The Men of World War II

by Stephen E. Ambrose

  Howard was also told that Mme. Vion, the director of the hospital, was head of the Resistance. Mme. Vion, he was told, “was quite an autocratic sort of person and considered to be the lady of the village, as we would call her in this country.” He even knew that many in the village looked sideways when Thérèsa Gondrée walked past, because they were suspicious of her German accent and because she was living right next to the garrison, selling beer to the Germans.

  Sketch made by John Howard early in the planning for the Pegasus operation showing the planned disposition of the platoons if all landed on target.

  Below: A topographical report on the bridges dated 17 May 1944. The superb quality of the information provided by both the French Resistance and reconnaissance aircraft is shown clearly.

  NEPTUNE

  BIGOT - TOP SECRET

  Copy No

  17 May 44

  TOPOGRAPHICAL REPORT ON BRIDGES AT BENOUVILLE 098748 AND RANVILLE 104746

  1. Sketch - BENOUVILLE 098748

  2. Description of canal and immediate vicinity

  (a) The current is slow. Depth reported to be 27’ but can be regulated by the locks at OUISTREHAM. Average width 150’. Banks average 6’ in height, and are of earth and broken stone.

  (b) A track with waterbound macadam surface runs for most of the length of the canal on both sides.

  On the WEST bank there is a It rly (single track).

  Either bank of the canal is lined with poplars.

  On each side of the br there are a few small houses. (For detail see large scale model).

  (c) The rd leading up to the br is on a 10’-15’ high embankment to keep it above the flood level.

  3. Description of Br

  (a) The water gap is 190’ but from either bank there are abutments which project 50’ into the stream.

  (b) The br is a steel girder, rolling lift br with masonry abutments.

  Control mechanism is located in a cabin over rdway.

  Overall length of br 190’

  Lifting span 90’

  Rd width 12’, rdway asphalt or steel.

  (c) The br is reported as being mined. (Prepared for demolition).

  4. Defs of Canal

  (a) WEST bank open MG emplacements are visible on the canal banks on each side of the br approach. There are further open MG emplacements at 098748(2), 097748(2) and 096746.

  (b) EAST side. SOUTH of rd close to the canal bank is a circular emplacement approx 27’ in diameter which is probable site for an atk gun but the object in the emplacement cannot be identified as a gun. 25 yds SOUTH of the above is an AA MG post on a tower 8’ high.

  (c) 60 yds NORTH of the rd close to the canal are 3 open MG emplacements, 12 yds apart, in a line facing NE.

  Approx 16 yds NE of these emplacements is a concrete shelter or pillbox, measuring approx 17' X 14'.

  (d) No wire defs are visible.

  (e) Armed trawlers and R Boats may be used in canal but this is considered unlikely.

  . . . . . . . ./5. . . . . . . .

  5. Description of R ORNE

  (a) Average width 160’-240’.

  Tidal as far as CAEN.

  Mean depth 9’

  Max tidal variation at OUISTREHAM 16’.

  “ “ “ “ CAEN 6’ 5”.

  Banks 3’ 6” high, of mud, and slope at approx 1 : 2.

  (b) There is a barrage at CAEN which regulates the canal at the expense of the river, hence speed and depth will vary considerably. Max current will probably NOT exceed 3 Knots.

  (c) Ground between the river and canal is marshy and intersected by many ditches and channels.

  (d) A track 8’–10’ wide runs on both sides of the river for most of its length.

  6. Description of br 104745 and immediate vicinity.

  (a) The br is a two-span, cantilever lattice girder, pivoted about a central masonry pier. Turning mechanism is housed over pier between girders.

  Overall length of br 350’.

  Spans, 2 at 100’.

  Load class 12.

  Rdway—9’ tarmac (20’ incl sidewalks).

  It is thought that this br may no longer be used as a swing br.

  Br has been reported as prepared for demolition.

  (b) SOUTH of the rd and WEST of the river is an orchard running NORTH and SOUTH.

  Each bank of the river is lined with poplars.

  On the EAST of the river and SOUTH of the rd is a thick belt of trees running parallel to the river, and about 50 yds away.

  Both NORTH and SOUTH of the rd there are a few small houses, standing in gardens or orchards. For details see large-scale model.

  7. Defs on R ORNE

  (a) EAST end and on the SOUTH side of the rd is a cam pill-box measuring approx 16’ X 16’. This may contain an atk weapon with main line of fire EAST along rd.

  There is a small AA MG emplacement adjoining this pill-box on the WEST side.

  (b) EAST side. Two open MG emplacements are visible on the NORTH side of the rd.

  (c) There is no wire visible.

  (d) Two rd-blocks (probably tree trunks) lie alongside the rd at 105745 and 106744.

  Maj

  BM 6 Airldg Bde

  APO ENGLAND

  DL

  Howard also knew that the garrison at the bridge was part of the 736th Grenadier Regiment of the 716th Infantry Division. On his intelligence summary, stamped “Bigot,” he read that “the fighting value of this division has been assessed at 40% static and 15% in a counterattack role. Equipment consists of an unknown proportion of French, British, and Polish weapons.” The last sentence read, “This intelligence summary will be destroyed by fire immediately after reading.” (Howard saved it anyway.)

  Howard could not take the air-reconnaissance photographs out of Broadmore, but he could go there to study them any time he wished. The RAF people had set up a stereograph system for him, which gave him a three-dimensional view. As Gale and Poett went over the photographs with Howard, they kept telling him that he had to capture those bridges in a few minutes, before they could be blown. The role, even the survival, of the 6th Airborne Division depended on having possession of those bridges, intact.

  • • •

  How good, and how up to date, was Howard’s intelligence? As good as it could possibly be. Of all the attributes the British people demonstrated during World War II, none equaled their ability to gather, evaluate, and disseminate intelligence. Without question, they were the best in the world at it. The British government invested heavily in intelligence in all its various forms, and received a handsome return. John Howard was one of the beneficiaries. Here are three examples of what he got.

  In early May, Rommel visited the bridges. He ordered an antitank gun emplacement built, and a pillbox to protect it, with barbed wire around it. He also ordered more slit trenches dug. The work began immediately. Within two days, Howard was told by the RAF that Jerry was installing some suspicious emplacements. Within a week, word came via Gondrée through Vion to Caen to British intelligence to Broadmore to Howard that the gun emplacement had an antitank gun in it, with some camouflage over it, and that the pillbox was finished.

  In mid-May, 21st Panzer Division moved from Brittany to Normandy, and on May 23 to the Caen area, with von Luck’s regiment taking up positions just east of Caen. On May 24, Howard knew about the movement of the division. On May 25, Hickman’s Independent Parachute Regiment moved into the area; Howard knew about it the next day.

  The intelligence people produced a model of the area, twelve feet by twelve feet. Howard describes it as “indeed a work of art, every building, tree, bush and ditch, trench, fence, etc., was there.” The model was changed daily, in accordance with the results of that morning’s reconnaissance flight. Thus on May 15 Schmidt knocked down two buildings along the canal, to give him a better field of fire, and Howard saw the change on the model the next day.

  • • •

  Howard’s visits to Broadmore were characterized by the place’s ni
ckname, “The Madhouse.” After clearing numerous checkpoints with his green pass, Howard recalls going in and being struck by “the harassed look on the faces of people walking about the building, obviously up to their eyes in last-minute changes in major plans.”

  At the end of his early-May briefing, Poett had told Howard, “Anything you want, John, it’s there. You’ve only gotta ring up for it.” Howard ordered up German opposition for his exercises—that is, the bridge defenders wore German uniforms, used German weapons and tactics, and insofar as possible shouted out their orders in German. He got captured German rifles, carbines, and machine guns, German mortars, German hand grenades, so that all his men were thoroughly familiar with what these weapons could do, and how to operate them. He had but to snap his fingers, and trucks would appear, to carry his platoons to wherever he wanted to go.

  D Company got the best of everything, except in food, in which area it got no special favors. The food was bad; worse, there was not enough of it. Parr recalls, “Much of your money, spare money, went on grub. I was always hungry. You worked so hard, you trained so hard that the grub they gave you wasn’t enough to keep you going and you didn’t ask what it was, you just grabbed it and you just shoveled it down, as simple as that. So the first thing you got paid you used to make out for the NAAFI and get chow. Yeah, you supplemented your diet with your pay, there’s no doubt about that.”

  Howard was pushing the men hard now, harder than ever, but no matter how he varied the order of landing or direction of attack or other aspects of the exercise, they were always the same make-believe bridges, at the same distances. Everyone was getting bored stiff. After about ten days of this, Howard called the men together on the parade ground and told them, “Look, we are training for some special purpose.” He did not mention the invasion—he hardly had to—but he went on: “You’ll find that a lot of the training we are doing, this capturing of things like bridges, is connected with that special purpose. If any of you mention the word ‘bridges’ outside our training hours and I get to know about it, you’ll be for the high jump and your feet won’t touch before you are RTU.” (Wally Parr told Irene the next evening, over the telephone, that he would be doing bridges on D-Day.)

  • • •

  Von Luck, as noted, had moved to the east of Caen, between the River Dives and the Orne River. So had Hickman. Von Luck planned, and practiced, his defenses. He marked out the routes forward to alternative assembly areas behind likely invasion points. He laid down rest and refueling areas, detailed traffic-control units, marked bypasses, and allotted antiaircraft guns for road protection. Hickman meanwhile was engaging in antiparatrooper exercises. Even Major Schmidt, at the bridges, was getting some sense of urgency. He was completing his bunkers, and was almost ready to get around to putting in the antiglider poles. The Gondrées watched all this, and said nothing, except to Mme. Vion.

  • • •

  Howard asked the topographical people to search the map of Britain and find him some place where a river and a canal ran closely together and were crossed by bridges on the same road. They found such a spot outside Exeter. Howard moved the company down there, and for six days, by day and by night, attacked those Exeter bridges.

  Townspeople came to gape as the lads dashed about, throwing grenades, setting off explosives, getting into hand-to-hand combat, cursing, yelling “Able, Able” or “Easy, Easy” at the top of their lungs. Howard had them practice every possible development he could imagine—only one glider getting down, or the gliders landing out of the proper sequence, or the dozens of other possibilities. He taught every man the basic rudiments of the sappers’ jobs; he instructed the sappers in the functions of the platoons; he made certain that each of his officers was prepared to take command of the whole operation, if need be.

  Howard insisted that they all become proficient in putting together and using the canvas boats that he was bringing along in the event the bridges were blown. Assault-boat training was “always good for morale,” according to Howard, because “somebody inevitably went overboard and that poor individual never failed to make sure he wasn’t the only one who got wet.”

  The hurling about of grenades caused some problems and brought some fun. Grenades were tossed into the river, to provide fish for supper. The Town Council protested this illegal fishing. The Council also protested that all this running back and forth over its bridges and all these grenades going off were seriously weakening the structures. (They stand, solid, today.) A homeowner in the area had some tiles blown off his roof by a grenade. Irate, he confronted Howard, who passed him along to Priday, who gave him the proper forms to fill in so that he could get the tiles replaced. One month later, sitting in a foxhole in Normandy, Priday let out a whoop of laughter. The mail had been delivered, and in it was a letter from the homeowner to Priday, demanding to know when his roof would be fixed.

  • • •

  Out of all this practice, Howard made his final plan. The key to it was to put the pillbox out of action while simultaneously getting a platoon across the bridge and onto that side of the road. It had to be accomplished before shots were fired, if possible, and certainly before the Germans were fully aroused. The pillbox was a key not only because of its firing power, but because that was where the button that could blow the bridge was located. Howard detailed three men from #1 glider (Brotheridge’s platoon) to dash to the pillbox and throw grenades through the slits. To take physical possession of the opposite bank, Howard detailed Brotheridge to lead the remainder of his platoon on a dash across the bridge. Ideally, Howard wanted Brotheridge to hear the thuds of the grenades in the pillbox as he was midway across the bridge.

  Number 2 glider, David Wood’s platoon, would clear up the inner defenses, the trenches and machine-gun nests along the east bank. Number 3 glider, Sandy Smith’s platoon, would cross the bridge to reinforce Brotheridge. On the river bridge, the procedure would be the same, with Priday in #4 glider (Hooper’s platoon), Fox in #5, and Sweeney in #6.

  Each glider would carry five of the thirty men under the command of Captain R. K. Jock Neilson. The sappers’ job was to move immediately to the bridges, then hand-over-hand themselves along the bottom beams, cutting fuses and looking for and disposing of explosives.

  It was John Howard’s plan. His superiors let him work it out himself, then approved his final presentation. He ran through it again and again, until the men were exhausted and both too tense and too bored to care any longer.

  But each time he ran through it, Howard saw something he had overlooked. One day, for example, he stopped an exercise and said he had been thinking that if so and so happened, and such and such, he’d need volunteers to swim the canal with a Bren gun to set up a flanking fire. As Howard remembers the occasion, “competition for this hazardous mission was high.” As Parr remembers it, he raised his hand before Howard could call for volunteers. Howard impatiently told him to put it down. Parr waved it some more.

  “Oh, all right, Parr, what is it?”

  “Well, sir,” Parr replied, “it’s just this: as Billy Gray and Charlie Gardner here are our two strongest swimmers, why not detail them?”

  “Excellent idea, Parr,” Howard pronounced, and it was done. Parr spent the remainder of the week staying far away from Gray and Gardner.

  • • •

  The last night in Exeter was a classic eve-of-battle event. Howard gave the men the night off, they poured into and out of Exeter’s pubs, there were fights, windows were broken. The chief of police got Howard on the phone; Howard and Priday jumped into a jeep and tore into Exeter, about three miles away, “and as we crossed the bridge we were picked up by the police for speeding, and we arrived at the station with police escort.” Howard strode into the chief’s office and said, “If you find Lieutenant Brotheridge he will put you in charge with how to get the troops back.” Then Howard looked around and saw the chief’s World War I medals, “and I knew the type of chap I was talking to, and I explained to this chap in very few words
that this was our last night out, and his attitude was absolutely wonderful.” The chief called out the entire force and put it to rounding up D Company and escorting it gently back to its encampment.

  Brotheridge, in fact, turned out to be no help, although Howard had sent him along with the men specifically to exert a calming influence. But he was too much like the men to stay sober on a night like this. Besides, he had a lot on his mind, and he needed some mental relief. His baby was due in less than a month, but he could not expect to see his wife before then, and who could tell about afterward? He was proud that Howard had chosen him to lead #1 platoon, but he had to be realistic—everyone knew that the first man over that bridge was the man most likely to get shot. Not killed, necessarily, but almost certainly shot. That first man was equally likely to have the bridge blow in his face.

  To escape such thoughts, Brotheridge had gone drinking with his sergeants, and when Howard arrived, Brotheridge was hopelessly drunk. Howard drove him back to camp, while the trucks took the men home. The people of Exeter and their police chief never made a complaint.

  • • •

  In late May, D Company moved to Tarrent Rushton. On this huge base, completely secured, no one in or out without a pass, the company met Jim Wallwork and John Ainsworth and Oliver Boland and the other pilots. Howard was pleased to note that they were absorbed into the company as family members as quickly as the sappers had been.

  How dependent D Company was on the pilots became quickly apparent after arrival in Tarrent Rushton. Now that the company was properly sealed in, Howard was free to give his briefing. First to the officers, then to the men, he explained the coup de main operation.

  Howard covered the walls of the Nissen briefing hut with aerial photographs of the bridges. He had the model in the middle of the room. As he talked, the eyes of the officers and men opened wider and wider—at the amount of intelligence available to them, at the crucial nature of their task, and at the idea of being the first men to touch the soil of France. But what they also noted was the extreme smallness of the LZs, especially on the canal bridge. Having examined the German trench system, and discussed the weapons and emplacements the Germans had, the officers—and later the men—were completely confident that they could take the bridges intact. They could, that is, if—and only if—the pilots put them down on the right spots.