(Mr. Woodward was one of the three British war correspondents who were landed in France from the air. He went by glider with a parachute unit. He was wounded, but not seriously, and is now in England.)
Somewhere in England
Thursday
A British parachute unit formed part of the Allied airborne force which was the spearhead of the Second Front. It was landed behind the German lines, seized vital positions, and then linked up with the Allied forces which had landed on the beaches.
I watched the unit go to war at dusk on D-1 (the day before D-Day), parading with everybody, from its brigadier downwards, in blackened faces and wearing the camouflage smocks and rimless steel helmets of the air-borne forces. Each of the black-faced men appeared nearly as broad and as thick as he was tall by reason of the colossal amount of equipment which the parachutist carries with him.
The brigadier and the lieutenant colonel made brief speeches. ╥We are history,╙ said the colonel. There were three cheers, a short prayer, and in the gathering darkness they drove off to the aerodromes with the men in the first lorry singing, incredible as it seems, the notes of the Horst Wessel song at the tops of their voices. The words were not German.
It was nearly dark when they formed up to enter the ╒planes, and by torchlight the officers read to their men the messages of good wishes from General Eisenhower and General Montgomery.
Then from this aerodrome and from aerodromes all over the country an armada of troop-carrying ╒planes protected by fighters and followed by more troops aboard gliders took the air.
The weather was not ideal for an air-borne operation, but it was nevertheless decided to carry it out. The Germans would be less likely to be on their guard on a night when the weather was unfavourable for an attack.
First came parachutists, whose duty it was to destroy as far as possible the enemy╒s defences against an air landing. Then came the gliders with the troops to seize various points, and finally more gliders carrying equipment and weapons of all kinds. Out of the entire force of ╒planes which took the unit into action only one tug and one glider were shot down.
By the time the glider which I was on board had landed it was very nearly daylight, and the dawn sky was shot with the brilliant yellows, reds, and greens from the explosions caused by the huge forces of Allied bombers covering the sea-borne attack, which was about to begin. A force of Lancasters led by Wing Commander Gibson, V.C., of Moehne Dam fame, put out of action a German battery which otherwise would have made the landing of troops on that beach impossible.
Meanwhile the parachutists had been busy, and the inhabitants of the little French villages near where the landings took place awoke to find themselves free again. In little knots they gathered at windows and at street corners and watched us. They were a little shy and a little reserved for the most part, probably because they remembered Mr. Churchill╒s statement that feint landings would take place, and they reflected that if what they were watching was a feint then the withdrawal of the British troops would mean that they would be responsible once again for their actions to Himmler and Laval.
These considerations did not affect some of them, however. One elderly Frenchman walked into a cemetery where British wounded were being collected amongst grotesque examples of French funerary art and laid upon the stretcher of one of the most seriously wounded men a huge bunch of red roses ╤ an unwittingly appropriate tribute to the wounded men.
Other paratroops told me that as they marched through a small village which had just been devastated by Allied air bombardment they were cheered by French men and women standing among the still smoking ruins of their homes. As D-Day went on it was possible for us, studying the maps at the headquarters of the air-borne division, to see the very high degree of successful surprise which the unit had achieved. German officers were captured in their beds in several places, and it became clear that the anti-air-landing precautions were not nearly as thorough as the Germans had been trying to make out for the past two years.
German prisoners proved a very mixed bag. The Reichsdeutsche was usually either a boy in his teens or an elderly veteran of the last war. There were some units of Volksdeutsche who had had German nationality forced upon them after the Hitlerian conquests of Poland and Czechoslovakia, as well as a number of Italians. The generally poor quality of these troops was not unexpected, and it was realised that behind them lay some of the best units of the German Army ready to counter-attack.
As our men prepared to meet these counter-attacks they were continually harried by snipers, who fought with great resolution until they were killed or until their ammunition was exhausted.
Later German tanks and Panzer Grenadiers in armoured lorries began their attack. In theory paratroops, because of their lack of heavy equipment, are considered light-weights for this kind of work, but these men stood up to the Germans just the same. When the fighting was at its most critical a large force of gliders carrying reinforcements flew right into the battle zone and, circling round, landed their cargoes in spite of continued German shelling of the landing zone.
These gliders turned the tide, and next morning it was an easy matter for us to drive in a captured car from the positions held by the air-borne forces to the beachhead formed by the troops from the sea. The countryside looked empty, but it still looked like posters advertising summer holidays in Normandy.
Small bodies of British troops moved along under cover of woods and hedges. Here and there were the discarded parachutes of our troops. Scattered over the ground were the black shapes of our gliders, most of which had been damaged in one way or another in their landings, with wings or tails sticking up at odd angles.
We could see where the beachhead was long before we got there by the clumps of barrage balloons flying over the ships which lay off the shore. Material already landed was being moved forward in ducks or lorries, or concentrated where it would be best hidden from the air. Mine-clearing operations were going on through the streets of a typical small French seaside resort, with occasional actions between our patrols and German snipers. In one corner of the village lay several German miniature tanks, all put out of action.
Down on the narrow beach transport moved over wire netting, shifting the stores, and on huts and tents the usual rash of British military initials had already broken out. Up to their chests in the surf troops were wading ashore from the landing craft. Out in the middle distance were supply ships and destroyers, while the background of the picture was provided by two big battleships slowly, purposefully shelling German positions with their heavy guns.
These guns had already supported the air-borne landings far inland and had badly damaged the local section of the ╥Atlantic Wall,╙ which consisted at this place of medium-sized concrete block-houses and minefields. The Germans had left in such a hurry that they had not removed the mine warnings which they had put up for their own troops so that our work was made simpler by our having the minefields clearly labelled.
A beach dressing station was full of men, British and Germans, mostly lightly wounded. In one corner there I saw a German N.C.O. showing to three British soldiers a set of picture postcards he had bought in Paris representing the principal buildings of the town.
The pilots of the gliders which had done so well the day before were embarking in an infantry landing-craft for England to get more gliders to bring over. Having become a casualty, I travelled with them across the Channel, which in places seemed literally crowded with ships making their way along the swept channels through the German minefields.
The glider pilots landed this morning at one of the ports used to receive men during the evacuation from Dunkirk. One of the glider lieutenants told me he had been brought there at that time. ╥The people cheered us then,╙ he said, ╥and now they just watch us go by. Do you suppose the English ever cheer their victories?╙
