When They All Came Together
By ANN Senior Correspondent Kevin "Hognose" O'Brien
(This is the third in a three-part ANN special report on the
gliders that carried Allied troops to Europe during the D-Day
invasion of June 6th, 1944. -- ed.)
The silence of the glider, of course, ends when it lands, and
this landing was known to be a crash from the outset. Pilot Jim
Wallwork guided the lead glider, PF800, to a crash just 45 yards
from the Caen Canal bridge. It was 16 minutes after midnight. Like
many Horsa pilots, he didn't drop the undercarriage -- as far as he
was concerned, the more energy absorption his plywood plane had,
the better. The undercarriage went its own way as the Horsa plowed
through a fence and piled up. Wallwork and his copilot, John
Ainsworth, were slammed into what had been the plexiglas of the
cabin. The splintering crash of PF800 was followed by at one minute
intervals by two more crashes. Then more splintering as the men
kicked and smashed their way out of the wreckage of what had been
flying machines.
The third glider was the most severely damaged, and the only one
to lose a man -- Private Fred Diggs was ejected during the crash
into a nearby pond and drowned. The glidermen, apart from the
pilots, had no seatbelts. Instead they practiced to link arms and
pick up their feet (experience had shown the floor of the glider
sometimes ripped off).
Major Howard ran forward, followed by his men. The Germans took
one look at the black-faced glidermen and dropped their guns, and
ran or surrendered. Now to cross the bridge. There was a spate of
gunfire and then it was over. The Germans were gone.
One of Howard's platoon commanders, Lieutenant Den Brotheridge,
was carried past him. He had been hit in the neck by gunfire on the
bridge and urgently needed surgery. A medical officer, Captain J.
Vaughan RAMC was with them but he could scarcely operate in a pit
by a bridge, and the airborne forces had no means of medical
evacuation. Howard was fond of Brotheridge, but had to turn to the
task at hand -- organizing to face the counterattack -- while
Brotheridge's life slipped away.
A long burst, the unmistakable rapid fire of a German machine
gun, came from over at the Orne River bridge (Howard would later
learn that the Germans had run away -- one of the glider troopers
had grabbed a cast-off German gun and emptied it in the direction
its former owners took). Then it was quiet for a time.
With chaos in the airhead, it took a long time for the signals
to get through to brigade headquarters. Signaller Corporal Ted
Tappenden sent patiently, for over an hour, the brevity codes: "Ham
and Jam... Ham and Jam..." before finally getting an
acknowledgment.
The glider attacks on the bridges went off better than expected.
A parachute assault on Merville Battery was more difficult, costing
the British Commonwealth more lives than any other D-Day action.
(Only the US paratroops and the early waves at Omaha Beach suffered
more casualties). But in the end, the assault had gone as planned.
British airborne forces had secured the left end of the fifty-mile
beachhead. Within days Allied forces would be constructing
artificial harbors on the shore, and forward airfields for fighter
planes. For Adolf Hitler and all his black works, it was a
milestone on the road to perdition.
The Bridges Held, And Renamed, And Celebrated
Howard knew that taking the bridge was only the beginning. He
expected the Germans to shake the confusion off, reorganize, and
they try --hard -- to retake the bridges. But they held.
At one point, a soldier came up to Howard carrying ammunition,
his face a mask of blood. It was Howard's own glider pilot, Staff
Sergeant Jim Wallwork; he didn't recognize him at first.
Had the Germans mounted an armor attack, they might have
succeeded. The only weapons the glidermen had against tanks were
two PIATs, a primitive spigot-mortar antitank weapon that could
only be fired from well within the range of the tank's weapons. But
the Germans held back their armor while they tried to figure out
whether they were facing a diversion or the main attack.
The German counterattack, with just infantry against infantry
who were ensconced in concrete positions the Germans had carefully
prepared, failed, and late on D-Day Lord Lovat's commandos showed
up at the bridge. And yes -- just like in the movie, "The Longest
Day," which was filmed on the actual bridge, the Commandos formed
up and marched across with piper Bill Millin playing.
Several commandos were killed and wounded by German snipers
during this, and one hero, Brian J. Mullen, was killed when he went
back to help a wounded comrade. The bridge still bears bullet scars
where he fell -- and a memorial from his comrades, that notes he
was "a talented artist."
On D-day also, two other, much larger glider landings, Operation
Tonga and Operation Mallard, greatly reinforced the British left
flank airhead/bridgehead. More than 130 gliders, mostly Horsas,
landed in a larger field after paratroopers dismantled anti-glider
defenses. The gliders brought men, supplies, and badly needed heavy
weapons, including anti-tank guns.
The Germans later mounted air attacks on the bridge. The
original bridge shows the marks of Messerschmitts' 20-mm guns, and
"they dropped a big bomb, you can see the dent where it hit the
bridge, and its still in the canal somewhere!" the guide says
as he points out the damage.
The Caen Canal bridge became known afterwards as the Pegasus
Bridge, after the winged horse that was, and remains, the emblem of
British airborne forces. The Orne bridge became the Horsa
Bridge.
Major Howard had one truly surreal experience during the time he
and his men were at the Orne Canal bridge. A pair of Polish
laborers reported to him. Their last orders had been to report to
the officer on the bridge; didn't matter to them that the officer
had changed. When asked what they had been doing, Howard found out
that they had been going around putting up anti-glider poles in
fields -- and June 6 was the day they were coming to do the field
he'd just used.
Howard let the Poles go. The two of them didn't know what to do
in the absence of instruction, he later recalled, "so the silly
buggers went right back to putting up poles."
Howard was awarded the Distinguished Service Order, and France
honored him with the Croix de Guerre.
Jim Wallwork's injuries weren't serious. Within days he and the
other glider pilots were back in England, training for future
operations. He was awarded the Distinguished Flying Medal for his
landing at the Caen Canal.
Where Are They Today?
While most of the men who fought in that battle have passed on,
like Major Howard, who passed away in 1999, the site remains
largely as it was, decorated by a number of well-sited memorials,
including a stone that marks the point where each glider stopped, a
German multi-purpose gun mount, and a well-sculpted head of Major
Howard.
Jim Wallwork still lives in Canada where he emigrated in 1957.
Last D-Day he sat in the Horsa replica and told the Prince of
Wales, "I could take it off tomorrow!" The Prince's comments
weren't recorded, but they didn't go flying. (One of Wallwork's
D-Day souvenirs was an American parachute. It provided the material
for his wife's wedding dress, and later for his childrens'
christening gowns).
The bridges have been replaced by more modern ones, but the
original Pegasus Bridge was saved, repaired and partially restored
(although it still has an extra five meters that were added in the
1960s), and it anchors a nearby museum, where knowledgeable docents
will show you the bullet impacts that ended the promising life of
young Den Brotheridge. Nearby the Cafe Gondree, where Howard ended
his longest day relaxing, still serves Britons, and those of any
other nationality, who fly to a much warmer welcome in modern
France, and you can coax Mlle. Gondree, who was a young girl in the
cafe on D-Day, to tell you her story.
Unfortunately the original Gustave Eiffel "Horsa Bridge" was
replaced by a modern bridge just a few years ago, and no trace of
the original was saved, although the layout of the terrain hasn't
changed appreciably.
Horsa gliders are a bit thinner on the ground. Not one survived,
and the fragment preserved in the Pegasus Bridge museum is the
largest known piece. Using the original plans, the museum built a
replica, appropriately painted as PF800. A D-Day (Operation
Mallard) glider pilot, Sgt. B. Crossland, has donated his logbook
to the museum -- the pages protectively sealed so that you can turn
them and read his logbook entries. Other museums around Normandy
have a wealth of parts and artifacts -- an instrument panel here, a
cast wheel there, a complete landing gear in the other. Another
reproductions is under construction for the Silent Wings glider
museum in Texas. British Aerospace, which inherited the plans from
long-since-merged Airspeed, provides them to museums for
reproductions with the stated understanding that any new Horsa will
not be flown.
Of course, it won't be flown. Who would dare?
ANN's Daily Aero-Linx (04.16.24)
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