apart from the book written by Pine-Coffin The tale of 2 bridges I was wondering atif there are any other books or sources about the actions of 7 Para at Benouville and Le Port on the 6th of june?????
A few personal accounts from IWM Collections Ronald Benwell Follett Richard Todd Walter William Tanner
This was from an old medal catalogue and may be relevant here? The Rare ‘Pegasus Bridge’ M.C. Group of 6 awarded to Captain David ‘Jock’ McCowan Hunter, No. 3 Platoon, ‘A’ Company, 7th (Light Infantry) Parachute Battalion, Army Air Corps, late Royal Scots. His battalion was parachuted in as part of ‘Operation Tonga’ to provide immediate reinforcements for the 2nd Battalion Oxfordshire & Buckinghamshire Light Infantry who had famously seized the key bridges over the River Orne (Horsa Bridge) and the Caen Canal (Pegasus Bridge) between Benouville and Ranville shortly before. He was recommended for the M.C. for leading his platoon ‘all through the day’ at Benouville, despite his own serious wounds, and in the face of repeated German counter-attacks led by elements of the 21st Panzer Division, until they were relieved by Lovat’s Commandos many hours later. Hunter also served soon after in the Ardennes and Rhine crossing operations, where his Platoon for a time formed the spearhead of the entire 21st Army Group advance into Germany, with Lieutenant Hunter leading his unit from the front. He later , comprising: Military Cross, G.VI.R. ‘GRI’ type, reverse engraved to lower terminal of cross ‘1944’; 1939-1945 Star; France and Germany Star; Defence Medal; General Service Medal, 1918-1962, single clasp, S. E. Asia 1945-46 (Lt. D M Hunter AAC); Operation Overlord Commemorative Medal, gilt metal; Group swing-mounted on bar as worn, lightly toned, extremely fine (6) £7,000-9,000 M.C.: London Gazette: 31 August 1944 ‘for gallant and distinguished services in Normandy’ (The original recommendation states: ‘During the airborne action at Benouville on 6 June 44 this officer received a very painful head wound early on in the day. The fighting was of a most strenuous nature but despite his wound Lt Hunter was always to the forefront of the fight encouraging his men by his own outstanding example. He continued to fight with the Company all through the day and was eventually evacuated when his Company was relieved by a counter attack. The example and devotion to duty of this officer was quite outstanding and contributed largely to the success of the operation.’) Captain David McCowan Hunter was born on 28 August, 1922, at Burnholme, Cumnock,Scotland. He joined the army in January 1942, having obtained his OTC certificates from George Watson’s College in Edinburgh and at St Andrews, he went straight to O.T.C.U. at Barmouth, Wales in June 1942, being commissioned into the Royal Scots as 2nd Lieutenant on 6 June 1942. In December 1943 he volunteered to join the Parachute Regiment, transferring from the oldest regiment to the newest (mainly ‘to impress the girls’, as recorded in his personal memoir), and after four weeks of intense physical tests and parachute training he joined the 7th (Light Infantry) Battalion, Parachute Regiment, part of the Army Air Corps in late January 1944. This new elite unit, created in 1942, initially included the Glider Pilot Regiment, seventeen Battalions of the Parachute Regiment, the Air Landing Regiments, Air Observation Post Squadrons, and by 1944 would include elements of the Special Air Service. The 7th Battalion formed part of the larger 6th Airborne Division which would play a major role on ‘D Day’. Lieutenant Hunter was initially posted to a reserve company, but once ‘Haggis’ Fleming was injured by a dropped grenade, ‘Jock’ Hunter was recommended by the Commanding Officer Lieutenant Colonel R. G. Pine Coffin (aptly nicknamed ‘Wooden Box’) to lead “A” Company’s No.3 Platoon as Platoon Commander. This came at the expense of several more established English officers, as the platoon contained a number of Scotsmen amongst its number. This turn of events led to his participation in ‘Operation Tonga’. Lieutenant Hunter’s superb memoir recalls the tension ahead of the parachute drop: “We arrived at the airfield in the evening of 5th June. We then filed past the WAAF parachute packers who handed us our parachutes.“I hope that’s not your dirty washing in there”, I said to the attractive girl who handed over my bag. We took off just before midnight and in about an hour we were over the DZ (drop zone). Anti aircraft flak exploded around us causing the plane to shudder… Six planes carrying our brigade, the 5th Parachute Brigade, were in fact shot down, at least one of them was with our battalion and these men were all lost… Finally the green light came on and one after another we plunged through the large hole in the floor of the plane. As I jumped I felt the sudden swish of the plane’s slipstream and, before I had time to panic, the sudden tug on my shoulders as my chute opened. It wasn’t the WAAF’s underwear after all. As I floated down I could briefly admire the view and quite dramatic it was as lines of red tracer bullets shot through the darkness criss crossing in different directions…” “The 7th Battalion pathfinder was Lieutenant John Rogers. I saw his green lamp flashing and eventually made contact with him. He told me that he was in the wrong place but he was able to direct me to the RV, a small wood in a gully. Colonel Pine Coffin and my company Commander Major Nigel Taylor were already there. By 2.30 am less than 40% of the battalion had turned up. The other half of my platoon had not turned up (they had been dropped some miles away and turned up some days later). The CO had received the signal from the bridges that the assault by the glider coup de main force had been successful and the bridges were held intact….The CO decided he could not delay further. He left his second in command Major Steele Baume (where do the English get these names?) to pick up any stragglers. A Company was sent over the bridges. One was later to be called “Pegasus Bridge” after the insignia of the Airborne Forces. I went first, leading my depleted platoon. It was still dark. There were a few bodies lying on the bridges. I couldn’t make out whether they were ours or theirs. It was my very first experience of death. I was still only 21. A tank was burning on one of the bridges and ammunition was exploding from it. I dashed past this in some trepidation. I was rushing into the unknown.” “A” company in particular bore the brunt of the fighting in defence of ‘Pegasus Bridge’, initially with orders to ‘dig in’ near a small farm & chateau on the southern edge of the village of Benouville, they were later forced to fight within the town itself. Lieutenant Hunter’s platoon suffered several casualties from its already depleted number, with Hunter himself receiving a serious wound to the head & ear from a grenade (from which he would lose a great deal of blood over the day), but soon after still managing to dispatch a German sniper with a well placed rifle round some 50 yards away hiding in a tree. The fighting continued fiercely around them, with several of Hunter’s men being taken casualty: “We were down to about a dozen men and we were really pinned down. Private Pembury who was beside me was badly wounded with a shattered leg. He lay on the roadway which ran alongside the wall of the farm. I took out his two large field dressings and bandaged him up, as best I could. I also gave him a shot of morphine. While I was doing this I put my Sten gun down. Suddenly the door in the wall was flung open. I looked up and was confronted by a German no more than a yard away with his Schmeisser submachine gun pointing right at me. I was a press on the trigger away from oblivion. He hesitated long enough to enable one of my men to send him to oblivion. I sometimes wondered if the poor chap hesitated to kill a soldier who was attending to the wounds of a comrade. It all of course happened in a flash and my man just reacted quicker. In the chaos of the day I neverfound out who had saved my life. I am sorry to say that he possibly lost his own life.” Despite this narrow escape, Lieutenant Hunter did soon after receive a second wound this time a gunshot to the armpit, which passed straight through, nicking a nerve and leaving his arm numb. Retreating to the Battalion HQ at the crossroads, the fighting continued in earnest. A German Mark IV tank from the 21st Panzer Division soon arrived, and its ‘75mm cannon swivelled round towards us and the walls were smashed to bits’. Shortly after afterwards Corporal Killeen confronted the tank ‘face to face’ with his Bren gun while his comrades attacked it with Gammon bombs and put it out of action, at the cost of Corporal Killeen’s life. After ten hours in action Lieutenant Hunter heard bagpipes in the distance at 13:00, and knew that support was on its way, but by which time Hunter recalled that ‘it was a bit later for us. Half my men had been killed, the other half wounded’. Continuing to fight in an isolated position, Lieutenant Colonel Pine Coffin later summarised the events in saying: “…“A” Company were, as suspected, surrounded and hard pressed, but nevertheless fighting back hard…(they) had been fighting for 17 hours, unassisted, against superior numbers of infantry supported by tanks and self propelled guns. The Company was in good heart, but tired and weakened by casualties.” Lieutenant Hunter’s Platoon (and the others of ‘A’ Company) were the last from the Battalion to be relieved with the 2nd Royal Warwicks’ arrival, crossing the bridge at 0100hrs (D Day +1). Faint from blood loss, Lieutenant Hunter was finally evacuated to the beaches and then on to England to recover, during which time even his small ‘DUKW’ boat taking him from the beach received fire from German aircraft en route. All in all, the 7th Parachute Battalion had held the bridgehead for 21 hours, and Lieutenant Colonel Pine Coffin later proudly remarked that in that time ‘not a single German other than prisoners had set foot on the bridge’. After just two weeks of recuperation Lieutenant Hunter was back with his Platoon in action in the Ardennes during the ‘Battle of the Bulge’, and also on 24 March 1945 during the advance into German of ‘Operation Varsity’. Flying in Dakota aircraft, Lieutenant Hunter, now the only surviving officer from ‘A’ Company’s original D Day Complement, was parachute dropped with his unit from a high altitude, to avoid the heavy anti aircraft fire which caused many casualties as many as 50 were shot down en route with crew. The result was that they landed off target, and had to proceed on foot before taking part in the general advance. By 7 April 1945 he also took part in the fighting near Neustadt in the vicinity of Hanover. The leading platoon of ‘B’ Company was ambushed and came under fire. ‘A’ Company was ordered to move through the wounded and engage the enemy, which they did, taking a number of prisoners. As night fell, Lieutenant Hunter reflected: “A halt was called and Colonel Pine Coffin came up to give me orders personally. He in particular ordered me to keep well behind my leading section and not to lead from the front as I had been doing (by the same token he shouldn’t have been up with his leading Company). I later learned that on the evening of 7th April our Brigade was the furthest advanced troops of the whole 21st Army Group. I feel rather proud to think that my platoon was leading the whole allied advance through Germany at that point.” After the war had been brought to an end, Captain Hunter was employed by the Malayan Police, but returned to civilian life in Edinburgh, working as a solicitor at his own firm ‘Hunter and Davidson’. He retired when he was 65, hoping to enjoy a long healthy retirement, with lots of travelling and tennis of which he was an avid player. Sadly, after a long struggle with cancer, he died aged 77, in 1999. This group offered with copies of Captain Hunter’s personal memoirs: ‘Recollection of D Day’ and ‘Over the Rhine and on to the Baltic’; signed recommendation letter from Lt. Col. Pine Coffin with regard to future work (describing Hunter as having ‘conducted himself with extreme gallantry in action and proved himself a splendid leader of men’); official ‘Release Certificate’ dated 23 October 1946; original portrait photograph in uniform; and a copy of ‘The Tale of Two Bridges’ (adapted by Barbara Maddox, based upon the diary of Colonel R G Pine Coffin), damaged Royal Mint case of issue for the Military Cross. Hopefully it fits the thread ? Kyle
