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"I had to tip my left wing, and rolled past him with only inches to spare," the flyer said. "My tail almost got him, too, and the plane's slipstream must have shaken him up, but thank God I missed him—I don't know yet what my rockets did to that gun position."
Beyond the River. Down on the ground the Allied troops—airborne no longer, just expert infantrymen now—set about speedily to vanquish the first and most formidable foe: the inevitable confusion and disorganization of a large-scale drop. The fact that they were in the middle of enemy territory did not disconcert them. That is what the tough-trained, extra-paid airborne troops are trained for. Their corps spirit is as cocky as the marines'. The masters of many weapons, from the lovingly whetted knife to the .57-caliber antitank gun, they are prepared to fight without tanks or artillery support. They are well aware that their presence in the enemy's vulnerable rear zone is excruciatingly unpleasant to him. But men have to find their outfits; outfits have to get in line with each other for tactical operation; the whole organization has to establish communications and a functioning chain of command. The process takes time.
But once the first shock of landing was over, the men of the Rhine drop went into action smoothly, setting up their guns and mortars, unpacking ammunition, getting the command radios working, moving out to crush local opposition and drive for the main objective.
In this case the objective was a limited one: to help in the establishment of a Rhine bridgehead for the British Second Army by seizing and holding an oblong patch of high ground northwest of Wesel. The drop itself, made in great strength, went on from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. By late afternoon both the British and U.S. divisions had made contact with British troops working overland from the river; by 6 p.m. the skytroopers had taken all their assigned objectives, including several intact bridges over the Yssel River, regarded as the Nazis' next main line of resistance after the Rhine. Before midnight the airborne men had captured 4,000 German troops behind their own front lines.
Nazi resistance was spotty—weak at some places, iron hard at others. British paratroopers at the north end of the area ran head-on into the German 7th Parachute Division, dropped back before one counterattack, then drove forward again.
Through the night there were short, bitter patrol clashes all around the perimeter, especially where German detachments came to grips with bands of paratroopers who had dropped farther out and were making their way back to the main body.
But by the second day it was clear that the airborne attack had come off beautifully, and that it could stand almost as a textbook model of sound airborne doctrine: jump for the open spots and clip the enemy from the side; jump in real strength, not in penny packets for the enemy to chew up one by one; jump close enough to the main attacking ground force so that contact can be made before the airborne group is worn down.