大象传媒

A few days before we were due to take part in an airborne assault into Germany our Commanders ordered a full-scale rehearsel to confirm that, taking off from a number of airfield in East Anglia, the entire British 6th Airborne Division could become successfully airborne in a single 'lift'.
We took off from Birch airfield in Essex and we being towed above Cambridgeshire when our tug aircraft developed an engine fault which forced our two Glider Pilots to cast-off (release from the tow rope).
Unlike to present-day small gliders which can remain airborne for long periods by taking advantage of local air currents, the heavy wooden Horsa glider which carried two Glider POilots and 28 fully equipped infantry had a very limited 'glide time'.
As we dropped earthwards at around 100mph I looked out of a side porthole window and was horrified to see a long, and well filled, passanger train passing directly in front of our flight path from right to left!
Fortunately our pilots had enough speed to life the nose of the glider which literally hopped over the startled folk in the train below and then made a near perfect landing in a large meadow on the southern outskirts of March.
As we clambered from the glider and made our way towards the town people seemed to appear from all directions, clapping, cheering and waving.
They took us into their homes, gave us tea and shared their merage rations with us and, when the local Inns opened, people were lining up to buy us drinks.
We were having such a good time that when our Officer told us that transport would soon arrive and take us back to our tented temporarily transit camp in Essex a couple of the lads when to the southern approach to the town, met the large truck and directed the driver to the other end of March.
It took him a fair time to finally locate us and he was none too pleased to have been sent on a wild goose chase!
In the early hours of 24th March 1945 we again clambered aboad our glider ready for our trip into Germany.
We should have been one of the first combinations to take off but, as we sped down the runway, our two-rope snapped and we skidded to a bumpy halt on the far side of the airfield. We were hitched up to a RAF tractor and towed back to the starting point and formed up at the back of the queue which meant that we were the last to leave.
While our vast airborne armada was well protected by Squadrons of fighter aircraft we travelled into Europe in grand isolation - a sitting duck for any Germany aircraft seeking a soft target.
As we crossed above the river Rhine at about 1,000ft our starboard aileron and wingtip was shot away by an anti-aircraft shell and as we slithered in to land the tail section took a direct hit from another shell!
Where just a few days earlier we had been greeted as heroes now we were met by powerful and deadly German Tiger tanks which we lightly armed Airborne Infantry could do nothing to stop. They were well supported by a large force of hostile German ground troops determined to defend their fatherland.
(A photograph of our shattered glider can be seen in my book The Devil's Own Luck - From Pegasus Bridge to the Baltic coast as an Airborne Sniper - 1944/45. Published under the Leo Cooper imprint of Pen and Sword Books.
Denis Edwards (pegasuseddie)
2nd OxfBucks - 6th Airborne Division

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