The FReeper Foxhole Remembers Major John Howard & Pegasus Bridge (6/6/1944) - Jan. 28th, 2004

International Baccalaureate Extended Essay ^ | October 1998 | Alasdair McKay

[SAMWolf]

"Band of Brothers."

LOL! What a great mini-series that is!!

[SAMWolf]

Don't spread that around, you'll ruin my reputation.

[Victoria Delsoul]

OK.

[Valin]

Just another old dead white guy...and who cares about them! What did they ever do do besides kill the "indigenous" peoples(who were living in harmory with out mother the earth and our friends from the forest floor).

[Valin]

But, with idiots on the roads playing Mario Andretti, we'll have them soon enough.

(right hand to god) I'm gonna get a gun and go on a rampage, we get a couple of inches of snow and you'd think it's a new iceage upon us. You've got the IDIOTS with the big tires and 4 wheel drive who think(?) because they do they a immune to the laws of nature and can drive 80 on snow slicked road. Then there are those who if they even suspect that there's a snowflake anywhere within 19 miles of them they don't dare go over 20.
AAAGGGGHHHHH!

There, I feel better now.

[Valin]

Air Force! We're the smart ones, we send the officers out to fight.

[SAMWolf]

LOL!

[SAMWolf]

Yeah, even the Founding Fathers are starting to fall into that category. We're not passing on our history, our children aren't learning where we came from.

[PhilDragoo]

Spartans held the pass at Thermopylae protecting the Greek fleet at Artemesium, buying time for the armada to mobilize at Salamis.

Major John Howard forged a force of Spartans to hold key bridges, protecting the Allied invasion, buying time for consolidation and reinforcement.

He made the men tough as nails and buoyant in the confidence borne of training until right response was automatic.

Tarrant Rushton Airfield D-Day invasion, 1944

Close up of the Horsa Glider section.

AIRBORNE MUSEUM PEGASUS BRIDGE 'MEMORIAL PEGASUS'

New museum building housing an original section of a Horsa Glider.

assaultgliderproject

Wolverton Works played a crutial role in the production of the Horsa. No factory produced aircraft completely from start to finish. This was to prevent production being totally destroyed by a German air raid. Wolverton was chosen for for the manufacture of the wings.

Photo by Del Smith, 35th TCS Pilot, WWII

We will fight them on the bridges.

[SAMWolf]

Evening Phil Dragoo.

Thanks for the link to Tarrant Rushton Airfield. Some good pictures there.

Sten - Cheap, easy to manufacure and effective.

[bandleader]

Dear SAMWolf & snippy_about_it,I didn't meant to steal your thunder.The Pegasus lads were told to"Hold Until Relieved".Their relief was no less than Lord Lovat and his lads.They were 2mins.and 30secs.late!!!!!

[SAMWolf]

You didn't "steal our thunder". You pointed out a fact that had to do with the topic, we just added to your observation. Major Howard and his men accomplished their mission perfectly.

[E.G.C.]

BTTT!!!!!

[snippy_about_it]

Lookie there, missed you by about 4 minutes. Us old folks need to sleep sometime. Nice picture of W, thanks.

[snippy_about_it]

Roger always said it was the thirteen buttons on their fly that made them cranky.

LOL. I hope by now they've progressed to zippers.

[Darksheare]

I have often felt that way myself.
Got behind someone on Tuesday who felt that just because there were mild flakes falling from teh skies that they should drive down THE MIDDLE OF THE ROAD going as SLOW AS A TURTLE WALKING BACKWARDS.
And the guy refused to move back into his own lane for oncoming traffic.
He seemed to believe that he'd spin out.

[stand watie]

YEP!

[Iris7]

The Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry, the "Ox and Bucks", were a proud and ancient outfit. My understanding is that the bureaucrats have closed the outfit down, and dismantled the Regimental system, a horrible mistake, an evil act.

"Howard had been a regular soldier and had risen through the ranks, he understood the mentality of the soldier." This practice should be universal in the American Military. The Germans used to use this practice, don't know if they still do, assigning "faehnenjunker" (cadet) status to promising noncoms.

In "Pegasus Bridge" the point is made that if D Company hadn't been used up putting out fires in Normandy they could have taken the Arnhem bridge in Market Garden by coup de main using Pegasus Bridge tactics. How history would have been different. No Huertgen Forest, no Bulge, maybe.

[SAMWolf]

It's a shame to see the heritage of older units being slowly dismantled.

IMHO, the failure to try and take the Arnhem Bridge by coup-de-main was one of the major blunders of the war. They thought it was too risky, I guess they forgot about "Who Dares, Wins". IMHO, the payoff would have been worth the risk. How much worse could it have been if they had attempted it? Military doctrine is that the best way to capture a bridge is from both ends at the same time.

I always felt that some of the best Officers were the ones that spent some time in the ranks.

[Iris7]

Thought about this subject myself.

Goebbels said in his 1945 diaries (very interesting, by the way) that they "could have defeated the Russians or the bombing, but not both."

So, we could have modulated the air war, used the aviation assets to supply the Polish Home Army with 50 time the supplies, antitank guns, mortars, etc. (a Lancaster could have made the round trip with an auxilliary tank in a bomb bay, delivering maybe 5-7 tons of material per flight), and the Serbs (cut out that Brit communist in intel who was screwing that up terribly), and there were Slovak and Moravian outfits also - until the last Nazi killed the last Communist, or vice versa. Really put out the rubbish. Every body who objected "over here" send to Gitmo and throw away the key, bunch of Communists.