “and being poor bloody infantry, we had never been under naval fire before and these damn great shells came sailing over, such a size that you automatically ducked, even in the pillbox, as one went over, and my radio operator was standing next to me, very perturbed about this, and finally Corporal Tappenden said, ‘Blimey, sir, they’re firing jeeps.’ ”

  Sandy Smith’s platoon brought in two prisoners, described by Howard as “miserable little men, in civilian clothes, scantily dressed, very hungry.” They were Italians, slave laborers in the Todt Organization. Long, complicated sign-language communication finally revealed that they were the laborers who were designated to put the antiglider poles in place. They had been doing their job, on Wallwork’s LZ, when they were rounded up. They appeared quite harmless to Howard. He gave them some dry biscuits from his forty-eight-hour ration pack, then told Smith to let them loose. The Italians, Howard relates, “immediately went off toward the LZ, where they proceeded in putting up the poles. You can just imagine the laughter that was caused all the way around to see these silly buggers putting up the poles.”

  More questioning then revealed that the Italians were under the strictest orders from the Todt Organization to have those poles in the ground by twilight, June 6. They were sure the Germans would be back to check on their work, and if it were not done, “they were in for the bloody high jump, so they’d better get on with it, and surrounded by our laughter, they got on with it, putting in the poles.”

  At about 0800, Spitfires flew over, very high, at six thousand or seven thousand feet. Howard put out a ground-to-air signal, using purposely made signs spread over the ground that meant, “We’re in charge here and everything’s all right.” Three Spitfires—like every other airship, including the gliders, that participated in the invasion, wearing three white bars on each wing—peeled off, dove to one thousand feet, and circled the bridges, doing victory roll after victory roll.

  As they pulled away, one of them dropped an object. Howard thought the pilot had jettisoned his reserve petrol tank, but he sent a reconnaissance patrol to find out what it was. The patrol came back, “and to our great surprise and amusement, it was the early editions from Fleet Street. There was a scramble for them amongst all the troops, especially for the Daily Mirror, which had a cartoon strip called Jane, and they were all scuffling for Jane. There were one or two moans about there being no mention of the invasion or of D Company at all.”

  • • •

  Throughout the morning, all movement in D Company’s area was done crouched over, at a full sprint. Then, shortly after 0900, Howard “had the wonderful sight of three tall figures walking down the road. Now, between the bridges you were generally out of line of snipers, because of the trees along the east side of the canal, and these three tall figures came marching down very smartly, and they turned out to be General Gale, about six feet five inches, flanked by two six-foot brigadiers, Kindersley on one side, our own Air Landing Brigade commander, and Nigel Poett, commanding the 5th Para Brigade, on the other. And it really was a wonderful sight because they were turned out very, very smartly, wearing berets and in battle dress, and marching in step down the road. It was a pure inspiration to all my chaps seeing them coming down.” Richard Todd said that “for sheer bravado and bravery it was one of the most memorable sights I’ve ever seen.”

  Gale had come down by glider, about 0300, and established his headquarters in Ranville. He and his brigadiers were on their way to consult with Pine Coffin, whose 7th Battalion was hotly engaged with enemy patrols in Bénouville and Le Port. Gale called out to D Company, as he marched along, “Good show, chaps.” After a briefing from Howard, Gale and his companions marched across the bridge. They were shot at, but were not hit, and never flinched.

  As they disappeared into Pine Coffin’s headquarters, two gunboats suddenly appeared, coming up from the coast headed toward Caen. They were coming from the small harbor in Ouistreham, which was under attack by elements of Lord Lovat’s Commando brigade. The gunboats were obviously aware that the bridge was in unfriendly hands, because the lead boat came on at a steady speed, firing its 20-mm cannon at the bridge. Pa
rr could not shoot back with the antitank gun because the bridge and its superstructure blocked his field of fire. Corporal Godbolt, commanding #2 platoon, was on the bank with a Piat. Howard ordered his men to hold fire until the first gunboat was in Godbolt’s range. Then some of the 7th paras on the other side started firing at the boat, and Godbolt let go, at maximum range, and to his amazement he saw the Piat bomb explode inside the wheelhouse. The gunboat turned sideways, the bow plunged into the para bank, the stern jammed against D Company’s side of the canal.

  Germans started running off the stern, hands high, shouting, “Kamerad, Kamerad.” The captain, dazed but defiant, had to be forced off the boat. Howard remembers him as “an eighteen- or nineteen-year-old Nazi, very tall, spoke good English. He was ranting on in English about what a stupid thing it was for us to think of invading the Continent, and when his Führer got to hear about it that we would be driven back into the sea, and making the most insulting remarks, and I had the greatest difficulty stopping my chaps from getting hold and lynching that bastard on the spot.” But Howard knew that intelligence would want to see the officer immediately, so he had the prisoner marched off toward the POW cage in Ranville. “And he had to be gagged and frog-marched because he was so truculent and shouting away all through the time.”

  The sappers poured over the boat, examining the equipment, looking for ammunition and guns. One of them found a bottle of brandy and stuck it in his battle smock. His commander, Jock Neilson, noticed the bulge. “Hey, what have you got there?” The sapper showed him the brandy. Neilson straightaway took it, saying, “You are not old enough for that.” The sapper complains, “I never saw a drop of that bloody brandy.”

  D Company had now fired its much-maligned Piat guns twice. One shot had knocked out a tank and sent a second tank scurrying. The second shot had knocked out a gunboat and forced a second one to turn tail and run. D Company had now captured two bridges, the ground between them, and one gunboat.

  • • •

  Near Caen, von Luck was close to despair. The naval bombardment raining down on Caen was much the most tremendous he had seen in all his years at war. Although his assembly point was camouflaged and so far untouched, he knew that when he started to move—when he finally got the order to go—he would be spotted immediately by the Allied reconnaissance aircraft overhead, his position reported to the big ships out in the Channel, and a torrent of 12-inch and 16-inch shells would come down on his head.

  Under the circumstances, he doubted that he could get through the 6th Airborne and recapture the bridges. His superiors agreed with him, and they decided that they would destroy the bridges and thus isolate the 6th Airborne. They began to organize a gunboat packed with infantry, meanwhile sending out frogmen and a fighter-bomber from Caen to destroy the bridges.

  At about 1000, the German fighter-bomber came flying directly out of the sun, over the river bridge, skimming along just above the trees lining the road, obviously headed for the canal bridge. Howard dived into his pillbox; his men dived into trenches. They poked their heads out to watch as the pilot dropped his bomb. It was a direct hit on the bridge tower. But it did not explode. Instead, it clanged onto the bridge and then dropped into the canal. It was a dud.

  The dent is there on the bridge to this day. Howard’s comment is “What a bit of luck that was,” which says the least of it. Howard adds, with professional approval, “And what a wonderful shot it was by that German pilot.”

  The two frogmen were, in the daylight, easily disposed of by riflemen along the banks of the canal. On the ground, however, the Germans were pushing the British back. Nigel Taylor’s was the only company of 7th Battalion in Bénouville. It was desperately understrength and very hard pressed by the increasingly powerful German counterattacks. The two companies in Le Port were similarly situated, and like Taylor were having to give up some ground.

  As the Germans moved forward, they began putting some of their SPVs into action. These vehicles belonged to von Luck’s regiment but were attached to forward companies that were expected to act on their own initiative rather than report back to the regimental assembly area. The British called the rocket launchers on the SPVs “Moaning Minnies.” “The thing we most remember about them,” Howard says, “apart from the frightful noise, which automatically made you dive for cover, but the thing we most noticed was the tremendous accuracy.”

  Between explosions, Wally Parr dashed across the road to see Howard. “I got a feeling,” he panted, “that there is somebody up there on that water tower spotting for the Minnies.” He explained that the water tower, located near the maternity hospital, had a ladder up to the top, and that he could see something up there. Wouldn’t Howard please give him permission to have a go at it? Howard agreed. “And you couldn’t see Wally’s arse for dust,” he recalls, as Parr dashed back across the road to his gun.

  Parr bellowed out, “NUMBER-ONE GUN!” As he did so, there was one of those strange lulls that occur in so many battles. In the silence Parr’s great Cockney voice carried across the battlefield, from Le Port to Bénouville, from the canal to the river. Now, as Howard points out, there was only one gun; as Parr rejoins, it was the only gun in the entire 6th Airborne Division at that moment, so it really was the number-one gun. Parr then put his crew through a drill that constituted a proper artilleryman’s fire order. “Seven hundred, one round. Right five degrees,” and so on, all orders preceded by “NUMBER-ONE GUN.” Finally, “PREPARE TO FIRE.” All around him, the warriors—German as well as British—were fascinated spectators. “FIRE!”

  The gun roared, the shell hurtled off. It hit the water tower head on. Great cheers went up all around, berets were tossed into the air, men shook hands joyfully. The only trouble was, the ammunition was armor-piercing. The shell went in one side and came out the other, without exploding. Streams of water began running out the holes, but the structure was still solid. Parr blasted away again, and again, until he had the tower spurting water in every direction. Howard finally ordered him to quit.

  • • •

  When Gale, Kindersley, and Poett returned from their conference with Pine Coffin, they told Howard that one of his platoons would have to move up into Bénouville and take a position in the line beside Taylor’s company. Howard chose #1 platoon. He also sent Sweeney and Fox with their platoons over to the west side, to take a position across from the Gondrée café, where they should hold themselves ready to counterattack in the event of a German breakthrough. “And we thought,” Sweeney says, “that this was a little bit unfair. We’d had our battle throughout the night; the Seventh Battalion had come in and taken over the position and we rather felt that we should be left alone for a little bit and that the Seventh should not be calling on our platoons to come help it out.”

  Sweeney and Fox settled down by a hedge. Back at Tarrent Rushton, a week earlier, Sweeney and Richard Todd had met, because of a confusion in their names—in the British Army all Sweeneys were nicknamed “Todd,” and all Todds were known as “Sweeney,” after the famous barber in London, Sweeney Todd. On the occasion of their meeting, Sweeney and Todd laughed about the coincidence. Todd’s parting words had been, “See you on D-Day.” On the outskirts of Le Port, at 1100 hours on D-Day, as Sweeney rested against the hedge, “a face appeared through the bushes and Richard Todd said to me, ‘I said I’d see you on D-Day’ and disappeared again.”

  • • •

  Over in Bénouville, #1 platoon was hotly engaged in street fighting. The platoon had gone through endless hours of practice in street fighting, in London, Southampton, and elsewhere, and had gained experience during the night, at the fighting around the café. Now it gave Taylor’s company a much-needed boost as it started driving Germans out of buildings they had recaptured.

  Sergeant Joe Kane was in command. “He was a phlegmatic sort of a character,” Bailey remembers, “nothing seemed to perturb him.” They saw an outhouse in a small field. “Cover me,” Kane said to Bailey. “Keep me covered. I’m going to tak
e a crap.”

  He dashed off to the outhouse. A minute later he dashed back. “I can’t face that,” Kane confessed. There was no hole in the ground, only a bucket, and nothing to sit on. The bucket looked as if it had not been emptied in days. It was overflowing. “I can’t face that,” Kane repeated.

  Thirty-four years later, Bailey induced Kane to return to Normandy. Bailey had been back often through the years, but this was Kane’s initial visit since the war. The first thing Kane wanted to do was to go to that outhouse to see if the bucket had been emptied out yet. But it was gone.

  • • •

  By about midday, most of the 7th Battalion had reported in for duty, some coming singly, some in small groups. Enough arrived so that Pine Coffin could release Howard’s platoons. Howard brought them back to the area between the bridges. The snipers remained active, sporadically the Moaning Minnies continued to come in, battles were raging in Bénouville, Le Port, and to the east of Ranville. D Company was shooting back at the snipers, but as Billy Gray confesses, “We couldn’t see them, we were just guessing.”

  But limited though 7th Para and D Company’s control was, they held the bridges.

  * * *

  1. After the war, Parr was reading a magazine article on German atrocities in occupied Europe. He came across a prime example of German bestiality: It seemed, according to the article, that before they withdrew from Bénouville, the Germans had decided to give the village a lesson and proceeded to methodically shell the maternity hospital and ancient château!