The third bridge (he mentioned Remagen and Arhem - ed), Pegasus, remains better known in the United Kingdom than in the United States, even though it was a featured section of the movie version of Ryan's The Longest Day and is covered in every extended account of the invasion. But no book-length account has appeared.

I first became attracted to the story on June 7, 1981. I was at Pegasus Bridge with a group of American veterans and their wives, leading a tour of World War II battlefields. We had examined the bridge, marveled at the skill of the glider pilots, visited the small museum. I had just got the group back on the bus and was ready to move out - behind schedule as always - when a white haired man, leaning on a cane, stopped me as I boarded the bus and asked, "I say, are any of you chaps from the British Sixth Airborne Division?"

"No, sir," I replied, "we're Americans on this bus."
"Oh, I'm sorry," he said.
"Don't be sorry," I answered. "We're all rather proud to be Americans. Were you in the Sixth Airborne?"
"I was indeed," he replied. "I'm Major John Howard."

"The capture of the bridges will be a coup de main operation depending largely on surprise, speed, and dash for success," the orders read. "Provided the bulk of your force lands safely, you should have little difficulty in overcoming the known opposition on the bridges. Your difficulties will arise in holding off an enemy counterattack on the bridges, until you are relieved."

Turning specifically to the subject of counterattack, Poett's orders continued, "You must expect a counterattack any time after" 0100 hours, or within an hour of landing. "This attack may take the form of a battle group consisting of one company infantry in lorries, up to eight tanks and one or two guns mounted on lorries, or it may be a lorried infantry company alone, or infantry on foot." The most likely line of approach for the counterattacking force would be from the west.

Back in the Benouville whorehouse, Private Bonck had just unlaced his boots. On the bridge, Private Romer had just passed his fellow sentry at the midpoint and was approaching the eastern end. Brotheridge and his platoon came rushing up the embankment. As the shot aimed at Howard broke the silence, Romer saw twenty-two British airborne troops, appearing so far as he was concerned literally out of nowhere, in their camouflaged battle smocks, their faces grotesquely blacked, giving the most eerie sensation of a blending of savagery and civilization, the civilization half of it represented by the Stens and Brens and Enfields they carried on their hips, ready to fire.

They were coming at Romer at a steady trot, as determined a group as Romer thought he would ever encounter. Romer could see in a flash, by the way the men carried their weapons, by the look in their eyes and by the way their eyes darted around, all white behind the black masks, that they were highly trained killers who were determined to have their way that night. Who was he to argue with them, an eighteen-year-old schoolboy who scarcely knew how to fire his rifle.

By 0700, the British 3rd Division was landing at Sword Beach, and the big naval gunfire had lifted to start pounding Caen, en route passing over D Company's position. "They sounded so big," Howard says, "and being poor bloody infantry, we had never been under naval fire before and these damn great shells came sailing over, such a size that you automatically ducked, even in the pillbox, as one went over, and my radio operator was standing next to me, very perturbed about this, and finally Corporal Tappenden said, 'Blimey, sir, they're firing jeeps.' "