Pegasus Bridge [Paperback]

In the early morning hours of June 6, 1944, a small detachment of British airborne troops stormed the German defense forces and paved the way for the Allied invasion of Europe. Pegasus Bridge was the first engagement of D-Day, the turning point of World War II.

This gripping account of it by acclaimed author Stephen Ambrose brings to life a daring mission so crucial that, had it been unsuccessful, the entire Normandy invasion might have failed. Ambrose traces each step of the preparations over many months to the minute-by-minute excitement of the hand-to-hand confrontations on the bridge. This is a story of heroism and cowardice, kindness and brutality—the stuff of all great adventures.D-Day: 0000 to 0015 Hours

It was a steel-girder bridge, painted gray, with a large water tower and superstructure. At 0000 hours, June 5/6, 1944, the scudding clouds parted sufficiently to allow the nearly full moon to shine and reveal the bridge, standing starkly visible above the shimmering water of the Caen Canal.

On the bridge, Private Vern Bonck, a twenty-two-year-old Pole conscripted into the German Army, clicked his heels sharply as he saluted Private Helmut Romer, an eighteen-year-old Berliner. Romer had reported to relieve Bonck. As Bonck went off duty, he met with his fellow sentry, another Pole. They decided they were not sleepy and agreed to go to the local brothel, in the village of Benouville, for a bit of fun. They strolled west along the bridge road, then turned south (left) at the T-junction, and were on the road into Benouville. By 0005 they were at the brothel. Regular customers, within two minutes they were
knocking back cheap red wine with two French whores.

Beside the bridge, on the west bank, south of the road, Georges and Theresa Gondree and their two daughters slept in their small cafe. They were in separate rooms, not by choice but as a way to use every room and thus to keep the Germans from billeting soldiers with l3v