As the boats neared the beach, the men checked their individual weapons, and a container of rum was passed around. Enemy fire began shortly after the Canadian LCAs thudded onto Green Beach and dropped their front ramps. Company A was to scamper immediately up the western cliff slope to assault the radar site while Company C secured the village. Companies B and D were to move inland to establish a position to block enemy reinforcements. Another Canadian unit, the Queen’s Own Cameron Highlanders, which landed about half an hour later, was to speed inland against the St. Aubin airfield 3 1/2 miles away.

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By the time Nissenthall and his group had crunched across the stony beach in the growing light to the protection of a sea wall topped with barbed wire, they realized that the navy had deposited them nearly 500 yards too far to the west. Instead of landing at the base of the Freya cliff on the other side of Pourville, Company A was in front of the German-occupied village. Using scaling ladders, they traversed the 8-foot-high sea wall, crossed a promenade and advanced into Pourville.

There were British planes overhead to provide cover for the Allied troops, but until the Luftwaffe arrived, the support they provided was mostly psychological. Small-arms fire and grenade blasts filled the air with smoke as the invaders fought their way into the town by fits and starts. An obscene trail of still and writhing bodies marked their progress. Following the shoreline through Pourville, Company A soon found the path to its objective blocked by pillboxes at both ends of a bridge crossing the small Scie River. Just beyond, an unpaved lane snaked up to the cliff, while the road turned right to run along the river. On top of the cliff, the Freya antenna methodically pivoted to and fro as it continued to track and report Allied aircraft movements.

If not for the boat handler’s error, the company would have landed on the other side of the bridge and probably already been on the cliff top. Machine-gun fire from the nearest pillbox dropped one Canadian after the other to the pavement. Finally, during a pause, one of the South Saskatchewans sprinted forward to lob two grenades through the firing slit of the pillbox. That did the trick. Led by their battalion and company commanders, the Canadians cleared the bridge and began to ascend the grassy height under fire from above and the right. Nissenthall and his bodyguards followed the advance, running between a stone church and a hotel to cross the body-littered bridge.

Shell bursts and small-arms fire followed the zigzagging soldiers up the mostly open slope. There now were only about 24 men left of Company A’s original 100. Nissenthall’s bodyguards were down to seven, three of whom were lightly wounded. The RAF sergeant later recalled being temporarily deafened when ‘one of the men carrying a backpack of mortar shells was hit and blown to pieces by his own shells’ only 20 feet away. Tossing smoke canisters and seeking what little cover they could find on the way up, the remaining men finally reached a point just below the top, where they stopped.

To the left was a sheer white cliff, with rocks and shingle below. Straight ahead, just to the left of the pebbly lane, lay the coveted Freya. It was protected by barbed wire, riflemen in slit trenches and machine-gun nests. Lying in a narrow, hedge-lined depression slightly downhill from the radar site, the company commander turned to Nissenthall and said: ‘Well, there it is. Take it if you want it.’

The radar antenna’s motions–limited to a 180-degree horizontal arc and pausing as it focused on individual targets–were revealing. They told Nissenthall that the Freya was a target-discriminating precision instrument and that it was connected to the operator’s cabin and blockhouse by coaxial cable–unlike British radar, which could turn through a full circle by using rotating electromagnetic coupling.

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