Battle on the beach: 75 years since the D-day landings

Giles Milton

It had been raining for much of the day and the air was still damp when Wally Parr, 21, clambered into the glider that would take him to Normandy. It was 10.35pm on 5th June 1944, and Parr’s nerves were on edge – with good reason. He had been selected for an audacious airborne operation that was to take place some six hours before the D-day beach landings in Normandy.

Parr, serving with the Ox and Bucks Light Infantry, and his 181 comrades had to seize two strategically vital bridges at the villages of Ranville and Bénouville. If they failed, D-day itself would be at risk of failure. Hitler’s SS panzer divisions would be able to sweep across the two bridges and drive the newly landed troops back into the sea.

‘Link arms!’ shouted the pilot as the Horsa glider swooped through the clouds towards Normandy. Parr felt a hideous crash as the plane hit the ground: the landing was so rough that he was knocked unconscious, along with all his comrades. It was several minutes before they came to and glimpsed the bridge through the glider’s portholes. The German defenders were still in bed, unaware the gliders had just landed.

‘Charlie, get out!’ shouted Parr to his buddy, Charles Gardner.

‘Charge!’ roared John Howard, their leader.

Parr and Gardner were the first to

reach the bridge and they did so in a welter of machine-gun fire. ‘Come out and fight, you square-headed bastards!’ shouted Parr. He and Gardner worked as a highly dangerous double act, pitching grenades into the German dugouts. Both knew that it was kill-orbe-killed.

There was one British fatality during that nocturnal operation: young Den Brotheridge was gunned down on the bridge. But there was good news to accompany the bad. As Parr and company reached the far side of the bridge, the German defenders ran for their lives. Bénouville Bridge – later renamed Pegasus – was in Allied hands.

There was soon further good news. Ranville Bridge had also been captured. Now Howard’s men had to hold on to these bridges until noon, when British commandos were due to relieve them.

Those commandos were among the 156,000 soldiers crossing the English Channel that night, destined for the five designated landing beaches: Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno and Sword. The Channel crossing was not for the faint-hearted. The sea was so choppy that men vomited up the meat stew they’d eaten before leaving England.

The commandos landed at 8.40am, led by flamboyant Scottish aristocrat Lord Lovat, who had the chutzpah to go into battle with Bill Millin, his personal bagpiper, at his side. (Millin is on this issue’s cover, in the right foreground. Lovat is in the centre, in the water.)

Men bellowed orders – ‘Stand by the ramps! Lower away there!’ – as the landing craft crunched into the gravel at

‘Lovat’s piper blasted out Road to the Isles as his men advanced through shellfire’

Sword Beach. Lovat led the commandos ashore under withering machinegun fire from the German defenders.

Lovat’s piper blasted out Road to the Isles as his men advanced through shellfire and shrapnel. ‘They moved like a knife through enemy butter,’ said Lovat with relish.

Among those in the vanguard were Stan ‘Scotty’ Scott, a chippy London bruiser, and his No. 3 Troop; they were determined to be first to reach Howard’s beleaguered men at the bridges. They advanced inland on bicycles, passing a wounded British paratrooper en route. ‘Where the f*** have you been?’ he asked. He knew that the men at the bridges had been engaged in a desperate six-hour struggle against the Germans.

As Scott and his men approached Bénouville, the firefight intensified. ‘Rounds hitting from all sides,’ said Scott. ‘Campbell was the unlucky one. He got hit through the neck and fell down in one big lump – him, the bike, Omaha Beach – a six-mile-long beach the Nazis turned into a bloodbath

and all that.’ It was just after midday when Lord Lovat arrived with the main body of commandos. He was so cool under pressure that the scene would later be immortalised in the Hollywood movie The Longest Day (1962). Lovat shook Howard warmly by the hand and apologised for being two and a half minutes late.

All along the Normandy coast,