Georges Gondree had wakened at the noise. Crawling on his hands and knees, he got to the window ledge and peered over. Smith looked up from his wrist at the movement, saw Gondree’s head, swung the Sten towards him and let go a burst. He pointed the Sten too high and merely shattered the window; bullets tore into the wooden beams, but they did not hit Gondree, who beat a hasty retreat and took his family down into the basement.
When Private Bonck heard the first shots, he pulled on his clothes, grabbed his rifle, and dashed out of the brothel and onto the street. His comrade was already there, and together they ran down to the T junction. After one look at the fire-fight going on, they turned and ran back through Benouville on the road to Caen. When they ran out of breath they stopped, talked over the situation, and fired off all their ammunition. Then they ran back to Benouville, there to report breathlessly that British troops were on the bridge and that they had expended all their ammunition before hurrying back to report.
At 0019 Brigadier Poett hit the ground, the first of the paratroopers to arrive. He had not been able to orientate himself during his short drop, and after a soft landing he undid his harness, gathered himself together, looked around, and realised he did not know where he was. The church tower at Ranville was supposed to be his recognition point, but he was in a little depression in a corn field and could not see it. Nor could he see any of his men. He had set out to find them, especially his wireless operator, when he heard Brotheridge’s Sten go off. That fixed his rendezvo”‘ point exactly in his mind and he began walking towards it, as fast as a man could move at night through a corn field. On the way he picked up one private.
Over England, at 0020, Captain Richard Todd’s Stirling bomber began to straighten out for its run over the Channel. Todd, twenty-four years old, had set aside a promising acting career to join the paratroopers. Commissioned early in 1941, he was in the 7th Battalion of the 5th Brigade of the 6th Airborne Division. The colonel of the battalion, Geoffrey Pine Coffin, was in the same group of Stirlings as Todd – they were on their way to reinforce the coup de main party at the bridge.
Todd was supposed to fly in Stirling no. 36, but as his stick jumped out of its truck and started to climb aboard the aircraft, a senior RAF officer stepped forward and said he was going along, and that this plane would be no. 1. Todd protested at this decision, ‘because we had our plan worked out, our jumping plan, but you can’t argue with somebody senior to you. I was lucky, in fact, because the first twenty or so aircraft got in with the help of surprise, and when I was down there looking up at the others streaming in, the numbers in the thirties were all getting knocked down. The one that replaced me was knocked down and all the chaps on it were lost, so I had a bit of luck that night.’
At 0020 hours. Fox and his platoon had an easy landing some 300 metres from the river bridge. According to Fox, the real leader in the platoon was Sergeant Thornton. ‘In barracks he was a quiet, unobtrusive man who would as soon sweep the barrack room himself as order a soldier to do it. But in action he was absolutely first-class, and he virtually commanded the platoon. I was the figurehead and did more or less what he told me to do.’
When they landed, Thornton reminded Fox that he had forgotten to open the door; when Fox could not get it open, Thornton showed him how to do it. When they got out and formed up, a corporal was supposed to move off with the lead section. Fox following at the head of the other two sections. But the corporal just stood there. Fox approached him to ask what was the matter; the corporal replied that he could see someone with a machine-gun up ahead. ‘To hell with it’, responded Fox, ‘let’s get cracking’. But the corporal still would not move.