Stephen Ambrose: Pegasus Bridge

Howard's thoughts shifted from Joy, Terry and Penny to his other 'family', D Company. He thought of how deeply involved he was with his platoon commanders, his sergeants and corporals, and many of his privates. They had been preparing for this moment, together, for over two years. The officers and men had done all that he asked of them, and more. By God, they were the best damn company in the whole British army! They had earned this extraordinary role, they deserved it. John was proud of every one of them, and of himself, and he felt a wave of comradeship come over him, and he loved them all.

Then his mind flashed through the dangers ahead. The anti-glider poles, first of all - air reconnaissance photographs taken in the past few days revealed that the Germans were digging holes for the poles (called 'Rommel's asparagus' by the Allies). Were the poles in place, or not? Everything depended on the pilots until the instant the glider had landed, and until that instant Howard was but a passenger. If the pilots could bring D Company down, safely, within 400 metres of the objective, he was confident he could carry out his first task successfully. But if the pilots were even one kilometre off course, he doubted that he could do his job. Anything over a kilometre and there was no chance. If the Germans somehow spotted the gliders coming in, and got a machine-gun on them, the men would never touch the soil of France alive. If the pilots crashed - into a tree, an embankment, or one of Rommel's asparagus - they might all well die even if their feet did touch ground.

Howard was always a bad passenger; he always wanted to drive himself. On this occasion, as he willed Wallwork onto the target, he at least had something physical to do for diversion. Held by Howard on one side and the platoon sergeant on the other. Lieutenant Brotheridge released his safety belt and leaned forward to open the door in front of them. The door slid up into the roof of the glider and Brotheridge accomplished this in one hefty swoop. It was a dicey business because Howard and Sergeant Oilis were hanging on to Brotheridge's equipment, and when the job was done, Brotheridge slumped back into his seat with a sigh of relief.

Looking down, once the door was open, the men could see nothing but cloud. Still they grinned at each other, recalling the fifty-franc bet they had made as to who would be the first out of the glider.

As Brotheridge took his seat again, Howard's orders flashed through his mind. Dated May 2, they were signed by Brigadier Nigel Poett and classified 'Bigot', a super-classification above 'Top Secret'. (The few who did have clearance for 'Bigot' material were said to be 'bigoted'.)

'Your task is to seize intact the bridges over the River Orne and canal at Benouville and Ranville, and to hold them until relief.... The capture of the bridges will be a coup de main operation depending largely on surprise, speed and dash for success. Provided the bulk of your force lands safely, you should have little difficulty in overcoming the known opposition on the bridges. Your difficulties will arise in holding off an enemy counter-attack on the bridges, until you are relieved.'

The relief would come from the men of the 6th Airborne Division, specifically from the 5th Para Brigade and especially its 7th Battalion. They would land in DZs between the Orne River and the River Dives at 0050 hours, roughly half an hour after Howard's party. Brigadier Poett, commanding 5th Para Brigade, told Howard that he could expect organised reinforcements within two hours of touchdown. The paras would come through Ranville, where Poett intended to set up his Brigade headquarters for the defence of the bridges.

Poett himself was only two or three minutes behind Howard, flying with the pathfinders who would mark the DZ for the main body of the 5th Para Brigade. There were six planes in Poett's group - the low-flying planes von Luck and Hickman had heard. Poett wanted to be the first to jump, but at 0008 hours he was struggling desperately to get the floor hatch open. He and his ten men were jammed into an old Albemarle bomber, which none of them had ever seen before. They were carrying so much equipment that they had to 'push and push and push to get in'. They had then had a terrible time squeezing together sufficiently to close the hatch door. Now, over the Channel with the coast coming up, they could not get the damn thing open. Poett began to fear he would never get out at all, that he would end up landing ignominiously back in England.

In no. 3 glider. Lieutenant Sandy Smith felt his stomach clinch as it did before a big sports event. He was only twenty-two years old, and he rather liked the feeling of tension, because he was full of the confidence he used to feel before a match when he was a Cambridge rugger blue. 'We were eager', he remembers, 'we were fit. And we were totally innocent. I mean my idea was that everyone was going to be incredibly brave with drums beating and bands playing and I was going to be the bravest among the brave. There was absolutely no doubt at all in my mind that that was going to be the case.'

Across the aisle from Smith, Captain John Vaughan of the Royal Army Medical Corps sat fidgeting. He was distinctly unhappy when Smith opened the door. Vaughan was a doctor with the paratroopers, had many jumps behind him, had confidence in a parachute. But he had volunteered for this special mission, not knowing what it was, and ended up in a plywood glider, an open door in front of him, and no parachute. He kept thinking, 'My God, why haven't I got a parachute?'

Back in Oxford, Joy Howard slept. She had had a routine day, taking care of Terry and Penny, getting them into bed at 7 p.m., doing her housework, then spending a couple of hours by the radio, smocking Penny's little dresses.

On his last furlough, John had hidden his service dress uniform in a spare room closet. He had then taken Terry's shoe, kissed the children, started to leave, and returned to kiss them once more. As he left, he told Joy that when she heard that the invasion had started, she could stop worrying, because his job would be finished. Joy had discovered the missing shoe and found the uniform. She knew that the invasion must be imminent, because leaving the uniform behind meant that John did not expect to be dining in the officers' mess for the foreseeable future.

But that had been weeks ago, and nothing had happened since. For two years there had been talk of an invasion, but nothing happened. On June 5,1944, Joy had no special feelings - she just went to bed. She did hear air traffic, but because most of the bombers based in the Midlands were headed south, rather than east, she was on the fringes of the great air armada and paid little attention to the accustomed noise. She slept.

Down in the southeastern end of London, almost in Kent, Irene Parr did hear and see the huge air fleet headed towards Normandy and she immediately surmised that the invasion had begun, partly because of the numbers, partly because Wally -in a gross breach of security - had told her that D Company was going to lead the way, and he guessed it would be in the first week of June, when the moon was right. She did not know, of course, exactly where he was, but she was sure he was in great danger, and prayed for him. She would have been pleased, had she known, that Wally's last thoughts, before leaving England, were of her. Just before boarding Wallwork's Horsa, Wally had taken a piece of chalk and christened the glider the 'Lady Irene'.

Wallwork had crossed the coast well to the east of the mouth of the Orne River. Although he was the pilot of the no. 1 glider, and nos. 2 and 3 were directly behind him, he was not leading the group to the LZ - the Landing Zone. Rather, each pilot was on his own, as the pilots could not see the other gliders in any case. Boland remembers the feeling 'of being on your own up there, dead quiet, floating over the coast of France, and knowing that there's no turning back'.