“Johnnie revived in a few minutes,” Wallwork continued, “and with the aid of a medic I managed to crawl free of the debris, but it required two of us to drag Ainsworth out. Nothing was broken except for one ankle and a badly sprained pair of knees for Johnnie…. But I could walk.”⁷

Right behind Wallwork and Ainsworth came glider number two. Riding in it was Birmingham-born Stanley Evans, a 20-year-old corporal in No. 14 Platoon, “B” Company. “I landed up to my waist in mud,” he recalled, “but we were only about fifty yards from the bridge and we ran straight across.” As a section commander, Evans’ role was to cover the Cafe Gondrée and the area around it. “I could have died loads of times, but Him up above was looking after me. It’s not a question of bravery. In those circumstances, you just do things that you are trained for.”

The rest of Lieutenant Richard “Sandy” Smith’s No. 14 Platoon, 2nd Ox and Bucks, was in the last of the three Horsas to arrive near Bénouville Bridge, slamming to earth at 0018 hours. The right side of the glider, piloted by Staff Sergeants Boland and Hobbs, was peeled away and several men were thrown from it, one of whom was the soldier who drowned when he was violently ejected and pitched into a nearby pond.

Lieutenant Smith had a particularly harrowing ordeal when he was catapulted from his seat in the fuselage and out through the cockpit wind-shield. “I went shooting straight past those two pilots, through the whole bloody lot, shot out like a bullet and landed in front of the glider,” he re-called. “I was covered in mud, I had lost my Sten gun, and I didn’t really know what I was bloody doing. Corporal Madge, one of my section commanders, brought me to my senses. He said, ‘Well, what are you waiting for, sir?’”

After shaking the stars from his eyes, Smith found his weapon and, hobbling on an injured knee, led his men to the western end of the bridge where Lieutenant Brotheridge’s No. 1 Platoon was already fighting; German and British bodies littered the bridge, some dead, some wounded. Smith and his men advanced upon a concrete enemy bunker. “The poor buggers in the bunkers didn’t have much of a chance, and we were not taking any prisoners or messing around; we just threw phosphorus grenades down into the dugouts there and anything that moved we shot.”

Advancing to the west side of the bridge—which would soon acquire the moniker “Pegasus Bridge”—Smith saw a German soldier about to throw a stick grenade in his direction. Smith immediately riddled him with his Sten gun but the already-primed grenade exploded, and a piece of metal hit the lieutenant in the wrist. Although painful, the wound did not prevent him from carrying out his duties or firing his weapon.⁸

Lieutenant Denham Brotheridge’s No. 1 Platoon had been the first to reach the lifting bridge and had overwhelmed the German guards there. They pushed on to the western bank where the Café Gondrée^* stood; Brotheridge had planned on making it his platoon command post, but he never made it that far. Something—a bullet or a shell fragment—ripped into his neck, severing an artery. He fell to the ground outside the café, his life leaking out of the gash. One of his men, Wally Parr, saw his lieutenant lying in the roadway and went to his aid. Cradling Brotheridge’s head in his hands, all Parr could think was, “What a waste! All the years of training we put in to do this job—it lasted only seconds and he lay there and I thought, ‘My God, what a waste.’” Lieutenant David Wood was also down, three bullets embedded in his leg.⁹

Word quickly spread about Brotheridge’s mortal wound. Major Howard directed Smith to take command of No. 1 Platoon—in addition to his own No. 14—and hold the bridge.

Smith continued to lead his men for as long as he could, but with his swollen wrist and bunged-up knee, he eventually had to leave to receive medical treatment.¹⁰

WITH BULLETS STILL flying, Howard established his command post in the machine-gun bunker at the east end of the bridge. While the battle for the Bénouville Bridge was raging, the other half of Howard’s company was coming in for a landing to assault the Ranville Bridge over the Orne River; it was a less precise landing than Howard’s. Captain Brian Priday’s lead glider completely missed the release point and ended up five miles to the east, near Periers-en-Auge and the Dives River. The second glider, carrying Lieutenant Tod Sweeney and his platoon, came down 500 yards north of the bridge, while the third glider, with Lieutenant Fox and his men on board, landed 900 yards north of the objective. Luckily, their landings were without incident and the men began double-timing south between the canal and river to reach the bridge.¹¹ Private Eric Woods of No. 17 Platoon, B Company, recalled, “Our platoon, commanded by Lieutenant Fox, quickly made our way across the fields to our target, a bridge that crossed the river Orne. It was, fortunately, very lightly defended, the main episode being when a phosphorous bomb was hurled at German defenders who were attempting to man a gun position.”¹²

The fight for the Ranville Bridge—which would later become known as “Horsa Bridge”—was over almost before it began; what few German guards were there were either quickly killed or run off. With the span now in British hands, the decision was made for Sweeney’s platoon to remain there while Fox and his men continued on to Pegasus Bridge, where the sounds of battle were still ringing, to reinforce Howard and, it was assumed, Brotheridge.¹³

Howard’s men were now in complete control, rounding up German prisoners and tending to the wounded of both sides. Lieutenants Brotheridge and Wood were carried to a trench that served as an aid station about seventy-five yards east of the bridge. But there was no one to administer proper care. Captain John Vaughn, the doctor who had accompanied the glider force, was lying unconscious in the mud beside one of the gliders, having been knocked cold during the landing.

Brotheridge soon died from loss of blood. Howard said, “It really shook me, because it was Den and how much of a friend he was, and because my leading platoon was now without an officer. At the top of my mind was the fact that I knew Margaret, his wife, was expecting a baby almost any time.”¹⁴

But there was no time to grieve—there were two bridges to be held against the expected enemy counterattacks and a battle to be fought and won. Howard’s wireless operator, Corporal Ted Tappenden, was at the radio set sending out the code words, “Ham and Jam, Ham and Jam”—the announcement that both bridges had been seized. But Tappenden had no idea if anyone was getting the message.

There was also a bit of good news. The sappers under Captain Jock Neilson had crawled under the bridge to check for the demolitions they assumed the Germans had installed to blow the structure sky high in the event of an attack, but no explosives were found.¹⁵

IT DIDN’T TAKE long for other German units in the area to learn of the British assault on the two bridges and begin preparing to take them back. Soon, mortar and artillery rounds began splattering the ground; the paras took cover. At any moment, Howard thought, the Germans would launch their counterattack. Could he hold? And where were the reinforcements he had been promised?

While he waited impatiently for the rest of Brigadier Nigel Poett’s 5th Parachute Brigade and Lieutenant Colonel Richard Geoffrey Pine-Coffin’s 7th Parachute Battalion to arrive by air, Howard set up his defenses around the two Orne bridges. The area east of the Ranville Bridge did not greatly concern him; Poett and Pine-Coffin’s men would soon be dropping there and could set up a stout defense against any incursions coming from the direction of Ranville. What he worried about most was a counterattack coming from west of the canal. The entire fifty-mile stretch, from the Orne Canal to the American airborne area west of the Vire River, was one giant German stronghold. Untold hundreds of German armor and infantry units, plus scores of artillery batteries, were out there in the dark, perhaps even now mounting up and heading toward his tenuous claw-hold on the two bridges. It wouldn’t take much for a superior force to wipe out his tiny, poorly armed group. Howard glanced at the luminous dials of his watch—0026 hours.

Off in the night, Howard’s fears were being realized. In Le Port, just a mile up the road from Bénouville, panzer crews were scrambling to their tanks, starting them, and getting underway. Howard and the men of D Company at the Bénouville Bridge could hear the sound of engines growing louder, and they expected at any moment to see the steel monsters making a left turn at the T-junction and rumbling toward the bridge. But they went past the junction and straight into Bénouville. They’ll be back, Howard said to himself, and ordered his men to bring up what few PIAT weapons and Gammon bombs they had.¹⁶

Jim Wallwork, his face bloody from his damaged eye, was one of those hauling ammunition and weapons from the shattered gliders. Although injured and half blind, he remembered, “I made myself useful carting ammunition from the glider to the troops, for which effort John Howard thanked me, politely at first. Then we heard the tank.”

It was true. Fortunately, Fox and his platoon were now arriving at the Bénouville Bridge, and not a moment too soon, for the tanks that had passed the T-junction at Bénouville were now on their way back. Howard sent Fox’s men forward then directed Wallwork to go back and retrieve the anti-tank Gammon bombs from Glider No. 1—something the injured pilot was unable to do: “I did not have much joy pottering about in the dark in a damaged glider looking for ammo, and I just could not find those bloody bombs. So I took a case of 0-303 [ammunition] instead, which made [Howard] rather cross. ‘Get the bloody Gammons,’ he hollered, all politeness now gone. So back I went again. This time I was using my flashlight to be sure they were either there or not when I heard a sharp rapid tapping on the wooden fuselage just above me. Woodpeckers? At night? In a battle? No. It was a German Schmeisser following the stupid clot who’s using a flashlight! So to hell with Howard and his Gammons. I had had enough, and told him so. It turned out they had been part of the discarded equipment back at Tarrant.”¹⁷

The German tanks came on. Private Eric Woods noted, “One of my most vivid memories on reaching the [Bénouville] bridge was finding myself lying alongside Sergeant [Charles] Thornton, who was armed with an anti-tank weapon. On the road on the opposite side of the bridge was a junction, and from this emerged three French tanks which had been commandeered by the Germans.” From a range of about thirty yards, Thornton sighted the PIAT and fired, “hitting the foremost tank broad-side on. It must have been a direct hit on the tank’s magazine, for there was an almighty explosion and ammunition continued to explode for more than an hour afterwards. The two remaining tanks quickly retreated from whence they came.”¹⁸

A German staff car and motorcycle then came barreling up the road and ran into a British ambush. Woods vividly recalled seeing “a German motorcyclist … blown off his machine during the fight; his legs were severely injured. A German officer was also at the scene and immediately surrendered to me, passing over his revolver. He was most concerned about his wounded colleague, and in very good English asked for medical assistance, saying, ‘I don’t think you would want to leave one of your mates in this condition, would you?’ I assured him that I would return to his comrade with medical assistance as soon as he had accompanied me to surrender himself to a British officer, which he did. I returned and a corporal helped me to get the wretched man to the medics.”¹⁹

WITH HOWARD’S MEN having killed, captured, or run off the German guards, and with the two other panzers unwilling to charge the bridge in the dark, the British were in complete control of the lifting bridge and the immediate area. The situation at Bénouville Bridge had become stabilized—at least for the moment. The probing German tank commanders at the T-junction in Bénouville, not knowing the size of the British force, pulled back, leaving their lead tank to burn and explode and sizzle. From near the burning tank there came the moaning sounds of someone in agony. Fox said that one of his men, Tommy Klare, “couldn’t stand it any longer and he went straight out up to the tank and it was blazing away, and he found the driver had got out of the tank still conscious, was laying beside it, but both legs were gone.” An extremely strong soldier, Klare picked up the wounded German, threw him over his shoulder, and carried him back to the aid station. “I thought it was useless, of course,” said Fox, “but, in fact, I believe the man lived.” The wounded German, the commander of the 1st Panzer Engineering Company, however, died a few hours later.²⁰

The first few hours at the Orne bridges had gone exceedingly well, but what would the next few bring? And what was happening at the Merville battery, just five miles away?