Sixty five years ago, in a place not so far, far away....

This shows the spot where the first Allied troops landed in France on D-Day, June 6th 1944. It was just after Midnight. They were part of `The Airborne`, always first, always surrounded, they were the men of the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry under the command of Major John Howard who, before the war, was a police officer. They were a corps elite. Their job was to capture this bridge on the Caen Canal and 2 other bridges over the Orne River and to hold them intact in advance of other British and Canadian paratroopers who were already in the air, waiting to hear the result of this mission, before dropping into that area of occupied France. Their job was to prevent German tanks from counter-attacking the troops that would land by sea 5 hours later. For those "Band of Brothers" fans, this was a similar strategic objective to that of the American 82nd and 101st Airborne at the far western end of the invasion beaches, over 50 miles away. The `Ox and Bucks` Light Infantry was the spearhead of the Eastern flank. Their mission was the classic example of a `Coup De Main`. They arrived, barely 100 of them, in 3 wooden "Horsa" gliders with controls that you could be forgiven for thinking would be used in a childs home made go-cart. There was an airspeed indicator a compass a stopwatch and precious little else. It was dark and the land below was under a blackout order, so there were no lights on the ground. They were towed across the channel and then released many miles from the target and flew a pre-planned, circuitous route in order to mask their intended target. The young pilots had trained hard but the time spent learning their skills could still only be measured in weeks. They navigated by a compass, a stopwatch and their trusty Mark 1 eyeballs to identify significant shapes of rivers and other landmarks. No Garmin, no Tom-Tom, no radar, no ground control. I reiterate, they were gliders, so no going round again, no second chances. All three gliders landed merely yards apart. If you'd been there at the time, stood at the spot where I took the lower left photograph, you would have seen all three of them, just the other side of the far towpath. The first one came to rest a mere 45 yards from the bridge. This was simply remarkable. The German defenders were totally surprised but resisted and after a fierce, head-on firefight the bridge was captured and the German demolition charges neutralised. The first man to be killed by enemy fire on D-Day, was Lt. Den Brotheridge who ran across the bridge, leading an attack on a gun position. He was shot in the neck, very close to where I stood to take this picture. He was 26. The rest, as they say, is history. This mission is, to this day, remarkable in its audacity, daring and execution. It is a humbling experience to stand there. The bridge at Benouville, Normandy, was renamed as a result and will forevermore be known as "Pegasus Bridge" - Up the Ox and Bucks!