Fox remarked that his Piat had been smashed in the landing. 'Take mine, old boy'. Smith said, and handed his Piat to Fox. Fox in turn handed it to Sergeant Thornton. Poor Wagger Thornton, a man slightly smaller than average, was practically buried under equipment by now: he had on his pack, his grenade pouch, his Sten gun, magazines for the Bren gun and extra ammunition for himself. And now he was getting a Piat gun and two Piat bombs. Overloaded or not, he took the gun and followed Fox forward, towards the T junction.
At 0040, Richard Todd and his stick were over the Channel. Todd was standing over a hole in the bottom of the Stirling bomber, a leg on each side. On each leg he had a kit bag, one containing a rubber dinghy, the other entrenching tools. His Sten was strapped to his chest, and he carried a pack and a pouch full of grenades and plenty of extra ammunition. Todd's batman stood behind him, holding and trying to steady him as the Stirling took evasive action from the flak. 'Quite a lot of people did fall out over the sea from evasive action', according to Todd. His batman held tight to him, as the Channel slipped past below.
At precisely 0050, exactly on schedule, Howard heard low-flying bombers overhead, at about 400 feet. To the east and north ofRanville, flares - set by the pathfinders-began to light the sky. Simultaneously, German searchlights from every village in the area went on. Howard recalls the sight: 'We had a first -class view of the division coming in. Searchlights were lighting up the chutes and there was a bit of firing going on and you could see tracer bullets going up into the air as the paras floated down to the ground. It really was the most awe-inspiring sight... . Above all, it meant that we were no longer alone.'
Howard began blowing for all he was worth on his metal whistle. Dot, Dot, Dot (pause). Dash. It was his pre-arranged signal, V for Victory. Over and over he blew it, and the shrill sound carried for miles in the night air. This meant a great deal to the landing troops, says Howard. 'Paras who landed alone, in a tree or a bog, in a farmyard, alone, and away from their own friends, could hear that whistle. It not only meant that the bridges had been captured, but it also gave them an orientation.'
But it would take the paras at least an hour to get to the bridges in any significant numbers; meanwhile, the tanks were rumbling in Benouville. Wallwork, returning to his glider for another load, went by the CP 'and there was Howard, tooting on his bloody whistle and making all sorts of silly noises'. Howard stopped blowing long enough to tell Wallwork to get some Gammon bombs up to Fox and his men.
So, Wallwork says, it was 'Gammon bombs! Gammon bombs! Bloody Gammon bombs! I bowled my flip line. I had already been to look for the damned things once and told Howard that there weren't any in the glider. But he said, "I saw those Gammon bombs on the glider. Get them!" so back I went panning through this rather badly broken glider looking for the flaming things'.
As Wallwork switched on his torch he heard a rat-tat-tat through the glider. A German in a trench down the canal had seen the light and turned his Schmeisser on the glider. 'So off went the light, and I thought, "Howard, you've had your bloody Gammon bombs".' Wallwork grabbed a load of ammunition and returned to the bridge, reporting to Howard on his way past that there were no Gammon bombs. (No one ever figured out what happened to them. Wallwork claims that Howard pitched them before take-off to lighten the load;
Howard claims that they were pinched by the men from nos 2 and 3 platoons.)
Tappenden kept calling 'Ham and Jam'. Twice at least he really shouted it out, 'Ham and Jam, Ham and BLOODY Jam'.
At 0052 the target for Tappenden's message, Brigadier Poett, worked his way through the final few metres of corn and arrived at the river bridge. After checking with Sweeney on the situation there, he walked across to the canal bridge.
Howard's first thought, when he saw his brigadier coming towards him, was 'Sweeney's going to get a bloody rocket from me for not letting me know, either by runner or radio, that the brigadier was in the company area'. Meanwhile he gave his report, and Poett looked around. 'Well, everything seems all right, John', Poett said. They crossed the bridge and conferred with Smith. All three officers could hear the tanks and lorries in Benouville and Le Port; all three knew that if help did not arrive soon, they could lose their precarious hold on the bridge.
At 0052, Richard Todd landed, with other paras dropping all around him. Like Poett earlier, Todd could not get orientated because he could not see the steeple of the Ranville church. Tracer bullets were flying across the DZ, so he unbuckled and made for a nearby wood, where he hoped to meet other paras and get his bearings. He got them from Howard's whistle.
Major Nigel Taylor, commanding a company of the 7 Para Battalion, was also confused. The first man he ran into was an officer who had a bugler with him. The two had dropped earlier, with Poett and the pathfinders. Their job was to find the rendezvous in Ranville, then start blowing on the bugle the regimental call of the Somerset Light Infantry. But the officer told Taylor, 'I've been looking for this damned rendezvous for three-quarters of an hour, and I can't find it'. They ducked into a wood, where they found Colonel Pine Coffin, the battalion commander. He too was lost. They got out their maps, put a torch on them, but still could not make out their location. Then they, too, heard Howard's whistle.
Knowing where Howard was did not solve all Pine Coffin's problems. Fewer than 100 men of his more than 500-man force had gathered around him. He knew that Howard had the bridges, but as Nigel Taylor explains, he also knew that 'the Germans had a propensity for immediate counter-attack. Our job was to get down across that bridge, to the other side. We were the only battalion scheduled to go on that side, west of the canal. So Pine Coffin's dilemma was, should he move off with insufficient men to do the job, or wait for the battalion to form up. He knew he had to get off as quickly as possible to relieve John Howard.' At about 0110, Pine Coffin decided to set off at double-time for the bridges, leaving one man to direct the rest of his battalion when it came up.
In Ranville, meanwhile, Major Schmidt had decided he should investigate all the shooting going on at his bridges. He grabbed one last plateful of food, a bottle of wine, his girlfriend, and his driver, summoned his motorcycle escort, and roared off for the river bridge. He was in a big, open Mercedes. As they sped past his girlfriend's house, she screamed that she wanted to be let out. Schmidt ordered the driver to halt, opened the door for her, and sped on.
The Mercedes came on so fast that Sweeney's men did not have a chance to fire at it until it was already on the bridge. They did open up on the motorcycle that was trailing the car, hit it broadside, and sent it and its driver skidding off into the river. Sweeney, on the west bank, fired his Sten at the speeding Mercedes, riddling it and causing it to run straight off the road. Sweeney's men picked up the driver and Major Schmidt, both badly wounded. In the car they found wine, plates of food, lipstick, stockings and lingerie. Sweeney had the wounded Schmidt and his driver put on stretchers and carried over to the first -aid post.
By the time he arrived at the post, Schmidt had recovered from his initial shock. He began screaming, in perfect English, that he was the commander of the garrison at the bridge, that he had let his Flihrer down, that he was humiliated and had lost his honour, and that he demanded to be shot. Alternatively he was yelling that 'You British are going to be thrown back, my Flihrer will see to that, you're going to be thrown back into the sea'.