First ashore on D-Day

Press, 8 February 1986, Page 20

First ashore on D-Day

Pegasus Bridge. By Stephen E. Ambrose. Unwin, 1935. 158 pp. Illustrations. $9.95 (paperback). (Reviewed by Oliver Riddell) It is not often that a company of fewer than 200 men can turn the course of a battle, let alone the course of history. But the first Allied troops ashore in Normandy on D-Day in 1944, six platoons of British soldiers in six gliders, did just that. This is as fine a unit history as one is likely to find. By interviewing 24 of those involved, including French locals and German soldiers, describing their weapons and their training, their personalities and their motives, the author has brought alive the events of 40 years ago.

The company was given the task of taking, preventing the destruction of, and then holding two bridges within half a kilometre of each other. They were the bridges over the Orne River and the adjacent canal on the extreme left flank of the main Allied landing beaches. Its captors were to hold the bridges until paratroop and regular forces could reach them, to prevent the German panzer troops rolling up the invasion from the north. Their assignment was successful, with much skill, great physical hardihood, many losses in personnel, and sublime courage. Few books on war will provide the sense of realism for the reader that this one does.