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engagements than a coordinated company action which was, although entirely effective, somewhat disappointing for Maj Neale. Lt Farr's platoon looked after the wooded escarpment while Lt Poole and his platoon were responsible for the houses in Le Port. Both, of course, had a totally different kind of fighting to carry out.

The third platoon, commanded by Lt Thomas, was entrusted with the guarding of the vital canal bridge itself and was disposed in a tight semi circle round the west end of it. It was as depleted as any other platoon and did its job with a small party, under Cpl Hutchinson, on the right in the garden of the cafe, a similar party under Sgt Fay on the left and Thomas himself with the reminder right by the bridge itself. To qote the words of Lt Thomas himself "the platoon, having been deprived of the job of ferrying and finding themselves reserve platoon in the battalion, rather developed the idea that they had been left out of the show". In point of fact they were far from being the reserve platoon; they were holding the divisional objective itself and it is doubtful if any other platoon in the whole division had such a responsible job as they did - nevertheless No 6 Platoon felt "out of it".

The effects of inaccurate dropping can be seen very clearly and simply by examining the case of this platoon, It had emplaned in two aircraft at Fairford, half of the platoon, under Thomas, in one plane and the remainder, under Sgt Amey, in the other. Thomas stick were given an almost perfect drop and were put down square across the centre of the DZ so that the whole stick duly arrived at the RV and were later available at the bridge. The other stick were dropped some twelve miles from the DZ and it was several days before the bulk of them had managed to get back. Each had several adventures on his way back and did very well to get through at all but, in the meantime, the platoon was compelled to do its full job with only half of its strength,

One of the weapons which the Germans had installed for the defence of the bridge was a 40 m.m. electrically fired gun. They disrupted the wiring system when they left but did no actual damage to the gun itself. Two of Thomas' men tinkered with it for a couple of hours and not only got it working again but even zeroed it against a nearby bank. They found it fired 5 feet low at 300 yards. The gun was subsequently used, with great success, against snipers who fired from the windows of the Chateau at people crossing the bridge.

One of the chief daylight problems of this bridge platoon was how to deal with the very large numbers of extremely excited and voluble refugees who wanted to cross. They did not know which way they wanted to go but were very frightened and wanted someone to take them under control. Obviously they could not be allowed to stream across whichever way they wished as there was always the chance that they would later contact the Germans and report what they had seen, or there might even be Germans concealed amongst them. Thomas' platoon had the job of separating the men from the women and children and herding them into hastily improvised cages. The obvious pleasure of these civilians at meeting British soldiers on the bridge was most noticeable and gratifying but their attempts to shake hands personally with everyone of them had to be discouraged as it took so long.

The bottle outposts in the grounds of the Chateau reached its area, without difficulty, by 3 a.m. It was commanded by Lieut Atkinson, who immediately put out a post to watch the road, which was the main one from Caen to the sea and the bridges. Atkinson was an enthusiast for explosives and so were his men; practically all of the party carried considerably more than there normal quota and the road party were particularly longing to use theirs on a tank. It is good to be able to record that they were not disappointed and eventually