rose or fell. Glancing left or right, all that each trooper could see were the profiles of the other men seated along the hold, faces pale and slightly unreal in the weak yellow glow of the overhead lights.
The hold was long, too crowded, horribly noisy and claustrophobic, making many of the men feel uncomfortable, even helpless. This feeling was in no way eased when, over France, the Halifax was attacked by German fighters and the Brownings front and rear roared into action, turning the din in the hold into absolute bedlam. To make matters worse, the Halifax began to buck and dip, obviously attempting to evade the German Stukas, and the piled crates began banging noisily into one another while making disturbing creaking sounds.
‘Christ!’ Neil shouted, to make himself heard above the noise. ‘Those bloody crates are going to break away from their moorings!’
‘If they do, they’ll fall right on top of us,’ his friend Harry-boy Turnball replied, ‘and crush more than our balls. They’ll bloody flatten us, mate!’
‘Or crash right through the fuselage,’ Jacko put in, ‘and leave a great big fucking hole that would see us sucked out and swept away. Put paid to the lot of us, that would.’
Even above the clamour of the Halifax’s engine and the banging, groaning supply crates, they could hear the whine of the attacking Stukas and the deafening roar of the Brownings.
Suddenly, there was a mighty explosion outside the Halifax, which shuddered from the impact, followed by cheering from the front of the plane. The RAF sergeant acting as dispatcher, standing near the crated jeeps in the bomb bay, gave the thumbs up.
‘They must have knocked out one of those Kraut fighters,’ Rich said. ‘I just wish I could see it.’
‘Right,’ Jacko replied. ‘Bloody frustrating being stuck in here while all that’s going on outside. Makes a man feel helpless. I’d rather be down there on the ground, seeing what’s going on.’
‘Too right,’ Rich agreed.
In fact, they didn’t have long to wait. The buzz of the Stukas faded away, the Brownings ceased firing, and the Halifax, which had been dipping and shaking, settled back into normal, steady flight. Ten minutes later, it banked towards the drop zone (DZ) and the dispatcher opened the door near the bomb bay, letting the angry wind rush in.
‘Five minutes to zero hour,’ he informed the men, shouting above the combined roar of the aircraft’s engines and the incoming wind, which beat brutally at the seated men. ‘On your feet, lads.’
Standing up, the SAS paratroopers fixed their static lines to the designated strong points in the fuselage and then waited until the dispatcher had checked the connections. This check was particularly important as the static lines were designed to jerk open the ’chutes as each man fell clear of the aircraft. If the static line was not fixed properly to the fuselage, it would slip free, the canopy would not open and the unlucky paratrooper would plunge to his death. A man’s life could therefore depend on whether or not his static line was secure.
Satisfied that the clips would hold firm, the dispatcher went to the open door, leaned into the roaring wind, looked down at the nocturnal fields of France, hardly visible in the darkness, then indicated that the paratroopers should line up, ready to jump. As they were already in line, having been seated along the length of the fuselage, they merely turned towards the open door, where the wind was blasting in, and stood there patiently, each man’s eyes focused on the back of the head of the soldier in front of him.
Because he could not be heard above the roar of wind and engines, the dispatcher mouthed the words ‘Get ready!’ and pointed to the light-bulb above his head. Looking up at the light, which would signal the start of the drop, the men automatically tried to become more comfortable with their harnesses, moving the straps this way and that, checking and rechecking their weapons, then doing the same with their equipment.
‘Close your eyes and think of England,’ Rich murmured, though most of the others merely took very deep breaths and let it out slowly, each coping with the rush of adrenalin in his own way.
The light turned to red. Two minutes to go.
As CO, Captain Callaghan was back at base, waiting to come out with the third and last group, and Captain Greaves was heading Group One. Greaves therefore took up a position beside the open door, from where he could check that each man had gone out properly before he became the last man out. The first man to jump was Sergeant Lorrimer, not only because he was the senior NCO, but because he was going to act as ‘drifter’, indicating the strength and direction of the wind.
Taking his place by the open doorway in the fuselage, Lorrimer braced himself, leaned into the beating wind, took a deep breath and looked down at what appeared to be a bottomless pit of roaring darkness. Eventually the dispatcher slapped him on the shoulder and bawled: ‘Go!’
Lorrimer threw himself out.
First swept sideways in the slipstream, he then dropped vertically for a brief, deafening moment. But suddenly he was jerked back up when the shoot was ‘popped’ by the fully extended static line secured inside the aircraft. Tugged hard under the armpits, as if by the hands of an unseen giant, he then found himself dropping again, this time more gently, as the parachute billowed open above him like a huge white umbrella.
In just under a minute the seemingly infinite darkness beneath him gained shape and definition, revealing the moon-streaked canopy of the dense forest north of Orléans. No sooner had Lorrimer glimpsed this than the trees were rushing up at him with ever-increasing speed. Tugging the straps of the parachute this way and that, he steered for the broad, open field that was now clearly visible and watched the trees slip away out of view as he headed for the DZ. The flat field seemed to race up to meet him and he braced himself for contact. The instant his feet touched the ground, he let his legs bend and his body relax, collapsing to the ground and rolling over once to minimize the impact. The whipping parachute dragged him along a few feet, then collapsed, and he was able to snap the straps free and climb to his feet, breathless but exhilarated.
Glancing about him, he saw no movement either in the dark expanse of field or in the forest surrounding it. Relieved that he had not been spotted by the Germans, who were doubtless in the vicinity, he looked up at the sky and saw the blossoming white parachutes of the rest of the men, most of whom were now out of the Halifax.
Having carefully observed Lorrimer’s fall and gauged from it the wind’s strength and direction, the pilot had banked the Halifax to come in over an area that would enable the paratroopers to drop more easily into the field, rather than into the forest. Now, they were doing so: first gliding down gently, then seeming to pick up speed as they approached the ground, hitting it and rolling over as Lorrimer had done, then snapping the straps to set themselves free from the wildly flapping parachute.
Having disengaged himself, each man used the small spade on his webbing to quickly dig a small hole in the earth. Then he rolled up his chute and buried it. This done, he unslung his assault rifle and knelt in the firing position, all the while keeping his eyes on the trees. By the time the last man had fallen, the paratroopers were spread out across the field in a large, defensive circle, waiting for the Halifax to turn around and drop the crates containing the jeeps and supplies.
This did not take long. The aircraft merely turned in a wide circle above the forest, then flew back to the field. When it was directly above the DZ, the crates were pushed out of the open rear bay and floated down, each supported by four parachutes. The. men in the field had to be careful not to be standing under a crate when it fell, even though its landing was cushioned by the air bags beneath it.
Soon
