The First Wave by Alex Kershaw

Author:Alex Kershaw
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2019-05-14T04:00:00+00:00

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AS THE PARATROOPERS and foot soldiers converged behind Utah Beach, Lord Lovat and his commandos crept into the village of Saint-Aubin-d’Arquenay, two-thirds of which lay in smoking ruins, the result of Allied bombardment.32 Shards of broken glass frosted the sidewalks, also strewn with smashed tiles and pieces of masonry. Telephone wire lay in twisting coils on the ground between snapped poles. Lovat was now less than two miles from Pegasus Bridge, where Major John Howard awaited reinforcement. He had a sense of foreboding—he hated street fighting, which suited German snipers, their cheeks bruised from the recoil of their Mausers, over the fast-moving, lightly armed commandos. At a road junction in the village, some distraught Frenchmen and women pointed at a building that had been destroyed. Family members lay badly injured in the ruins, desperate for medical aid. Lovat turned and gestured toward medics who were some way behind him. A sniper’s bullet hit a wall close to Lovat’s head with a startling crack. Stone chips flew through the air.

“He’s over there,” shouted one of Lovat’s men as he sprinted across the street, determined to kill the sniper who had fired on Lovat. A grenade through a window. A flat explosion. A door kicked in. Tommy gun bullets spraying a room. Dead and done.

Germans were spotted, around thirty, crossing nearby fields, sun in their eyes, unaware of Lovat and his men.

Lovat pulled off his eighty-pound Bergen rucksack. It felt good to be free of the weight. He knelt down behind it, aiming his short-barreled US Army carbine.

The Germans kept coming, oblivious. Some of Lovat’s men set up a Vickers K machine gun on the roof of a shed.

Whispered orders.

“Pick the officers and NCOs and let them come right in.”

A blond-haired German officer spun as he fell, dust flying off his back as bullets thumped into his chest. Others who had bunched up lay in a grotesque heap, riddled by the vengeful commando fire.

Lovat pressed on, hearing the sound of intense fighting in the distance, the dull hammer blows of artillery and the steady tonk of mortars firing. He knew it was the Germans counterattacking. “The Airborne sounded in trouble,” Lovat recalled, “and it was our job to bail them out.”33

At Pegasus Bridge, Major John Howard had just one thought.

How long could he and his men hold out?

He had been given very clear orders.

Hold until relieved.

Howard looked at his watch.

Come on lads . . . Where are the bloody commandos?

Howard’s nerves were raw. The wait was excruciating, perhaps the hardest part of the whole D-Day operation.

Hold until relieved.

Hold until relieved . . .

But how long for?34

It was approaching 1 P.M. when Howard heard an odd sound amid the crackle of machine gun fire and distant explosions.

Several hundred yards away, out of Howard’s view, Bill Millin walked at the front of a group of commandos, playing his pipes.

Lord Lovat sauntered behind Millin as they passed a row of poplar trees.

Millin spotted a sniper in one of the trees, off to his right.

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