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CHAPTER III

OVERLORD

The flight to the dropping zone took only forty five minutes and was uneventful and very similar to any of the many night exercises that the battalion had done in the past, except that the experience of flying through flak was a novel one for most and the fact that no practice jumps had been made from the Stirling.

The Stirling is a more roomy aircraft than the Whitleys or Albemarles had been and, as it had a simply enormous jumping aperture, there should be little difficulty about getting out, despite the bulky kit bags.

These kit bags presented a very real problem because the ones containing the rubber dinghies and other boating material were extremely heavy and were additional to the already large number of kit bags that have to be carried. Against this could be off-set the fact that the 3" Mortars and the Medium Machine Guns (MMGs) were being dropped in containers from the bomb racks, but even so , approximately two in every three carried a kit bag of some kind or another. The kit had to be taken and kit bags were the only practicable means of doing so.

It was fully realised that they would cause difficulties when the stick came to line up in the plane for the jump, especially if the pilot was taking evasive action at the time, and they would also slow the speed of the exits but, serious as these disadvantages were, they had to be accepted. The large apertures of the Stirlings would certainly be very welcome.

The kit bags were the normal leg type of parachute kit bag, that is to say they were strapped to the right leg of the jumper by leather straps which could be released by pulling a rip cord. This cord is pulled when the parachute has opened and the twenty feet of cord, which connects the bag to the jumper's harness, is paid out until the bag is at the full length of it.

The DZ was some half a mile due East of the first water obstacle but it was a full mile from the RV to the Orne bridge.

It was expected that the most serious opposition would be met at the Canal bridge but it was, of course, quite impossible to pre- dict for certain what the situation would be. Whatever it was though it was essential to contact the Coup de Main party with all speed and to secure a crossing place over the first obstacle.

C Company, under Maj R. Bartlett, was allotted this role and the equipment carried by his company was stripped to the minimum so that they could move fast once they reached the ground. They carried none of the extra kit bags and their haversacks were loaded into containers to be dropped from the bomb racks. It was hoped that they would be able to form up much faster than the rest of the battalion and could be sent off, at the double, to carry out their role before the rest of the battalion had arrived at the RV.

This arrangement meant a further problem over the kit bags as there is a limit to the number that can be carried in an aircraft. If every jumper is encumbered by one, which may well weigh over 90 lb, and in some cases over 100 lb, the stick will be so slow getting out that the aircraft will have passed the DZ before they have all jumped.