Sapper Cyril Haslett

OUR JOB WAS...

Sunday marks the 60th anniversary of the D-Day landings. All this week, we still feature the stories of the Gwent survivors who fought in that longest Day, and how their courage is being remembered. Today, MIKE BUCKINGHAM meets a Newport soldier who was probably the first Welshman to land in occupied Europe on June 6, 1944.

It began with a tearing, splintering crash. Then came the furious and bloody fighting until at last the British airborne troops, exhausted and hungry, won the day.

They have since named June 6 1944 the longest Day; 24 terrifying exhilarating hours during which the greatest invasion force ever mustered comprising 150.000 British Commonwealth and American forces stormed ashore to win a toehold in Fortress Europe.

As the minute hand ticked inexorably towards midnight Cyril Haslett of the Royal Engineers was in a Horsa glider, part of an airborne force that had been dispatched to seize the bridges across the River Orne near Ranville and the bridge over the Caen canal of Benouville, three miles inland from the Sword invasion beach.

There were minutes that even after 60 years are etched on Cyril’s memory.

« We had trained with the Oxon and Bucks Light Infantry and in the night of June 5 began to climb into the gliders, each of which was hooked up in a Halifax bomber », Cyril, now 80, recalls.

“There was a jerk as the cable took up and then we were in the air. We were talking, but when the cable was dropped at about 5000 feet over the French coast everything went deadly quiet. All we could hear was the wind rushing by as the glider swooped down to land.”

Success in seizing the two bridges would mean that powerful local units of the German Seventh Army and the highly mobile Army Group B under the legendary Erwin Rommel would be delayed in reaching the invasion beaches. Failure to seize the crucial bridges would have been at best a major setback and at worst, fatal.

“Our job was to take those bridges. Just before the glider landed we were told to link hands. It hit the ground with a terrible crash and one bloke at the back was killed, although we thought we were lucky to get away with just that.” Cyril recalls.

“The machine disintegrated around us. We climbed out of the wreckage and got our bearings, all this time under fire from the bridge which was our target.

”My job as a Royal Engineers Sapper was to get under the Benouville bridge and remove the German charges. Fierce fighting was going on over our heads as we searched desperately for the explosives.

“When we got to the first one we saw that although the detonators were in place the actual charges had gone. It was the same everywhere on the bridge. We assume this was the work of the French Resistance.

“When we saw there was nothing for us to do as combat engineers we began to fight as infantry. I was there when Lieutenant Den Brotheridge of the Oxon and Bucks fell, the first Allied death in action on D-Day.

“Three of us took over a German outpost about 200 yards from the bridge. While we were there a German came at us with a pistol. My mate shot and injured him and he was taken prisoner. At one point I entered a German position in which there were seven men in German uniforms who surrendered immediately. We found out later that most of them were Italians.

“Later, the Germans got themselves together and fought back bravely, too bravely.

“I smoked in those days, and I remembered during a lull in the fighting reaching for my cigarettes only to find that they were all sodden. Fortunately, Fred Singleton, who is also from Newport, was in the next lot of gliders to arrive and gave me a couple of his cigarettes.”

Cyril may have been the first Welshman to set foot on occupied soil on D-Day, but if he was, others were not far behind.

“Harry Knowles parachuted in some........who live at Caerleon, had been through basic and airborne training together.

Before the invasion I was sent to train with the Welsh regiment at Aberystwyth where we were billeted in the hotels along the front.

When I volunteered for the Royal Engineers one of the officers on the selection panel said, “Don’t I know you? Aren’t you from Newport?”

“His name was Kilby, the son of the manager of the joinery company I’d worked for before the war. I told him that Fred wanted to be in the Royal Engineers as well, and he said what he could see what he could do. He must have been able to pull strings.”

In fact, Fred and Cyril had been together through their training, and were to remain together for much of the war. After 60 years they are firm.....

“I was in Aberystwyth a couple of years ago. The place hasn’t changed all that much and as I looked down at........

Edith, with whom he has one grown up son and two grand-daughters.

“You get on with your life, don’t.........

But when anniversaries come ........

Extract of a paper about sapper Haslett in Normandy and some pictures of Palestine 1946, thank you for his son.

Copyright Nigel Haslett