He trained alongside the Glider-Landed Troops – trained to sit 30 to a wooden glider (a platoon) and crash-land on a military target before deploying (if surviving). Alfred either landed on Sword Beach in the first landing-boats and fought his way (ten-miles) in-land to relieve the British Glider Troops landed in Caen – or he landed in Caen with the Glider Troops and tried to hold the area until relieved by the British Army. Either way (we are not exactly sure – but must assume the former) the German resistance was so intense the first-wave Units were decimated and many of the early objectives were not achieved. My grandfather, when talking about his experiences many years later, described how he had to kill many people as he moved through the French and German countryside. He would fight his way to Hamburg before he was granted rest and leave. It was this killing that negatively affected him psychologically. Indeed, there hundreds of thousands of men in the UK who had to re-integrate into British society and pretend nothing had happened.
SANGHA KOMMUNE (SSR) 