Deadly mission of D-Day veteran honoured (From Times Series)

Deadly mission of D-Day veteran honoured

3:23pm Wednesday 16th March 2005

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The D-Day attack on the Merville Battery has often been overshadowed by more famous assaults by the Allied forces. But a Hendon man last week received France's top military honour for his role in the suicide mission'. LAWRENCE MARZOUK spoke to him

"The question was put to us by the Colonel he wanted 50 men. We had to do this job. I would have done anything to shorten the war. I said yes."

What Gordon Newton, now 80, of Southfields, Hendon, did not know is that this was a mission he was not supposed to return from. Only one in 50 soldiers were expected to survive the attack on the Merville Battery, a formidable fort and linchpin of the German defence of the Normandy beaches.

More than 60 years ago, as the first troops began to land on the Normandy coast, the plan to take the heavily fortified battery crumbled around them. The day was Tuesday June 6, 1944 D-Day.

The 9th Parachute Battalion had been scattered across the Normandy countryside into flooded fields, 4ft deep with water from the river Dives. The banks had been opened by the Germans.

"Many just sank into the swamp. It was a terrible disaster," said Mr Newton.

The RAF bombing raid which was supposed to disable the German guns had missed the battery, and anti-tank guns, mortars, mine-detectors and a range of other important equipment, had also failed to arrive at the first rendezvous.

At this point Mr Newton was flying across the Channel in a Horsa glider. The day before, the attack gliders had left the RAF barracks at Brize Norton, Oxfordshire, with Mr Newton, 19 other men of the 9th Battalion, and a dog, huddled on board.

The Horsas were expected to ram into the battery after the rendezvous, and the men had orders to destroy the guns from close range. "We were all paratroopers. You had to be a bit mad, and we were very fit," he said.

The Melville Battery, highly fortified, with four heavy guns, two walls of barbed wire, an electric fence, minefield and anti-attack guns and bombs, was an almost impregnable foe.

"I was quite confident, but I didn't want to let myself down, and do anything stupid. The battery was important. From there, the Germans could have covered the beach with fire. It would have changed the face of the invasion had we failed," said Mr Newton.

"One of the officers told me after the attack that is was a suicide mission. But we didn't think we were going to be killed. I felt absolutely invincible. You cannot imagine that you are going to die."

One of the three gliders had already had to land in England after the tow-rope had been damaged, and as Mr Newton's glider crossed the sea, the parachute, which allows the glider to land, opened and they began to lose altitude.

As the glider came perilously close to water, the co-pilot armed himself with a knife and managed to cut the parachute loose.

As they reached France, cloud, darkness and smoke mingled in an impenetrable smog over the battery, obscuring the target.

"Near the battery, we got caught in the search-light and we got hit by anti-aircraft shells," said Mr Newton.

"The flak was coming through the floor and out of the roof, and hit the flame-thrower I was holding. Fortunately it didn't hit the noxious fluid inside. The pilot was getting badly hit and we were being shot to pieces. He told us to cast off.

"Through the night the pilot spotted the flicker of a fire in the distance. It must be the battery,' he thought. But it was the town of Gonneville which had been torched by the Germans. We were heading straight into the floods, and as we came out we sank into a drainage ditch."

It was cold and murky, and they knew it would be tough to reach the battery from such a distance. "We hauled each other out of the water, and all hell was let loose in the battery area."

The battery area suddenly lit up in the distance just as the other glider began its descent. "The majority of the men in the other glider were wounded, and they got out just to stop a counter-attack, through an orchard."

In a moment of calm, Mr Newton, then a private, looked around and contemplated what could have been a peaceful rural setting at daybreak. It looked at bit like the English countryside, he said.

But the fields were marked out with barbed wire and markers with the skull and cross bones signalling minefields dotted around them.

"It was just getting light and we noticed there was a group of Germans, so we jumped into a water-filled ditch," said Mr Newton. "We were down to their jackboot level, and ambushed them. They were quite amazed to see black-faced Englishmen with weapons, up to our waste in water. As we pulled them down into the water I saw on their badge Gott mit uns', which means God with us'. I though to myself, He was with us too that day'."

As the rest of the small and unequipped band of men had already taken the battery, Mr Newton and his fellow-soldiers were charged with marching the prisoners back to camp.

Two days later they were moved to a strategic crossroads to bolster the number of infantry soldiers. "The German attack started on Wednesday, and continued for 13 weeks," he said. "We only were supposed to go for a week. But the area was so vital they threw everything into it to try and break us."

On D-Day Plus Five, the allies finally took Merville and secured the line. Mr Newton breathed a sigh of relief he knew he would soon be going home. But the most traumatic mission awaited him.

"We were told to head back to edge of the battery," he said. "Me and the sergeant found some equipment it was still attached to the operator. We couldn't identify them. We had to go through their rib-cages to get their dog-tags.

"The smell of death was everywhere, the smell of cordite was everywhere. The bodies were in such a state, we reeked of death. When I came home, my mother asked, What is that dreadful smell?' It was the smell of putrid bodies in the depths of my boots. My mother sacrificed her clothing rations to buy me some new boots."

Mr Newton is now the secretary of the 9th Parachute Battalion reunion club. He returns to Merville every year.

Last week, at the French Embassy, Mr Newton received France's top military medal, the Chevalier de la Legion d'Honneur, for his role in the Normandy Landings. "It was very moving. It was all very emotional and there were a few tears," he said. "But it wasn't for heroism, I'm not a hero."

Not everyone would agree with this interpretation.

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