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The thunderous roar of engines and the buffeting of the wind filled Danny鈥檚 ears, as the aircraft bounced its way through the windy night! Orders and objectives whirred back and forth in his anxious and racing mind! His head was spinning, his stomach churned, there was so much to be remembered, so little time left before he had to put it into practice. Then in the odd brief silences when the wind turned and drove the engine noise away, a droning mumble filled the fuselage as muttering lips recounted orders. On either side of him his comrades pressed shoulder against shoulder, and space between their legs was non-existent. Every inch of the Short Stirling was crammed with kit bags and the specialist equipment that was needed to launch a war. Nor was there was any concession to comfort in a Stirling. The floor was hard, the fuselage dark and it wasn鈥檛 particularly warm. Danny squirmed, rolling his shoulders and stretching a little as his parachute harness pulled tight into his clothing and pressed the torturous knotted-string vest deep into his skin! Whichever way he turned the vest dug in all the more and any efforts to make life easier only brought rebuke from fellow sufferers cramped in their own private hell. So he stayed put, soon he鈥檇 have all the space he could ever want.

Then the telltale rhythm of the Bristol Hercules engines faltered as the pilot slowed the aircraft, the order was given to stand and the aperture door opened. Danny instinctively reached to check his static line and the line of the man in front, then he checked his own line again. And all around the aircraft two hundred fingers and thumbs moved in the semi darkness acting out ingrained routines. Checking buckles. Checking straps. Tugging and tweaking. Hooking on kit bags and other bits of extra equipment. Then it鈥檚 the red light followed by an interminably endless minute of fidget and uncertainty. And when Danny thought it would never come, when he thought the pilot had forgotten and was going to take them all home again, 鈥渟orry lads, just our little joke鈥�, it was green light on and go go go!

The 鈥榮tick鈥� shuffled towards the rectangular hole in the floor, stooping beneath the low ceiling, their thirty pound kit bags hooked to the front of their webbing, pulling that stoop into a toppling lean. Danny felt the urgency to get out, pressed from behind and driven by the momentum of the occasion. Then someone in front stumbled and this rippled domino like back down the line. Now others stumbled, and with each successive man the lean forward became more and more acute until Danny had little option but to dive headlong out of the aircraft and into the swirling night sky!

It was H-Hour plus 50 minutes, ten minutes before 1 am, the morning of June 6th 1944. Somewhere in that black night, eight hundred feet below on the green fields of Normandy, D-Day awaited the men of the 6th Airborne Division.

Daniel Frank Lyons was born May 4th 1925, Wood Green, North London. His father also Daniel and a Scot, twice wounded in the trenches of Ypres, was a buyer for Barratts Confectionery, his mother Doris (nee Exten) a Londoner and housewife, kept a warm, secure and loving home for her young family.

Every summer the family packed their suitcases, clambered aboard a Royal Blue coach and journeyed across the South of England to Paulton in Somerset, for a week with Uncle Charlie (Mums brother) and his family. Paulton was a coal mining village, and Danny and his cousins spent many a grubby hour scrabbling amongst the coal heaps, and doing all those things that keep young boys amused on long summer days.

In 1938 the Emergency Powers Act was passed prompting over 500,000 people to join the ARP and swell the ranks of the 200,000 who鈥檇 volunteered a year earlier. Many others joined the Territorials or the RAF Volunteer Reserve. Danny was in the Scouts, and they bravely took on the role of messengers for the ARP.

Sunday September 3rd 1939, 鈥漈he day war broke out鈥�, at precisely 11 in the morning, the hesitant voice of His Majesty King George VI crackled from the wireless, announcing that Britain and its Empire were now at war with Germany. And a few minutes later the hushed and stunned silence of Wood Green was shattered by the screaming wail of air raid sirens! Six days after the King鈥檚 announcement the British Expeditionary Force moved into France. Eight months later between May 28th and May 30th 1940, the BEF were forced back to the coast by vastly superior opponents and were evacuated from the beaches of Dunkirk. The 鈥榩honey war鈥� was over.

Danny was still at school in 1940 and he鈥檇 often say, 鈥淲e could hear the distant rumble of the Dunkirk guns from our playground, when the wind blew from the south-east!鈥�

He left school at 16, taking a job as an electrical instrument assembler, and when he was old enough joined the Local Defence Volunteers - (the Home Guard). In March 1943 Danny volunteered for the regular army and signed on for seven years.

14426143 Lyons spent the first six weeks of army life in a converted holiday camp, No1 Primary Training Centre (PTC) in Prestatyn, where there was a new intake of would be soldiers every two weeks. After basic training he was sent to the Royal Signals Regiment in Catterick to train as a wireless operator and to learn Morse code. Whilst he was there two officers from the 6th Airborne Division, the sinister sounding Lt.Colonel G Pine-Coffin and another officer by the name of Dust, came looking for men to train as Airborne Signallers. Danny put up his hand, 鈥淲ell it was an extra two bob a day, and it sounded like fun鈥�.

His name was taken, then duly forgotten, and was posted to Egham where he trained as a Signal Interceptor.

Eventually though the call came and Danny went to Claycross for basic jump training. Then he was transferred to 鈥楾he Central Landing School鈥�, at Ringway Airfield, for his eight qualifying jumps.

The first two jumps were from 800ft, from the basket of a tethered balloon. Then they jumped from aircraft, either Whitleys, Stirlings, or Halifaxes. To qualify for airborne wings they had to make eight jumps. Up to and including the seventh jump a trainee could back out and say, 鈥淣o, this isn鈥檛 for me.鈥� But if they went on to the eighth jump, there was no going back. Danny made his eight jumps and proudly took possession of his parachute wings and red beret in the autumn of 1943.

Training now intensified they had to get used to going out as a group, as a 鈥榮tick鈥�, getting 20 men out of the aircraft as rapidly as possible, 20 men in 20 seconds was their target. From Ringway he moved to Bulford and was assigned to the Divisional HQ Signals Section, and of course the training continued. Jumping, landing and re-grouping had to be as natural as breathing.

At the end of April maps started to appear, training became less physical and more technical as they studied plans and relief models. They were given their destination, Normandy, but kept in the dark as to the size and nature of the operation. They just concentrated on their own little bit of the action, they had no idea that 156,000 other men of all nationalities and services were learning their little bits too. Armed soldiers now patrolled the perimeter and no-one was allowed in or out. This was as much a safeguard to keep intruders out as it was to keep the soldiers in. At this late stage High Command couldn鈥檛 afford someone inadvertently speaking out of turn.

The 6th Airborne Division was mobilized on 25th May and Div.HQ dispersed in its specialist units to transit camps somewhere in Southern England. It was a big division so quite a few bases had been prepared to receive them, Tarrant Rushton, Keevil, Blakehill Farm, Down Ampney, Fairford, Broadwell, Brize Norton and Harwell. And of course where-ever the 6th went, the armed guards went too. To this day Dan still isn鈥檛 certain which airfield his unit was taken to. It was possibly Fairford or Keevil, they were the only bases with serviceable Stirlings in late May, early June.

On Sunday June 4th, Lt.Colonel 鈥楶ygmy鈥� Smallman-Tew (he was well over six foot!) sat his signalmen down and said, 鈥淲e go tonight.鈥� But later that night as storms gathered over the English Channel, Pygmy came back to his eager young men to tell them the mission had been postponed. Twenty four hours later, with improving weather Pygmy was able to give his men the thumbs up. It was on! He wished them well, then read an order from Major General Gale, Officer Commanding 6th Airborne Division

鈥滱ll reports I have had from civil and military sources reflect greatest credit to all ranks for their loyal and rigid security. My final words to you are to see to it that what you gain by stealth you hold with guts. In the words of a great Captain, Pray to God and keep your powder dry. God bless you. Go to it."

At 22:30 Monday June 5th 1944, Danny and his mates struggled aboard their Stirling aircraft and waited for the off.

Danny fell for a five second eternity whilst his last connection with England and safety, his static line, snatched setting into motion the series of events that would pull his parachute clear. One second. Two seconds. Three seconds. Four seconds. Five seconds. Then his harness grabbed him like an iron fist and the silken canopy tautened as it swallowed the rushing air. For few seconds, he just hung there as he tried to get his bearings. But he saw nothing in that pitch black night, and only heard the quickening beat of the Stirling鈥檚 Hercules engines as the aircraft climbed away. Quickly he unclipped the kit bag, and paid out its attachment line through his gloved palm. With nothing to gauge his descent, with no horizon to fix his position, this kit bag dangling twenty feet below would be the only thing to tell him where the ground was. Automatically he ran through his checklist to, everything was where it should have been, then once again he strained for the familiar, a house, a tree, anything. Suddenly the dangling line slackened! Instinctively he braced for impact 鈥� bent his knees and hit the soft-ish ground, rolling to his left.

The months of repetitive training now kicked in. Before he knew it the harness was off. The chute made safe. His equipment out of the kit bag and onto his back. And he was stooped low so as not to present a target!

After about half an hour of trotting back and forth across the surrounding fields Danny found someone he knew and together they worked towards higher ground. Their eyes were growing accustomed to the poor light, they could make out fences and trees. Then near to the top of a low hill they saw a range of buildings, probably a farm and the furtive movement of familiar outlines. As they approached Danny called out 鈥楬am鈥� and was answered by the word 鈥楯am鈥�, it was their side. They were paras, infantry men of 5 Para Brigade who鈥檇 taken refuge in the farmhouse where one of their number, injured in the drop, was laid on the kitchen table and receiving first-aid from the farmers wife. Other paras rallied on farm and the stick commander set about fortifying their position. They had a Vickers Machine Gun and Danny and his mate joined the task of setting it up to cover any approach from the passing lane. At about 03:30 - 04:00 the sky started to lighten and at last they were able to pick out landmarks and plot them on their maps. Danny and his mate should have landed close to the village of Le Bas de Ranville, but the wind and their search for a vantage point, now had them about two miles from where they should have been. They waited for the light to improve a little more, then at approximately 05:00 they left the relative comfort of the farmhouse, and made their way cross country to join up with the rest of Div.HQ at the Chateau du Heaume.

The better light brought blessings and they were able to pass through the landscape a lot easier knowing that gate posts topped with rounded foliage were gate posts, and not the outline of a German sentry or that protruding logs or fallen glider poles were just that. Not the barrels of tanks and mobile guns. But the better light had its downside too, sobering up any elation of a safe landing or the joy of serving a purpose at last. Danny was now within yards of where he had floated to earth a couple of hours before and his blood froze. He saw his rolled up chute, the empty kit bag, his tell tale boot prints in the soft earth and a wooden sign bearing a 鈥榮cull and cross-bones鈥� accompanied by the chilling words 鈥楪efahr Miner鈥�! He had landed slap bang in the middle of a minefield, thank god it had been dark and he鈥檇 had the luck of blind ignorance.

Quickly they moved on and a bit further down the road they came across the remains of a fire fight. Slumped against a wall was a young German soldier, perhaps a little younger than themselves, he was in a poorly state, a British officer lay dead on the other side of the wall. He鈥檇 been someone they both knew. They disabled the body taking his dog-tags, pay book, cigarettes and revolver. Then gave the smokes to the wounded German and continued on their way, arriving at the chateaux around 06:00am.

Stragglers had been arriving all through the early hours and the process of digging in was well under way. Danny was tasked with digging a slit trench on the south side of the chateaux, where he would install and operate a No. 22 Wireless Set until relieved. Digging in was hazardous work, neighbourhood resistance was considerable and the chateaux was under sporadic small arms fire. The paras had stirred up a hornets nest and although the local military had been surprised by Major Howard鈥檚 successful glider assault and his capture of the bridges over Orne River and the Caen Canal, the defenders were now wide awake and speedily organising. But the Allied surprise had been total, and those very same German defenders believing all was well, had confidently gone about their evening activities, just a few hours before, happy in the knowledge that they were safe behind Rommel鈥檚 Atlantic Wall. They鈥檇 had a very rude awakening as hundreds of armed men appeared out of nowhere! Suddenly their own surprise airborne strategies had been successfully used against them! And scenes reminiscent of the German assault on the Belgian fortress at Eben Emael, were being re-enacted all around them. But instead of a single isolated action involving 78 Fallshirmjagers (paratroopers) as in 1940, these hapless defenders were now confronted with who knows how many men. They seemed to be everywhere! And with every passing minute more and more armed invaders were emerging from the shadowy countryside. Then as if to compound their confusion, a rolling rumble of big guns could be heard out at sea. Something big was in the offing, and they could only hope they were up against another poorly planned excursion like the 1942 raid on Dieppe! Never in their wildest dreams could these defenders have imagined that behind that distant rumble of guns, 5000 ships were preparing to land 133,000 troops and that another 22,000 others were already coming from the skies above!

Danny made himself comfortable in the newly dug trench, flicked the switch, the valves warmed and the 22 set hummed into life. Bullets were still flying back and forth across the lawn and a couple thudded into the chateaux wall whilst others ricocheted off the stonework balustrades. Instinctively he hunkered down hoping the Norman earth would give him just a few inches more. More bullets clipped the walls and loose masonry pattered onto the groundsheet covering their metre deep trench. Then Danny was handed his first signal of the day. This was it, a years training would now be put to the test. He made his beret comfortable, clamped the head-phones to his ears, flexed his fingers as do concert pianists before they strike the first note, positioned his Morse Key and sent out a stream of code. It was 07:00am, and it had already been a very long day for Danny, the longest he could ever remember. It was well over twenty four hours since he鈥檇 had any real sleep. It would be many more hours before he and his mates were to get any more sleep. Because having achieved all they had set out to do, the 6th were now prisoners of their own success. Now was the time for 鈥榞uts鈥�! And until they were relieved by the troops pushing up the beaches, the men and boys of the 6th Airborne Division would have to hold the front line. They had to prevent German re-enforcements bolstering up their beleaguered Atlantic Wall defences.

It was now H plus 7hours. D Day - Tuesday June 6th 1944, and nineteen year old Danny Lyons (Signalman 14426143) and the Div.HQ Signals Section would continue at their posts for the next sixteen hours without a break!

Thanks Dad.

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