Tanks coming down from the T junction were by far his greatest worry. With their machine-gun and cannon, German tanks could easily drive D Company away from the bridges. To stop them he had only the Fiat guns, one per platoon, and the Gammon bombs. Parr came back to the CP from the west end of the bridge to report that he had heard tanks, and to announce that he was going back to the glider for the Fiat. ‘Get cracking’, Howard said.
Parr went down the embankment, climbed into the glider, and ‘I couldn’t see a bloody thing, could I? There was no torch, I started scrambling around and at last I found the Piat.’ Parr picked it up, tripped over some ammunition, sprawled, got up again, and discovered the barrel of the Piat had bent. The gun was useless. Parr threw it down with disgust, grabbed some ammunition, and returned to the CP to tell Howard that the Piat was kaput.
Howard yelled across at one of Sandy Smith’s men to make sure they had their Piat. Jim Wallwork trudged by, loaded like a pack horse, carrying ammunition up to the forward platoons. Howard looked at Wallwork’s blood-covered face and thought, ‘That’s a strange colour of camouflage to be wearing at night’. He told Wallwork ‘he looked like a bloody Red Indian’. Wallwork explained about his cuts – by this time, Wallwork thought he had lost his eye – and went about his business.
At about 0045, Dr Vaughan returned to consciousness. He pulled himself out of the mud and staggered back to the glider, where he could hear one of the pilots moaning. Unable to get the man out of the wreckage, he gave him a shot of morphine. Then Vaughan walked towards the bridge, where he could hear Tappenden calling out, ‘Ham and Jam, Ham and Jam’.
Vaughan stumbled his way to the CP and found Howard ‘sitting in this trench looking perfectly happy, issuing orders right and left’.
‘Hello, Doc, how are you? Where the hell have you been?’ Howard asked. Vaughan explained, and Howard told him to look after Brotheridge and Wood, who had been brought by stretcher to a little lane about 150 yards east of the bridge. (When Howard saw Brotheridge being carried past on the stretcher some minutes earlier, he could see that it was a fatal wound. ‘At the top of my mind’, Howard says, ‘was the fact that I knew that Margaret, his wife, was expecting a baby almost any time’.
Vaughan set off for the west end of the bridge. There were shrieks of ‘Come back. Doc, come back, that’s the wrong way!’ Howard pointed him towards his destination, the first-aid post in the lane. Before letting the still badly confused Doc wander off again, Howard gave him a shot of whisky from his emergency flask.
Vaughan finally made it to the aid post, where he found Wood lying on his stretcher. He examined the splint the medical orderly had put on, found it good enough, and gave Wood a shot of morphine. Then he started staggering down the road, again in the wrong direction, again raising cries of ‘Come back, wrong way, unfriendly!’
Returning to the aid post, Vaughan found Den Brotheridge. ‘He was lying on his back looking up at the stars and looking terribly surprised, just surprised. And I found a bullet hole right in the middle of his neck.’ Vaughan, recovering quickly from his daze, gave Brotheridge a shot of morphine and dressed his wound. Soon after that Brotheridge died, the first Allied soldier to be killed in action on D-Day.
All this time, Tappenden was calling out, ‘Ham and Jam, Ham and Jam’. And as the Doc looked after Den and the several other casualties. Fox and his platoon came marching in, in good order. Howard told him, ‘Number 5 task’, and Fox began moving across the bridge. As he passed Smith he got a quick briefing – the tiny bridgehead was secure for the moment, but hostile fire was coming from houses in both Le Port and Benouville, and tanks had been heard.
Fox remarked that his Piat had been smashed in the landing. ‘Take mine, old boy’. Smith said, and handed his Piat to Fox. Fox in turn handed it to Sergeant Thornton. Poor Wagger Thornton, a man slightly smaller than average, was practically buried under equipment by now: he had on his pack, his grenade pouch, his Sten gun, magazines for the Bren gun and extra ammunition for himself. And now he was getting a Piat gun and two Piat bombs. Overloaded or not, he took the gun and followed Fox forward, towards the T junction.