Green Devils–Red Devils

Untold Tales of the Airborne in World War II

Edmund Blandford

• Publisher: Leo Cooper
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9780850523119
• eBook ISBN: 9781473814752
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

World War II introduced a new chapter to the history of elite troops - the parachute and glider-borne soldiers of Germany and the Allies, whose story is told in this book. Despite their experimental nature, there is no doubting the successes achieved by both sides. The story of the German airborne corps is traced from its inception - the policemen co-opted into becoming Goering's paras, their army rivals, the revelations of the German disasters, and triumph in Norway, Holland and Belgium before their ultimate test of May 1941. The crucial Battle of Crete is described through the experiences of men who were there, the struggle that broke the back of Hitler's airborne army. Late starters, the British Red Berets came to achieve worldwide fame as crack troops, and the book includes the tales of men who volunteered at the start and saw it through to the end; the triumphs and tragedies of the ordinary soldier, proud to serve in these distinguished regiments. Readers will find not only authentic detail and personal stories, but insights into airborne operations.

Contents

Introduction

The Parachute

Airborne Soldiers

GREEN DEVILS

I Soldiers with Wings

II A Year of Triumph

III Disaster on Crete

Appendix I

Appendix II

Appendix III

RED DEVILS

I Striking Companies

II “Go To It!”

III Arnhem

IV Spearhead

Appendix

Bibliography

Index

Introduction

Everyone familiar with the history of parachute troops will recall the 1930s film and stills of Russian soldiers emitting from a giant transport plane. The pictures were impressive from some points of view: the size of the aircraft, the men exiting in seemingly haphazard fashion, even sliding off the huge wing of the plane.

It seems remarkable, but the sport of parachuting had been taken up in the Soviet Union in the 1920s, and, with State support, the Osswiachim Club members were spread across Russia, and eventually by the outbreak of the ‘Great Patriotic War’ in June, 1941, one thousand villages were supporting such organizations.

By 1928 the Red Army had begun to organize parachute troops, and this move received the full support of its C-in-C, Marshal Tuchatschewski. In 1930 the Red Army held its annual manoeuvres – and sprang a surprise: a Lieutenant jumped with one platoon south of Moscow and ‘captured’ a high level staff who were taken completely unawares. This was the first known use of paratroops.

Six years later the Soviets lifted their usual curtain of secrecy and invited a host of foreign military attachés to their war games. A clutch of transport planes droned over the field and disgorged 1000 paratroopers who descended before the astonished gaze of the foreign observers. These paras were quickly followed by a further 5000 soldiers who landed in assault transport planes. One officer who witnessed this impressive demonstration was Britain’s General Wavell, who was to gain fame in World War II. To his government he wrote:

‘If I had not witnessed it myself, I would not have believed that such an operation was possible.’

Nevertheless, neither Wavell nor his superiors felt pressed to follow up such experiments.

Yet by 1940 the Germans’ use of the airborne weapon made such an impact that fear of the sudden arrival of the enemy by parachute permeated Britain more than anything else. This led to all kinds of absurd rumours, the standard one being that of Hun parachutists disguised as nuns. Even the seemingly unflappable, erudite J. B. Priestley allowed himself to be swayed by foolish tales, so that in one of his famous radio broadcasts (9 June, 1940) he referred to:

‘those half-doped, crazy lads they call parachute troops.’

The first part of his comment refers to one of the many tall tales that abounded in that slightly hysteria-ridden period of dead German paras being found with green-tinged faces. The British media seized on this as being evidence that the enemy needed pills to sustain their courage.

Similar stories appeared in print concerning the bodies of Luftwaffe aircrew, the green shade on the faces said to be the after effects of drugs — unless they had died in a green funk.

There was nothing clinically crazy about the trained German paratrooper; suicidally courageous at times perhaps, yes. The reputation of the German airborne soldier remained second to none in World War II.

Compared to them the British were slow starters, but once in the saddle the red berets proved they could ride with the best.

There are no soldiers equal to élite paratroopers, yet we should not forget the bravery and courage of the men who rode into battle in flimsy gliders, often paying with their lives for that very reason, men who in the main were impressed into such service; it seems only a few felt the urge to gain a coveted red beret via the easier route.

Although it has been necessary to place them in historical context, the main intention of this book has been to present the experiences of ‘other rankers’ as told in their own words. In the context of paratroops it is hard to refer to even the most humble private as a ‘common soldier’, for the very act of leaping from an aircraft marks down any human being as rather more than just ‘ordinary’. And to do so without a reserve ’chute and often into the arms of an enemy intent on ensuring their early demise sets these soldiers well apart from all others. This was especially true in the early ’forties when all was very new in airborne warfare.

The fact that such men had conquered fear in leaping into space, relying on equipment which could never be 100% certain ensured them a morale and fighting spirit second to none, which was why German paras were able to survive and triumph on Crete, and why the red berets became fighting demons at Arnhem.

British or German, it was usually the daredevil spirit of youth which prompted most of these men to step forward as volunteers for parachuting; the glamour of belonging to something special came later. For those older ones such as some officers an even greater effort was required.

But whether ex-Hitler Youth or ‘Nazi fanatics’, as they were seen by some in wartime Britain, both German airborne and the Red Devils who made such an outstanding impression on their enemies were of the same breed.

Edmund L. Blandford

The Parachute

It was Leonardo da Vinci who first mooted the idea of an ‘envelope’ made of linen which could, he foresaw, enable a man to descend from a great height in safety. His original sketch depicted a hollow cloth pyramid, made rigid at the base, with cords attached to each corner to which the jumper could cling.

Three hundred years later, in 1785, the French pioneer of ballooning, Jean-Pierre Blanchard, made a small model of such a ‘parachute’, and, taking a dog with him in his balloon several hundred feet over Paris, he strapped the envelope to the animal and dropped it over the side of his basket. The dog descended safely, barking as it landed in good shape, to scurry away and not be seen by Blanchard again. The dog was therefore the world’s first successful parachutist. Since there was apparently no rush of volunteers to take up this remarkable invention the idea lapsed.

But in time the crowds who had flocked to watch trapeze artists performing tricks by hanging from balloons grew tired of the novelty, so the carnival promoters had to come up with a new attraction. They recalled the parachute or life-saving umbrella. A number were made and a few daredevils paid to leap from balloonists’ baskets. Beyond this entertainment there seemed no practical use for the invention.

The early parachutes consisted of cloth or linen fixed to a rigid frame, but these provided anything but a gentle, gliding descent. An Englishman, Robert Cocking, invented an alternative: in essence it was an inverted type, the designer reasoning that if air was allowed to escape at the top it would permit a much easier descent. His drawings resembled an inverted umbrella, using tin hoops, the largest of 34ft diameter at the top, all of them connected by wooden spars, the structure covered in Irish linen. Beneath the umbrella was suspended a wicker basket to carry the ‘aviator’.

Cocking’s would-be mentor was an impresario named Fred Gye who put on shows at London’s Vauxhall Gardens where balloonists and parachutists were a regular part of the entertainment. But Gye declined Cocking’s offer to demonstrate his new-style parachute over the Gardens as he did not consider the existing balloons strong enough to take the extra weight. Cocking would not be put off, however, and two years later Gye agreed to allow him to use a strengthened balloon to lift the inverted umbrella and jumper over the paying crowds at Vauxhall. Cocking had offered to make the first descent free of charge, but jumps thereafter would earn him 20 guineas per jump, rising to 30 guineas if success continued.

It was the evening of 24 July, 1837, when Cocking was released from 4000 ft above an anxious crowd who gaped as the rays of a setting sun caught the strange contraption and its inventor descending gently towards them. But then disaster struck, and swiftly, for the tin and wood structure was not strong enough to take the stress of weight and wind, the members snapped, tearing open the linen covering and allowing the hapless inventor to plummet to his death.

It was almost another half century before further serious work was done to develop a more practical parachute. The American Baldwin brothers set about designing a type that could be stowed on the person; in other words, it no longer utilized a rigid structure. There is a story that the brothers sat in a restaurant discussing their ideas, and in due course borrowed a table napkin from a waiter, tied four pieces of string to its corners and, using a wine cork as a weight, dropped it out of a nearby window. They reasoned that a full-scale version could be folded and strapped to the back of a jumper, but they did not proceed with their idea for several years; when they did it worked. The parachute was folded up, with a sandbag as weight and dropped from a balloon, and on 30 January, 1887, Tom Baldwin himself made the first successful descent by modern parachute from a tethered balloon from 5000 ft at Golden Gate Park in San Francisco. It had been the weight of Baldwin’s body which had pulled the ’chute from its container, the whole apparatus secured to him by ropes and opening in five seconds.

Whereas ballooning had been the great spectator sport of the early Victorian era, parachuting now took over as the big carnival show attraction in America where there seemed to be no shortage of daredevils – both men and women – to take up the sport.

But it was the rapid development of aircraft which next produced a spurt in parachute design as the number of aerial disasters caused by poor design and structural failure grew rapidly. It was an obvious solution for pilots to save their lives by the magic umbrella. But although the Baldwin ’chute had proved excellent, its use by a pilot in an aeroplane was another matter. The problem was one of stowage, for although the parachute envelope itself had been perfected a satisfactory method of carrying one in a plane had not.

One early parachute bag was a conical container made of tin, designed to be fitted beneath the fuselage and attached by lines to the pilot, the idea being that in an emergency he would drop through the bottom of the plane and thus pull the ’chute from its container. Other designs made use of bulky canvas bags but it was the cone designed by Leo Stevens which was used for the first successful parachute jump from an aircraft. Albert Berry leapt from the wheel axle of a Benoist pusher biplane over Missouri on 1 March, 1912, descending safely to land near the mess hall of Jefferson Army Barracks.

But when war came to Europe two years later little or no thought had been given to the saving of military pilots from crippled aircraft, though the warlike possibilities of aviation had been realized. The advent of air fighting led to the deaths of hundreds of aviators, for most of the pilots and observers whose machines were disabled crashed to their deaths when their planes caught fire or fell apart, though some preferred to leap from their cockpits rather than be burnt alive. It seems an obvious solution now in an age of ejector seats, but in those days there seemed to be cogent reasons why aircrew should not be provided with parachutes. For one thing, some air leaders imagined that their airmen might be encouraged to flee from a fight by parachute, and in any case no ready supply of suitable equipment was available.

Meanwhile, another American, Charles Broadwick, had designed an ingenious ‘parachute coat’, a sleeveless garment containing the ’chute within its back, the designer selecting his adopted daughter for a demonstration before officers of the US Army in April, 1914. The girl is reputed to have been a professional jumper since the age of fifteen, a wife and mother, thrilling crowds across America since 1908. As ‘Tiny’ Broadwick, she had been the first woman to jump with a parachute, leaping from a hand-made Glenn Martin biplane over Griffith Park, Los Angeles on 21 June, 1913. A year later her official demonstration saw her landing almost at the feet of General Scriven and his amazed staff. Yet the US Army never adopted the Broadwick para-coat.

The use of observation balloons was common to both sides during the Great War, and owing to their vulnerability to air attack the crews were provided with parachutes which were carried in bags or cones and strapped to the balloon baskets; in some German balloons they were stowed in a rack over the heads of the crew. These balloon observers went aloft wearing harness containing hooks which could very quickly be attached to the parachutes in an emergency. The balloons themselves were filled with highly inflammable hydrogen gas and were therefore very vulnerable to gunfire. When fighting aircraft attacked balloons it was customary for the crews to hook up and leap out at once, for the enemy pilots could hardly miss their fat targets and the incendiary bullets used soon reduced the gas bags to a flaming mass which fell quickly to the ground. The balloons were, of course, stationary targets, tethered to the ground and usually protected by a ring of anti-aircraft machine guns which invariably failed to protect their charges from attack. In some cases a fake pass by an enemy pilot out of ammunition would be enough to send the balloon crews over the side.

But it was the pilots and observers in the fighting and observation aeroplanes who suffered most, and not until May, 1918, when the war was practically over, were the first parachutes issued to military aviators, and even then only the Germans received them. The equipment was hardly ideal, the pilots wearing a body harness which was attached to a separate container which needed to be thrown out of the disabled machine before the airman followed, using the static line method of opening the contain...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents