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By 8 p.m. the advanced party of the relief battalion arrived and the CO sketched the situation to them. The take-over of the B Company positions and, in fact, all except A Company's would present no problems at all but an attack by a fresh company would be necessary to get A Company out together with their casualties. The plans were made and the arrival of the main body of the battalion awaited. They arrived about half an hour later in lorries and quickly set about taking over the positions.

The battalion was to spend the night in the village of Ranville close to the DZ where they had dropped some sixteen hours before. As sub-units were relieved they were to move straight back to Ranville without waiting for further orders. The CO stationed himself on the bridge itself again to check them over.

Bit by bit they came through tired, dirty, hungry and many of them wounded as well but all marching with their heads held high.

In amongst them were troops of the Airlanding Brigade who had come in during the late afternoon in what seemed a never ending stream of tugs and gliders to land on both sides of the two water obstacles. These formed an odd contrast with their freshness and cleanliness to the battle weary men of the battalion.

Brig Poett frequently visited the bridge at this period to chat to the men as they passed and to praise them for the job they had done. The men, for their part, remembered how he had also visited them in the afternoon before the take off while many of them slept and how he had jumped with the pathfinder party thirty minutes before them and how his duties had kept him on the move from unit to unit ever since; he must be as tired as they were, probably more so, and indeed he looked tired too but now he spoke only of their fatigue and of their good work so that a casual observer might have thought that he had done nothing himself. He was a great leader and this fact was realised, perhaps for the first time, by many as they passed over the bridge.

By 9.30 p.m. the CO and Lt Mills (IO) had a period of complete inactivity in front of them for an indefinite period. The battalion was all across the bridge except for A Company and themselves; the relief of A Company was taking rather longer than expected. The responsibility for the defence of the bridge had already passed to the relieving battalion and there was nothing to do but wait for the relief to be completed. The difficulty was to keep awake and this could best be done by constant movement so the two officers moved up and down watching anything of interest they could find.

Time passed. slowly and it was gathered from reports coming in that the Germans were proving very difficult to dislodge from some of the houses in A Company's area. They were using their usual tactics of shooting from one house and then moving to another so that the attacking troops would enter an empty house and very often come under fire as they did so from another direction. The company were working their way through the village systematically and every now and again small parties of A Company would come back as they were relieved.

It was impossible to keep anything like on accurate check on the casualties as some were being evacuated towards the beaches direct through the seaborne Field Ambulance whereas those handled by the Airborne Field Ambulance were evacuated over the bridges into Ranville.


(Archive transcripts © Copyright Normandy War Guide)

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Archive: Story of 7 Bn. Light Infantry, The Parachute Regiment, 1943 - 1944

Page: Page 19