Sweeney set off with Corporal Porter and one private. ‘Herouvillette,’ Sweeney reports, ‘was a very eerie place. There were pigeons going in and out, and parachutists still dangling from buildings, dead bodies.’ Sweeney was supposed to turn in Herouvillette, but he missed the turn, wandered about for an hour, finally found the right road, and set off for Ranville and the regiment.
One hundred yards down the road, he saw a dark shape ahead. Motioning for a quiet, careful advance, he moved towards it. There was a clang of a steel door, indicating a German armoured vehicle ahead. Sweeney and his men had practised for exactly this situation during the years at Bulford. Sweeney pulled a grenade, threw it, and started running back towards Herouvillette, while Corporal Porter provided covering fire with his Bren gun.
Sweeney says, ‘now the other chap was a big, slow farm lad who couldn’t really run at all. He had never done anything athletic and as we were going down the road, he passed me, which I felt very upset about, this chap passing me. I said, “Here, private, wait for me”. It seemed to me to be quite wrong that he should be racing past me down the road.’
The Germans, meanwhile, had sprung to life. Tracer bullets were whizzing past Sweeney and the private. Porter kept blazing away with his Bren. Sweeney and the private ducked behind a building to wait for Porter, but the fire-fight continued and Sweeney decided he had to report back to Howard, with or without Porter. Howard confessed to Sweeney that as he had listened to the fire-fight, his thought had been ‘My God, there goes the last of my subalterns’.
Sweeney told Howard that there was no point in heading down the road. ‘Wherever the regiment had got to it hasn’t gone down the road towards Herouvillette and I’ve just run into an armoured car and lost Corporal Porter.’ Howard agreed, saying that they would go back the other way and find the regiment. They did, and discovered that they had never been lost: the regiment had camped for the night in a different location from the one Howard had been told about. He had marched near it twice in the last two hours. It was 0300 hours.
When Howard reported to battalion headquarters, to his great delight he saw Brian Friday and Tony Hooper. They told him of how they had realised they were at the wrong bridge, how Hooper had become a prisoner and was then freed as Friday killed his captors with his Sten gun. They had set off cross-country, through swamps and over bogs, hiding in barns, engaging in fire-fights with German patrols, joining up with paratroopers, finally making it to Ranville. D Company now had twenty-two more men, and two more officers, including his second-in-command. Howard reorganised the company into three platoons, under the three remaining officers.
By 0400, the platoon commanders had put their men into German bunks, then found beds in a chateau for themselves. After two hours of sleep they were on the road by 0630. When it came to the road junction and the left turn towards Escoville, there was Corporal Porter sitting on the side of the road with his Bren gun. He looked at Sweeney and said, ‘Where did you get to, sir?’ Sweeney apologised but explained that he really had to get back and report.
D Company moved on towards Escoville when they suddenly came under very heavy fire. They took some casualties before setting out cross-country, and finally got to the farm Howard had picked as his company headquarters. He put his three platoons into position and they immediately came under mortar, SPV, tank, sniper and artillery fire. They were being attacked by the 2nd Panzer Grenadiers of von Luck’s 125th Regiment of the 21st Panzer Division. ‘And these people’, Sweeney is frank to say, ‘were a different kettle of fish to the people we had been fighting at the bridges’. Casualties were heavy, but D Company held its position.
About 1100 hours, Howard started to make another round of his platoons. Sweeney’s was the first stop. Howard began studying the enemy with his German binoculars, ‘then there was a zip and I was knocked out’. He had a hole right through his helmet, and there was enough blood to convince the men that he was mortally wounded.[3] — [3] Howard’s helmet, complete with bullet-holes front and back, is now in the museum at Pegasus Bridge. He still bears the scar.