The Pegasus and Orne Bridges

Their Capture, Defences and Relief on D-Day

Neil Barber

• Publisher: Pen & Sword Military
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781473822740
• eBook ISBN: 9781473830097
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

This WWII history chronicles a daring airborne mission that was vital to the success of Operation Tonga, D-Day, and the liberation of France.
 
When the British Army landed on Sword Beach in Normandy, their only exit eastward required passage across the River Orne and the Caen Canal. But the two bridges fording these waterways—the Pegasus and Orne Bridges—were heavily guarded and wired for demolition in case of a Germans retreat. Capturing these bridges would be next to impossible.
 
Operation Deadstick, conducted by Major John Howard and his company of Oxford and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry, was a superbly daring, brilliantly executed 'coup de main' assault. The glider-borne troops not only seized both bridges but faced a ferocious and prolonged German counterattack.
Neil Barber, a military historian and expert in British airborne operations, uses extensive personal accounts to tell this incredible story of Allied victory. Covering events and operations from Ranville in the East to Benouville in the West, Pegasus and Orne Bridges chronicles the combat of the 7th, 12th and 13th Parachute Battalions and reinforcements such as the Commandos, seaborne engineers and the Warwicks.

Chapter One

Planning

On 17 February 1944 Lieutenant General Frederick ‘Boy’ Browning, the Commander of British Airborne Forces, visited the Officer Commanding the 6th Airborne Division, Major General Richard Nelson Gale. It was no ordinary meeting. Browning briefed Gale on Operation Overlord, the plan for the invasion and liberation of Western Europe. Gale learned that the landings were to take place along the Normandy coast, with the Americans in the west and the British and Canadians in the east. Prior to the seaborne landings, his Division plus the American 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions were to be employed to protect the vulnerable flanks. General Richard ‘Windy’ Gale:

The left flank of the British seaborne assault was bounded by the double water obstacle consisting of the Canal de Caen and the River Orne. The ground to the east of the River Orne, though not high, was sufficiently dominating to overlook the left flank of the British assault. It was not desirable to extend the seaborne landings to the beaches east of the Orne in order to capture this ground, as the sea approaches to these would have come under the fire of the heavy defences of Le Havre. The river and the canal were obstacles of no mean order, and an attack over these would have been a costly and most undesirable operation. The quickest and surest way of seizing the dominating features east of the Orne was therefore, by means of an airborne assault.

Our first task in order of priority was to seize intact the bridges over the Canal de Caen and the River Orne at Benouville and Ranville; and to secure a bridgehead of sufficient depth to ensure that these could be held. The defence must have depth; the bridgehead must be sufficiently far out to have the necessary resilience to stand up against any local success which any well delivered enemy attack might have.

The 6th Airborne Division comprised the 3 and 5 Parachute and 6 Airlanding Brigades, but Browning explained that the size of the force was limited by the number of available aircraft. Consequently, one parachute brigade and an anti-tank battery were to be placed under the command of the 3rd British Infantry Division, one of the seaborne assault divisions. General Gale:

Quite apart from the fact that I feared that so small a force would be inadequate for the task, not of seizing, but of holding the bridgehead, it is a terrible thing for a commander to feel that his formation is being committed piecemeal to battle and even then not under his command. I knew how sympathetic General ‘Boy’ was to my feelings, and indeed it was knowledge of this and the effect I knew he would make on our behalf that really formed my only solace.

There was of course no argument and so I detailed James Hill [Officer Commanding, 3 Parachute Brigade] and his, the senior brigade, for the task and sent him off to commence his planning. Meanwhile my mind was working rapidly on plans for reinforcing him as speedily as possible.

Great therefore, was my relief when a few days later, on 23 February, I was told that the whole of 38 and 46 Groups RAF would now be available and that thus a Divisional operation would be possible. That ghastly dream had passed.

The Ground Commander of the Allied Armies, General Sir Bernard Montgomery, had analyzed the whole invasion plan. This proposed a landing on a forty mile front from the River Orne to Grandcamp in the west, but he considered the capture of the Cherbourg Peninsula to be vital to the success of the operation and therefore suggested to General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Supreme Commander Allied Expeditionary Force, that the front be extended by fifty miles to the west. He also suggested that the Airborne presence east of the Orne must have more immediate depth. Eisenhower had come to the same conclusions. The further transport aircraft, gliders and crews required for the increased airlift were to be provided by 46 Group which had been formed within RAF Transport Command, and which came under the operational control of the existing 38 Group. Aircraft from the IX US Troop Carrier Command were to also provide aircraft and crews for the training period. General Gale:

So it came about that on 24 February, the 6th Airborne Division was definitely placed under command of the 1st British Corps for ‘Operation Overlord’. For planning, a small party consisting of myself, Bobby Bray my GSO 1, Lacoste my GSO 2 Intelligence, one GSO 3, Shamus Hickie my AA and QMG, MacEwan my Medical Adviser, Jack Norris my CRA and Frank Lowman my CRE with the chief clerk went up to 1st Corps Headquarters in Ashley Gardens, London.

It was here that I received my orders and here that we worked out our outline plan.

James Hill’s plan for the seizure of the vital bridges was included in this. General Gale:

I was convinced that once the Germans realized that airborne landings had taken place they would be prepared everywhere. They would certainly be prepared on the bridges which we knew were manned; and they would be ready, immediately they looked like being attacked, to blow these. We knew that virtually all the enemy would have to do would be to press a button or move a switch and up would go these bridges. There is always or nearly always a slip between the cup and the lip; orders are vague; there is uncertainty; has the moment arrived or should one wait? Who is the individual actually responsible both for working the switch or for ordering the bridges to be blown? These questions are age-old, and on the doubts that might exist in some German mind or minds at the critical moment I based the plan. But a moment or two was all that I knew we would get. The assault on the bridges must therefore come like a bolt from the blue.

A stick of parachutists covers a considerable area: under operational conditions twenty men could expect to cover over one thousand yards. The concentration of such a stick in the dark and on unknown ground would take time. Immediate surprise was the essence of the bridge problem. If three gliders can be landed slap on the objective, a concentration of seventy-five fully armed men is immediately achieved.

Brigadier James Hill

Brigadier Hill’s plan was based on these essential requirements of speed and surprise, and proposed this use of gliders to capture the bridges, followed by rapid reinforcement by parachutists. Richard Gale:

It was thus for very good reasons that I decided on two Coup de Main assaults each by three gliders on each of the two bridges. On account of the necessity for complete surprise this must coincide with the drops of the Independent Parachute Company [which was setting up navigational aids on the Dropping Zones (DZs) or Landing Zones (LZs) to guide in the reinforcements] and not follow them. The Coup de Main party must in fact be one of the first incidents of the invasion and so must be prepared to come in without any navigational aids.

To seize and secure the bridges over the canal and river would take one brigade.

Gale allocated this task to Brigadier Hugh Kindersley’s gliderborne 6 Airlanding Brigade. Richard Gale:

Having captured the bridges intact the problem would then be to hold them. Initially, there must be a bridgehead on both the western and eastern banks. When the seaborne assault division reached Benouville we would be relieved of the responsibility for that in the west. That on the east would, however, remain our task.

*

The core of the 6th Airborne Division had been formed using the policy of ‘converting’ battalions to gliderborne or parachute formations. This meant that a regular battalion was chosen for conversion and the men asked to volunteer for the Airborne Forces, with those not interested being transferred, without disgrace, to another battalion. However, volunteering was not enough. They then had to pass the rigorous medical and physical fitness tests and then initial training. Thus the nucleus of a battalion was maintained, and then brought up to strength with volunteers from within the Services who had specifically requested to join the Airborne Forces. Each of the Division’s three brigades consisted of three battalions. 3 Parachute Brigade had the 8th and 9th Parachute Battalions and 1st Canadian Parachute Battalion; 5 Parachute Brigade comprised the 7th, 12th and 13th Parachute Battalions, while 6 Airlanding Brigade had the 2nd Battalion, Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry (The 52nd Light Infantry), the 2nd Battalion, Royal Ulster Rifles and 12th Battalion, The Devonshire Regiment.¹

Chapter Two

Bugle Horns and Para Wings

On 25 March the Division began a three-day exercise codenamed ‘BIZZ II’, which was a full-scale dress rehearsal for the invasion. On the first day, ‘D’ Company of the 2nd Oxf and Bucks, after exiting from the back of trucks, captured three bridges at Faringdon, while the rest of the battalion arrived in gliders, surrounded the bridges and dug in. The Officer Commanding ‘D’ Company was Major John Howard, a man with a reputation for being extremely professional. Lance Corporal Arthur Roberts, ‘D’ Company:

Scarface we used to call him [he had a long scar down the right side of his face] what he’d got at Rugby. You always knew when he was in a bad mood …, it seemed to light up at you! He was a bloke you wouldn’t mess about with. He’d come up the ranks and he knew all the answers!

Jack, or ‘Bill’ Bailey as he was better known, was due to join the Anti-Tank Platoon, but met Howard after finding that he was being temporarily placed with ‘D’ Company:

He sat behind the desk, well he looked a bit of a sod actually … I can’t put it any other way! I’d already been told, already been warned on the previous night that it was a ‘bugger’s Company’, and it was. Having been there a short while, I found I didn’t want to go to the Anti-Tank Platoon. John Howard had … in the true sense of the word, ‘a bastard Company’ in as much as the 52nd were a pre-War regiment with a very, very long history which extended back beyond the Peninsula, and they had a great many between-War soldiers serving with them. They’d only come back from India in about 1940. John Howard, it would appear, had got the nucleus of this [in] ‘D’ Company. And I’m pretty certain when I say this that ‘D’ Company probably consisted of fifty percent men other than 52nd. John Howard had to weld this Company, so it was something new for him.¹

On first seeing his men, Howard had not been impressed. Corporal Bill ‘Smokey’ Howard had joined from a Young Soldiers battalion, the 70th Kings Royal Rifles, which had been performing aerodrome guard duties with a solitary Lewis gun shared between the whole battalion:

He looked at us askance when half of us didn’t know how to deal with a Bren gun, didn’t know how to strip it down, didn’t know how to clean it or anything else. We looked at it and that was about all we did. We’d never seen any grenades, knew nothing about Bren guns because we hadn’t seen any. We had the old short Lee Enfield rifles, which were good. We had fired those in the days when we first joined up. We might have fired ten rounds … Of course when we got to John Howard he was used to seeing real soldiers, not these young layabouts!²

Gliderborne battalions had four companies, each comprising four platoons, ‘D’ Company’s being numbered 22, 23, 24 and 25. A platoon consisted of a Scout section, two Rifle sections and a HQ section.

The training required to bring the Company to the standard that Howard required had been intense. Wally Parr joined the battalion from the Gloucestershire Regiment:

He was strict, he was firm, but he was fair. He never asked anybody to do anything that he wasn’t prepared to do himself first. The training was rigorous. Absolute discipline and above all, physical fitness was his thing. Everybody had to be able to do it.

Private Doug Allen:

Twenty-five mile forced marches, he’d be up the front, making sure we were all OK, moving back to each platoon, coming back again. He’d be doing more than twenty-five miles by the time we got back.

Lance Corporal Tom Packwood:

We didn’t know it was anything more exceptional than anyone else was doing. He was the man in charge and you just done what he said. We knew that he was older than us and if he could do it, we could too. He was a fair enough man. If anything went wrong and you had an excuse and that, he was on your side.

Private Nobby Clark:

We sort of moulded to his, John Howard’s mannerisms because we knew it was the easy way of pleasi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• Chapter 1: Planning
• Chapter 2: Bugle Horns and Para Wings
• Chapter 3: The Divisional Plan and Deadstick Training
• Chapter 4: Benouville
• Chapter 5: Final Planning and Transit Camps
• Chapter 6: The Coup de Main Operation
• Chapter 7: Arrival of 5 Parachute Brigade
• Chapter 8: German Reaction at the Bridges
• Chapter 9: Arrival in Ranville
• Chapter 10: Coup de Main Glider 94
• Chapter 11: The Morning at Benouville and the Bridges
• Chapter 12: The Morning in the Ranville Area
• Chapter 13: Seaborne Arrivals at the Bridges
• Chapter 14: The Remainder of the Day
• Appendices
• Notes
• Sources & Bibliography
• Photographic Credits