Voices from D-Day

by Jon E. Lewis

  All that night spats of violence erupted over the Cotentin as US airborne troops fought their way to their objectives, and fought Germans wherever they found them.

  General Matt B. Ridgway, US 82nd Airborne Division

  My own little command group of eleven officers and men set up division headquarters in an apple orchard, on almost the exact spot we had planned to be before we left England. Hal Clark’s boys had not failed us. They had put us down on the button.

  The Germans were all around us, of course, sometimes within five hundred yards of my GP, but in the fierce and confused fighting that was going on all about, they did not launch the strong attack that could have wiped out our eggshell perimeter defence.

  This was in large part due to the dispersion of the paratroopers. Wherever they landed, they began to cut every communication line they could find, and soon the German commanders had no more contact with their units than we had with ours. When the German commander of the gist Division found himself cut off from the elements of his command, he did the only thing left to do. He got in a staff car and went out to see for himself what the hell had gone on in this wild night of confused shooting. He never found out. Just at daylight a patrol of paratroopers stopped his car and killed him as he reached for his pistol. The lieutenant commanding the patrol told me the story with great glee.

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘in our present situation, killing division commanders does not strike me as being particularly hilarious. But I congratulate you. I’m glad it was a German division commander you got.’

  Donald Burgett, US 101st Airborne Division

  ‘What’s your plan?’ one of the men asked. After a little thought the Lieutenant answered, ‘A head-on attack and the sooner the better, so let’s go.’ He jumped up and started running toward the group of houses across the field, yelling as he went. We all jumped up and followed him, yelling and screaming at the top of our lungs. We automatically spread out and fired as we ran through the fields, apple orchards and right up to the houses themselves. I saw my first Kraut running through the trees on an angle toward our right flank. I stopped, took a good sight on him and squeezed the trigger. The rifle bucked against my shoulder. I don’t remember hearing the shot or feeling the recoil, but the German spun sideways and fell face first out of sight in the grass. Another Kraut stepped around the corner of a building, stopped and just stood there looking down at the spot where the first soldier fell. He was facing me. I had a good straight-on shot at his chest and took careful aim. Again the rifle bucked against my shoulder, and he too fell face forward.

  Fighting was at a fever pitch now. All around, men were running between buildings, through yards and over fences. Three troopers ran through a gate in a hedge surrounding a house and almost immediately there came a long ripping burst of a Kraut machine gun. The three Americans died in the weed-choked front yard. Automatically other troopers shunned the yard but moved on the double on all fours down the hedges on either side until they were in throwing distance of the house and grenaded it. One trooper leaped through a side window, fired several rounds from his M-1, then stepped to the front door and motioned that it was all clear. Running through the open gateway, past the dead and into the house, I saw a German machine gun, a lot of empty shells and a couple of boxes of ammo under the window to the left of the door. No Germans or bodies were in the house. Evidently they had cleared out when the first grenades hit, leaving their gun behind. The trooper who went through the window said they went out the back way just as he entered. He fired at them but none of them went down. We left the house and rejoined the others in clearing out the remaining houses.

  Two troopers came out of one of the buildings carrying a case of German hand grenades between them. They ran down the street throwing potato mashers into windows and apertures in the walls. German soldiers were pulling out of town by the back way and. disappearing into fields and woods surrounding the town. German dead were scattered about in the houses, ditches and fields. I don’t know how many I hit. The ones that fell when I fired would have dropped anyway if a bullet had passed close to them.

  After occupying the enemy positions we wondered why they had given up so easily, for the walls were all of stone and two feet thick, with small rifle apertures to fire out from, and many of the rooms were filled with food, ammo, and weapons. Over 200 Germans had vacated these positions, leaving behind thirty dead and about seventy-five prisoners. Four of our men had been killed. Phillips could speak some German and he questioned the prisoners as to why their comrades had pulled out. They said that when we came running at them yelling, hollering and shooting across the open fields, they figured the whole invasion was directed right at them and never dreamed that only twenty men armed with rifles would attack over 200 well-armed soldiers in stone fortifications.

  If the British and American parachutists had a tough time of it, few of them would have swapped positions with the airborne troops arriving in Normandy that night by glider, crash-landing in tiny fields all too frequently occupied by ‘Rommel’s asparagus’ and other anti-landing devices.

  The Times war correspondent, attached to 6th Airborne Division

  Our glider was a Horsa, which looks almost like a normal aeroplane except that its wings are set farther back to compensate for the lack of engine weight forward. It is generally used as a troop-carrier. Heavy weights are carried in Hamilcar gliders, which look like nothing on earth except possibly streamlined pantechnicon vans.

  Our trip to France was made in almost complete darkness, and we had seen few signs of flak or of firing from the ground when the pilot of our tug aircraft slipped the tow rope and we headed down. Gliders, just before they land, usually put their noses down through 45 degrees and then pull them up sharply to land in as short a space as possible. Parachutist pathfinders had been before us to clear away as many obstacles as they could, but even if the obstacles had not been removed we should have been able to get down safely provided the fuselage itself did not strike one of the iron or wooden posts which the Germans had compelled the French farmers to put up all over their open fields.

  Ours, however, was in no way a normal landing. We hit a telegraph pole, and crashed in such a way as to break the back of our glider in two places. Our business then was to get out as quickly as possible and scatter because, for all we knew, we might have landed right in front of a German position, and if they had opened fire immediately we should all have been trapped.

  The crash had jammed fast the door in the fuselage, but after some kicking and banging against the glider’s plywood walls we got out into the night air. Immediately fire was opened on us, and we had several casualties. I was slightly hurt and later went off in search of divisional headquarters and of stretcher-bearers for our wounded.

  Private William Gray, D Company, 2nd Battalion Oxfordshire & Buckinghamshire Light Infantry

  The glider was twisting and turning a bit and, looking over the pilot’s shoulder, you could see the bridge. It was exactly like the models we’d been shown but it suddenly vanished as the glider veered to make its approach to landing and the next thing – crash! – and it hit the deck. Sparks were flying left, right and centre, and, all of a sudden, it just came to a halt and then there was silence again – just the creaking of timer in the glider. The undercarriage had gone and the front of the glider had caved in. Den Brotheridge, our platoon commander, quickly shoved the door open and said, ‘Gun out!’ Which was me, so I jumped and stumbled on the grass because of the weight I had on me. I set the Bren gun up firing towards the bridge and the rest of the lads jumped out. Den Brotheridge looked around to make sure everyone was out and he said, ‘Come on, lads!’ We were about thirty yards from the bridge and we dashed towards it. I saw a German on the right hand side and I let rip at him and down he went. I kept firing as I went over the bridge.

  With the loss of only two men, the coup de main of Major John Howard’s 2nd Battalion Oxfordshire & Buckinghamshire Light Infantry secured both canal bridge objectives. Th
e Caen Canal bridge was later immortalized as Pegasus Bridge, named after the insignia of the 6th Airborne Division. Meanwhile, the seizing of the Merville battery fell to Lieutenant-Colonel Terence Otway’s 9th Parachute Brigade:

  Obituary: Lieutenant-Colonel Terence Otway

  Daily Telegraph, 25 July 2006

  Lieutenant-Colonel Terence Otway, who died on Sunday aged 92, led the 9th Parachute Battalion in operation on D-Day and was awarded the DSO.

  The 9th Battalion, part of 3rd Parachute Brigade, was given the task of destroying the coastal battery at Merville before the seaborne invasion began at dawn on 6 June, and afterwards of occupying a key feature of the heavily invested defence perimeter on the Allies’ eastern flank.

  The battery was believed to be equipped with four 150 mm calibre guns capable of laying down fire on Sword Beach, which was the landing area for the British 3rd Infantry Division. It was guarded by a garrison of 130 within a 15 ft thick and 5 ft high barbed wire fence and surrounded by a minefield 100 yards wide. Twenty weapon pits had been counted in aerial photographs; there were also isolated minefields laid across all likely approaches; and an anti-tank ditch had been dug on the west side.

  The assault, supported by three gliders with orders to crash-land directly on the battery, was to go in at 4.30 a.m., thus allowing the battalion one hour to destroy the guns before the assault-craft landed.

  Otway divided his force into 11 groups, each with its own task. Among them was a reconnaissance party, a taping party, a breaching unit and the assault group. Four minutes from the dropping zone, the assault group ran into anti-aircraft fire and began to take evasive action. As a result, instead of being dropping in a concentrated area the battalion was spread over 50 square miles.

  A shell exploded close to Otway’s aircraft, and incendiary bullets went through his parachute just as he was about to jump. He, his batman Corporal Wilson and another man landed close to a farmhouse which was a German HQ.

  Wilson fell through the roof of a greenhouse which attracted fire from the Germans but, with quick thinking, he threw a brick through one of the farm windows. This was mistaken for a grenade, which provided a moment of respite in which the three men got clear. Much of the path-finding equipment had been damaged and smoke from a bombing raid reduced visibility. As a result few of the pilots saw the beacons prepared by the advance party, and there were parachutists who missed the dropping zone by 30 miles. Some landed chest high in water and, weighed down by their 60 lb kitbags, were drowned. On reaching the rendezvous, Otway discovered that he had no radio sets which worked, no engineers, no medical orderlies and only a quarter of his men.

  But as the attack went ahead, it was found that the reconnaissance party had penetrated the minefield. The taping party had also arrived, but without tapes or mine-detectors; they marked the route through the minefields by scratching heelmarks in the dust. The plan had to be drastically changed. The men from ‘B’ company were divided into two breaching teams. The assault was to be made by a composite force of ‘A’ and ‘C’ companies, comprising about 50 men. As they formed up, they were fired on by machine guns inside and outside the perimeter from both flanks.

  At 4.30 a.m., two of the three gliders carrying the assault party could be seen circling low over the battery. The plan for illuminating this had gone seriously awry and one of the gliders landed four miles from the objective; the other crashed in an orchard and immediately engaged a German platoon which was trying to reinforce the garrison.

  The enemy machine guns were silenced and Bangalore torpedoes were detonated to clear the wire in front of the assault. ‘The battery concentrated everything waist-high on the gaps in the wire,’ Otway said later. ‘Booby traps and mines were going off all over the place, fierce hand-to-hand fighting was going on inside the battery, and I had to keep dodging a machine gun in the tower which was shooting at me.’

  Twenty-three captured men were then ordered to guide Otway’s force through the minefields as the Germans opened fire with shells and mortars from neighbouring positions. Otway started with about 750 men, few of whom had seen action before; of the 150 who took part in the attack, only 65 were still on their feet at the end of an action, which saved a great many Allied lives. The citation for his DSO stated that his utter disregard for personal danger had been an inspiration to all his men.

  Those landing by glider included Major-General Gale of the 6th Airborne, arriving as part of the division’s reinforcement in the early hours of the morning.

  Major-General Richard Gale, 6th Airborne Division

  We were flying at about five thousand feet and we soon knew the coast was under us, for we were met by a stream of flak. It was weird to see this roaring up in great golden chains past the windows of the glider, some of it being apparently between us and the tug aircraft. Looking out I could see the canal and the river through the clouds; for the moon was by now fairly well overcast and the clear crisp moonlight we had hoped for was not there. Nevertheless here we were. In a few moments Griffiths said, ‘We are over the landing zone now and will be cast off at any moment.’ Almost as soon as he had said this we were. The whistling sound and the roar of the engines suddenly died down: no longer were we bumping about, but gliding along on a gloriously steady course. Away went the tug aircraft with Crawford in it back to England. Round we turned, circling lower and lower; soon the pilot turned round to tell us to link up as we were just about to land. We all linked up by putting our arms round the man next to us. We were also, as I have said, strapped in. In case of a crash this procedure would help us to take the shock.

  I shall never forget the sound as we rushed down in our final steep dive, then we suddenly flattened out, and soon with a bump, bump, bump, we landed on an extremely rough stubble field. Over the field we sped and then with a bang we hit a low embankment. The forward undercarriage wheel stove up through the floor, the glider spun round on its nose in a small circle and, as one wing hit one of those infernal stakes, we drew up to a standstill.

  We opened the door. Outside all was quiet.

  Captain Philip Burkinshaw, 12th Yorkshire Parachute Battalion

  One glider, which just missed the copse, floated down almost on top of us like some giant bat and ground to a halt after a very rough landing in the field beside us. It proved to be the one which carried the Divisional Commander, Major-General Richard (‘Windy’) Gale. Apparently slightly stunned and somewhat shaken up by the heavy landing, he lumbered up to me and bellowed in his customary direct manner, ‘Where the hell am I?’ I tried to enlighten him with my assessment of our position and told him where the CO could be found, but I must confess my confidence momentarily suffered a setback! I hasten to add that ‘Windy’ was the nickname for our respected Divisional Commander because of his surname and in no way implied any weakness of nerve; in fact, the opposite was very much the case.

  About this time we had our first encounter with the enemy. A staff car containing, it was subsequently discovered, the officer in command of the bridge defences, came at speed down the road from the direction of Ranville, followed by a motor-cycle escort. The armoured car somehow survived the fusillade of small-arms fire directed at it, but the motor cyclist was killed, his machine careering off the road into the ditch. The armoured car proceeded on its way to the bridge and was taken care of by Major Howard’s men. When captured, the German officer, a Major Schmidt, who was fairly badly wounded, apparently asked to be shot as he had let his Fuhrer down by failing to hold the bridges. He made it plain, however, that he was confident that we would all soon be thrown back into the sea!

  After this brief initial encounter, the battalion proceeded on down the road to Le Bas de Ranville, taking it with little difficulty and being joined there by other members of the battalion who, having landed outside the dropping zone, had not managed to reach the rendezvous. Digging in furiously and encouraged the while by some mortaring and shelling from the direction of Caen, we were in position by 4 a.m.

  Some hours previ
ously the news of the airborne landings had been passed to the headquarters at St Lô of one of ‘Windy’ Gale’s opposite numbers, General Marck of the Wehrmacht. The news arrived during a small surprise birthday party for the general, a veteran of the Eastern Front.

  Major Friedrich Hayn, Wehrmacht Staff Officer

  At 01.11 hours – an unforgettable moment – the field telephone rang. Something important was coming through: while listening to it the General stood up stiffly, his hand gripping the edge of the table. With a nod he beckoned his chief of staff to listen in. ‘Enemy parachute troops dropped east of the Orne estuary. Main area Bréville–Ranville and the north edge of the Bavent forest. Counter-measures are in progress.’ This message from 716 Intelligence Service struck like lightning.

  Was this, at last, the invasion, the storming of ‘Festung Europa’? Someone said haltingly, ‘Perhaps they are only supply troops for the French Resistance?’ … The day before, in the St-Malo area, many pieces of paper had been passing from hand to hand or had been dropped into the letterboxes; they all bore a mysterious announcement: La carotte rouge est quittée. Furthermore, our wireless operators had noticed an unusually large volume of coded traffic. Up till now, however, the Resistance groups had anxiously avoided all open action; they were put off by the danger of premature discovery and consequent extermination.

  Whilst the pros and cons were still being discussed, 709 Infantry Division from Valognes announced: ‘Enemy parachute troops south of St-Germain-de-Varreville and near Ste-Marie-du-Mont. A second drop west of the main Carentan–Valognes road on both sides of the Merderet river and along the Ste-Mere-Eglise–Pont-l’Abbé road. Fighting for the river crossings in progress.’ It was now about 01.45 hours.