PEGASUS BRIDGE – THE MERVILLE BATTERY: Two D-Day Commando Operations

Major John Howard's "coup de main party" is undoubtedly one of the most spectacular and celebrated commando-type operations of D-Day, if not of the entire Second World War. Following a brief and audacious glider landing, the steel swing bridge over the Caen–sea canal was seized by a lightning assault carried out by a few dozen airborne soldiers of the 6th Airborne Division. From that moment — twenty minutes past midnight on 6 June 1944 — the Bénouville bridge, with its distinctively singular silhouette, became Pegasus Bridge and entered History, going on to achieve worldwide renown within a matter of decades. Six kilometres away, towards the coast, a German artillery battery was positioned at Merville; it too was attacked a few hours later by British paratroopers… but what exactly is the connection between these two sites — both now inseparable from the memory of the Landings — and between these two events? In this seventh book of his series on D-Day, successful author Helmut Konrad von Keusgen presents an entirely new and well-grounded account of the events that unfolded at Pegasus Bridge and the Merville Battery — an account that diverges from all previous written works on the subject, principally from the British side. Seventy years after the Allied Landings in Normandy, and following four decades of patient research, Baron von Keusgen brings these events back to life, notably from the German perspective, through precise and astonishing cross-referenced testimonies that had until now remained in the shadows (for example, those of Kanonier Hans Staab, a Flak gunner at the Merville Battery, and Obergrenadier Helmut Römer, a sentry on the Bénouville bridge during the night of 5 to 6 June). Enriched with twenty detailed maps and diagrams as well as more than 270 photographs, the narrative thread chosen by the author is compelling from first to last, recounting with precision the actions of the airborne forces, and then those of the British commandos, on Sword Beach and in the bridgehead east of the Orne and north-east of Caen, on D-Day and in the days that followed. Turning his attention this time to a sector of the Landings on which he had not yet published, the author reaches conclusions that are both striking and unsettling: were all the airborne operations of the 6th British Airborne truly, as has been claimed until now, clear-cut successes dearly won? This book provides answers that will mark a turning point in the historiography.