by Thomas Wood
I had undergone several attempts at trying to make my Horsa landings much more comfortable, but after a while, I got used to them. I would be landing with some Royal Engineers of their Parachute Squadron, decent guys but the amount of kit that they required made the landings that much more uncomfortable, not to mention dangerous.
I was nervous to say the least, the weight of the glider at the best of times was heavy, but with all the added kit that we needed to take in the gliders, it must have doubled our cargo. I raised my concern with the pilots once who could do nothing but shake their head.
“They can only risk three gliders,” one of them had said, “and we’ve got to pack in everything that we’d need for the first twenty-four hours at least.” He was right, there was nothing we could do about it, the officers planning our attack knew what they were doing for the most part, and even if they didn’t, they could just pull rank on us anyway.
It was just that one word that I had a problem with, one that being in a glider in itself resonated.
“Risk.”
7
“’Ere, mate, what does your cap badge say?” He whipped it off excitedly, like a child ready to show off his newest and most impressive toy.
“In Arduis Fidelis,” he proclaimed, rather too loudly. He knew that we didn’t have a clue what it meant, but he left the silence hanging there anyway so that he had the pleasure of being asked.
“And in English that means?” I let one of the Privates take the unenviable task of letting this young man have his moment.
“Faithful in adversity,” he was proud of his motto, it seemed to resonate with him well, and he stood and looked at it for a moment or two longer, before plonking it back on his head, stroking it till it fit perfectly once more.
He was young, the proud medic, and something in him reminded me of someone, I couldn’t quite remember his name now. He had died in France back in 1940, but I struggled to picture his face. It must have been something about his demeanour.
He was quite weedy, not your average well-built medic. I imagined that he’d struggle to pull a sandbag to one side, let alone a fully-grown man in full kit. On his exterior he was brave and composed, but I could tell from his eyes that there was something beneath the façade, something that troubled him and threatened to undermine his outward appearance.
His name was Private Harry Walsh of the Field Ambulance section that was to accompany us on our operation. He seemed pretty pleased with himself and I had caught him on more than one occasion, affectionately stroking the jump wings that occupied his smock whenever we were about to complete a training jump. The medics had done several of them, the same jumps that we, the Parachute Regiment, had done; several from a barrage balloon, five from an aircraft in daytime and two by night. Anyone who had not made the grade was sent back to their unit.
These boys had made it, so they at least knew how to jump. Jumping was the easy bit for them, they could practice and practice that to the point where they could do it with their eyes shut, which was probably going to be a huge benefit to them. A combat medic however, was something completely different. There was only so much training that you could do before you hit a plateau. After that, you’d need to see it first hand, to be there when someone’s life hung in the balance, pleading with you to help them, or worse, just lying there in silence.
But the majority of these boys had not got that far, they had told me themselves. I had suppressed the disappointment that I could sense spreading across my face when they told me, I had probably been more qualified to jump as a medic than they were. I looked around at their worried, anxious faces as they saw my confidence in them plummet.
They all wore their battle dress uniform, and it looked almost identical to my own. Parachute wings worn on the top of the right arms and the winged horse Pegasus just underneath it. There was one, slight, but incredibly important difference between our uniforms. The letters “R.A.M.C” emblazoned right at the top of the arm, almost touching the shoulder, separated their apparent medical expertise with my own.
I decided that I would need to look after these boys as if they were my own, my decision seemingly justified when I found out how they prepared themselves for war. They were all pacifists, conscientious objectors. Not one of them would carry a weapon into war.
“It don’t matter anyway,” one of them had sparked up, cockily, “under the Geneva Convention thingy we ain’t really allowed to use them anyway!”
Although it was true, the medics that I had served with before all carried a pistol at the very least, even if it was for self-defence, the vast majority of them having used them at some point. These lunatics were preparing to meet the enemy, the enemy who did not distinguish between soldier and civilian, man or woman, adult or child even, without so much as a hunting knife. The pocket that would house their fighting knife in any normal circumstance, I was jovially informed, was stuffed full with a number of extra field dressings.
I couldn’t believe my ears. These were the men who were meant to try and keep my lads alive, and yet they held absolutely no regard for their own lives it seemed.
Harry had looked troubled at my discontent, almost like he was reconsidering why he was unarmed. They all gave their excuses, some of them were God, others were on a stance of human morality, none of which made sense to a career soldier like me.
“Why do you refuse to have any kind of weapon, Walsh?” I didn’t enjoy this kind of conversation, but I had to at least try to understand what motivated these young men in refusing to go into combat, without a weapon.
“It seems to me like you’ll endanger the life of all my men if you won’t even open fire in self-defence.”
He was quiet for a moment, letting a squad march past us in perfect formation before making any attempt to formulate an answer.
“Do you ever go to church, Sergeant-Major?” He got me there. I don’t think I had been inside of a church since my own wedding day. I told myself that it was because it was the best day of my life and I didn’t want to ruin my perception of the church by marring it with my attendance.
“Occasionally.”
“Do you know the ten commandments?” His voice was weak and crackled, it can’t have broken all that long ago and it sounded like he was still trying to work out how to use it.
“Do you know the sixth commandment?” The little blighter was trying to catch me out, he knew that I didn’t have a clue, but I decided to take a punt.
“Thou shall not commit murder,” it was easy enough to guess. Nevertheless, he seemed pleased with my apparent knowledge, or at least, my faint interest.
We took a left towards his barracks, and his tone soon changed from one of almost trying to patronise me, to one of complete seriousness. He stopped.
“I cannot take another man’s life,” he paused, and the gap that hung there made me feel intensely uncomfortable. “I could not live with myself if I did…and I don’t think my God would either.” He held my gaze for a moment and it was then that I knew that the belief that seemed so flippant to his other comrades, meant absolutely everything to him. He also had a point to prove.
I walked with him for a moment longer in silence, before he piped up again.
“You know my Dad has got the VC?”
“No…no, I didn’t.” That’s what was hiding behind the façade, that’s the point that he had to prove. His Dad had received the highest military honour that anyone could receive from this country, and here was his son; weedy, weak, vulnerable, about to drop from the sky with no weapons whatsoever, knowing that whatever he would do, it would be overshadowed and compared to whatever his Dad had managed to do.
I peeled off from him as he made his way into his barracks and headed for the NCO mess. That was the moment that I could pinpoint that I was going to look after this lad in particular, not because his Dad was the recipient of the highest gallantry award, but because that weakness, that distraction, could quite easily get him killed.
8
; I was to be flown into our drop zone by a flimsy, wooden glider, stuffed to the rafters with all the kit and supplies that were deemed too heavy, or too dangerous, to be dropped in with the parachute boys. It didn’t fill me with the slightest bit of confidence that all that sat between a round of high explosive and a box stuffed with Bangalore torpedo rounds, was a very thin piece of plywood.
I would have to put my trust in a couple of youngsters, who had flown into combat in a glider the exact same amount as I had. Zero.
They were good though, they knew exactly what they had to do and precisely what was expected of them. The pilots that were due to take us in to our target had been specifically handpicked for the objective, because we had to land inside a very particular perimeter. If we overshot, we would be in an enemy minefield. If we landed too soon, we would be subjected to several minutes of enfilade fire, courtesy of our German hosts. It was not exactly something that I wanted to place in someone else’s hands.
I had kept an eye out for my two pilots in particular, but wanted to make sure I staked out who I could have had as my guardian instead of the two I was assigned. One of the others in particular, had kept my attention for some time. He was an intelligent young man, but his fellow pilot who he was crewed with seemed like an elderly brother figure to him, looking to him when making a joke that was quite possibly too close to the bone.
His skin was impossibly smooth, there wasn’t a single blemish upon the surface of his face, making the red pigment in his cheeks seem to burn an intense scarlet, brighter still when he looked to his older brother and realising many a mistake. I liked him, and his pilot, they seemed to have just the right balance, a streak of fun and adventure running through both of them, combatted only by a deadly serious side when conversation would move onto the mission. If it were up to me, I would have had Staff Sergeant Manning and Sergeant Chambers as my crew taking me to France.
The glider pilots were an elusive and mysterious bunch. They would turn up on the base for a day or two at a time, take some of us for a training flight, before disappearing again for another week or so. Chambers would always be the first face you saw whenever they reappeared on base. He looked shifty and mischievous and his pockets always seemed stuffed full to the brim with goodies.
How he managed to lay his hands on some of the items that he did was beyond me, and he must have made a fortune flogging some of the American goods that he had tucked away. He was the go to man, not the NAAFI, if you had a sudden craving for chocolate, his breast pocket always had at least one bar poking out of it, and he had been known to sell half eaten bars to the really desperate man.
His speciality though, was alcohol. He never seemed to drink it when out in the town, but he was always the man to go to if you wanted some for yourself. He had gifted me a bottle of brandy that I hadn’t yet broken into, instead it was tucked away at the bottom of my kitbag, almost too scared to come out. I was convinced that it was stolen, there was no way a bottle of the stuff could be bought on a Staff Sergeant’s salary. It was an accusation that Chambers strongly rebuffed, claiming he had merely “acquired” it from an overly friendly American one night.
Manning seemed to stick to him like glue and the disapproving, elderly brother look, was seemingly permanently etched across his face. Manning was older than Chambers, not by much, eighteen months, two years at the most, but he acted in a much more mature manner than his counterpart. He flashed his wedding ring around as if it bought him some extra privileges on the base, like he was entitled to more than just being confined to barracks.
His wife lived nearby, expecting a baby apparently. He gave off the wrong impression to me and my fellow NCOs, but I couldn’t help but feel sorry for him for becoming a father so close to an invasion attempt. It was unlikely that he would ever get to see his child grow up. Maybe that’s why he seemed to act so uptight all the time.
As we all spoke, I stared at the identification flashes that adorned their arms. Like Walsh’s, it was very similar to my own. Manning and Chambers looked identical, they both wore three chevrons stitched into their arms, with a small crown resting in the valley that it had created on Manning’s. Above that was their airborne recognition flash, the winged horse Pegasus again, but they were topped with yet another different cloth title sewn in. ‘Glider Pilot Regt.’ This is what intrigued me the most. I knew that these boys must have excelled at every point of their training, they had to earn the right to wear that title on their sleeve. They had all proudly told me that they first had to learn how to fly a plane, equipped with engine and all, before learning how to land without one. Then they had moved onto their rifleman training. One or two bobbed and a few muttered agreements at Manning’s claim that they could do just about any job in the army now, except maybe for being a medic.
They were probably right, they were intelligent boys, they could probably lead a company into battle and still bring most of them out unscathed. They were masters of their craft, masters of the air and they felt very sure that they would be masters over the enemy before too long. Meeting them injected an inkling of confidence in me, a slight ember of hope that maybe I will survive the crashing phase and be able to fulfil my duties.
It was only a slight hope though.
“Good luck, Norm!” Chambers screeched as I turned on my heel and strutted back over to my lads. I hadn’t said he could call me Norm, he was just one of those people who tested others, and if he got away with it, he would keep on doing it. I smirked to myself as I walked adjacent to the hangars, where the Stirlings were being dusted clean, or whatever they did to make sure they were ready to pull an aircraft into battle.
The Stirling would drag us in, there would be three of us preparing to land on the drop zone. The Stirling’s crew would have to endure the ack-ack fire from the battery, before continuing on for a few miles to bomb a nearby town as a diversion. The likelihood of these crews actually surviving and being able to land safe and sound in Britain was quite small. Deep down, they knew it.
I admired them, the bomber boys, they went to war in a slow, un-manoeuvrable, ill-equipped tin can. They were susceptible to fighters, ack-ack, probably even the odd rock that old Hilda launched up at them in the middle of the night. And yet, they managed to maintain a positive outlook in everything they did. You never saw them sitting in a corner feeling sorry for themselves. They were always up to something, sometimes it was operational, more often than not it was making a nuisance of themselves.
There were claims that they stole from local farmers quite frequently. And I’m not talking about apples and chickens. They stole cows, horses, farmer’s wives, quite literally it seemed, anything they could lay their hands on.
But they lived in fear of their lives, and that’s the thing about fear, it manifests itself in the strangest ways possible. For these boys, it was bravado, mischief.
It was getting increasingly closer to the time. I needed to head back quickly now. There was still a lot to be cracking on with. In fact, it would probably take me over an hour to kit up. I picked up my pace and trotted towards my quarters. There was one last letter that I needed to write before I left.
9
I could almost make out the scratching nibs around the whole of the base, as I scribbled down the last of my letter. I stuffed it in the envelope, not wanting to think about the next time it might be opened, and scribbled ‘Helen’ onto it, with my indecipherable scrawl that I called my best handwriting. I hoped she could read it, it was important to me that she understood everything in the letter.
Tapping it on my knuckle, I went to hand it in, never to be seen by another human soul, I hoped. But, if it was, I hoped that my words would bring my family a dose of encouragement and happiness when they read the contents.
That was that. I would leave all that behind now. I was a Company Sergeant Major, and now it was time that I acted like one.
I strutted around for a few moments more, talking to one of the Lieutenants about the final few preparations that had to be
made. It was pointless conversation, just filling the silence, we both knew exactly what was expected of both our roles.
“Thank you, Norman,” he said to me rather emotionally, “I appreciate everything that you have done for me and the men.” He was tall, some might even say he was handsome, with sharp cheekbones and a smile that a Hollywood actor would have been proud of. He was younger than me, and this would be his first time in combat. I had tried to prepare him for what was to come by having almost daily sessions with him, talking him through the different stages of planning an attack and trying to explain to him what it felt like to lose a man.
As I gripped his hand in a firm shake, I couldn’t help but consider him a friend, rather than a superior. I could tell that he felt exactly the same way. He knew he was going to die tonight, and I knew that I would take his death just as personally as all of those who fell.
I thought of Arthur Knight. I could see his eyes once again as he gave in to the pain and anguish that was engulfing him. I could hear his voice repeatedly as he tried to tell me to leave, a great shard of wood impairing him and his speech.
The tears were not something that I had remembered before and I wondered if it was my own mind that was now constructing them. My emotions and feelings on the matter being played out on little Knight’s nightmare. They started off small, but grew as each second passed, before they hit the ground, diluting the concentrated scarlet that was beginning to stain the leaves beneath him.
I looked over the rest of his body, checking him over for any other holes that I could plug in an attempt to keep him alive for a moment longer. Around the left pocket of his trousers, the khaki coloured cotton was stained a darker shade than the rest. I placed my hand on it and inspected it. My hand wasn’t covered in a layer of blood like I had half expected, half hoped. The lad had wet himself.
