The Men of World War II

by Stephen E. Ambrose

  • • •

  The canal has been widened by some four or five feet, and the water tower is gone. The château stands intact. the machine-gun pillbox that Jack Bailey knocked out and John Howard used as a CP is still there, forming the foundation of the house lived in by the man who operates the swing bridge. The bunkers are all filled in. The antitank gun and its emplacement, where Wally Parr had so much fun, remains. Three stone markers are placed on the sites where the first three gliders crashed.

  CHAPTER 11

  D-Day

  Plus Forty Years to D-Day Plus Fifty Years

  There had been intense worldwide press publicity on the fortieth anniversary of the capture of Pegasus Bridge. Television cameras, radio reporters, hundreds of French, British, and American visitors were present at the annual Ox and Bucks ceremony paying homage to “fallen comrades.” Prior to 1984, the ceremony had been a small private occasion attended only by coup-de-main veterans and their families, and the Gondrée family who always provided champagne for the toast. Since 1984, the annual occasion has been crowded with people and covered by television lights. John Howard comments, “In many ways, the veterans and Gondrée family now regret the occasion has become a public affair rather than the private one.”

  In 1986, the area between the gliders’ landing zone and the canal was designated “Esplanade Major John Howard.” In 1987, the French authorities announced that the Café Gondrée and the house had been officially listed as a Monument Historique, as the first house to be liberated in France. That same year, however, word arrived that other French authorities had decided to replace Pegasus Bridge with a newer, larger one. The Port of Caen Authority, it turned out, wanted larger ships to be able to pass up and down the canal to the Port.

  When the initial plans became available, it was seen that the new bridge was to be located on the south side of the old one (i.e., nearer the café). Strong objections were raised by British veterans and by the Gondrée daughters.

  Major Howard took command. After spraying a red line along where the proposed road would run (only a few meters from the front door of the café), Howard took photos and showed them to the Prefect in Caen. He pointed out that the heavy traffic using the road passing so close to the café would quickly undermine and permanently damage the structure of a Monument Historique.

  The Prefect called for fresh plans to be drawn up. When they became available, Howard was satisfied to see that the new bridge would be constructed exactly where the old one stood and the new road would be no more than a few centimeters nearer the café. The new bridge would be a lifting bridge, same as the old one. He was also promised that the old one would stay in place until after the fiftieth anniversary of D-Day.

  In 1988, Howard received a special medal from a special group. The Normandy Veterans’ Association was issuing a serially numbered, limited-edition medal for Veterans of the Normandy Campaign. Howard was told that committees of the Association from all over the country had met and unanimously agreed that the medal numbered “1944” should be presented to him, and the citation on it should read as follows: “The first British Commanding Officer to be engaged in action against the enemy on the mainland of France in the Normandy Invasion.”

  On the forty-fifth anniversary, the Mayor of Ranville unveiled a plaque to commemorate the capture of the river bridge by two platoons of the coup-de-main party. The bridge was named “Horsa Bridge.” There was a big turnout of Ox and Bucks for the occasion, and despite a cold penetrating rain, a large crowd of visitors.

  In 1991, the bridge was again threatened by French bureaucracy. The authorities announced in the press the intention to move Pegasus Bridge to the Peace Museum in Caen. Howard and virtually all other veterans of the 6th Airborne Division raised a storm of protest, which led the French to back down, although possibly only temporarily. Until the spring of 1994, the eventual resting place for Pegasus Bridge will be unknowable—but if Howard and the other British veterans have their way, it will remain in the bridge area.

  All of these and other events concerning the bridge are regularly reported on in the British press, along with some of the details of an unhappy squabble between the Gondrée sisters over ownership of the café. There have been some bonuses, thanks to the publicity. For one thing, John Howard receives stacks of mail from admirers. He invariably answers, signing off with his well-known “Ham and Jam, John.” He especially enjoys his correspondence with young army officers from around the world.

  In the mid-1980s a teenage German student named Frank Montag read this book and was so taken with the story that he worked the next two years on a model of the action. He consulted with Major Howard and Private Romer frequently to ensure accuracy. In 1988, he presented the completed model to the Airborne Forces Museum at Aldershot, where it is on display today. The model portrays the action a few minutes after the landing, with No. 1 platoon crossing the bridge while grenades exploded in the pillbox. It was a labor of love and is much admired by the airborne veterans.

  On June 7, 1986, the German sentry Helmut Romer and his fellow sentry Erwin met John Howard on the bridge. Howard took down their oral history, then wrote it up in the third person. It provides a fascinating point of view on the coup-de-main operation, as well as some needed corrections concerning the German side of the event as recounted in the first edition of this book.

  As Howard got their story, Romer and his friend Private Erwin had been called up in 1943 and became seventeen-year-old soldiers in the Wehrmacht. They were posted as sentries on the nights of June 5-6. Their duties were to stop and question anyone wanting to cross, examine papers, and so forth. As there was a curfew at night, they normally had little or nothing to do. “It was not an exciting job,” Romer told Howard, “but it was certainly better than fighting in Russia or Italy.”

  Romer went on to give an eyewitness account of Jim Wallwork’s landing, as written by Howard: “They heard a strange ‘swishing’ noise and suddenly saw a large silent aircraft flying low toward the canal bridge from the south and parallel to the canal and they heard it crash in the small field immediately southwest of the bridge around fifty meters away. They concluded that it must be a crashed bomber and started discussing whether they should investigate or awaken the Sergeant who was sleeping in a bunker by the pillbox.”

  Howard described how as they debated, “they were suddenly confronted by a bunch of wild men numbering ten or more who were charging toward them, guns and rifles at the hips. They were black-faced and wearing camouflaged uniforms and obviously looking for trouble, but strangely they were not firing their weapons.”

  Romer and Erwin started to run for it. “We were only boys of eighteen after all,” Romer said, “and badly outnumbered.” The Germans leaped to the side of the road. Romer fired his Verey light into the air “and then they ran like hell. They were joined by a comrade, a Pole, who like them was fleeing for his life.”

  They ran for 100 meters, then hid in some thick bushes. “Firing had started all round the bridge behind them before they reached the bushes and they could see tracer bullets whizzing in all directions. It was clear that the enemy were rooting out the rest of the German garrison. Romer and his two comrades pushed back further into the bushes, very frightened, glad it was dark.”

  They stayed through the day and saw the whole battle—Sergeant Thornton blowing up the tank, the arrival of the Commandos, everything. They stayed through the night and well into the next day. Finally hunger and thirst forced them to surrender. “They hesitantly approached the bridge with their hands up and they were very surprised and thankful when the British did not fire on them. They knew that it was the end of the war for them and they were not sorry. They were taken to England as POWs and later to Canada where Romer said it was ‘heaven on earth.’ ”

  Howard’s account concludes: “Romer and Erwin showed Howard exactly where they stood as sentries in June 1944, pointing out RAF fighter bullet marks on the steel girders of the bridge, the result of a straffing they
had [received] only a few days before D-Day. They then slowly retraced their steps up the road and showed Howard where they [lay] hidden in the bushes for over thirty-six hours on that terrifying occasion forty-two years before.”

  In interviews with the glider pilots, Howard has provided another badly needed corrective to the first edition of this book. At the fortieth anniversary, the three pilots who landed at the canal bridge were reunited for the first time since D-Day. Together, they made a discovery, as described by Howard: “It soon became clear from the exchange of views between Boland (pilot of No. 2) and Barkway (of No. 3), plus what Howard had gleaned over the years from surviving passengers in the two gliders, that just before landing, Boland had seen Barkway’s glider bearing down on him from behind, causing Boland to swerve right, while Barkway seeing Boland’s glider in front of him had to swerve left and then right, turning ninety degrees and finishing up with the glider broke in half and his cockpit in the pond.”

  Armed with this testimony and evidence, Howard had the bronze placques marking where the No. 2 and 3 gliders landed, switched around. This is a good example of why history is never definitive—there is always something new to be learned.

  • • •

  In the decade since the fortieth anniversary, the following men have passed on:

  Glider Pilot Boland

  Colonel Taylor

  Sergeant Ollis

  Corporal Godbolt

  Corporal Porter

  Corporal Stacey

  Private Jackson

  Private O’Donnell

  Private Bleach

  General Sir Nigel Poett

  Sergeant Major Bailey

  Major Fox

  Major Smith

  The men of Pegasus Bridge who can still answer the roll call are living happy lives, sweetened because people frequently recognize them as heroes, a role they earned and carry out with appropriate modesty.

  Wally Parr’s Irene died, and he has remarried, a French widow who can’t speak English. Wally can’t speak French. They live in Normandy and are delighted with each other and themselves.

  Jim Wallwork is fully retired. He spends his winters in Mexico. He returned to England in 1992 for a reunion of the Glider Pilot Regiment and a visit with John Howard. The number of men attending the ceremonies on June 5-6 goes up each year, as do the crowds.

  John Howard is a widower now. He lives in an apartment in a renovated old country mansion down in Surrey. He has aches and pains but he soldiers on, living an exceptionally busy life. He crosses to the Continent three or four times a year, driving his own car, to lecture young cadets from the various NATO countries and Sweden—and of course for the anniversary ceremonies in June. He flies to the United States once a year, to give lectures and see friends. He keeps up a vast correspondence.

  With General Poett and Colonel Taylor gone, Major Howard is the senior surviving member of the 6th Airborne Division mentioned in this book, a role he fills with distinction. His vigorous leadership has been critical to saving the bridge and the Gondrée Café. Thus he enjoys the satisfaction of knowing that just as he was the individual most responsible for the capture of the bridge, intact, in 1944, so is he the individual most responsible for the preservation of the bridge, intact, in 1994.

  EPILOGUE

  The Significance of Pegasus Bridge

  What did it all mean? Because the operation was a success, we can never know its full significance; only if it had failed would we know the real value of Pegasus Bridge. As it is, any assessment of the operation’s worth is speculative. But then speculation is the secret vice of every history buff, and in any case is unavoidable when passing judgments.

  Suppose, then, that Major Schmidt had managed to blow the bridges. In that event, even if Howard’s men held both sides of both waterways, the easy movement back and forth that the British enjoyed over the bridges through the night would have been impossible. Howard could not have brought Fox’s platoon over from the river to Bénouville, and Thornton would not have been at the T-junction with his Piat. The most likely outcome, in that case, would have been a failure to hold the ground in the Bénouville-Le Port area, with the result being the isolation of the 6th Airborne east of the Orne.

  Had Thornton missed with his Piat, and German tanks had come down to the bridge from Bénouville, the enemy surely would have expelled the invaders. In that case, with the bridges in German hands, the 6th Airborne would have been isolated, in a position comparable to that of the 1st Airborne later in the war in Arnhem, unable to receive supplies or reinforcements, immobile, lightly armed, trying to fight off German armor. But for the bridges, in other words, the 6th Airborne might well have suffered the devastating losses the 1st Airborne did suffer.

  The loss of a single division, even a full-strength, elite division like the 6th Airborne, could by itself hardly have been decisive in a battle that raged over a sixty-mile front and involved hundreds of thousands of men. But 6th Airborne’s mission, like the division itself, was special. Eisenhower and Montgomery counted on General Gale to hold back the Germans on the left, making Gale the man most responsible for preventing the ultimate catastrophe of panzer formations loose on the beaches, rolling them up, first Sword, then Juno, then Gold, then onto Omaha. Gale was able to hold off the German armor, thanks in critical part to the possession of Pegasus Bridge.

  Denying the use of the bridges to the Germans was important in shaping the ensuing campaign. As Hitler began bringing armored divisions from the Pas de Calais to Normandy, he found it impossible to launch a single, well-coordinated blow. There were two major reasons. First, Allied air harassment and the activities of the French Resistance slowed the movement to the battlefield. Second, the only area available to the Germans to form up for such a blow was the area between the Dives and the Orne. The natural line of attack would then have been over Pegasus Bridge, down to Ouistreham, then straight west along the beaches. That area had the further advantage of being closest to the Pas de Calais. But because the 6th Airborne held its bridgehead and controlled Pegasus Bridge, such divisions as the 2d Panzer, the 1st SS Panzer, and the famous Panzer Lehr were forced to go around bombed-out Caen, then enter the battle to the west of that city. As a consequence, they went into battle piecemeal and against the front, not the flank, of the main British forces. In the seven-week-long battle that followed, the Germans attacked again and again, using up the best and much of the bulk of their armored units in the process. Throughout this campaign, 6th Airborne held its position, thereby continuing to force the Germans into costly and ineffectual direct attacks.

  What did it all mean? At a minimum, then, failure at Pegasus Bridge would have made D-Day much more costly to the Allies, and especially to the 6th Airborne Division. At a maximum, failure at Pegasus Bridge might have meant failure for the invasion as a whole, with consequences for world history too staggering to contemplate.

  1 Oblique aerial-reconnaissance photograph taken March 24, 1944, showing the river and canal bridge, with the beaches where the landing took place in the distance. Pegasus Bridge is on the left.

  2 Overhead aerial-reconnaissance photograph taken May 30, 1944, showing Pegasus Bridge below the river bridge. The white dots in the surrounding fields are holes dug for “asparagus” antiglider poles.

  3 John Howard, 1942.

  4 General Omar Bradley awarding Brigadier Nigel Poett the Silver Star in recognition of the 5th Parachute Brigade’s taking and holding of Pegasus Bridge; June 9, 1944.

  5 Captain Brian Priday, second-in-command of D Company.

  6 Jim Wallwork, pilot of No. 1 glider.

  7 Joy Howard, 1942.

  8 John Howard at Brotheridge’s grave, Rainville, 1946.

  9 Lieutenant “Den” Brotheridge, the first Allied soldier killed in action on D-Day.

  10 Aircraft towing Horsa glider.

  11 Gliders abandoned north of Rainville.

  12 No. 1 glider with Pegasus Bridge beyond. Visible on the right is a bit of the barbed-wire fe
nce the pilot, Jim Wallwork, had been asked to aim for.

  13 No. 1 glider viewed from the other end, with John Howard leaning against it at left. Wallwork escaped without serious injuries, despite the smashed nose of the glider.

  14 Aerial-reconnaissance photograph taken at 6 A.M. on D-Day showing three gliders. No. 1 glider is only yards from Pegasus Bridge. The “asparagus” holes are clearly visible in this photograph.

  15 Aerial-reconnaissance photograph showing No. 5 glider near the river bridge.

  16 Pegasus Bridge with the Gondrée café at left. The German gun used by Wally Parr can be seen in the center of the photograph.

  17 Monsieur and Madame Gondrée outside their café. (British time is shown; French time was one hour ahead.)

  18 The payoff: a British tank crosses Pegasus Bridge on June 7

  19 Low-level oblique aerial-reconnaissance photograph taken March 24, 1944, showing Pegasus Bridge in the center of the picture.

  APPENDIX

  Poett’s Orders to Howard

  5 Para Bde 00 No. 1 Appx. A

  Ref Maps.

  1/50,000 Sheets 7/F1, 7/F2

  TOP SECRET

  1/25,000 Sheet No. 40/16 NW