by Thomas Wood
Gliders Over Normandy
Books 1-3
Thomas Wood
BoleynBennett Publishing
The Silent Invader
‘Gliders Over Normandy’ Book 1
Thomas Wood
This book is dedicated to all the men who took part in Operation Deadstick, in what became known as the raid on Pegasus Bridge, with a particular dedication to those who lost their lives that night and in the following days and months of the Second World War.
1
As we'd lurched off the ground, bumping around and hitting every groove in the strip as was possible, my stomach felt as if it was going to break through the back of my seat. It was a sensational feeling, and one that I could never quite get used to, especially when I became convinced that the force of the tow rope tightening, as the tug yanked us forward, would rip the front of the glider clean off.
The constant low rumble of engines and the enraging creaking from the joins in the framework, that had frequented my ears for hours, began to bore into my mind and echoed in my eardrums. I had become so used to the sound, from hours of training flights and landings, that it had almost given me a solace, provided me with an element of consistency, as I flew into a world that would be anything but.
The soft detachment of the tow rope was a blessed relief as the low drone of engines slowly faded off into the darkness, our engines, on their way home. I felt almost sorry for them, as they departed, they still had to fly onwards some more, bomb a target as a diversion, and then negotiate their way back over the plethora of coastal defences that we had only just put behind us.
My co-pilot took his hand off the release lever and looked over to me. He’d yanked it backwards so vigorously that I half expected it to come off in his hand, leaving us in a never-ending circle of being towed around the skies. He gave me a semi-smile, the kind that two school boys give each other, when they realise they have just got away with the biggest crime of the century.
I noticed his hand was quivering slightly, but his eyes were fired with determination and excitement. I gave him a flick of a smile. Giving him a glimmer of a smile in return, I knew that the quiver that was slowly taking hold of his hand wouldn’t have been out of fear, but probably due to the sheer amount of adrenaline that was surging through his body. I knew that because I was feeling exactly the same. As I continued to look at him, for half a second too long, my thoughts were interrupted by a voice.
"Good luck chaps," had sparked a crackled voice over the radio, before our communication line too, was released. The voice was confident, reassuring almost, and it filled me with a fantastic amount of gratefulness to the boys who had towed us into such a hostile environment. I was in awe of them, they had completed so many ops over enemy held territory, some of them already on their second tour, completely voluntarily. I only hoped that my bravery would extend to somewhere close to the amount they displayed.
The crackled voice had carried a message that did not need an acknowledgement and, even if it did, my full attention was now on my aircraft and my cargo, not the aircraft that was pulling away from us at a couple of hundred miles an hour.
All that I could hear now was the creaking as men shuffled around in their kit, itching to get out of the flying coffin they were in. No one seemed to dare to speak, as if their voices would put us all at risk and threaten the entire operation. As soon as the shuffling had started, it stopped almost immediately, and I felt the expectation on my shoulders grow as they all held their breath and said a prayer for me.
We lost altitude rapidly as we were released, but as I forced the plane into a snaking motion of left banking and right, we began to descend at a much more graceful pace. I was trying to manipulate one of the biggest and most well-known forces known to man, gravity. I needed to maintain a decent enough speed, to try and keep the amount of thrust we needed to stay airborne for as long as possible, but it was difficult, especially when I had such a heavy load on board.
The controls began squeaking as I used my strength to guide the men down to our landing site. I grunted with exertion as my co-pilot fought with the rudder to control our movements.
His head pivoted like an owl on drugs as he scanned the countryside below for some reference points. We would try our best to stay in the air until his eyes, trained as good as a hawk's, spotted something that told us where we were. His head movements and his eyes began to work together, his eye balls rolling around in their sockets, trying to broaden the horizons of his vision, but it seemed like he was struggling to make out anything that he recognised.
Momentarily, I helped him. The landscape below was in total darkness, as if an inky blanket had been pulled over the top, hiding everything useful from our gaze. I had half expected to see a big arrow, pointing us to our drop zone, as I had become so accustomed at staring at the reconnaissance photos that had done just that for us during training. The other side of my brain anticipated seeing gunfire making its way up to us, or to see firefights raging below as the various groups of pathfinders became the first men of the invasion force to be engaged. But I saw nothing, just a barren landscape of fields, obscured by the rolling, wispy clouds.
We were looking for a river. The moon glinted down on the land below, but I could see no distinguishing features that I recognised.
My hands gripped the central control a lot tighter as I turned my gaze from the front, a nervous disposition that I had never been quite able to shift. The controls felt warm and were layered with a thick coating of sweat from my hands. I had ditched my gloves just before we were released.
It wasn’t protocol or routine, just another of my dispositions, we all had them. I felt closer to the aircraft when I felt skin on the controls, I became an integral part in the construction of the craft.
I once voiced my preference to be able to fly naked if I had been allowed to, an opinion that my co-pilot, very aggressively, did not share.
I turned my eyes to the front again and gazed out of the paper-thin wind shield we had in front of us. A reminder of how basic our cockpit truly was. We couldn't afford to be flying with no engines and heavy electrical equipment. We had the basics.
A few instruments; altimeter, airspeed indicator, that sort of thing and most important of all, the brake lever. That was it. There was no throttle, no sort of emergency power that we could utilise if we found ourselves heading towards a ditch or a lake, there was absolutely nothing that we would be able to use if we found ourselves in trouble. We had no option of bailing out, no option of returning to base, we were now fully committed to this invasion.
I thought how much like a paper aeroplane we must have looked like, with our oversized wings and how the glider had been constructed out of one type of flimsy, cheap material. But we were even more like a paper plane in the way we majestically fell to the ground, completely at the mercy of the gentle breeze around us, with little say as to where we landed and when.
I only hoped that we didn't crumple on the ground like a piece of flimsy paper.
I felt like I’d become an expert in landing the silent craft but that was in daylight, there was no one shooting at us and, it was on flat terrain. I hated being in so much control, the way that the boys in the back were having to put their faith in me completely and yet, no matter how many training missions that we had completed, there was still such a large amount of uncertainty looming over me, an uncertainty over which I had little control.
I was amazed at how we'd made it through a barrage of searchlights as we'd passed over the French coast. They flickered teasingly across the belly of our aircraft then passed silently over the underside of the Halifax in front. I had been blinded for a moment as one stream had
caught on the rear gunner’s windshield, sending a shrieking burst of light directly into my unprotected eyes. They continued to taunt us, lighting up the cockpit every now and then, before leaving us, as if they hadn’t quite seen us.
We had no option but to fly on, unperturbed by the passing lights.
The ack ack guns however, jostled us about like a bully in the school yard, throwing the occupants of our craft around like ragdolls. It wasn’t so much the feeling of the anti-aircraft guns that was making me feel nervous, but the noise that resounded each time a volley was fired towards us, like the drumbeat as it grew progressively quicker the closer it came to execution time.
I forced that image from my mind as my neck clicked several times as it was pushed from side to side, backwards and forwards as somehow the guns missed their targets.
The singing of the men had gradually grown fainter as the repetitive booming of the anti-aircraft guns had grown dimmer. It was almost as if, the closer we had got to our target, the more their confidence had waned. I wondered for a moment if there had been any additional takers on the hip flask that had been passed around shortly after take-off, especially after our dalliance with the searchlights.
Now, we were just left, silently floating through the night sky, like Death seeking out his next victim, ready to wreak havoc on the world below.
I felt powerful up in the sky, like a god about to release punishment and destruction on his subjects with no mercy. I began to feel a rage burn up inside me, placing the fear in my mind towards the back. It spurred me on and I felt myself straining my eyes even more as the anger morphed into a brilliant determination, that I had never experienced before. I suddenly found myself locked in a silent competition with my co-pilot, I desperately wanted to be the one to spot our landing site first, even though it made no real difference, just as long as we found it.
The whoosh of the wind intensified as we lowered, it almost became unbearable as we excitably drifted. The rustling of the wind as it swooped over our wings, began to transform into what felt more like a scream, a primitive howl. I hoped earnestly that we were the only ones being subjected to this crescendo, and that no one below us would even hear a vague whisper of it.
Suddenly, as I continued my pointless competition, the inky blanket was lifted, as we descended below the clouds.
We were no longer blind. We could see.
2
From a young age, I’d always toyed with the idea of becoming a soldier, but truthfully, I’d never had the guts to do so. I loved the image of running around with a gun in my hands, taking the life of an enemy who’d murdered and raped, a hero ridding the world of the scum of the earth. The idea of helping to right the world of its wrongs and get attention and recognition in the form of medals and parades appealed to me. I was fit enough, there was no doubt about it, and I’d always had an adventurous streak that meant I spent large amounts of my time outside, days at a time, on occasion.
I loved it all, the adventure, the excitement, the admiration, but I hadn’t liked the idea of being shot at, or watching my friends die helplessly in battle.
I’d been in the local church choir; my mother had made me join in the hope I would gain a respect for the church instead of throwing hymn books around and passing wind in services. I had hated it, leading to endless teasing from the other local lads who were dragged along on a Sunday to hear our renditions of certain hymns and endless performances around Christmas time. If anything, my time in the choir had had the opposite effect upon me that my mother had desired, the numerous times I plodded into St Michael’s meant that each time I lost a little bit more of the awe and admiration I had for the church. There was just one event that had changed my perception of it, and it made me grateful for my position in the stalls of the choir.
Every year, from the year I’d first joined the choir, I’d been struck with pride, but also humbleness at the men who shuffled in on the day of remembrance. Each one was able to hold themselves well, but, on that one day of the year I watched as their shoulders slouched forwards slightly, as each of them kept their eyes fixed on the ground as if they were looking for a misplaced shilling.
They were people I’d grown up around, teachers, postmen and even clergymen. I knew them all by name, I could tell you where they lived and who they were married to.
I bid them a good day every time I saw them about, and they returned it with a broad smile. It was only that one day a year though, that I viewed them as soldiers. As heroes.
Their medals would always clink together and reverberate off the stone walls of the church, as they tried in vain to sit down silently by separating their medals with their fingers. I’d never quite understood their modesty. From my premium seat in the stalls, I could marvel at their medals and the wide variety of colours of their ribbons that adorned their chests, each one depicting a heroic or chivalrous act to my young imagination.
My father’s own medals never left the house, I only knew that they even existed because I was playing a rather immature game of hide and seek with my sister.
I found a stash containing letters, photographs and a Bible, stuffed nonchalantly into the smallest box possible. I couldn’t imagine why a man, let alone a war hero, would treat such items in this way. I couldn’t get my head around the fact that this man was not shouting about his exploits, not telling as many people as possible about what he had done, not even on Remembrance Day. I charged down the stairs, clutching the small trinket box that enclosed my new-found artefacts, before I set about exploring each one in detail on the kitchen table.
“Where on earth did you find that?!” My mother had shrieked upon entering the room.
“Charlie, get that box out of here now, and put it back where you got it from, before your Dad gets back!”
That was all that was ever said in my house about that after that incident, my Dad evidently moving the box to a new location shortly after.
He’d always walked with a limp for as long as I could remember, but I’d never known why, just walking round the park would render him breathless. He relied on his stick everywhere he went, never standing up straight but always leaning on it.
It had a tough job in keeping such a big man like my dad upright. We knew never to ask about it. After the incident with the trinket box, I knew that that was a chapter of my Dad’s life that he never wanted to return to, never wanting to reflect on it even. So, the lid of the trinket box, as well as the lid that stored the stories of how my Dad possessed an odd walking pattern, remained firmly on, never seeing the light of day in our household.
I never listened to those church services, I stared intently at their chests and marvelled at what each piece of highly polished metal represented.
I dreamed up stories of their heroics, rescuing friends in a hail of bullets and saving children from certain destruction. I wondered how many more medals would have been given out if half of the men who had died had in fact, survived the Great War. My young, immature, mind, found it difficult to envisage these middle-aged, balding and weary looking men, gallantly fighting and capable of heroics. I could not imagine what they had looked like in their youth, when they had been teenagers rather than forty-year-old men. I could not imagine that what they had seen would have given me nightmares for weeks, if not months, never mind what it did to their own dreams.
As I grew older, I began to understand, to appreciate what they had done and seen. So much so that even though I wanted to join up, I would never be able to truly compare myself to those men. I never thought I’d get the opportunity to display what little courage and bravery I had; I had worked as a butcher’s apprentice until a few years ago, and even the sight of a small amount of pig’s blood had been enough to send me into a never-ending cycle of nausea and light headedness.
Everyone else was signing up, so why shouldn’t I? That was my reasoning. I had more courage in a pack of friends, boys on their own are never confident in anything.
My mother didn’t have the exact same o
utlook, she had paced around the kitchen screaming.
“Your Dad! Look what it did to him! He’s never been the same and now you’re going!”
There was no talking her down, she’d made up her mind at the outbreak of war that I wasn’t to go, in her mind, sending her only son to war was grossly unfair, and should only be considered when everyone else had already signed up themselves. I should be the last one in the country to join in.
My father sat quietly, in a chair in the corner of the kitchen, ignoring my mother’s pleas to join in the rather one-sided debate.
He twizzled his stick in his hands, mulling things over, or reliving the nightmare. I couldn’t quite tell.
He spoke quietly, but assertively, my mother sat down as he began to talk.
“He must go. It’s his duty.”
His tear-filled eyes looked up and met my mother’s, whose tears had already begun racing to the ground.
The three of us sat there, frozen in a stunned silence in anticipation of what was to come.
“The boy more than likely won’t see action anyway,” he rasped reassuringly. I could tell he was lying, even if my mother didn’t.
The sniffles grew weaker as my mother retreated upstairs, taking her sodden hanky with her. The floorboards creaked gently as I heard her sit in the rocking chair that occupied the corner of their room.
“But, if you do, prepare yourself. It is hell on earth. Nothing will compare to it. You do not look out for your friends, you think you will, but you won’t. It’s all about survival.”
Goosebumps rippled their way over my skin, a chill sent straight up my spine, he had never spoken to me with such sincerity and foreboding in his voice before.
He withdrew a cigarette from his golden case, offered me one, which I declined, before he lit his. I felt uneasy, not because my Dad had uncharacteristically offered me one of his beloved cigarettes, but because of what he had said and how he had said it. He had never spoken to me in that way before, never with such seriousness and consequence as he had done in that moment. It made me question whether or not I had made the right decision by signing up, but it was too late to take it all back now, I didn’t think the army would take too kindly to their newest recruit saying that he had made a mistake.
