Ham and Jam. Overlord

Transcription

1 Ham and Jam Major John Howard, D Company, 2 nd Battalion Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry ("Ox and Bucks"), during his short leave at home, folded his undress uniform carefully and placed it in a drawer of the wardrobe in the bedroom. From now on, his only uniform would have been the battledress. At the end of his leave, before leaving home to get his Company, he picked up a shoe of his son Terry from the floor and stuck it in his pocket for lucky charm. Then he told his wife Joy: "When you ll know that the invasion has begun, you can stop worrying because at that time I will have finished my job." Colonel Hans von Luck, commander of 125 th Panzer Grenadier Regiment of 21 st Division based at Ranville in Normandy, was a veteran. He had fought in Poland, France, in the eastern front and in Africa under Rommel. Von Luck was an old-fashioned and chivalrous commander. During his service in Africa( where he commanded a reconnaissance battalion), in his sector, at five o clock in the afternoon the operations stopped, the British had tea, the German coffee. One day a soldier of his seized a truck full of food. Von Luck looked at his watch and ordered to give back the truck to the British: it had been captured at six o'clock p.m., an hour after the truce. The pacts- tacit or evident- had to be respected, even if, during a raid (evidently before five o'clock in the afternoon), the British had seized von Luck s favorite motorcycle. Von Luck was expecting the invasion. He had figured it in his mind a lot of times since he was in France. He was prepared. His men were prepared. He knew what to do. But only Hitler himself could order the division to move. And von Luck did not know that. Thérèse and Georges Gondrée were the owners of the small café close to the bridge of the Caen Canal. Thérèse was of Alsatian origin, and knew German; because of his past service at the Lloyd Bank of Paris, Georges knew English. Both worked for the French Resistance. Thérèse listened to the conversations of the German non-commissioned officers and soldiers and referred them to her husband; Georges collected the information and sent them, through his contacts, to London. In early June, British intelligence received his communication: it indicated the exact location of the mechanism to make detonate the mines positioned under the arches of the bridge of the Caen Canal. Private Vern Bonck was twenty-two years old. Born and raised in Poland, he had been recruited into the Wehrmacht and sent to France. A lot of his countrymen had preceded him, others would have followed him. Being considered second choice troops had become a kind of lottery: few risks, relatively quiet life, good wine, girls. That evening, Bonck, after having come off his guard duty at the Caen Canal bridge, did not go to sleep, but along with a Polish comrade, decided to take service in the brothel of the nearby town of Bénouville. When Bonk and his comrade crossed the entrance of the brothel, it was sometime after midnight. From five minutes was Tuesday, June 6 th. June 6 th, Overlord Since time the Allies were thinking of opening a second front in Europe. Stalin asked it, the situation on the ground required it. The problem was: where, how, when? With what forces? Which door entering Germany from? From the Balkans (Churchill) or from France

2 (Marshall)? In April 1942, Marshall himself had flown to London to propose the opening of a second front in France for the following year. But at that time Churchill had other troubles. In North Africa Rommel seemed unstoppable and Suez concretely threatened. The loss of the channel would have cut off Britain from her empire and have allowed the Germans to seize the oil resources of the area. With Marshall s disappointment, Churchill was able to convince Roosevelt to give priority to the Mediterranean. But after El Alamein, Torch and Husky, the issue of opening a second front in Europe could no longer be postponed. Consistent with his own idea, Churchill insisted on Italy and on the Balkans; with equal energy, Marshall suggested France. And this time Marshall s opinion won. The military analysts of Cossac (Chief Of Staff, Supreme Allied Command) under British General Frederick E. Morgan got to work. Theirs was a not easy job. Many conditions were necessary: one port at least, the air cover, a relatively solid ground, favorable tides, landing craft in adequate numbers. In the choose of the landing zone, Cossac proceeded by exclusion: Brest in Brittany was too far; although near, Calais was too predictable and too risky because of its strong defenses. Normandy remained. And in Normandy, between the Cotentin Peninsula in the west and the estuary of the Orne River in the east, the place of landing was located. The unsuccessful Allied raid at Dieppe (1942) had revealed the impossibility - or at least, the great difficulty- to seize a well protected harbor by an attack from the sea. But the Allies needed a safe harbor to land, after the first assault wave, troops and supplies. Thus two artificial harbors, codenamed Mulberries, were arranged. They would have been assembled piece by piece close to the Normandy coast to receive, waiting for the seizure of the natural harbor of Cherbourg, supplies and men in the days following the strengthening of the bridgeheads. A sunken ships line arranged stern to bow (codename Gooseberry, ) would also have given shelter to smaller vessels, allowing them to upload and download without running big risks. To the first stage of the operation Overlord(the landing, Operation Neptune) were assigned five divisions (originally three had been planned): two American (Utah Beach and Omaha Beach), a Canadian (Juno Beach) and two British (Gold Beach, Sword Beach). Air and support and naval support were essential. The skies were absolute dominance of the allied planes: this superiority was to be used to its full potential. Bridges and gliders. During the planning stage, however, the analysts realized that the flanks of future bridgeheads were exposed. And vulnerable. The beach codenamed "Sword", in particular, was the most exposed. So, the military analysts of Cossac, solicited" by a worried general Montgomery, took remedial measures strengthening the Western side of the deployment with two divisions of paratroopers (81 st and 101 st airborne, American) and the Eastern one with a British division (the Sixth Airborne division). According to the plan, the paratroopers should have to drop a few hours before the landings, regroup, achieve the assigned objectives, occupy and hold the lines of communication to and from the beaches, create confusion behind the German lines and give support to the landing troops. But, once on the ground, the paratroopers were to be supplied rapidly. It was unthinkable, in fact, they were able to face the German armored units or to hold their positions counting on lightly weaponry only. Therefore, artillery and tanks were needed. And since artillery and tanks can not - usually- parachuted, but, once landed, they must get the frontline by road or by rail, the control of transport routes became essential. In the Sword area, the bridges over the Caen Canal and River Orne -close respectively to the towns of Bénouville and Ranville- were the key positions. If those bridges had

3 remained in German hands, the paratroopers of the Sixth Division, without any possibility of receiving supplies, would be isolated and easily overwhelmed. The bulk of the German forces, in fact, was concentrated in the north and east of the River Seine in anticipation of an Allied landing in the Pas de Calais area. Once realized that the landing in Normandy was the main landing and once neutralized the paratroopers, the Germans would have been able to take advantage of the bridges over the river Orne to counterattack the British at Sword and, after Sword, to extend their counterattack to the remaining beaches. It could not happen, it should not happen. So, those bridges had to be occupied by the Allies and held until the completion of the launches and the complete consolidation of the bridgeheads beyond the shores. The raid had to be quick and decisive; surprise and speed of execution were essential. The paratroopers could not guarantee them. It was a matter of time, not of individual bravery. Even if assuming a perfect air-dropping, how much time would the paratroopers need to regroup, collect the equipment, organize and take action? The airborne operations were awfully risky. After the bloody conquest of Crete (1941), Hitler, for example, had forbidden employing paratroopers in separate operations. But if the paratroopers could not be employed, it was possible to use the assault gliders. The British Horsa gliders could lead thirty men each directly to the target. But would the pilots be able to land unscathed? And at night, in addition? Would the driving planes unhook the towing ropes at the right time? And how to forget the disaster of Operation Fustian (Sicily, 1943)? Questions and doubts did not lack, then. They could not lack. But there were also different examples. Fustian had proved a failure, but the seizure of the fort of Eben-Emael by the Germans in 1940 had been a complete success. And what about the seizure of the bridge over the Corinth Canal in Greece? Both operations had been carried out by crack troops embarked on gliders. Was the bridge over the Caen Canal different compared to the Corinth Canal? If the Germans had been successful, why should the Allies fail? It was decided, therefore, to take the risk, employing the assault gliders to size the bridges. British general Richard "Windy" Gale, commander of the Sixth Airborne Division, planned the action and chose the men. His choice fell on the D Company, Second Battalion Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry (Ox and Bucks). The Major John Howard s Company. "When you ll know that the invasion has begun, you can stop worrying because at that time I will have finished my job." "Hold until relieved" The "job" began on June 5 th in the airport of Tarrant Rushton, Dorset. At p.m., six Halifax bombers took off, tugging six Horsa gliders. On board of the gliders there were 180 men: the Company D, two platoons of Company B, thirty engineers and a doctor, Captain John Vaughan. And, of course, the pilots (two for each glider). Gliders number 1,2 and 3 formed the first group: their goal was the Caen Canal and its bridge; gliders 4, 5 and 6 formed the second group heading the Orne bridge. The two groups were flying one parallel to the other. Major John Howard commanded the whole operation. His orders were strict: taking the bridges with a quick coup, organizing the defense, holding the position until he was relieved. "Hold until relieved" General Brigadier Nigel Poett had written in his own orders. And he had added: taking the bridges should not be a big problem. As long as the gliders land exactly in the assigned areas. On your side you will have the surprise; you will face second-class troops, for the most part inexperienced and less motivated. You could do it, you should do it. The real problems will begin with the German counterattack. "Hold until relieved." On board the glider number 1, Howard was thinking about the words of his superior. "Hold until relieved." Would they take the bridges intact? Would

4 they hold the position until the arrive of reinforcements? How far away from the bridges would the gliders land? There would have been flak fire? Had the Germans had time to plant the poles (the famous and notorious "Rommel's asparagus") in the landing zone? Howard pushed away these thoughts. Strangely he did not suffer airsickness, as it had happened in all previous exercises. Around him, his men, those men of whom he was proud, their faces blackened by carbon, the Stens slung across their shoulder, were singing to exorcise their tension. They had trained hard. Months of fierce training exercises with live ammunition had hardened them, enabling them to make decisions in a split second. During the exercises they had attacked those damned bridges, ten, twenty, thirty times, by day and by night, with the full moon and in the full darkness, yelling "Baker! Baker! Baker! or Able! Able! Able! to identify themselves and to avoid friendly fire. But the maneuvers are one thing, fighting another thing. And Howard knew it. All too well. Seven minutes after midnight. At the controls of "Lady Irene", the glider number one, Staff Sergeant Jim Wallwork saw the silvery glare of the undertow shining below him. Around the same time, Brigadier Nigel Poett was approaching, aboard an Albemarle, the drop zone. Behind him, five other Albemarle bombers were transporting the pathfinders, the men who had the task of illuminating the Drop Zone for the paratroopers of the Fifth Brigade, and in particular for the men of Colonel Richard Geoffrey Pine-Coffin s Seventh Battalion, in charge of relieving Howard. Colonel von Luck heard the rumble of the Albemarle bombers. He had trained ears and realized they were flying at low altitude. But he did not think it was an aerial attack: probably those planes were carrying a load of weapons and supplies for the men of the French Resistance, he said to himself. He sent out some patrols. In the brothel in Bénouville, private Bonk and his comrade ordered a bottle of red wine and withdrew with two girls. Major Hans Schmidt, responsible for the defense of the bridges over the Caen Canal and River Orne, was in Ranville along with his lover; the garrisons were not on high alert; the explosives were not in the powder chambers: Schmidt, fearing accidents or surprise attacks by the Resistance men, had ordered to put the mines in a safe place. Thérèse and Georges Gondrée were in bed. Arrived in sight of the coast, the tow ropes were dropped. The Halifax bombers flew away in the direction of Caen. There was an initial chop, then only silence: the Horsa gliders and Major Howard s men were alone. It was seven minutes after midnight. The invasion had begun. "Let's go" Lieutenant Herbert "Den" Brotheridge, platoon commander, opened, with some effort, the hatch of the glider number 1. Brotheridge was a first-rate athlete, good soccer player, with a likely future among the professionals. His wife Margaret was pregnant: the birth was a question of days, maybe of hours. The sky was covered with clouds. Lady Irene was flying at a speed of about two hundred and fifty kilometers an hour. During exhausting exercises, Wallwork and his co-pilot John Ainsworth had tried and tried again the maneuver: check the speed, turn; check the speed, turn again. And now, in the sky over Caen, Ainsworth, using a stopwatch, was dictating the timing (and the co-pilots of other gliders were doing the same thing): he was counting the seconds loudly, yelling at Wallwork when to turn.

5 Like giant birds of prey, silent and invisible, spaced a minute each other, the Horsa gliders were flying down in the darkness towards the prey: two thousand meters: turn; a thousand meters: turn; fifteen hundred meters: turn. In the darkness, Wallwork was seeing nothing and was confident in the accuracy of the calculations of his co-pilot. Then the moon rose for a moment from the clouds and Wallwork was finally able to identify, in the distance, the unmistakable silhouette of the bridge and the landing zone. The Channel of Caen was appearing like a thin silver ribbon. "OK," he said to himself, "Let's go." Lady Irene landed exactly where, according to the Ainsworth s calculations, she had to land. Moving at a speed of one hundred and sixty kilometers an hour. Too many for a landing area long about a quarter mile. There were no "Rommel s asparagus." Wallwork ordered then Ainsworth to operating the glider s parachute. He did not like this maneuver, (sometimes the parachute did not open), but there was nothing else to do to avoid crashing into the embankment of the road at the end of those four hundred, endless, meters. The parachute swelled; the Horsa s nose tilted down sharply, the wheels went to pieces, the glider bounced once, hit the ground again and bounced again until, without the parachute, fell at one hundred km an hour over the barbed wire entanglements, stopping at about forty meters from the bridge. Wallwork and Ainsworth did not have time to enjoy "the greatest feat of flying of the second world war as Air Marshall sir Trafford Liegh-Mallory would have said afterwards: they were thrown out of the cockpit, fell on the ground and remained senseless. Another honor was ought to them: they were the first Allied soldiers to set foot (and some other body parts, actually) in French soil on D-day. The two German sentries on the bridge heard the noise of the crash, but they did not pay much attention to it. There had been and there was an intense air activity in that zone. Another scrap of an another plane shot down, they thought. Inside Lady Irene there was silence. The men were stunned. Major Howard had beaten his head against the top of the fuselage and the helmet had been pulled down over his eyes. He was seeing nothing. It was sixteen minutes past midnight. "What are we waiting, sir?" Ten seconds after the impact- but for many those seconds seemed minutes- the Ox and Bucks came out, weapons in hand, from Lady Irene - some through the front door, some from the back- and raced towards their goals. They knew what to do, they had tried and tried it again and again, they could not get wrong. Meanwhile, in rapid succession, the gliders number 2 and 3 landed close to Lady Irene. On impact, a man of the number 3 was killed and Lt. David Wood was thrown out from the number 2, personal weapons and ammunition included. Once recovered, she gathered his men and led them towards the trenches located on the eastern side of the road. Even Lieutenant "Sandy" Smith was catapulted out from the glider number 3. He fell in the mud (the glider had landed on the edge of a pond) and lost his Sten. A corporal of his platoon approached him and calmly said, "What are we waiting, sir?" Smith immediately stood up, grabbed one Sten and ran along with his men towards the bridge. At about the same time, Brigadier General Nigel Poett landed in a dip situated about a couple of kilometers from the bridges. Nobody had landed close to him: not a paratrooper, not the radio operator to whom Howard would have to communicate, using the code words Ham and Jam, the news of the seizure of the bridges. Brigadier Poett was alone. He looked around, hoping to see the bell tower of Ranville, his guiding star. But the tower was not in sight. Then he heard some shots. He headed,through a cornfield, towards them. A little further on, he met a scattered soldier and along with him moved forward.

6 Running, Brotheridge and his platoon entered the bridge, their Stens at their waist, ready to fire. The young German sentry - little more than a kid- saw twenty-two devils in battledress, with blackened faces and guns blazing, running against himself. The part of the hero was not for him. Instead of shooting, he ran towards the opposite end of the bridge, shouting: "Paratroopers!" The second sentry heard his scream, and had time to fire a signal flare before being hit by a burst of gunfire (these were the shots heard by Poett). The flare and a loud explosion ( Brotheridge s men had blown up the bunker at the eastern entrance of the bridge), alarmed the garrison. Some Germans got the trenches and reacted immediately, opening fire with light machine guns and with their Schmeisser. Brotheridge was hit by a bullet and fell down. He died a few minutes later without regaining consciousness. Two weeks later, his wife Margaret gave birth to a girl. There was no organized resistance: the Germans had been caught completely by surprise. Trenches and bunkers on the banks of the Canal were "cleaned" with grenades: the bridge was captured in less than ten minutes. There were additional costs, however. Lt. David Wood was wounded in the left leg; Lieutenant "Sandy" Smith was hit by a shrapnel and received a serious wound in a wrist. In addition he had a sore knee. Both needed Dr. Vaughan s care. Dr. Vaughan sat immediately behind the pilots in the glider number 3. As the glider landed, he was thrown out of the cockpit. He remained unconscious for fifteen minutes. When he stood up, he seemed a bit dazed, so dazed to head twice towards the German positions. Come fully to his senses, Dr. Vaughan began to take care of the wounded. And he did not miss the direction any more. Even Wallwork and Ainsworth came to their senses. The first had the face completely covered with blood because of the cuts received when he was thrown out from Lady Irene; the latter was blocked under the glider. Wallwork freed his co-pilot and entrusted him to a medic. Then he began to unload the glider and to bring ammunition to the frontline. In the meanwhile the engineers were exploring the bridge arches in search of explosive devices: they found the powder chambers empty. It was a relief for Howard and a stroke of luck for the Allies. In the brothel of Bénouville, Vern Bonk and his Polish comrade heard the first shots. They grabbed their weapons, rushed out and ran towards the Caen Canal bridge. At some point they stopped to catch their breath. What to do? To continue? To come back? Their decision was quick: they unloaded their Schmeisser firing in the air and came back to Bénouville, affirming they had withdrawn for lack of ammunition, after having engaged the enemy on the Canal bridge. Even Georges Gondrée heard the shots and wanted to know what was happening close to his home. Crawling on the floor, he reached a window. He opened with great caution the shutters and started to lean out of the window. At that precise moment a burst of Sten struck the shutters just above his head. Georges Gondrée came back, joined his wife and his daughters, and along with them went down into the cellar. Fox! Fox! Fox! Twenty minutes after midnight, in the Ranville sector, the glider number 6 landed about three hundred meters from the bridge over the River Orne; one minute later, the number 5 landed three hundred meters back. The Horsa number 4 carrying Captain Brian Friday, second in command, and Lieutenant Tony Hooper, platoon leader, missed the zone and landed about twenty kilometers away near a bridge over the River Dives. But Howard had trained his men to act independently, so that they could deal with any difficulty. Each platoon had a specific task, but the men knew every stage of the operation and, during training, they had rehearsed every phase more than once.

7 Lt. Dennis Fox quickly gathered his men and, without waiting for orders or for Captain Friday, ran toward the bridge. A German machine gun opened fire and the men got on the ground. Sergeant Charles "Wagger" Thornton stepped forward and neutralized it with a single mortar shot. Immediately after the explosion, all men, screaming, sprung forward and rapidly reached the opposite end of the bridge. They met no further resistance. Fox deployed his men in a waiting position. He had just finished doing so, when about twenty men entered the bridge from the opposite side screaming "Easy! Easy! Easy! ". It was the lieutenant Todd Sweeney s platoon. From opposite bridge s end came the reply: "Fox! Fox! Fox! ". Sweeney and his men crossed the bridge without firing a single shot. Twenty-six minutes after midnight, Corporal Ted Tappenden, Howard's radio operator, received the long-awaited communication: the bridge over the River Orne at Ranville had been captured intact. Ham and Jam. Ten minutes had gone by from the landing of the first Horsa gliders. At 0.50 a.m. the paratroopers of the Fifth Brigade began to take land in the area of the river Dives and east of the bridges seized by the Ox and Bucks. After the seizure of the bridges, Major Howard organized the defense. Aware that he was protected on the eastern side by the paratroopers, he strengthened the western sector, displacing there the most of his platoons and deploying the engineers as a reserve force. Finished giving the orders, Howard began to blow his whistle in Morse code: three dots, one dash; three dots, one dash (it was the V of Victory). In the darkness, the paratroopers needed to know where to head: with his whistle Howard was trying to give them a point of reference. But much time, a long time, would be necessary to colonel Pine-Coffin for gathering his men and materiel. And surely the Germans would have counterattacked. In direction of Le Port and Benouville, in fact, the threatening noise of engines running could be heard. Howard was worried. Beside him, Tappenden was keeping speaking on the radio: "Ham and Jam", "Ham and Jam". In vain. A couple of times he lost patience and exclaimed: "Hello Dog Four. Ham and Jam, Ham and bloody Jam. Where the hell are you? " The recipient of that string of curses was at that moment near Ranville. Brigadier Poett, in fact, was finally come out from the wheat field along with the drifter soldier met on the road and had reached the Orne bridge. After having conferred with Lieutenant Sweeny, Poett reached the other bridge, the bridge over the Canal. There, he met Howard and was made aware of the situation. When Poett arrived at the Bénouville bridge, Tappenden did not curse jam anymore. Meanwhile, Colonel Pine-Coffin had strayed. Dropped with parachute just before one o'clock a.m., he did not know where he was. Because of the darkness, as already Poett before him, he could not see the tower of the church of Ranville and, in addition, he could not find the location on his maps. He had around him more or less one hundred men and did not know what had happened to the bulk of his battalion. He was still trying to collect his thoughts, when he heard the Howard s whistle. What to do? Moving that handful of men or expecting to have gathered all the battalion? One hundred men were a very weak force, but they were still better than nothing and waiting would have meant only to waste time. Pine- Coffin did not think twice: he ordered his hundred paratroopers to move quickly in the direction where the signals were coming from. "We will throw you back into the sea" On the bridge of Caen Canal, a first aid post was set up. And there, with the patience of a

8 saint, Dr. Vaughan was listening to that wounded German officer magnifying, in perfect English, the superior Arian race and the Adolf Hitler s military genius. For the moment, you have been lucky, the wounded was screaming. And you have been lucky because our Fuehrer has not yet been informed about your stupid action. As soon as he will know that you are here, he will react immediately and in no time you will be thrown back into the sea. Those claptraps did not annoy doctor Vaugham: his duty as a doctor was to look after anyone in need. Even a staunch Nazi. And major Hans Schmidt appeared a staunch Nazi. He had been wounded while was driving at breakneck speed towards the Orne bridge to know what was happening there. Maybe he was a Nazi, surely he was an enemy, but he was wounded, too, and he should be treated. The Hippocratic Oath required it. Schmidt had left in a hurry from Ranville along with his mistress and his personal escort. Left the woman at the door of her home, he had entered the bridge at breakneck speed, surprising the guard patrols. Not Sweeny, however. A burst of his Sten had reached the major s Mercedes, making it to swerve and sending it to stop violently against the bridge s structure. On board stockings, underwear and some bottles of wine were found. Vaughan practiced to Schmidt a shot of morphine and began to bind his wounds. About ten minutes later, major Schmidt stopped exalting Hitler and the Aryan race and thanked the doctor for his treatments. The counterattack At 1:30 a.m. two German tanks moved into the darkness toward the bridge on the Canal. They were coming forward with a lot of caution. Howard was hearing them more than seeing them, and he were sweating cold. Had the Germans taken the bridge, they would have time to organize a defensive perimeter and block the Pine-Coffin s paratroopers before their arrival. Then armored units would have taken action against the paratroopers. It would have been the end of the whole mission. At the entrance of the bridge, sergeant Thornton was shaking like a leaf. But he was ready. Nobody was shooting, the tension was very high. Just after 1:00 a.m., colonel von Luck received the first reports about some paratroopers landings in his sector. He put immediately his battalion on alert: before long - he was sure of it- the order to move would have arrived. The enemy paratroopers were in the moment of their highest vulnerability: they should regroup, collect the heavy armament, organize themselves. That was the moment to counterattack. Waiting would have only helped the enemy: The paratroopers would have gathered, reached the bridge, organized the defenses and, on daylight, they could have counted on their air force and on the fire of the naval guns. Von Luck was shuddering : that was the moment. Waiting would have been a big mistake; it was necessary to attack immediately. But the orders to move ahead were not still coming. At the same time, on the Caen Canal bridge, Sergeant Thornton, in the darkness and invisible to the crews of the panzers, was brandishing a PIAT anti-tank gun, the only one still working. The others had been damaged during the landing. The PIAT was a cumbersome and heavy weapon, effective only at a short distance. Thornton could not, should not miss his shot: If it had been ineffective, nothing and nobody could have stopped the German tanks. The leading panzer was moving slowly, the gun threateningly leaning forward. Thirty meters, twenty-five meters... Thornton pulled the trigger.

9 Colonel Pine- Coffin saw the night lighting up. In the distance, long tongues of fire were rising into the sky. A few miles away, at the entrance to the bridge over Caen Canal, the leading German panzer was burning, ammunition and bombs on board exploding, staging a kind of fireworks display. Thornton had hit the first panzer. The latter had retired. Once in Bénouville, the commander of the second panzer had reported to his superiors that on the bridge area there were at least six anti-tank guns. The commanders had then decided to wait and to try again at dawn. There would be no further attacks that night. Pine- Coffin knew where to go now. He advanced along with his hundred men towards the tongues of fire. The rest of the regiment, scattered around in the area, did the same. Sleeping, sweet sleeping. At about 3:00 a.m., Lieutenant Fox and Sergeant Thornton inspected the bunkers on the banks of the Canal. In one of them they found three German soldiers asleep. Inexplicably they had not noticed anything. Fox approached one of them, headed the light of his flashlight towards his face and told him to stand up. The sleepily German opened barely his eyelids, glanced at Fox, at his strange uniform, at his blackened face, at his strange weapon and believed it were a joke of his fellow comrades. Unceremoniously he sent Fox to hell and went back to sleep. Sergeant Thornton began laughing so hard that tears were in his eyes. While sergeant Thornton was dying laughing, Colonel von Luck had gathered his regiment and was ready to go. The engines of the tanks were running, only the order to move was missing. But only Hitler himself could issue that order. Only he could move the armored divisions in Normandy. Not von Rundstedt, not Rommel, not von Salmuth. Or even von Luck. And Hitler, at that time, was sleeping. Wake him up? And why? Yeah sure, there had been paratrooper jumps in Normandy, but who can say that this was the main attack and not a diversion? No, it was not worth to wake up the Fuehrer. Meanwhile, while Hitler was sleeping, while the engines of the von Luck s tanks was spinning freely, the paratroopers of General Gale were deploying around the bridges of Bénouville and Ranville. With them there is Captain Richard Todd, Seventh Battalion Airborne. Eighteen years later he will play Major John Howard in the movie The Longest Day. A pleasant surprise. It was dawn, and von Luck was still standing close to his tanks, engines running, waiting for an order that was not still arriving. While, in him, he was cursing and cursing again the stupidity of the higher officials, he saw some of his men advancing. They had captured two allies pathfinders landed in Ranville area and recovered a motorcycle inside an abandoned glider. Von Luck s attention was not focused on the prisoners, but on the motorcycle. It seemed familiar. He looked at it better and had no doubts: it was his favorite motorcycle lost in Africa. A strange destiny delivered it to him again, after a long time, on the Normandy coast. But the order to move had not yet been arrived. Georges Gondrée heard someone knocking at the door. Carefully, he went to open. There were two soldiers with strange uniforms, their faces blackened, their aspect threatening. One of them asked him, in French, if there were Germans inside his home. Georges did not know what to do. Who were those soldiers? Where did they come from? Why? Were they perhaps disguised Germans sent there to check whether he collaborated with the Resistance? Was that a trap to unmask him? He decided to play dumb.

10 By gestures, speaking some words of French, answered them that no, there were no Germans inside. The two soldiers entered, their Stens blazing. Georges introduced Thérèse and his daughters. The two soldiers nodded at each other. Then one addressed the other, in perfect cockney, saying that everything seemed all right. Georges Gondrée then understood. It was not a trap or a clever show: these soldiers were Allied soldiers. He wept with joy. To celebrate, he dug up a hundred bottles of champagne buried at the arrival of the Germans, 1,450 days before. Even the straight-edger Howard could not resist champagne. Thérèse Gondrée was kissing all soldiers she was meeting. Soon her face became black. For two days Thérèse did not wash her face: he wanted to let everyone know that she had been the first French woman to meet Allied soldiers on the day of the invasion. At 1:00 p.m., June 6 th, Major Howard heard the sound of a bagpipe coming from the direction of Bénouville. It was Bill Millin s bagpipe: it was announcing the arrival of the Lord Lovat s commandos. Hold until relieved. "When you ll know that the invasion has begun, you can stop worrying because at that time I will have finished my job." Aftermath. On November 13 th, 1944, because of a tragic and ironic twist of fate, Major John Howard became victim of a car crash. He suffered severe injuries in the accident. After the war he wanted to be confirmed full active duty, but he was judged physically unfit, and his request was rejected. He worked at the Agriculture Ministry. Until the day of his death in 1999, every year, major Howard returned to France on the places of his incredible war feat. The French government awarded him the Croix de Guerre ( War Cross, Military Cross). To remember those events long gone, a stamp with Howard s effigy was recently issued by French Post. The bridge over the Caen Canal, renamed Pegasus Bridge, (the winged horse Pegasus, with in the saddle the mythic warrior Bellerophon, was the symbol of the British airborne forces) was replaced in 1994 by a new structure, able to withstand the today traffic. The old bridge was bought for the symbolic sum of one French franc by some veterans. For seven years- lacking the funds to restore it- the bridge remained rusting close to his younger brother. Eventually the funds were found and now the bridge, restored and polished, proudly shows itself in the Pegasus Memorial, the open-air museum dedicated to the events of that far-off Close to it, you can see a model in the original scale of a Horsa glider and the bronze bust dedicated to major Howard. Every year, on June 6 th, since she has been the owner of the café close to the bridge over the Caen Canal, Thérèse Gondrée has always offered champagne to the veterans of the Sixth Airborne Division and to the Green Berets of Kieffer arrived with Lord Lovat in Since June 1987, the Café Gondrée is a national monument. Today it is run by the youngest daughter of Georges and Thérèse, Arlette. In 1991, Colonel "Todd" Sweeney met up with Colonel Hans von Luck in Ranville, Normandy. After the war, they had become friends and had learned to know and respect each other. They visited the local cemetery with its 2,562 graves of which 322 were German. Sweeney and von Luck paused in thought in their respective sectors, both touched and deeply troubled. In the silence of the shrine, while paying tribute to the fallen comrades, Sweeney thought of the war and its significance. Okay, at those times there was no alternative, he said to himself. But is the war really necessary? Or is it the wrong

11 solution? At the opposite corner of the cemetery, von Luck, probably, was thinking in the same way.