For the first 15 minutes there was no word from the other bridge over the Orne River. Howard asked his radioman, Corporal Tappendan, over and over, ‘Any from four, five, or six?’ The answer was, ‘No, no, no.’ Finally, Dennis Fox from Glider No. 5 called in that the Orne Bridge had been captured. Within minutes of that report, Glider No. 6 landed and Todd McSweeney’s troops came racing to the bridge. The attackers had achieved total surprise, and the British now controlled both bridges. Ecstatic, Howard ordered Tappendan to send out the success signal. Tappendan lay down on the road by the canal bridge and transmitted, ‘Hello Four Dog, Hello Four Dog, Ham and Jam, Ham and Jam!’ He paused for an answer, but there was only silence on the airwaves. Then he tried again, ‘Hello Four Dog, Hello Four Dog, Ham and Jam, Ham and Jam.’ But try as he might, no one answered him. At that very moment, the rest of 6th Airborne was descending onto the Ranville Plain. A radio in that force had been set to their frequency, but no one answered.

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‘For a solid hour I lay on that road,’ Tappendan recalled. ‘I finally got so frustrated that I said, `Hello Four Dog, Hello Four Dog, Ham and Jam, Ham and Bloody Jam, why don’t you answer me?”

Tappendan had no way of knowing that the radio tuned to his frequency had been lost in the jump, so no one knew that Howard’s force had captured the bridges intact. The major began consolidating his positions, preparing for the anticipated German counterattack.

The successful taking of the bridges had not been without cost. Two men had been killed — Diggs, who had drowned in the pond, and Howard’s platoon commander, Brotheridge, who had been shot through the neck on the far side of the bridge.

But those losses seemed relatively minor when Howard learned that Glider No. 4 was apparently missing. That meant 30 men might have been lost, including two of his officers, Lieutenant Hooper and his second-in-command, Captain Priday. Lieutenant Fox reported that he had seen the glider while he was in the air. ‘I saw Brian Priday’s tug and glider going off at an angle,’ he told Howard, ‘and I thought the pilot was going to circle and come in.’ But the glider never arrived.

At that point, Glider No. 4 was still very much in action. Coming in over Cabourg, the crew had cast off from their tug and dived toward the ground. Somehow, however, the pilot then became disoriented and flew in a great circle, finally spotting a silver stream of water reflected in the moonlight. Deciding that he had spotted his target, the glider pilot made his approach and set the plane down smooth as velvet on the left bank of the river. ‘We had a very comfortable, soft landing in the water on the riverbank,’ said Lance Cpl. Clive. ‘We got out and were only fifty yards from the bridge, and Captain Priday led the way.’

We rushed the bridge,’ recalled Sergeant Raynor, ‘and we took the bridge. There was a German sentry there and he ran away. He left his helmet on the parapet of the bridge and ran.’

Priday’s men would eventually realize that they had seized the wrong bridge, a Dives River crossing near Robehomme that was about 10 miles from their real objective. But it would take a while for them to understand what had happened.

Lieutenant Hooper immediately went off toward the right, down the road in the direction of the invasion area. Captain Priday split his force, so that half of the men occupied each end of the bridge over the Dives.

Just then German fire came from Hooper’s direction, with one shot hitting the wireless operator in the head and killing him instantly. Then, from the same direction, Raynor and Priday could see dark figures approaching. The 13 troopers on that end of the bridge flattened themselves into the grass along the bridge embankment. In the moonlight, they could make out the familiar figure of Lieutenant Hooper. But he was not walking confidently. He had his boots tied around his neck, with his hands over his head, marching in front of a German soldier who had a submachine gun pointed at his back.

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