Operation Overload D-Day

This story was added to the website by Helen Jubb, BBC Radio Leeds on behalf of the contributor with his permission.

Shortly after being posted to the 9th Parachute Battalion at Bulford, we were marched to Inkpen near Newbury, where a full size model of a four-gun emplacement was being erected.

This was to be our objective on D-Day, and we practiced day and night to make sure it would be unable to fire on Sword Beach during the landing.

After a 72 hour leave, which in itself was some trick to get home and back to Bulford, missing the last train from Ashford meant a fifteen mile hike along the line to Rye, no bother, we were taken to Broadwell and in for two weeks. At the end of which we were briefed in full.

After a tantalizing 24 hour delay while ‘they’ waited for the weather, we were relieved when we took off into the dusk 11.04pm Double British Summer Time.

We flew up toward London-some blackout! There were lights all over looking from the air.

We crossed the coast a Worthing, at which point having used my sleep period watching the Delta Rhythm Boys singing ‘Dem Bones’ in the camp cinema, I caught up on a bit of ‘shut eye.’

What we had not been told, was that we were flying on a deception flight path to give the opposition the idea that we were coming in further East, following the coast along westward and turning left on the east bank of the Orne River, except that a lot of the aircraft, mainly Dakotas ferrying the 9th battalion, missed the mouth of the Divies for the Orne, not entirely the fault of the pilots of 38 Group.

The 100 bomber’s raid on the battery, which went in before we dropped, was completely ineffective and nearly killed our Brigade Commander, the indomitable ‘Speedy Hill,’ who was caught in the middle of it and was badly wounded and his staff was buried in the rubble, it had caused so much smoke that the visibility was badly affected.

Still we were all blissfully unaware of all this as we stood in the door with a fair bit of flak coming up--- you could see streams of tracers lazily reaching up and zipping past---fortunately most of the rattling on the fuselage was hail---I wished I had known that at the time though.

Anyway on came the green light and away we went.

Imagine my surprise on exiting to find I had mislaid the drop zone, no pretty lights no flares or beacons---- Well! That’s a good start Mick, lost already.
I swing down into a small orchard with a building which I avoided and completely surrounded by my first sight of the bocage hedgerow.

I clambered out and headed up a hill to where I could see 2 figures silhouetted against the night sky, when I pointed this out to them in a critical fashion. (Love one, to me). One said “Well we are in no danger from you corp., you’ve still got your rifle in your leg bag.” (Love all?)

We set off southwards, as it happened not really having a clue where we were, owing to an oversight ‘they’ forgot to issue maps for people dropped 20 miles adrift.

We were in fact, more or less in the area we had been told in the briefing, that they were going to drop Dummy Parachutists to cause a diversion by exploding and simulating gunfire.

I’m glad I didn’t know at the time as I would have felt type caste.

I did have a button compass stitched to my flies but that was for escaping if you got captured, but we weren’t caught yet.

We carried on through the night, picked up more of our ‘stick’ on the way. With the coming of the light we found that we were moving through race horse training ground and so we came to Dozule.

As we came down from the north we passed a lost glider, the occupants had unloaded a jeep and trailer. I hope that they got away in one piece as minutes after we passed, a gun which we later learned the hard way was incredibly good, the 88 self propelled opened up and blew up the glider. We didn’t feel like taking them on, we just wanted to get back to our lines; we couldn’t chance taking the road through the village so we followed the river to by pass it.

At this point our seven strong team met up with Sgt. Bullock with about the same amount of men, who had obviously spent the night as we had, emboldened by the reinforcement Sgt. Bullock took over my team and decided we would go through Dozule.

We aroused quite a bit of interest, people were coming out and giving us milk and apples and the odd drop of cider, sadly this idyllic phase was shattered by an unwary German car coming through the town in the same direction.

Suddenly the air was full of lead and to my surprise the car pulled up and 2 German soldiers got out and gave themselves up. Due to our incredibly high standard of discipline we stopped firing and as a tribute to our marksmanship neither had a scratch on him, in spite of all the flying glass. Both these soldiers were immaculate, fully armed with stick grenades stuck in their belts.

I stuck one of the grenades in my belt.

During the firing an elderly French civilian came out of a house, dashed to a car that was parked, picked up a bundle from the car and dashed back inside. What a lunatic! I investigated and found that the ‘bundle’ was a child of about four years of age, I tried to apologise, but what can you do when you’ve only rehearsed the one essential French phrase and it wasn’t appropriate. Anyway, to show my admiration for the most heroic man I had met that day, I shook hands and saluted him.

We gave the German’s weapons to the villagers, hope they didn’t get into trouble, and carried on up the road with our 2 ‘guests.’

About a quarter of a mile along the road two cars came along, the first one, full of blue uniformed men got away, I was glad because I thought they might have been French police bit the other one copped it.

There were three high ranking officers and we shot them to ribbons, we collected their identity and I took a small Walther Automatic* 75 from one and a Leica camera, which I later surrendered to Brigade HQ for any useful film in it.

Sgt. Bullock at this point decided that this road had got too ‘hot’ and started moving off to the left, I didn’t agree with this decision because I had seen a road sign saying Troarn, any way I was the last one up the bank when I got my gear hooked on some barbed wire.

Just then I heard a car approaching from Troarn, panic stations, I decided to do a quick study on the stick grenade, which I had only seen pictures of. I unscrewed the base revealing a double cord with a toggle.

Not knowing if, and I still don’t, it was timed or impact, I pulled the cord and slung it. It vanished over the bank and made a lovely bang, every one came running back to see what the fuss was.

The card driven by a French civilian, it could have been a taxi, there were 2 German soldiers, done up to the nines, why do they always look smarter than us?, with 2 ladies, maybe their wives!

Anyway it looked as though they should have started their leave yesterday. (score 4)

At this point I think I must have made my point that if this was the road to Troarn we should be heading north-west, anyway that’s the way we headed until they wanted to rest.

We all sat in an open field bordered by a road.
I had been trained in field craft and pointed out that we should have a look-out, the answer was fine, if you wanted to be it OK.
So Mick went and sat by the road side.

Sure enough around the corner came this Gorry ‘blood wagon,’ well I thought if they get away we’ll be cooked.

“Halt,” cries Mick, reinforcing this modest request by popping off the pistol. To my astonishment, it swerves off the road and crashes into the hedge/ ditch. Out jumps one, but gives up when he sees everyone running up. They did have a rifle on the ambulance, medics?

I was mystified how I had got this result but years later when I got that left hand drive Morris I realised it was the driver I has hit in the left upper arm, he wasn’t pleased with me I could tell.

Luckily just then a farmer came along with a horse and cart so we reckoned it would be safe to let them go.

If I hadn’t stopped that wagon they would have had a posse down on us in no time.

Anyway Cpl. Fiditarse wanted to get on the way, but no we had to stop for the night in some deserted farm buildings, from where we had a grandstand view of the Air Landing Brigade coming in.

The Next Day D+1

We followed a railway line, with all the rails removed, we later found were used for sea defences.

We then came to the blown up bridges over the River Divies, with the crashed glider whose task force had destroyed the bridges.

Clambering over the bridge we had no idea that just to the north of us 192 men of our battalion had dropped into a swamp and drowned and have never been recovered to this day.

It was around this point I noticed a building along the line that looked like a halt, with Robbehomme painted on the wall.

Later when we broke out and advanced eastwards we passed it again and followed the same line back.

There was a bitter fighting at Duzole station and C Coy took a lot of casualties.

I was luckier that day but a kid I had as reinforcement that day was killed with 3 shots from a SP88, the third shot was a direct hit.

The lad was an L/C and told me his name was Victor, he appears in the Roll of Honour as Pte. R.G. Parsons.

Later that day as we were approaching Brigade, I was playing ‘Tom Mix’ with my pistol and looking to see if it was safe, when it went off, curing everyone’s constipation.

“Take that bloody gun off him,” says Sgt. Bullock, “before he kills the lot of us.”

Shame! I was really getting attached to it. Shortly after this we came up to Brigade.

Sgt. Bullock went in and left us waiting but he didn’t come back.

My camera was returned to me with an offer of a ‘tenner,’ from some one in Brigade, but I thought I would rather keep it, sadly some one else had the same feeling a couple of days later.

I heard that the Yanks were paying £60 for them in Petticoat Lane at the same time and I saw a dead ringer for it on the Antiques Roadshow…

We were escorted back to our battalion and I never saw Sgt. Bullock again, but I heard that he had been recommended for a medal and various stories went around about his exploits, all very odd it must have happened after he left us?

I never remember seeing him again, though I must have because we are both in the Sgt’s. Mess photograph taken on our return to Bulford.

I can’t explain where they get four day’s adrift from though.

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