HAVING DEMONSTRATED IN several exercises that they were indeed as ready for combat as their instructors could make them, on 24 May 1944, Bradbrooke’s Canadians mounted up in lorries and left Bulford Camp for their transit camp near Down Ampney. D-Day was right around the corner.1
Sergeant Earl Rice, C Company, 1st Canadian Parachute Battalion, recalled, “It was the last week in May, on a Friday, that we received the order that we would be moved from Bulford to an airfield the following Monday. The second day our final briefing started. C Company would be going in first with the pathfinders [at Merville] who would mark the drop zone for the divison that would follow.”2
With D-Day drawing closer, some of the men had premonitions that they would never see Canada again, but they were in the minority. Most were confident—or talked as if they were—that some other chap might buy the farm, but not them. Sergeant Harry Reid, for one, believed that his unit was unbeatable and that he would survive the coming battle. “At this stage I felt there was nothing that could stop me, and although many of the men would obviously be killed, wounded or captured, I did not believe that I would be one of them. It is a truth of men at war that almost every man feels the same way. Without that optimism, there would be no armies, for men would not go to war unless they felt they had a reasonable chance of returning.”3
Brigadier James Hill was immensely pleased at the spirit of camaraderie that seemed to infect the entire Canadian contingent. He noted, “The great day was arriving and all my battalions were penned in their camps, which they weren’t allowed to leave. This period was very interesting to me. All day long the Canadians, with whom I’d pitched my tent, were playing games—baseball, throwing balls about—and I thought what tremendous vitality these Canadians had got. Then in the afternoon I would visit my English battalions and find half a dozen chaps desultorily kicking a football, and the rest asleep. I thought to myself, here is the difference between the Old World and the New—the elan and joie de vivre of the New World of the Canadian, and the maturity and the not worrying, not bothering and having a good nap while you can, of the British.”4
ON 3 JUNE, the weather in southern England was uncharacteristically hot, and then a line of thunderstorms crossed the island, leaving the encampments a sea of water and mud. Canadian Private Bob “Sully” Sullivan, A Company, said that the storm was so bad, “I can remember digging [a trench] all the way around the outside of our tent just to keep the water out.”5
The next day the weather was perfect but that night, based on meteorologic forecasts, it was expected to turn rotten again, and the invasion, scheduled for the night of 4–5 June, was postponed by Eisenhower.6
The night was indeed a stormy one, the winds and rain buffeted the tents and rattled the windows and washed the planes waiting silently on their hardstands. The fifth of June dawned cloudy, but the storm had passed. The men wondered: Is today the day? It was. The orders came down—the invasion was on for that night—and the men were put on mandatory rest for the morning and afternoon. At around 1930 hours, the men at Down Ampney (C Company and the pathfinders of the 22nd Independent Parachute Company would take off from RAF Harwell) donned their battle dress and were moved to their assigned aircraft, which would begin leaving at 2245 hours. Inside the planes, their equipment was laid out, ready to be strapped on.7
Carrying the 6th Airborne were some 400 aircraft—Albemarles, Halifaxes, Whitleys, Short Stirlings, and Dakota C-47s—of Numbers 38 and 46 Groups of Transport Command, taking off from such RAF stations as Brize Norton, Fairford, Harwell, Keevil, and Tarrant Rushton.8
There was joy mixed with apprehension at the British and Canadian transit camps with the announcement that the invasion was back on. The 6th Airborne Division commander Richard Gale stopped by to pay his respects. He told the assembled troopers, “The Hun thinks only a bloody fool will go there. That’s why I’m going!” The men clapped and cheered at the remark. Any time a division commander put his life on the line by going into battle with his troops was a cause for celebration.*9
Brigadier Hill also visited the battalions of his brigade at Down Ampney, telling the men, “Gentlemen, in spite of your excellent training and your splendid briefing, you must not be daunted if chaos reigns. It undoubtedly will!”10
ON THE EVENING of 5 June, a dispatch rider arrived at Tarrant Rushton and delivered to Major John Howard a sealed envelope that contained a single word: “Cromwell.” That was the code word that told him the invasion would begin that night. Howard gathered D Company, Ox and Bucks, and told them that the great day for which they had long been preparing had finally arrived.11
Piloting Howard’s glider number one were Sergeants Wallwork and Ainsworth, with Hobbs and Boland in number two and Barkway and Boyle in three. The pilots for the Ranville Bridge raid were Sergeants Lawrence and Shorter, Pearson and Guthrie, and Howard and Beacke.12
Stanley Pearson recalled that Tarrant Rushton was abuzz with excitement. “The airfield was packed with people; the word had got around that the invasion was on! The runway was lined on both sides with almost everyone who was employed at Tarrant. Then the definite order for takeoff came at 2250 hours and the troops and pilots got on board and strapped in.”13
A few days before the operation glider pilot Roy Howard, in charge of gilder number six, got acquainted with Major Howard’s Ox and Bucks troops and judged them to be “a very good bunch. However, on the night they arrived [at RAF Tarrant Rushton] all blacked up, loaded with arms and ammunition, they looked a right bunch of cut-throats. I think I was more afraid of them than I was of the Germans! We loaded up, drank a cup of tea, chatted, and, at about twenty to eleven, when it was nearly dark—we had double summertime in those days—we mounted up and when somebody fired the green flare, the engines started and one by one we got underway.”
Flight Lieutenant Alec Blythe, C-47 pilot, thought that the Royal Engineers whom he would be transporting from Down Ampney to a DZ north of Caen “seemed jolly nice chaps. However, when they came up to the Dakota on the night of the operation with blackened faces they looked a fearsome lot. One pulled out a dagger and said that it was going to find a German that night. I was rather glad they were on our side.”
Just before takeoff, Major Howard visited the men in each glider—each Horsa held twenty-three infantry and five sappers—and gave them his “‘Ham and Jam’ farewell, not knowing when I would next see them again. I found it a very sad experience, and by the time I got to my glider, I had a lump the size of a football in my throat. ‘Ham and Jam’ were the code words for a successful capture of both bridges intact. Those two words became very important to us, during those days in the transit camp, and forever since for us survivors.”14
AT DOWN AMPNEY, before the Canadians boarded, Chaplain George Harris held an impromptu prayer service on the tarmac. A reporter captured the scene: “The chaplain, G.A. Harris, was waiting with a prayer book in his hands. His face was daubed with camouflage paint, he wore a green jumping smock and there was a crash helmet at his feet. The Canadians knelt and, as a stormy sun set over the woods, prayed and sang a hymn. After the blessing they turned, buckled the last straps, and filed to the planes.”
Sergeant Dan Hartigan, C Company, noted that all of the men in his stick were ready for action. “Every man carried two pounds of plastic explosive primed with a screw-cap detonator, a No. 74 anti-tank grenade, several Mills bombs, and, in the assault companies, every second man carried four loaded Bren machine-gun magazines or four two-inch mortar shells, and smoke bombs for covering assaults. They knew that it might be as much as four days before they were properly resupplied from sources which came from the sea, and that if certain highways and road junctions were not taken and held, air resupply might be their only avenue for obtaining more ammunition.”
On their heads were their steel helmets covered with camouflage netting interlaced with strips of burlap, and around their waists or shoulders were six-foot-long toggle ropes. So overloaded was each man that it took two other men to hoist him into the planes.
Ted Kalicki, an American who had joined the Canadian paras, was also weighted down like a beast of burden. He was carrying four bandoliers of .303 rifle ammunition, a pack stuffed with rations and extra clothing, a water bottle, and a leg bag that held his Enfield rifle, more ammo, phosphorous grenades, plastic explosive, two mortar shells, and hand grenades—all attached with a twenty-foot rope. After he left the plane, he would loosen one end of the rope and the bag would drop down and hit the ground first.
Other men carried additional items, depending on their specialties. For example, Colin Brebner, the battalion medical officer, had a map case, binoculars, battle dressings, bandages, surgical instruments, morphine, and two pistols. His two medics carried ammunition and grenades, plus stretchers “which they rode out the door and released after their parachutes opened.” The battalion chaplain carried no weapons but rather a Communion kit and portable altar.15
Sergeant Earl Rice, C Company, said, “We marched on the airfield in front of our planes, about eighteen or twenty Albemarle aircraft that were small and obsolete short-range bombers. They were formed in a straight line with their motors warming up. Each plane could only hold one section of ten men that included a sergeant, section leader, a corporal Bren gunner, and eight men. Before we boarded our plane, Lieutenant Colonel Bradbrooke came down the line and stopped at about every third plane to wish us luck. I was one of them and we shook hands and he said, ‘Good luck, Rice.’ Without any further ado, we boarded our planes during the last light of day.”16
Once the men were loaded, the planes taxied to the end of the runway and began taking off, setting a southward course toward France. Corporal John Ross, C Company, remarked that the Albemarle was “not very roomy. We sat on the floor, ten men to each plane cramped in. There was barely room enough to enable one to rise up into a crouched position, so no one stood during flight.”17
Another member of C Company in an Albemarle was Company Sergeant Major Richard O. MacLean. He too commented on the cramped quarters: “There was a gun turret on top and every time the gunner moved it, we had to move out of the way. It was very tight in there.”18
At 2256 hours, a green flare from a Very pistol popped from the top of the control tower at Tarrant Rushton and the first C-47 tug began rolling, stretching taut the line between it and Jim Wallwork’s glider, picking up speed until, with a roar, the two aircraft lifted off. This first combination of tug and glider was followed in short order by five others, and off they went until they could be seen and heard no more.19