D-Day. The Battle for Normandy

Brotheridge, they were already charging across the bridge. Howard had made sure they were at the peak of fitness with cross-country runs. But by the time Brotheridge’s platoon reached the other side, the German guards had got themselves together and opened fire. Brotheridge was mortally wounded from a shot through the neck and died soon afterwards.
    Another platoon arrived led by Lieutenant Sandy Smith, although he had broken his arm badly in the landing. After a fierce but mercifully brief firefight, the bridge over the Caen Canal was secured. Howard was concerned at having heard nothing from the platoon ordered to take the bridge over the Orne, a few hundred yards beyond, but then a message arrived to say that they had secured it without the defenders firing a shot. Its commander, Lieutenant Dennis Fox, took a certain pleasure in greeting the next platoon to arrive, panting heavily since they had landed half a mile off target. When asked how things stood, he replied, ‘Well, so far the exercise is going fine, but I can’t find any bloody umpires.’

    Howard immediately ordered an all-round defence and sent Fox’s platoon out in fighting patrols to probe the nearby village of Bénouville. The curious choice of success signal for the two bridges - ‘Ham and Jam’ - was sent off by radio. Howard could hardly dare believe that such a tricky operation had gone entirely according to plan, but then at 01.30 hours the platoons defending the bridges heard the unmistakable noise of armoured vehicles beyond Bénouville.
     
    By then paratroopers were landing all over the place. German officers in command posts along the Normandy coastline were desperately ringing regimental headquarters on field telephones. In some cases they could not get through because the Resistance had cut the lines and they had to resort to their radios. To increase confusion, the RAF had mounted Operation Titanic, with a force of forty Hudsons, Halifaxes and Stirlings. They dropped dummy parachutists and ‘window’ aluminium strips to confuse the radar, as well as SAS teams to simulate airborne landings away from the invasion area. The SAS teams were there to cause mayhem behind the lines and give substance to the dummy parachutists. Some 200 dummies were dropped south of Carentan at the base of the Cotentin peninsula, fifty more east of the River Dives and fifty to the south-west of Caen. They were little more than rough scarecrows, with a device to make them explode and catch fire on landing. The Germans called them ‘ Explosivpuppen ’. Soon after 01.30 hours, teleprinters began chattering in corps and army headquarters, but reports of these ‘exploding puppets’ caused most commanders to think that all the attacks were simply part of a large-scale diversion, probably for the main landing in the Pas-de-Calais. Only Generalmajor Max Pemsel, the chief of staff of the Seventh Army, recognized at the time that this was the major invasion, but Generalleutnant Speidel at La Roche-Guyon refused to believe him.
    Generalleutnant Joseph Reichert, who commanded the 711th Infanterie-Division to the east of the Orne estuary, had remained talking in the officers’ mess until late. On the point of going to bed, he and his companions heard aircraft engines overhead. ‘The planes were flying so low that we had the feeling they might almost touch the roof,’ he wrote later. Reichert and his companions went outside to have a look. ‘It was a night of the full moon. The weather was fairly stormy, with low-hanging black clouds, but in the gaps between them several low-flying planes could be distinctly observed, circling the divisional command post.’ Reichert went back inside to grab his pistol, then heard the shout of ‘Parachutists!’ Paratroopers were coming down all round his divisional headquarters. The 20 mm quadruple flak guns on the main strongpoint opened fire.
    While his operations officer alerted the division, Reichert rang LXXXI Corps headquarters at Rouen. By this time the guns had stopped firing, leaving an uneasy calm. Reichert, who had been sceptical about the whole invasion, now sensed that it really was starting, even if this attack was only a feint. Two captured British paratroopers were brought in, but they refused to answer questions. The accuracy of the maps found on them shook Reichert. They showed almost every gun emplacement. He deduced that the French Resistance had been even busier than the Germans had imagined. Not all