Location 5 – The Fighting in Bénouville and le Port

By 0300, the 7th Battalion, 5th Parachute Brigade under Lieutenant-Colonel Pine-Coffin had reached Pegasus Bridge and began deploying in the villages of Bénouville and le Port to deepen and broaden the defences. However, the 5th Parachute Brigade drop had become dispersed over a much wider area than anticipated and Pine-Coffin only had one-third of his force – just over 200 men to contribute to Howard’s embattled glider infantry.

As daylight dawned on the 6th June, the sniper and machine gun fire that had continued all night was joined by mortar and artillery fire, directed at the bridge’s defenders. A series of murderous street battles erupted between small groups of British and Germans soldiers in Bénouville and Le Port as each side desperately sought to control the crossing. The battle reached its height mid-morning when three German MkIV tanks of 21st Panzer Division rumbled into Le Port. Without a thought for his own safety Private McGee ran up to the lead tank and destroyed it with a Gammon bomb, an action for which McGee later received the Distinguished Conduct Medal. A sniper in le Port Church tower was also dealt with by a well-aimed shot from a PIAT. Later in the morning the Germans used a fighter-bomber and even a patrol boat with a 20mm gun to destroy the bridge but both attempts failed.

Then, some time after noon, the defenders heard the unmistakable yet somehow surreal sound of the bagpipes. It was Piper Bill Millin of the 1st Special Service Brigade – British commandos who had landed at Sword Beach at 0820 hours under the command of Lord Lovat. Lovat ordered his men across the bridge led by Piper Millin playing “Blue Bonnets Over the Border”. As Piper Millin later recalled,

"It was the longest bridge I ever walked over…but I got over, stopped playing the pipes and shook hands with the two chaps in their slit trench. Then from across the road appears this tall airborne officer, red beret on. He came marching across, his arms outstretched towards Lovat; ‘Very pleased to see you, old boy’, and Lovat said, ‘And we are very pleased to see you, old boy. Sorry we are two and a half minutes late!’ We were more than two and a half minutes late but that’s the famous words of the link up of the airborne and Commandos."

Fighting continued south and east of the bridge for months as the commandos and airborne forces backed by the infantry, tanks and artillery of the 3rd British Division Group that had landed on Sword Beach, struggled to expand the bridgehead. Yet, despite this, it was clear by the evening of 6th June that the operation to capture the bridges had been a stunning success.

This was underlined as, in the gathering dusk, friend and foe alike watched in awe as 250 gliders carrying the entire 6th Air Landing Brigade came in to reinforce the airborne bridgehead with guns, ammunition and 3,000 additional infantry.

Major Nigel Taylor saw the operation from outside the Café Gondreé,

“Just before it got dark, there was a tremendous flight of aircraft. They came in and they did a glider drop and a supply drop between the bridges and the coast on our side of the canal. It was a marvellous sight, it really was. They were also dropping supplies on the ‘chutes out of their bomb doors, and then it seemed only a few minutes afterwards that all these chaps in jeeps, towing anti-tank guns and god knows what, were coming down the road through le Port and over this bridge. At that moment I can remember thinking to myself, ‘My God we’ve done it!’”