Howard briefed the men over and over, by sections and by platoons. He encouraged them to go into the hut whenever they wished, examine the maps and the photographs and the model, and talk among themselves about their particular tasks.
On May 29, he called the reinforced company together and issued escape aids, ‘very Boy Scoutish things’, Howard says. They included a metal file to be sewn into the battle smock, a brass pants button that had been magnetised, so that when balanced on a pin-head it became a tiny compass, a silk scarf with the map of France on it, water-purifying tablets, and French francs. ‘This sort of thing absolutely thrilled the troops to bits’, Howard recalls: ‘I have never seen such enthusiasm about such simple things like that’. Billy Gray remembers that all the French money was gambled away in two hours.
All the officers were issued with more sophisticated escape wallets. They included large wads of French francs, which were all conveniently ‘lost in battle’. Howard says he lost his francs playing poker with a popular Army Padre.
That night, in Normandy, von Luck was conducting exercises, designed to counter any landing, even commando, by an immediate counter-attack. That day. Major Schmidt received a shipment of slave labourers from the Todt Organization and put them to work digging holes for anti-glider poles, in what he figured were the most likely LZs for gliders. He began with the areas around his bridges. The poles themselves had not yet arrived, but were expected daily.
On May 30, when Howard and all of D Company saw the photographic evidence of the holes, their first reaction was that somehow the great secret had got out, that the Germans knew where they were coming. Kindersley came down to visit Howard, guessing correctly that Howard would be in a blue mood. ‘I know about those photographs’, he began, ‘but there is nothing to worry about’. Howard voiced his fear: all those photographs taken by the RAF for the movie for the pilots, all those photographs each morning, surely the Germans must have figured out that the bridges were to be attacked because of all the reconnaissance activity. Kindersley laughed encouragingly. ‘John’, he said, ‘we’re taking similar photographs of every bridge or target between the Bay of Biscay and Dunkirk’.
That relieved one worry. Howard went to Wallwork with the other worry. ‘Supposing the poles are put into the holes before we land? What will our chances be?’
‘That’s just what we want, sir’, Wallwork answered.
‘What do you mean? What can you mean?’ Howard asked.
Wallwork explained that the gliders would be overloaded, flying into a narrow field with an embankment at one end. They would be landing in the direction of the embankment, and Wallwork was worried about hitting that. He continued, ‘Now, those poles will take something off one wing, and something off the other wing – it’s just damned cheap plywood, you know -and will pull us up absolutely beautifully’.
Howard’s face brightened. ‘Right’, he said, ‘well, let’s get the company on parade’. He called the men together, let them mumble and rumble awhile as they studied the aerial photographs, mostly about those holes, then explained to them what the Brigadier had told him about photographing everywhere, not just their bridges, and then asked Wallwork to tell ..he company what he had just said about the poles being exactly what was needed. Wallwork did so, and the men were satisfied.
‘Put it down to ignorance’, Wally Parr explains, ‘call it what you like, we could see the situation. But Johnny Howard said it could be done and Wallwork said we could do it and that was the end of the subject. If Johnny Howard said we could do it, we could do it.’
Besides the poles, Wallwork had to worry about Howard’s request that he break through the barbed wire with the nose of his Horsa, a difficult enough task with an unloaded glider in daylight on a runway. And his glider – all the gliders – was badly overloaded, with thirty or thirty-one men in each, plus ammunition. There were also two canvas assault boats per glider. The sappers had heavy equipment. The men were carrying up to twenty pounds more ammunition each than had been allotted, and still were trying to add more to their load.