Gliders Over Normandy Series Box Set

by Thomas Wood

  I found it difficult to comprehend how Harry would be able to step out from his father’s shadow, to make something of his own life. But he needed to have that chance, and to do that, he needed to survive his own war first.

  His Dad was all he had now anyway, he had no brothers or sisters, no girlfriend that he had mentioned, not so much as a dog to add to the family. His mother had been killed in the Blitz. She was found where the cupboard under the stairs had once stood, under a mass of plaster, brick and shattered glass. His father had been out with the fire service when the bomb struck and had been one of the first on scene.

  The house was completely flattened, by one single bomb. The house would soon be rebuilt no doubt, and reoccupied by another family wanting to make it large in the Big Smoke. They would have no thought, no knowledge of the family that had been shattered by a single Luftwaffe bomb on that night and that shook me. I had no idea what that thought would do to Harry. I hoped he wasn’t thinking it just now.

  It made me even more amazed at him than I had ever been before. How a young boy, with such a tumultuous family life of incredible bravery and sickening tragedy, could carry on as if nothing had happened. And not just carry on as if nothing had happened but, head into enemy held territory, drop behind the front lines and not show any signs of anger or show any inkling of revenge in his mannerisms. What made him all the more remarkable was that he was heading into the hail of bombs and bullets armed only with syringes and bandages. Not even a revolver was occupying any part of his kit.

  I had an unwavering respect for Harry, I couldn’t quite get my head around him. I found it difficult to control my anger and desire for retribution on a daily basis, in fact I had wanted to head straight back to France the moment the ship had docked in Southampton in 1940.

  I knew why he was doing this though. He had accepted that some casualties in war were in fact, accidents. Some people couldn’t help but be killed, he was here to try and put some people’s lives back together again, instead of shattering them any further.

  Even if his mother, and eleven-week-old baby brother had been killed by the enemy.

  12

  I went to France in 1939. I went to war in 1940. And it changed me.

  I was only just a Staff Sergeant when I went out to France, and had only been a Sergeant for around three months before that. War seems to accelerate things in this regard, and the army were keen to promote those who had been in more testing combat situations than just skewering a bag of hay for bayonet practice.

  I had lost a great many of my men in 1940, and I knew that I was going to lose many tonight as well. But 1940 had felt different. It almost didn’t seem fair that we were retreating, running away almost, and yet, so many of my boys were being cut down by mortar rounds, machine gun bullets, shards of tree.

  It had changed me. It had made me angry. Not the kind of anger that goes to the pub looking for a brawl, nor the kind of anger that makes a recruit wash out the toilets with a toothbrush for not ironing his shirt correctly. It was worse than that. It was an anger that had not seen the light of day for the best part of four years. Four years simmering away on the stove, ready to bubble over and spit itself at the enemy.

  I had been promoted again shortly after returning home from France. I was now a Company Sergeant Major. Those boys, those dead boys had allowed me to get home in one piece. Those dead boys had promoted me. There is not one NCO in the whole world who can say that about their men and not come home changed, to not come home angry with the enemy.

  The guilt had eaten away at me for four years. It had nibbled away at the insignia on my arm, it had stabbed me straight in the heart every single time someone decided to use my full title. It was a crippling guilt, the feeling that no matter what I go on to achieve in my life now, it was because of these boys, the dead ones, that I was able to achieve it. And I had let their killers get away with it, I had run away to the nearest Navy destroyer I could find and threw myself on it. I had offered no exacting of revenge for my boys. That is something that no one could live with.

  Tonight, and for however long I would last afterwards, would be a shot at redemption. A chance to relieve my own conscience, by pulling myself from the No Man’s Land of a guilt-ridden life, and charge towards the enemy held territory of forgiveness.

  This assault would be my only chance at hacking away at half the guilt that engulfed my brain like a tumour. The other half of the tumour that clung to me was making sure Harry got home. I had let those other boys die, I had failed in every aspect of that, but with Harry, I had to try my best. If I did not manage to get him home, if I failed with him as I had done with all of the others, then my existence would become nothing. There was no reason for me to try and get home as well. My conscience would kill me, even if a German bullet couldn’t.

  I checked for the hundredth time that my rifle wasn’t loaded and so wouldn’t discharge a round when the sudden impact of landing jolted me and the weapon. I pulled the bolt back and slid my index finger around the breech now that it had opened up. All I could feel was the cold steel of the internal parts, no brass round was barrel-rolling around in there. Confident that it was clear, I quickly raised it to my eye, checking visually that it was clear, before replacing the bolt. I was more confident with the Lee Enfield rifle and so had opted to take this one into the inferno with me.

  It was the rifle that I had trained on when I had first joined up, the rifle that I had taken to France with me in 1940, and the one that I had operated for most of the years until this point. So, I decided it would be the one that would return to France with me.

  Besides, I preferred it to the Sten like the ones a lot of the others were carrying. The Sten was unreliable and jammed frequently, whenever a speck of dust or dirt found its way into the internals. Considering that we were about to jump into a world of disturbed dirt and flying debris, I would choose the Enfield every time. I liked its simplistic design, and that when it jammed it was normally a pretty quick fix. The Sten could go off just by making a solid contact with something, a trait which I desperately didn’t want when I was about to make a pretty solid contact with the French countryside.

  The Sten could fire automatically and, when it did, it threw itself all over the place like a hyperactive child with a bee flying around in his underpants. The Enfield would kick, enough to make you know that it had pushed a round out, but it wouldn’t buck. It was a much more solid, dependable weapon in my book.

  The voices began to permeate my mind again.

  “You’ve done this to us, Baker, you!” I winced as I watched Vidler spit his words at me for the thousandth time, and smiled as I watched Carter strike him on the jaw. The begging whines of Vidler’s voice as he began to profusely apologise for what he had done or said in the past, began to appear in my memories, like I had only just remembered it for the first time.

  “Please…I’m sorry, really I am…I’m just so desperate to get home. I have a wife now. Please…”

  It struck me as odd that a man like a Vidler, a crook and a thief, who would happily steal off his own mother, a man who seemed to dislike anyone who had a dosset of common decency, should have a wife back home. It was so strange a thought to me that, for a moment, I debated whether it was my mind playing tricks on me, conjuring up memories that had never actually existed, it wouldn’t have been the first time it had happened; like my memories of my seventh birthday that everyone else seemed to forget about. I knew it was true however, it was a memory that was so real, so convincing that it couldn’t have been made up and I suddenly felt very guilty that I hadn’t done more for Vidler, or done more for his wife.

  Harfield popped into my mind, his chest exploding as rounds entered, then very quickly, exited his body again. Knight appeared in my thoughts as the piece of wood stopped him from rasping out his dying pleas. Harry appeared, very much alive, very much scared.

  What was I trying to prove by involving myself in this? I supposed it was a kind of a justification, a defence
mechanism against myself, I was trying to save the boy, I wasn’t going there to kill and injure. I was going there to rescue.

  “Okay then boys, let’s get you in these things then.”

  The murmur of excited, slightly hushed voices, brought me back into NCO mode.

  “Come on then lads, on your feet! Hop to it!”

  13

  The men plonked themselves down on the ground next to the glider. The men of the other two gliders did exactly the same. The RAF ground crews were just going over their final checks, reassuringly yanking hard on the tow rope between us and our Albemarle. This was the invasion for them, this is as far as they’d go. And yet, I didn’t feel bitter towards them, I didn’t feel jealous of them. If anything, I felt sorry for them. They were safe, I’m sure they knew that, but the boys that I had got to know over the last few weeks had been itching for something else, something more than checking tow ropes and throwing parachutes to pilots.

  I knew that’s how I would feel.

  The boys carried out the last few checks on their equipment, tucking weapons into their harnesses and making sure all their straps weren’t going to come undone during the flight. A few slaps on the back and encouraging words rippled up and down the line, sparking up the enthusiasm once more that kept closing in on us.

  I waddled over to the front of the queue and stared at each of them in turn. Sparkling white teeth, set against the backdrop of black cam cream gleamed back at me, their eyes burning white hot with anticipation. I let out a small snort and smirked as I looked them up and down.

  “Okay then boys, this is it.” I felt a coldness sweep over me momentarily as I stepped towards the first man. Goosebumps pricked their way up my arms and my hairs stood to attention. The nervousness was gone at the moment that I gripped William Potter’s cam cream smothered hand. I snapped him up towards me, and the weight of him nearly pulled me down with him. I gave him a slap on the back and more or less pushed him towards the door of the Horsa, before I swiftly made my way onto Wheeler, who looked up at me like a naughty puppy caught with the week’s ration of sausages.

  I continued to force each one of them towards the Horsa, making sure they fell into the grips of one of the RAF loadies helping them up. I came to the end of the line and it was only me and the Captain left.

  “After you, Sir,” I said mockingly, an arm outstretched to pave the way for him.

  “Thank you, Sergeant-Major,” he returned, stepping towards the aircraft. He stopped just before the door, and it took him about half an hour to turn to face me.

  “Good luck, Norm,” he said for the second time in twenty-four hours, gripping my hand. “I hope it helps sort that out,” he pointed at my canvas-covered helmet, before chuckling and being thrown into the Horsa.

  I had been his confidante, his sounding board for training ideas and defeating the boredom. But he had been mine too, he knew I was troubled and it felt good to lay it all on him. It was better that a superior knew about my worries rather than a junior. If they saw what it could do to a man, not one of them would have loaded up into that Horsa. It’s the naivety that spurred most of them on.

  “Not a chance, Sir,” I called after him, to which he replied with a hearty explosion of good old, upper class chortling.

  As the door to the Horsa had slammed shut, the hushed noises of the outside barely penetrated the thin, plywood body of the glider. The outside world was now just that, outside. The silence that smothered us was deafening. It was as if the confidence that everyone had held in us, had been left outside the aircraft.

  Knees began bouncing and fingers began drumming. Wheeler had his eyes shut, either praying or trying earnestly not to cry. I imagined that under the cam cream, his face would be completely ashen. He did not look well at all.

  The noises from the airfield began to die away, as all men in the vicinity began to take a step back from the aircraft. The silence was punctuated only by the occasional shout from across the strip.

  I thought about the other gliders. I thought about Harry. His plane would most likely be on its way home now, having dropped its precious cargo somewhere over Northern France. I felt excited for him, this was the moment that he wanted to be in, to show everyone what he was made of. But at the same time, I was panicking. There was so much that could go wrong.

  The Germans had flooded a few nearby fields and although we didn’t know the depth, a few inches could drown any of them, they were carrying that much kit. He could be hit by anti-aircraft fire or machine gun fire on his way down, and there was nothing I would be able to do about it. That’s what I had to keep telling myself. There was nothing I could do. Nothing for Harry, for the Captain, or any of those dead boys who had been in France for four years now. There was nothing I could even do for myself.

  I had experienced these kind of deep, searching thoughts on the eve of battle before. But never like this. Then again, I had never been involved in a battle like this before. I tried to distract myself by guessing the thoughts of the boys in the glider with me. All of them stared, almost unblinking, at the walls opposite them. Not one of them looked at each other. None of them looked at me. And yet, it felt as though each one of them was holding my gaze intently, staring at me, looking at me to see what to do next. I could see the fear in all of their eyes, I could feel it. They all sat stock still, like they were already dead.

  I rubbed my eyes as if it was going to cleanse my head of the thoughts. I pulled my rifle from my harness and tucked it in between my legs, pointing upwards, and clamped it in between my knees. As it thumped on the hollow plywood, I shook my head in disbelief at what I was doing.

  Sending a wooden glider into a modern war seemed to me like sticking an expensive lighthouse in the middle of a desert. I hated the things. I was convinced it was going to get me killed but I would rather be dead than have one of my boys die in this thing.

  I couldn’t get the thought of my own death out of my head. That last contact with the tip of my boot may have been the last time that I touched British soil. Feeling incredibly nauseous, even before the flight had begun, I shot a quick prayer up to heaven that I would be spared and that I would get Harry out of there.

  The silence was torn apart by the spitting of an engine start up outside. It was quickly followed by a whole load more spluttering and droning as numbers two, three and four engines were started up on all three aircraft. The noise was deafening as all three bombers sat patiently idling, waiting for the go ahead.

  Our pilot turned to us with a cheery grin. “Everybody ready?” He hollered unnecessary loudly and thrust a thumb into the air. We replied with our own thumbs and a few half-hearted smiles grinned back at him.

  “Okay then, standby!” He screamed as he turned back to his front and began to get on with what he was actually meant to be doing.

  The revs picked up on the Albemarle and we jerked as we were pulled out of a slumber and began to taxi towards the runway.

  The faces around me reflected fear more now than ever before. I watched the pilot stamp around on the rudder pedals and felt ourselves line up straight, totally in line with the Albemarle in front. There was no doubt about it now, we were definitely on the runway.

  The engines seemed to attack us from all angles and returned to a quieter crescendo as they idled once more. Our pilots said something into their mouthpieces, before giving each other a confident nod and grin.

  The engines throbbed through my chest as I imagined the pilot forcing the throttle forward, as far as it would go. These engines were strong, they could lift almost twenty-five tonnes of its own weight, and another few tonnes carried by us. To be strong though, they had to make a lot of noise.

  The eruption of noise emanating from these engines was so strong that they would be heard by ears miles away. Those ears that would hear the engines rumbling overhead, like a long, continuous roll of thunder, would include my wife’s. Bending her ear towards the clamour, she would wander out of the back door, and offer a little prayer up for
me. I hoped everyone that heard the engines would be doing that tonight.

  That would be the last time that I thought of her now, I had to remove her from my conscious mind. She would not fill my attention again until I was safe. That was my job. I had to forget her to keep the others alive. I had to erase her from my immediate thoughts to keep Harry alive.

  14

  The Horsa groaned as the weight of the kit we were carrying seemed to put an unwelcome burden on its wooden supports. It creaked and moaned some more each and every time the pilot nudged his control column even half an inch.

  It sounded as if we had just rudely awoken it and asked it to do the most menial task known to man. I wondered momentarily if the noises it was making was having a similar effect on the rest of the men. I looked around for any giveaways as to what they were thinking.

  I felt like if the Horsa, an inanimate, non-thinking object felt as depressed and unwilling as it sounded, then why were we here?

  The constant drone of the Albemarle began to etch itself into my mind, and I began to convince myself that the incessant rumble would continue, even after we had been cast off and were left on our own. Every now and then, we would be pulled from one side or the other, or bounce up and down again as we were teased by the pockets of air that lay hidden in amongst the cloud.

  “We’re halfway, boys!” Screamed the pilot as he flashed another grin and the same thumb up at us. He didn’t wait around for a response this time, he flicked his head back round to his wooden controls once more. He was beginning to irritate me now and I could see he was beginning to wear thin on a few of the other lads.