Forgotten Voices of D-Day
Page 33
I walked back to Varaville and I collared one of my colleagues, a corporal, who came back to the stretcher with me, and the two of us attempted to take him back into Varaville. We didn’t succeed in getting him back into Varaville because he was a very, very heavy man and it was beyond the power of two of us to carry him the distance it was. We therefore planted this poor man in a farmhouse and tied his foot to the kitchen stove, to stretch it as far as possible because he had a broken femur, and left him there and promised to come back with a jeep, if we could get one, or a four-man team. We gave him an injection to ease the pain. But unfortunately, when we got back to Varaville, we were ordered out in the other direction and I honestly don’t know what happened to him. I assume he was taken to a German hospital but I’ve no way of knowing.
Captain David Tibbs
Regimental Medical Officer, 13th Battalion, Parachute Regiment
As the afternoon wore on, I was put in charge of a barn containing nearly a hundred wounded men. I did my best for them. It was filled with hay, which was in a way fortunate for them to lie on. But in the late afternoon there was a sudden moment of panic as somebody threw open the door to the barn and said, ‘The Germans are here! They’re just at the bottom of the road!’ And one of the wounded, a sergeant, who up till that time had looked too ill to do anything, partially sat up, grabbed his Sten gun which was lying beside him and swore violently at this man and said in a broad Glaswegian accent, ‘Stop your blethering, man. Or ye’ll be the first to go!’ I then noticed, to my horror, that not only was the hay a big incendiary risk but most of the wounded still had their weapons with them and they were quite prepared to fight and if the Germans did overrun us we wouldn’t stand a chance. I myself was carrying a pistol. But while I was standing there, things settled down. The tank that was coming in with these Germans was knocked out and that particular scare was over.
Brigadier James Hill
Commanding Officer, 3rd Parachute Brigade
I was sitting on the top of the steps that led to an outdoor barn where I had my personal headquarters and I smelled to high heaven because I’d developed gangrene. I was very unapproachable, really. And I remember sitting on those steps on the evening of D-Day looking away to the north-west and seeing the arrival of an airlanding brigade into battle. It was a wonderful sight. Hundreds and hundreds of gliders coming in. So we knew we weren’t going to be alone.
THE 6TH AIRLANDING BRIGADE
Major Napier Crookenden
Brigade Major, 6th Airlanding Brigade
The glider brigade was to take off from its airfields at 6pm and land at about nine o’clock in the evening. My brigadier – typical of Hugh Kindersley – went across at three in the morning with the first wave of gliders carrying the general, his staff and the anti-tank guns. I had to go to Airborne Corps headquarters at Moor Park and wait there from one o’clock in the morning until news of the parachute landings came in and divisional headquarters, the general and staff, could pass me the message, ‘OK, it’s going well. Launch the glider brigade.’
Tarrant Rushton, Hampshire, on the afternoon of 6 June, as the 6th Airlanding Brigade prepares to fly out to Normandy that evening. On the runway are Hamilcar heavy-lift gliders, preceded by two smaller Horsa troop-carrying gliders. Halifax glider-tugs of 298 and 644 Squadrons, RAF, are parked either side.
I only got this message at twelve noon having sat there for hours, and at once telephoned all the take-off airfields for the gliders and set off down the Great West Road in a staff car to RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire where my aircraft were to take off. On the way, passing through Slough, I saw a paperboy selling a lot of newspapers with the banner headline, ‘Skymen Land in Europe.’ I can see it now. So I bought his whole stack, and my main contribution to D-Day after landing in Normandy, just about nine o’clock, was that I was able to go round my friends in the parachute brigades giving them the newspapers so that they could read about their own landings the same day.
Before we took off I was having a late meal in the officer’s mess at Brize Norton when in through the dining room doors came Bill Collingwood, brigade major of the 3rd Parachute Brigade, my opposite number, his face covered in camouflage cream, his clothing rather torn and battered, very dirty, and limping badly. He had flown over to land at ten to one in the morning, but on jumping from his Albermarle aircraft he had been caught up in the strap which holds your parachute to the aircraft and he’d been suspended below the aircraft unable to cut loose. With great difficulty they pulled him in and by that time it was too late to drop the stick, the men inside, and he landed back in England. He knew we were taking off from Brize Norton and he’d made his way across England to Brize Norton in order to borrow spaces for himself and his men in one of our spare gliders.
Troops of the 6th Airlanding Brigade prepare to fly out as part of the second drop on the evening of D-Day.
Irene Gray
Civilian, Southampton
About teatime, I was, like all other women, busy in the home, fiddling about, and there was a sudden drone of aircraft in the distance. And as soon as you heard aircraft, of course, you were on edge, wondering. You didn’t know if it was one of ours or one of theirs. But the noise increased in intensity to such a pitch that it was absolutely deafening, and I mean deafening. By now everybody had gone out to their gates to see what on earth was happening. The sky was literally black with aircraft towing gliders. They were very, very low. Wave after wave.
Sergeant Mike Brown
Glider Pilot Regiment
We were under a glass canopy like a greenhouse and going out we flew over parts of England we had never seen before and I shall never forget the fields, field after field, of tanks, and then another field of guns, then another field of lorries. All that stuff that was accumulated. It was amazing. It gave you confidence. You could see so much going on everywhere. But at the same time we had to watch what we were doing. Flying a glider on tow was quite hard work. You had to keep the glider in position. There was no hydraulics. It was all pull and push. Levers.
Pilot Officer Ron Minchin
Australian Stirling bomber pilot, 196 Squadron, RAF
I think the planning by 38 Group was fantastic. We ended up with this great mass of aircraft, with gliders behind it, going out together across the English coast and into the Channel. And the sight when we got halfway across the Channel! Everywhere you could see, right to the horizon, on our left and right, there were aircraft. They weren’t all with gliders and there were other groups, beyond 38 Group, taking American gliders, smaller gliders. We were all going to different areas once we’d got across the other side, there were various dropping zones, quite a lot of them, but the sheer weight of aircraft in the air was one of the most wonderful things. And down below us was a carpet, it seemed to us, of ships and the wakes of these ships. The Channel was being churned up all the way across; it was nearly white. When we saw how they’d organised it, to get us all together, we gave a lot more credit to airvice marshals and things than we usually gave. It gave you a great deal of respect for the planners and it made you feel so much safer with all these people around you. In fact it wasn’t until we got to the other side that we had trouble, when we were up against flak and we started to lose aircraft.
Sergeant Bob Rose
Glider Pilot Regiment
The nearer you got, it seemed, the more sea craft there were. You got the impression, ‘Well, if this rope broke now, I’d hardly get wet. I’d ditch alongside one of these guys and I’d be quite safe in moments.’ It was almost as if you could walk across. No matter where you looked, as far as the eye could see, you could see this armada. The other thing, of course, was the Typhoons and Spitfires, which were guarding us. They were flying underneath us and above us. And of course we didn’t see one Jerry aircraft at all on the way over. Nothing.
Lieutenant Commander Patrick Bayly
HMS Mauritius (Royal Navy cruiser)
We were told to cease firing – I was the anti-aircraft
officer right up in the top of the ship – and we looked northward. And there, spread from horizon to horizon, were hundreds of planes towing gliders carrying people. The whole of the RAF, it looked like, came low over our heads, went over the beach and dropped them all, God knows how many, on the front line. It really was the most remarkable sight I’ve ever seen. It was sad seeing some being hit and falling but very few compared to the actual numbers flying over. I had a marvellous position. I was in the highest point of the ship. We had a Russian admiral with us as well and we were both on the bridge absolutely marvelling at the whole scene.
Major Napier Crookenden
Brigade Major, 6th Airlanding Brigade
By quarter to nine we could see the French coast ahead of us, it was still light of course, and spread out below us was the spectacle of the whole invasion fleet. The warships and destroyers firing at the coast, you could see the flashes of their guns and puffs of smoke. Over the whole of the French coast, a great rolling cloud of smoke and dust; and the landing craft, smaller ones, scuttling to and fro, like water beetles, from the shore to the larger landing ships anchored off.
The bridge of HMS Holmes, a Royal Navy frigate stationed off the Normandy coast, as the airborne armada passes overhead on the evening of 6 June.
Then we were running down the line of the Orne River and Canal. Ahead of us, looking over the pilots’ shoulders, I could see one of the tug aircraft winging down over Caen after releasing its glider with smoke pouring from his starboard engine. And down to our left, to the left of the Orne River and canal, we could see our landing zone where the 5th Parachute Brigade had landed that morning and the first lift, the three o’clock lift, of gliders had also landed. The fields were covered with the parachutes of the 5th Brigade.
Over Ranville church, a church with a most characteristic separated tower, a famous landing mark for us, our pilot cast off. The roaring of the air stream from the tug ceased, he did a sharp left turn and another left turn and we were on our final run in. The second pilot put his head through the door and shouted out ‘Brace! Brace!’ We lifted our feet off the floor, put our arms round each other’s shoulders and with a couple of major bumps were down: the perfect landing. In a minute or two we were out of the glider, unbolted the tail, swung it back, put the loading troughs against the sill of the glider, ran out our jeeps and trailers and were moving away to our brigade headquarters rendezvous, a little orchard.
Staff Sergeant Reg Dance
Glider Pilot Regiment
Some of the anti-invasion posts had been knocked down, some by gliders, some by blowing them up, but there were still quite a few left. I went down at quite a speed and aimed to hit one on my port wing – that would swing me round, then the starboard wing would hit the next one – and this is what we did. It took both wings off and that reduced my speed alarmingly and we just hit the deck and shot on like a cigar. Just at that moment another glider came down straight in front of me and levelled off and I hit the backside of it and knocked it right off. So it was an eventful landing but the only one hurt was myself. I got my nose split by the Perspex in front smashing up and cutting me.
Sergeant James Cramer
1st Battalion, Royal Ulster Rifles
We landed with a crash of splintered wood and we got out quick because you’re very vulnerable when you first land. We had to kick the door open, we ran to the edge of the field, everybody was running like hell to get away from the gliders in case they were mortared, and then we saw the very tall figure of our divisional commander, General Gale. I’ll never forget the smile on his face. ‘Welcome to France, gentlemen,’ he said. There were smashed gliders all over the place but the amazing thing is that we only lost one man out of the battalion, by a German mortar explosion. Everybody else was safe. So we ran and formed up and marched towards the outskirts of Ranville, where we started to dig in.
Captain John Cadman Watts
195 Airlanding Field Ambulance
One of the Field Ambulance jeeps had arrived, so I hooked my trailer behind theirs and we rushed across country to the rendezvous with the result that we were the first lot there. And there the Germans, for some inscrutable Teutonic purpose, had dug a hole, about ten feet long, about six foot wide and about four foot deep, at the side of the road. I persuaded my glider passengers to get in the hole and I sat on the edge waving my feet.
The next chap to arrive, who later became a very eminent neurosurgeon, said, ‘Hello. Is this the RV?’ I said, ‘Yes.’ ‘What do we do now?’ I said, ‘Well, you dig in, like we have.’ And they were so inexperienced in strange circumstances that they got their silly entrenching tools out and went the other side of the road and started hacking away before they realised that in order to dig our hole we should have landed on D minus three. It was terribly amusing to realise that you could pull a chap’s leg completely when he’s out of balance and never done it before.
Captain David Tibbs
Regimental Medical Officer, 13th Battalion, Parachute Regiment
It was tremendous spectacle to see these coming in, the gliders circling round to find their way down safely to the ground and the planes passing on, and as they did so dropping these huge tow ropes, incidentally, on to the Germans. This was a tremendous morale booster. The extraordinary thing was how little ack-ack fire they encountered and how everything went silent, both the Germans and ourselves, who were watching this extraordinary spectacle, which was a tremendous boost for us but no doubt the very reverse for the Germans. The wonderful thing was that the great majority of these gliders came down exactly as planned. They were bringing desperately needed antitank guns and about 1,500 glider-borne infantry and a number of other weapons and communications equipment and another Field Ambulance.
Aerial photograph of Horsa gliders of the 6th Airborne Division on landing zone N between Ranville and Amfreville, east of the Orne River. Some have had their fuselages separated to facilitate unloading.
Warrant Officer George Oliver
Australian Stirling bomber pilot, 196 Squadron, RAF
So we dropped them there and turned around to fly home and just as we were about to cross the coast we noticed a flak gun down on the ground. There was a huge haystack there, they were trying to conceal themselves with this, and he was trying to pick us off as we went.
He had a good range on us, he knew exactly where we were, and the aircraft in front of me was set on fire. It was hit in the wing. We were just coming over the water by then and he seemed to climb away, we were only at about eight hundred feet, fairly low, but the wing was on fire and all of a sudden the wing just folded up and fell off and the aircraft of course then catapulted over and just plunged into the water. I didn’t see anybody get out of it at all and I can remember saying to myself, ‘Poor bastards.’
By the time we got back it was evening. Most of us had a meal and went to bed. I know we were all very relieved. We had heard on the radio that the invasion was going well at that time and I had a feeling of great satisfaction, inasmuch that 38 Group and 46 Group, we’d dropped the whole of the 6th Airborne Division into Normandy by the evening. Not without casualties.
Pilot Officer Ron Minchin
Australian Stirling bomber pilot, 196 Squadron, RAF
When we got back, six of the more senior pilots, our planes were loaded with containers of food and petrol and ammunition and we went back a third time, at night. We went back and dropped containers to the paratroopers that we’d dropped the night before and then returned. So it was quite a day.
LION-SUR-MER
Marine Raymond Mitchell
41 (Royal Marine) Commando
The Germans counter-attacked and the colonel decided to pull back to hold a more defensible line between the sea and a crossroads inland. We moved HQ to this orchard and the jeeps were well employed ferrying the wounded back to the beaches for evacuation. By that time it was about mid-afternoon, the main forces were pushing inland, but we were in a bit of a backwater with this pocket of Germans facing
us.
Marine James Anthony Kelly
41 (Royal Marine) Commando
Captain Powell instructed me to go back to the beach with a message saying we’d been held up by what he thought was tanks and self-propelled guns. They’d got into a yard, like a farmyard, and the shells were going straight through the walls so he’d deduced that they must be armour-piercing shells which came from tanks. So off I went running down the lane. I remember he took the Bren gun off me. ‘Leave that,’ he said.
Fortunately, I didn’t have to go right back to the beach because the Commando headquarters had moved up by that time. Major Taplin, I gave him the message, and he said to me, ‘Well, go back and tell Captain Powell to hold on where he is for as long as he possibly can.’ And he said, ‘Good luck, Kelly,’ because he knew me, I’d been in his troop, and off I went.
I went back up the lane and the Germans by that time had got the place really sorted out. Anything that was moving they were shooting at. The lane was now empty of troops, they’d all been deployed in firing positions and were engaged in fighting the Germans, so I was just running up the lane not knowing exactly where anybody was and there were bursts of firing coming down and hitting the brickwork just above my head.
This happened two or three times and on one occasion I dived into the side where there was a little opening of a trench and I just ducked into that for further cover. It turned out to be the air-raid shelter for a house close by and people were in it. French people, like. And I thought, ‘What a precarious place to be at this time.’ Of course they didn’t know there was going to be an invasion in their area. I just said I was English, you know, and they gave me a quick drink of wine and I popped out again and made the rest of the run.