PARACHUTE OPERATIONS

D-DAY ACCOUNT BY MAJOR R. J. N. BARTLETT, OXF. & BUCKS LT. INFTY

As you probably know the Parachute Bn. is composed almost entirely of Light lnfantry men and riflemen. I was lucky enough to have three officers, six serjeants and thirty-four men of the Regiment in my company.

Towards the end of May [1944] we moved to a transit camp where we were locked up and rigid security measures were taken, and during that time the Regiment was briefed for the operation from air photos, models and maps all of which were quite excellent and gave every man a very clear picture of the ground over which he was to operate. I also had an opportunity of seeing John Howard, with whose company I was to work on reaching the ground. Briefly the plan was as follows: The Parachute Brigade, with a company of Colborne's [2^nd Battalion, Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry, nicknamed after John Colborne, who led the 52nd at Waterloo] attached, was to secure and hold the bridges over the Caen Canal and River Orne, in order to prevent the Germans from attacking the seaborne invasion from the east flank. John Howard's company in gliders was to gate-crash the bridges and the Parachute Battalion was to drop half an hour afterwards and relieve John Howard on the bridges and occupy a bridgehead position in the village of Benouville until relieved by the seaborne forces advancing from Ouistreham. The battalion was also prepared to capture the bridges, should anything go amiss with John Howard's party.

The operation was to take place at night. On Saturday, June 3rd, we all went up to the airfield, fitted parachutes, loaded containers on to the aircraft, chattered with our respective air crews and generally found our way about the place. On Sunday the show was postponed for one day on account of weather, but we moved off early Monday morning to a rest camp just outside the aerodrome. We slept for a few hours during the afternoon and the Padre held a service at 18 hours; then we moved off to the aerodrome in lorries to draw our 'chutes. The weather was good and the "Met" report was "favourable" and everyone was in good spirits. We drew our 'chutes and had a cup of tea and then got into our lorries and were driven off to our aircraft. I have seldom heard such a noise as we drove round the aerodrome - lorries loaded with men bulging with all sorts of equipment, singing themselves hoarse and blowing all sorts of musical instruments.

We took off in ‘Stirling’ aircraft at 2315 hours and were duly dropped at 0050 hours on June 6th. John Howard's party was due to land at 0020 hours. My company was due to be first on the dropping zone and go at best speed and link up with John Howard. The flight was uneventful though there was a certain amount of light flak as we crossed the French coast and my pilot, for some reason best known to himself, had not chosen the right place and instead of finding myself on dropping zone which consisted of cornfield I was put down in very close country and landed in an apple orchard. The rest of the company got down on the correct dropping zone although slightly more scattered than was hoped and the battalion, having found the bridges had been captured intact by John Howard's company, moved straight across and took up the bridgehead positions in the village of Benouville. There was a certain amount of opposition from the ground and some casualties were sustained on dropping. One of my aircraft which consisted of one half of my company's headquarters (a duplicate having gone in another plane under Bob Keen, my second in command) I only found my servant and my signal corporal on the ground out of eighteen men. Due to the close nature of the country the others were spread out and as there were a certain number of enemy about they did not go round shouting to find out where the others were, but pushed off as quickly as they could. There was a half moon and I reckoned that two were about 3+ miles north-east of the dropping zone, so we set out to get back to the battalion. There were a number of German light flak positions in the woods near and quite a few people about on the roads, and after bumping into one or two parties, I decided it was best to work down through the woods.