From the Archives: Gliders, Pegasus Bridge, and D-Day
At this time last year, My Own True Love and I took a D-Day tour put on by the fabulous National World War II Museum in New Orleans. With the 75th anniversary of D-Day marching toward us, it seemed like a good time to re-run the blog posts I wrote about the trip. Settle in: for the next few posts it’s going to be D-Day in the Margins.
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The image of pilgrimage came to mind again as soon as we began to visit key sites related to the Invasion of Normandy, beginning with the museum at Pegasus Bridge.
Pegasus Bridge, June 1944 (From the collection of the Imperial War Museum
The capture of Pegasus Bridge was a key objective in the first moments of the D-Day invasion on June 6, 1944. Here’s the short version:* Six Horsa gliders carried 181 members of the British airborne infantry, led by Major John Howard, from Dorset to Normandy, with orders to land, capture both Pegasus and the nearby Horsa Bridge,** and hold them until relieved. Pegasus Bridge was captured ninety minutes after the gliders took off from England. The operation’s success played a key role in limiting the effectiveness of the German counterattack.
The museum has the actual bridge, but as far as I was concerned the glider exhibit had the most impact.*** The exhibit juxtaposed an actual section of a glider fuselage from World War II with a full-sized replica of a Horsa glider, built according to the original plans. Just like the little two-man gliders that I enjoyed rides in several decades ago, military gliders were towed aloft by powered airplanes. Once they reached an assigned position and altitude, they were released and flown using rising and falling air currents. Unlike the gliders I knew, they were BIG: they were capable of carrying thirty armed paratroopers, a jeep, or an anti-tank gun. (Obviously I knew this in my head, but there is nothing like seeing things in person to give you a sense of scale.) They were also terrifyingly fragile, made of wood and canvas to conserve metal: in the months after the invasion, desperate French civilians broke up abandoned gliders for firewood and building materials. (And who can blame them?)
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- A Horsa glider under tow (Image from the Royal Air Force)
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- Horsa glider in a training exercise (Image from the Imperial War Museum)
One detail in particular caught my imagination: Allied planes and gliders were painted with black and white “invasion stripes” on the fuselage and wings to distinguish them from German planes. Because of the need for secrecy, the order for the paint job, which involved thousands of airplanes, wasn’t issued until two days before the invasion was scheduled to begin. Because of the size of the job, civilians joined ground crews in painting the stripes. Some used brooms rather than standard painterly gear. Even those who had brushes didn’t have time to mask off the stripes. In many cases the paint was still wet when the aircraft took off.
* If you want to know all the details, I hear good things about these accounts of the operation: Stephen Ambrose Pegasus Bridge: June 6, 1944 and John Howard with Penny Bates. The Pegasus Diaries: The Private Papers of Major John Howard. I haven’t read either of them.
**The local names were the Bénouville and Ranville bridges. In honor of the operation, they were renamed Pegasus after the emblem of the British airborne division and Horsa after the gliders that brought the troops in. Similarly, the names by which we know the beaches on which American, British, Canadian and French forces landed–Omaha, Utah, Gold, Juno, and Sword–were their code names during the planning of the operation. I don’t know why this surprised me, but it did. Perhaps because the accounts I’ve read of the invasion have only used the code names.
***The upside of the tour was that we had an excellent guide narrating the history for us. At some museums, including the museum at Pegasus Bridge, we also had a private lecture/tour/talk by a museum guide/curator/docent. The downside of the tour was that we often didn’t have time to look at museum exhibits in detail. It is quite possible that we learned more from the guides than we would have from the exhibits, but it was a bit frustrating for a hard-core museum fan.
Counting Down to the 19th Amendment
Today I’m taking a brief break from all things D-Day to remind the Marginalia of another critical historical anniversary.
On June 4, 1919, Congress passed the 19th amendment, which would make it legal for the women in the United States to vote. The amendment was ratified on August 18, 1920. (Thank you, Tennessee!)
Please note I don’t say “gave them the right to vote”. Women fought hard for that right. Some even died for it. Even after the amendment was passed, there was work yet to be done before African American and other minority women were able to exercise the 19th Amendment guaranteed to them.
Over the next fourteen months, we’ll come back to the the question of the 19th amendment more than once. I have books I want to review. Exhibits I want to visit. Soapboxes I want to stand on. Because no one should take the right to vote for granted.
From the Archives: German Bunkers and Reinforced Concrete
At this time last year, My Own True Love and I took a D-Day tour put on by the fabulous National World War II Museum in New Orleans. With the 75th anniversary of D-Day marching toward us, it seemed like a good time to re-run the blog posts I wrote about the trip. Settle in: for the next few weeks it’s going to be D-Day in the Margins.
* * *
At dinner on our first night in Normandy, My Own True Love and I ended up in conversation with two men at a neighboring table, a pair of British history buggs who were also touring D-Day sites in Normandy. They had already spend several days looking at the remains of the battles over Normandy, and one of them made a comment that stuck with me for the rest of our time in Normandy: “The Germans sure loved reinforced concrete.”
We soon found he was right. The remains of German bunkers and gun batteries bite into the landscape of Normandy: squat ugly concrete constructions with none of the grace of ruins from earlier ages.(1)
In our first day of touring alone we saw two fine examples: The Grand Bunker Atlantic Wall Museum at Ouistreham and the German gun battery at Longues-sur-Mer.
I must admit, the gun battery at Longues-sur-Mer was of only passing interest to me. It was the site of a key incident in The Longest Day.(3) Seeing it gave me a sense of physical place, but did not change my understanding of the event. The serious D-Day buffs on the tour were more enthralled, and spent a bit of time quoting their favorite lines from The Longest Day to each other in situ.
The Grand Bunker Atlantic Wall Museum, also the site of a memorable incident in The Longest Day, was a different experience altogether. The concrete tower was the German headquarters in charge of gun batteries that covered the entrance to the river Orne. The top floor was a 360-degree observation post overlooking “Sword Beach”, where the British landed on D-Day. On D-Day, the tower housed two officers and fifty men, who formed the last pocket of resistance after the British landed. For three days the German garrison held off Allied attempts to take the tower with heavy machine gun fire and grenades thrown from the roof of the Bunker. On June 9, the German garrison surrendered to Lieutenant Bob Orrell and three other members of of the Royal Engineers, who blew open the armored door of the bunker. (A four-hour process.)
Today, the fully restored tower is a museum that gives visitors an understanding of the cramped and claustrophobic experience of life in a bunker. The interior of the bunker is a multi-story corkscrew of small rooms on uneven levels that house a radio transmission room, an electrical generator, ammunition storage, bunk rooms, the original range finder in the observation post, and a medical bay that makes a Civil War hospital look like a modern surgical theater by comparison. In addition to German artifacts, the museum includes exhibits about the creation of the German system of coastal defenses and fortifications known as the Atlantic Wall. (4)
An illuminating stop by any history buff standard.
(1)The Romans loved their concrete, too. They used it to build temples and coliseums and the renowned Roman roads throughout an empire that stretched from Persia to Britain. And while I suspect the people they conquered hated their Roman invaders as much as the people of Normandy hated the Germans,(2) the concrete constructions they left behind them are beautiful.
(2)Based on the regular revolts against Roman rule from one end of the empire to the other.
(3)Both the book by Cornelius Ryan and the 1962 movie based on the book–a three hour blockbuster with an ensemble cast that included virtually every male star in Hollywood.
(4)Built between 1942 and 1944 using conscripted French labor. By June 1944 the Atlantic Wall extended eight hundred miles with some nine thousand fortified positions. Not that it did the Germans any good.