Gordon Newton
Paratrooper who survived a hair-raising glider operation in the D-day attack on the Merville battery
GORDON NEWTON, who has died aged 94, took part in the airborne D-day assault on the heavily fortified and strategically important Merville battery on the coastline of Normandy. The battery was manned by a strong garrison and protected by anti-aircraft and machine guns, minefields, an anti-tank ditch and barbed-wire obstacles. It was equipped with four 100mm guns in thick steel-reinforced concrete casemates, capable of laying down a devastating fire on Sword Beach, where the British 3rd Infantry Division was to land.
The 9th (Eastern & Home Counties) Parachute Battalion, The Parachute Regiment, part of 3rd Parachute Brigade and commanded by Lieutenant-colonel Terence Otway, was given the task of silencing the battery before the seaborne invasion began at dawn on June 6. Newton was part of G-B Force, selected from “A” Company, and commanded by Captain Robert Gordon-brown.
This group, comprising 58 men, had the job of crash-landing three gliders inside the battery’s defences and attacking the casemates from the front while the main force was parachuted in and attacked from the rear. Bangalore torpedoes were to be used to blast a path through the coils of barbed wire. Taping parties had to lift the mines and mark corridors through the fields. If the attack, set for 0430 hours, had not succeeded by 0530, the light cruiser Arethusa had orders to bombard the battery.
Members of G-B Force were armed with automatic weapons, grenades and fighting knives. Newton, a heavily built man, carried the flame-thrower. The three Horsa gliders, high-winged monoplanes with a tricycle undercarriage, were mostly constructed of laminated plywood.
The main group encountered gusting winds, low cloud, dust and smoke from Allied bombing, incoming tracer, and, as they approached the dropping zone, heavy anti-aircraft fire – forcing them to take evasive action. Some of the crews were inexperienced, much equipment was lost and most of the battalion was scattered over 50 square miles of Normandy. Many of the men, weighed down by kit, drowned in marshes and submerged irrigation ditches.
Halfway across the Channel, the airspeed of Newton and Gordon-brown’s glider suddenly dropped. The arrester mechanism had broken and the parachute was trailing in the slipstream. It had to be cut free before it dragged both glider and tug aircraft into the sea.
As they approached the battery while still under tow, tracer bullets burst through the floor, splintering wood and metal before going out through the roof. No marker flares or mortar star-shells were visible and they landed about a mile from the battery.
Newton had been seated at the rear of the glider, but decided to move further forward. When the glider landed, the tail broke off; he would have been killed had he remained where he was. He tumbled out into a flooded field and the weight of his kit almost drowned him.
The second glider had to return to England after the towrope parted. The remaining one was badly damaged by flak and landed 500 yards behind the battery.
After the disastrous parachute drop, 9th Para Bn was under strength. Only 150 men out of the 640 who flew out of England mustered in time for the main assault. The enemy’s heavy guns were neutralised after a ferocious firefight.
Gordon Newton was born at Menston, Yorkshire, on June
Gordon Newton, born June 23 1924, died September 30 2018