Corporal Geoffrey Clarke
Unit : No.2 Anti-Tank Platoon, Headquarters / Support Company, 5th (Scottish) Parachute Battalion
Army No. : T/103936
Geoffrey Clarke originally enlisted into the Royal Army Service Corps in September 1939, and was serving in Italy when he volunteered for Airborne Forces. He was posted to The Parachute Regiment on the 11th February 1944, completed his parachute training in Italy, and was posted to the Anti-Tank Platoon of the 5th Parachute Battalion.
The following account was published in 70 True Stories of the Second World War, a book resulting from The War Stories Contest, run by The People newspaper in 1952, for men and women who had served during the Second World War to submit a story of one particular incident which stood out in their experience.
I Longed to be Shot at!
G. Clarke
Had some prophet told me, on 14 August, 1944, that within twenty-four hours I would be praying to see enemy tracer bullets coming my way I would have uttered a cynical laugh and told him to go and try someone else.
Having already, at that date, spent four and a half years being normally scared of bullets and dodging them like any other sane human, such a thought was, to say the least, a little crazy. However, I lived to become wiser, and to learn that some very strange things happen in war. Also that, contrary to popular belief, they can happen to oneself.
On that beautiful sunny evening in August, on an airfield in Rome, we of the 2nd Ind. Parachute Brigade - also elements of the American Rangers - were "standing-to" beside the planes which were to drop us in the south of France.
Briefing was complete; the tedious waiting nearly at an end. The planes were ready, equipment checked, 'chutes fitted and containers clamped into bomb bays ready for release.
We now had to wait until take-off at 3 a.m. We could sleep beneath the wings of our respective planes, talk, eat, sing or just sit around, running the details of the briefing up and down a little, well-worn tracks in our minds.
This latter is not a popular occupation with the chaps, as it causes at least "butterflies in the tummy," if not the "screaming abdabs."
So we laughed and sang and talked of everything we could think of except what we aimed to do to Jerry when we hit the D.Z. at 5 a.m. The last few hours before an operation of this kind are a unique form of modern torture which make Poe's Pit and the Pendulum seem like an afternoon at the pictures. Inner feelings, however, are kept well under control and the chaps never let them come to the surface, where they might mingle and breed.
The hour for take-off came and we took off to the usual strict time-table. The armada formed up and then headed for France. This is the moment when one realizes the full meaning of what one is doing. The seriousness of the job ahead comes to mind with a bang and sticks with deadly persistence.
At times like these a man does not talk much. He's too busy thinking and some of his thoughts he doesn't care to mention. My fourteen comrades in the plane, then, and myself fell to a will to say little and search our souls in private. I knew we should all be laughing and joking when we reached the D.Z. It's always like that. A hazard can be faced when it is upon you and can be grappled with, whereas, the preceding hours and minutes are nerve-destroying in comparison.
Of what does your paratrooper think, then, on the one-way flight? Having made peace with all else, what does he think about in relation to the job ahead? I will try to answer this one from my own experience and continuous discussions with fellow jumpers.
He is not afraid of the actual exit from the plane, for he knows the immense odds against this going wrong. He is no more - and no less - afraid of the Jerries below than he would be in a line action. He knows that the operation is planned with relative strengths taken into account and expects to do the job he's briefed to do.
What does cause the fears - you do get chaps who don't know the word but I'm not one of them - is the all-important landing, especially in the dark or in bad light. He fears what he might drop on - or in. Fences, trees, sloping roofs, poles, mines, electric cables; all these he fears, but most of all water. Deep water means death to the parachutist unless he is specially equipped for it. We were not.
The dropping zone we were heading for on this occasion was only a mile or two inland, La Muy, to be exact; so you will understand we had much food for thought about being food for fishes.
As we sped through the dawn sky, still dark enough for us to be invisible from below, one could feel one's blood quickening with a furious urge to be out of the plane, away from the roar of the engines, and to hit the deck and make an early start on a good job.
Most of the chaps took a turn at the open door, reporting back anything of interest. Thus we learned that the lights of Corsica and Sardinia were behind us.
I stood for a while at the door myself, looking around us and down. Beneath lay a blanket of darkness, no lights now. But all round us, at the same height exactly, were scores of little blue lights which swept along the skyway with ourselves in an undulating fairyland.
These blue lights cannot be seen from below. I remember two thoughts which came to me at the door. Was there every such a beautiful sight seen in such unhappy conditions, and had any fighting man since the beginning of time gone to battle in such magnificent company?
Darkness had given way to day when the crew chief came in from the pilot's cabin. "Lucky devil," we thought. "He's going back to Rome for his eggs and bacon."
"Ten minutes to the D.Z., boys," he said, and made a damn fool grin as he folded his arms and prepared to watch the lamb go to slaughter.
Larry Wilson and I dug each other in the ribs and laughed as Les Plested, always a cheerful type at the red light, cracked some joke at someone.
We were good pals and this was one of the more important partings. Larry had one of those funny escapes one hears about on this "op." He says it was funny, anyway. Tell you later about that.
The stick commander's voice rang out. The words were the only ones we wanted now: "Stand up - hook up."
Eagerly we fell in line down the gangway with the smooth efficiency which comes after superb training. Each man hooked up his static line to the strong point in the plane and checked that of the man preceding him.
We numbered off, made sure no lines were crossed and that everything was clear for the scramble. The tension was gone now. No time for it. Hands were clasped in such friendship as is seldom, if ever, experienced other than by soldier comrades going into action.
"See you digging in, Larry," I said, hoping like hell there wouldn't be any.
"O.K., Nobby," he replied, "and I'll try not to lose my ration pack this time!" I hoped we would hang on to it for once, even though it was good fruit country below.
"Five seconds red - stand to the door," came the order, and No.1, the stick commander, grasped the sides of the doorway ready to spring. We all pressed forward eagerly. There was no stick faster than ours, I swear, that morning. We had to go out on each other's shoulders if we were to be within a useful operational distance on hitting the deck.
"Go!" yelled No.1, and before the green light could be switched off again he was gone, and so were we all.
I jumped No.3 and Larry No.5, and no sooner had the slip-stream opened by canopy with the usual triumphant-sounding crack than Larry was almost on top of me.
I was glad he was near me as it meant we could talk on the way down. His feet sank into my canopy. He kicked away and we laughed. There was no danger, we well knew. A moment later I was fifty feet from him. Air currents play strange tricks on parachutists, on this occasion strange enough to put three hundred yards between him and me in the last two hundred feet of the drop.
There is, I am sure, no sensation in the world to compare with participating in a mass drop on such a morning as this was. The planes, having spilt their cargoes, are out of hearing and the only sound now is of a thousand silks as they billow and dip.
My reader can capture, with a little imagination, something of the magic. Thus imagine you are sitting in a ballroom where the silk gowns of the ladies are swishing and twirling to the music. Now shut your eyes and stop all the talking. Now silence the music. Substitute cotton-wool for the floor - you've got it.
Even on the grim occasion of a drop in enemy country the beauty and peace of those first few seconds afloat holds one spellbound. It is necessary that I should convey the wonder of this moment because the whole object of this story is to tell of the utter extremes of joy and terror which visited one man within the fullest minute he had ever known.
Having surveyed the scene and made a mental note of the general position of the boys, I now had to get down to the business of preparing to land. I pulled the pin of the quick-release gear which held the kit-bag to my leg, and the said kit-bag swung clear as I lowered it down on the twelve-foot rope. The other end of the rope was fastened to my harness between the legs, so I could let go and just let it swing beneath me. Next, a quick check of gear, torch O.K.; tommy-gun, watch, grenades, ammo, everything organized for speed on touching down if necessary.
Now I raised my arms to lift the webs and took my first good look below. There was a lot of billowy mist, white and thick. We had dropped from about twelve hundred feet, so should be nearly down now. Larry was paying me another visit. He was quite close.
"I don't like that mist, Nobby," he said. I looked again. We were getting amongst it now, and I didn't like it either. It didn't just waft and drift like the usual morning mist. It rolled, and the layers tumbled over themselves as though too heavy to float.
I was brought up on the Lincolnshire coast and I'd seen such mists before, seen them roll over the sea and come off the sea, but they usually broke up into wispy films over the land. I was uneasy. I was about to say something to Larry about it when he instead said:
"I hope that's not water down there, Nobby."
"We'll know damn quick, anyway," I answered, trying to sound cheerful, "when we get through this blanket."
We were right in the thick stuff now, and I could hardly see my kit-bag for it. I think I was looking for the kit-bag when I suddenly saw something else, something which gave me the first and only deadly fear I'd ever known. A break appeared in the rolling mass beneath me. Through it I could see a new pattern taking shape. Long rows of writhing mist which seemed to sway to and fro and which were getting rapidly nearer.
I knew by the sudden speed-up of its approach that I was almost down. All my senses screamed that this was the sea. I could not hope adequately to describe the horrible and hopeless feeling which engulfed me. I am quite sure, however, it was not merely fear of drowning. It was much more basic and important than that.
Perhaps I can best describe it as an intense sensation of futility and loneliness. That I should go out unseen and unheard - for Larry had drifted away again - without a chance to fight for my life, or strike a blow of any sort, seemed a most shocking way to die. A great anger certainly arose inside me as I realized the terrible injustice of it.
Fear waxed as strong as anger, though, and I would have given a limb gladly to see a sign which would tell me of solid earth beneath. Why the devil didn't Jerry open up? But, of course, he couldn't, I consoled myself, for even the sentries would be half-asleep. We had counted on surprise.
I was wondering whether I had drifted alone or if all the chaps were near, when I got amongst the "waves" and two things happened which sent my spirits up at such a rate they must have rung the bell.
First was that I heard a short burst of firing to my left, and, secondly, my heels touched the deck. "Touched" is the wrong word, though, because my right boot struck something solid in the soft earth and ten thousand knives shot into my leg. It was a bad sprain and swelled rapidly. To me, at the moment, it was sheer luxury, however, and had the leg itself dropped off I should still have laughed in my state of overwhelming relief.
All was quiet now and I lay quiet too. I was in the dip between two rows of grape vines, and as I slipped a mag. into the tommy I realized that it was the ground mist playing on the tops of these rows of vines which had caused all the disturbance.
Now I hadn't a care in the world. The brigade was down and the first Jerry to cross my path would know it. I felt that I should never be scared of anything any more and I don't think I have.
Now everything was normal and I could get on with the job we'd come to do.
I worked my pack into position, made sure the spare magazines were handy and, with every nerve alert, began to work my way through the vines. I had a battalion rendezvous to find. I wanted to whistle.
Larry's escape? He, along with Sergeant Tucker and some chaps, landed bang on the roof of the Hun H.Q. Just like Larry! That the Huns got the boys through the roof and took 'em prisoner, but that couldn't last, of course. It was the other way round in an hour or two. Larry collected a bullet through the wrist and he and I had twin beds in a Naples hospital a week later.
END
Geoffrey Clarke was released to the Z/T Reserves on the 9th April 1946, and then discharged on the 20th June 1948. He later re-enlisted into the Army Air Corps (T.A.)
Regarding Sergeant Tucker's experience, the following account was written by Captain R.A. Corby, the Administration Officer of the 5th Parachute Battalion, and was published in the Pegasus Journal in 1974.
While in Southern France last September on holiday, I took the opportunity to visit the DZ near Le Muy where the 2nd Independent Parachute Brigade dropped on 15th August, 1944, with the US 7th Army... [Regarding what he refers to as "Sergeant Tucker's roof"] It is in fact the barn, used by the Germans as a garage, adjacent to the Chateau of Domaine Clastron at the Le Muy end of the DZ.
This Chateau was used by the Germans as an HQ and Sgt Tucker of 2 Platoon of the 5th Bn (Scottish) The Parachute Regiment, had the misfortune to land on the roof of the barn at about 4.30 am in the dark. He was luckier than some, I suppose, who were dropped anything up to 20 miles away. Perhaps Sgt Tucker, now working at London Airport, will read this and tell us in more detail what happened. However, I gathered from him at the time that in the darkness the roof looked too high to jump off and whilst seeking a way down the Germans shot at him from the ground. Whilst returning the fire he was forced to lie in the gulley between the two roofs. I gather that he gave the Germans a lot of trouble and they were forced eventually to make a hole in the roof in order to capture him.
However, when he reached the guardroom, Tucker convinced the Germans that continued resistance was hopeless due to the large numbers of 2nd Brigade and US paratroops around and about 8 am, when the gliders appeared, he led the German garrison out as prisoners.
I discussed all this with Cavalla Laurent the Domaine Manager, last September. He was there in 1944 and remembered Tucker's exploits well. Tucker was fired at, he says, by at least three Germans from different positions to the east, west and north of the barn. He wounded one German and killed another, the Adjutant, before being brought down.
I spoke also to Mme Rowley-Harvey the owner of Domaine Clastron and now unfortunately bedridden. She, too, remembered all this well and indeed several people also, including myself (I doubt this) and John Williams, the Brigade Major. Incidentally, he is one of the few who have been back and he has left a Pegasus Sign and Parachute Wings sketched on the wall inside the barn.
The DZ has altered little. I found the spot where I landed beside the road without much difficulty. Apart from the trees being higher and a few new buildings everything looks much the same. I am certain that anyone visiting Le Muy on the coming 30th anniversary of the landing will be very welcome at Domaine Clastron and I must add that the grapes there are marvellous, if you go at the right time of the year.