The objectives of the British airborne troops
As behind Utah Beach, the area east of the Orne estuary, east of Sword Beach, consisted of marshy land flooded by the Germans. It was there that the Allies decided to launch General Gale's 6th Airborne Division. The British airborne troops' primary objective was to protect the left flank of the landings from any attack by the German 15th Army , both before and after D-Day. To achieve this, the airborne assault troops had to capture the German battery at Merville, destroy the five bridges over the Dives and Divette rivers – at Troarn, Bures, Robehomme, and Varaville – and, this time, take the bridges at Bénouville and Ranville intact. For this final, rather delicate operation, Major Howard's Company D of the 2nd Battalion of the Ox and Bucks ( Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry) was chosen. 400 meters from the Bénouville bridge, the undefended Ranville swing bridge was captured by the two other Ox and Bucks sections from gliders 5 and 6. In the absence of Captain Priday, Howard's second-in-command, who was to lead the operation (but who was lost in glider number 4), the capture of the Ranville bridge was entrusted to Lieutenant Fox's platoon, reinforced by Lieutenant Sweeney's platoon. The outcome of the raid was 2 killed and 14 wounded. After giving the agreed victory signal, "Ham and Jam," Howard prepared to receive reinforcements from the 7th Battalion paratroopers in the area around the two bridges ; they were scheduled to land at 00:50 a.m.
Operation “Helping Hand”
Towed from England, where they took off shortly before 23:00 and stalled over Cabourg, the 6 Horsa gliders carrying the 120 men of Major Howard (Company D of the 2nd Battalion of the 6th Airborne Brigade) landed east of the Orne at 00:16. Howard then had to report one dead and several wounded in the ranks of his company.
While gliders 1, 2, 3, 5, and 6 completed their flight paths according to plan and with great precision near the bridges of Ranville and Bénouville, glider No. 4 strayed toward the Dives River, 13 km from the target, at Périers-en-Auge. This was the beginning of Operation "Coup de main."
The assault on the Bénouville bridge was launched at 00:20. For the German sentries, the attack was a complete surprise. During the attack on the bridge, Lieutenant Brotheridge was fatally shot in the neck. He was probably the first British soldier killed on D-Day. As for the explosive charges supposed to have been placed on the bridge by the Germans, they were found stored by Lieutenant Smith's section, unused.
400 meters from the Bénouville bridge, the undefended Ranville swing bridge was captured by the two remaining sections of the Ox and Bucks from gliders 5 and 6. In the absence of Captain Priday, Howard's second-in-command, who was to lead the operation (but who was lost in glider number 4), the capture of the Ranville bridge was entrusted to Lieutenant Fox's platoon, reinforced by Lieutenant Sweeney's platoon. The operation resulted in 2 killed and 14 wounded. After giving the agreed-upon victory signal, "Ham and Jam," Howard prepared to receive reinforcements from the 7th Battalion paratroopers in the area around the two bridges ; they were scheduled to land at 00:50 a.m.
Learn more: Major Howard
Major John Howard enlisted in the British Army in 1932 at the age of 19 before joining the police force in Oxford in 1938. Recalled in December 1939, he was attached to the airborne troops and in 1942 took command of D Company of the 2nd Battalion of the Ox and Bucks. A few weeks before D Day, he was entrusted with the attack on the bridges at Ranville and Bénouville, the capture of which would allow the 3rd Infantry Division to quickly reach Caen.
He oversaw the training of his men and prepared the assault plans himself. Having entered the legend of Pegasus Bridge on June 6, 1944, Major Howard led his company throughout the Battle of Normandy until September 1944. Seriously injured in a road accident in November 1944 in Great Britain, and forced to leave the army in 1946, he began a career as a civil servant until his retirement in 1974. John Howard died in 1999.
Learn more: Lieutenant Brotheridge
Killed at the age of 28 in Bénouville, Herbert Denham Brotheridge is considered the first Allied soldier to die during the Normandy landings.
Den Brotheridge commanded Section 25 of Company D of the 2nd Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry, a unit designated to capture the bridges at Bénouville and Ranville.
Aboard glider No. 1, which he shared with his commander, Major Howard, he landed in Normandy around 00:16 a.m. The landing was rough but precise – 30 meters from the lifting bridge – allowing Brotheridge to launch himself once on land towards the opposite side of the bridge, heading towards a German machine-gun position.
It was at this precise moment that he was struck by a burst of gunfire, fatally hitting his neck. He was 29 years old. He left behind a young wife in England awaiting a future event. Den Brotheridge's body has been buried in the Ranville civilian cemetery since 1944.
Airborne waves
The 60 scouts of the 22nd Independent Company of the 6th Airborne Division were parachuted in at 00:20 over the areas of Ranville, Varaville, and Touffréville. Their mission was to mark the drop zones by installing the radio beacons necessary for ground guidance of the gliders and aircraft that would bring in the troops and equipment.
Thirty minutes after the drop zones were marked, more than 2,000 men from the 5th Brigade (7th , 12th , and 13th Battalions ) were parachuted north of Ranville along with 730 containers of equipment. Their mission was to clear and hold Drop Zone North in preparation for the mass landing of the brigade's gliders, scheduled for 3:30 a.m. The dispersal of the men was significant: after the jump, losses amounted to 16 killed, 82 wounded, and nearly 430 paratroopers who never rejoined their units.
The parachute drops on Drop Zone V between Varaville and Gonneville took place simultaneously: these were the remnants of the 1st Canadian Battalion (Company C had jumped ahead at 00:30) and the 9th Battalion of the 3rd Brigade . Disoriented and widely dispersed, Colonel Otway's 550 men took more than four hours to regroup before heading towards their objective, the Merville battery.
The men of Colonel Pearson's 8th Battalion (3rd Brigade ) were parachuted in at 00:50 from Ranville to Toufreville. After regrouping, they were to proceed towards the bridges at Bures and Troarn, which they were ordered to destroy.
After the men, it was the equipment's turn to be parachuted in. Shortly after 1:00 a.m., three of the six planned gliders (the others landed by mistake or crashed in more distant areas) carrying jeeps, heavy weapons, and explosives arrived at the Toufréville landing zone.
While the 13th Battalion reached the Ranville crossroads with the mission of uprooting the "Rommel's asparagus" on the Drop Zone N meadow using explosives, a group of British paratroopers entered Ranville to liberate the village. This was accomplished at 2:30 a.m., making Ranville the first village liberated.
Shortly after, around 3:00 a.m., the 7th Battalion of the 5th Brigade finally arrived as reinforcements on the Bénouville bridge after parachuting in near Ranville. It immediately took charge of the defense of Bénouville and the hamlet of Le Port.
Finally, it was the turn of the commander of the British airborne troops, General Gale, to land by glider with the third assault wave, bringing heavy equipment and the division's headquarters near Ranville. It was then 3:30 a.m. Ranville had been secured for over an hour. Gale immediately went there on foot to set up his command post at the Château du Hom.
Before daybreak, the eastern flank of the landing zone was completely locked down. Operation Tonga, which began at midnight and ended at dawn, proved to be a resounding success: 74 gliders had been successfully transported, 4 men, and 300 containers were on site before 1:200 a.m.
The final operation of the day in this sector, Operation Mallard, will see the arrival in the evening, between 8:30 and 9:00 PM, of 250 additional gliders around Ranville, Bénouville, and Saint-Aubin-d'Arquenay, notably deploying the division's last brigade, the 6th Airlanding Squadron , and its 2,800 troops.
On the evening of June 6, a total of 1120 gliders landed east of the Orne.
Nearly 9 British fighters gained a foothold in this sector with the aim of holding the bridgehead thus formed at all costs until Caen was taken.
The destruction of the bridges over the Dives and the Divette
East of the Orne, the destruction of the bridges was essential to slow the arrival of German reinforcements and allow the landing on Sword Beach to proceed smoothly.
Major McLeod's C Company of the 1st Canadian Battalion landed west of Varaville at Drop Zone V (DZ) shortly before 00:30, thirty minutes before the main body of the battalion. Its mission was to secure the DZ, neutralize and destroy a fortified enemy position (concrete bunkers, anti-tank gun) at the Varaville crossroads, and destroy the bridge over the Divette River.
Poorly marked and swept by flak, the drop zone remained difficult to identify. Many paratroopers were dropped outside the designated drop zone. McLeod nevertheless managed to gather a few men and headed towards Varaville. They took up defensive positions in the village. Fierce fighting broke out between C Company and the Germans entrenched in their positions. Major McLeod, Lt. Walker, and four paratroopers were killed. Day broke, and the enemy came under intense Canadian fire. Around 10:30 a.m., about forty Germans finally surrendered. The bridge over the Divette River was destroyed. At 5:30 p.m., C Company set off for the Battalion and 3rd Brigade Headquarters at the Mesnil Crossroads.
Varaville would have to wait until August 17th for its liberation by No. 3 Commandos. Major Fuller's B Company was to destroy the Robehomme bridge. Since assembling on the ground, the unit had been advancing with difficulty through the marshes in search of the bridge over the Dives. It was finally reached and destroyed around 6:30 a.m. Robehomme was immediately surrounded by the Canadians, making the church steeple an ideal observation post for monitoring the entire valley. They would remain there until June 7th, then rejoin the rest of the battalion at the Mesnil crossroads.
South of Robehomme, the Bures and Troarn bridges were to be destroyed by the 8th Battalion, which had also landed in a highly dispersed manner. With the few weapons and demolition equipment that could be gathered, the 120 paratroopers who had regrouped west of Touffréville set off towards Bures at 03:45 a.m. to reach the two metal bridges shortly before 6:00 a.m. At 6:30 a.m., the charges were placed by the sappers. At 7:15 a.m., the two structures collapsed into the Dives. Troarn, occupied by more than 200 Germans, was the next objective. A first 5-meter breach had been opened between the bridge pillars two hours earlier by Major Roseveare, who, after crossing Troarn at breakneck speed in his jeep, detonated his trailer packed with explosives in the middle of the bridge. With the presence of the 21st Panzer Division's armored vehicles preventing any approach to the village, the paratroopers must reach midday to seize the bridge, complete its destruction, and liberate Troarn. It is then 15:00 p.m.
At that moment, all bridges across the Dives were cut. The mission assigned to the parachute troops had been fully accomplished.
Ranville, the first village liberated by the British.
On the other side of the swing bridge – named Horsa Bridge – which was easily captured by Major Howard's men, Ranville owed its liberation around 2:30 a.m. to the men of the 5th Parachute Brigade, and more specifically to those of the 13th Lancashire Battalion, who cleared the main streets of the town without encountering much resistance. Thus, an hour later, General Gale was able to establish his division's command post at the Château du Hom. At dawn, however, the paratroopers had to repel a counter-attack by Major von Luck's regiment of the 21st Panzer Division at Bas-de-Ranville. Most of the victims of the fighting on June 6th, who fell east of the Orne River, were buried that same evening around the village church. Today, 2564 soldiers, including 2152 British, rest in the Ranville military cemetery, which prides itself on being the first village in France to be liberated.
The attack on the Merville Battery
Built back from the coast, south of the town, the German battery at Merville, organized around its four concrete casemates housing 150mm guns and defended by a garrison of 150 men, posed a serious threat to the success of the landings on Sword Beach. The assault on this fortification was planned for the night before D-Day. It was entrusted to the 9th Parachute Battalion under Lieutenant Colonel Otway.
At the time of the attack, Otway's position was very unfavorable. He was only able to muster 150 men, lightly armed (a single machine gun and a few Bengalore torpedoes), out of the 550 parachuted shortly before 1 a.m. around Varaville but dispersed during the night. The three gliders supposed to land inside the battery's defensive system did not manage to land there, and the overflight of the position by two of them even alerted the Germans.
Otway nevertheless decided to launch the assault around 4:30 a.m., directing his men divided into four groups towards the four casemates. The fighting was brief but terrible. Otway lost half of his men to seize guns that ultimately turned out to be of low caliber (4 mm instead of the expected 100 mm). Otway had to evacuate the position around 150:5 a.m. to make way for the fire of HMS Arethusa positioned offshore. Despite the losses and the low risk incurred for Sword Beach, the capture of the battery remains one of the major feats of arms of D-Day.
The junction between the paratroopers and the commandos of the 1re special brigade
Landing in several waves at Sword Beach , the 1st Special Service Brigade, without the Franco-British No. 4 Commando which was occupied with liberating Ouistreham, crossed the village of Colleville before turning towards Saint-Aubin d'Arquenay. The fields crossed towards Bénouville were littered with gliders of the 6th Airborne Division, as well as snipers in hiding. Reaching the vicinity of the bascule bridge, the advance proceeded to the sound of Bill Millin's bagpipes, who had been asked to announce the commandos' arrival to the paratroopers. Link-up with the paratroopers took place around noon, giving Major Howard and Lord Lovat time to congratulate each other before the commandos continued their advance, crossing Pegasus Bridge under enemy fire, and pushing further into the airborne beachhead towards Amfreville and Ranville.
Learn more: Bill Millin
Bill Millin, in the foreground from behind, prepares to land on Sword Beach with Lord Lovat's Special Brigade HQ, 6 June 1944, 8:40 a.m. © IWM
After spending the first 12 years of his life in his native Canada, Bill Millin returned to Scotland in 1934. Ten years later, he was the only bagpiper to take part in the D-Day landings.
He owes this exception to the head of the First Special Service Brigade, Lord Lovat, who called him to his side. This was not Bill Millin's first landing. Before Normandy, there was North Africa and then Sicily. On June 6, 1944, leading the commandos, Bill Millin sang "Highland Ladies," "The Road to the Isles," and "Rawintree" from Colleville to Pegasus Bridge before Lovat asked him for a new tune to warn Major Howard of the commandos' arrival. This would be the famous "Blue Bonnets over the Border," performed at the entrance to Bénouville, then "March of the Cameron Men" at the exit from Pegasus Bridge. Bill Millin would tirelessly return to the scene of his exploits almost every year until his death in 2010.
