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- 9th Battalion, Parachute Regiment during the Second World War -


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World War 2 Two II WW2 WWII 1939 1945

9th Battalion, Parachute Regiment



6th June 1944 Landings

6th Jun 1944 Battery Captured  location map

6th Jun 1944 Mistaken Identity

6th Jun 1944 D-Day

6th Jun 1944 Second Objective

7th Jun 1944 Village Cleared  location map

7th June 1944 Patrols

8th Jun 1944 In Action

9th Jun 1944 Attacks

10th Jun 1944 Attacks

11th Jun 1944 Attack Fails

12th Jun 1944 In Action

13th Jun 1944 Reliefs

14th Jun 1944 Defence  location map

17th of July 1944 Conference

27th Jul 1944 Bombing

31st Jul 1944 Orders

16th Aug 1944 Intelligence

1st Mar 1945 Preparations

12th Mar 1945 Orders

18th Mar 1945 Preparations

20th Mar 1945 On the Move

23rd Mar 1945 Preparations

24th Mar 1945 In Action

25th Mar 1945 In Action

26th Mar 1945 Reliefs

27th Mar 1945 Advance

28th Mar 1945 Advance

29th Mar 1945 Orders

30th Mar 1945 Advance

31st Mar 1945 Advance

1st Apr 1945 Bridgehead

2nd Apr 1945 Shelling

3rd Apr 1945 Attack Made

4th Apr 1945 Attack Made

5th Apr 1945 Bridges

6th Apr 1945 Enemy Active

7th Apr 1945 Advance

8th Apr 1945 Advance

9th Apr 1945 Consolidation

10th Apr 1945 Moving Forward

11th Apr 1945 Advance Resumes

12th Apr 1945 Forwards

13th Apr 1945 Forwards

14th Apr 1945 On the Move

15th Apr 1945 On the Move

16th Apr 1945 Advance

17th Apr 1945 Advance

18th Apr 1945 Advance

19th Apr 1945 Moves

20th Apr 1945 On the Move

21st Apr 1945 Area Cleared

22nd Apr 1945 Preparations

23rd Apr 1945 On the Move

27th Apr 1945 Orders

29th Apr 1945 Wood Cleared

30th Apr 1945 Advance

1st May 1945 Reorganisation

2nd May 1945 Reorganisation

2nd May 1945 On the Move

3rd May 1945 Reorganisation

4th May 1945 Reorganisation

19th May 1945 On the Move


If you can provide any additional information, especially on actions and locations at specific dates, please add it here.



Those known to have served with

9th Battalion, Parachute Regiment

during the Second World War 1939-1945.

The names on this list have been submitted by relatives, friends, neighbours and others who wish to remember them, if you have any names to add or any recollections or photos of those listed, please Add a Name to this List

Records of 9th Battalion, Parachute Regiment from other sources.



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Want to know more about 9th Battalion, Parachute Regiment?


There are:1380 items tagged 9th Battalion, Parachute Regiment available in our Library

  These include information on officers, regimental histories, letters, diary entries, personal accounts and information about actions during the Second World War.


Pte. JE Johnson 9th Btn. Parachute Regiment

Pte.JE Johnson served with the 9th Btn. Parachute Regiment British Army. I have his unissued dogtags, made in preparation for deployment to the Far East and would love to get them home to his family. I am happy to cover all costs. If you are a family member or can put me in touch with them please get in touch.

Update: Unfortunately The Wartime Memories Project has lost touch with Dan, his website, facebook page and email have all ceased to function. But if you can add any details about the person listed, please use the add to record link below.

Dan



Cpl. Gordon Newton A Coy., 9th Parachute Btn. Parachute Regiment

Gordon Newton

From The Daily Telegraph, 10 November.

Gordon Newton, who has died aged 94, took part in the airborne D-Day assault on the heavily fortified and strategically important Merville battery on the coastline of Normandy. The battery was manned by a strong garrison and protected by anti-aircraft and machine guns, minefields, an anti-tank ditch, and barbed-wire obstacles. It was equipped with four 100mm guns in thick, steel-reinforced concrete casemates, capable of laying down a devastating fire on Sword Beach, where the British 3rd Infantry Division was to land.

The 9th (Eastern & Home Counties) Parachute Battalion, The Parachute Regiment, part of 3rd Parachute Brigade and commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel Terence Otway, was given the task of silencing the battery before the seaborne invasion began at dawn on June 6. Newton was part of G-B Force, selected from “A” Company and commanded by Captain Robert Gordon-Brown. This group, comprising 58 men, had the job of crash-landing three gliders inside the battery’s defences and attacking the casemates from the front while the main force was parachuted in and attacked from the rear. Bangalore torpedoes were to be used to blast a path through the coils of barbed wire. Taping parties had to lift the mines and mark corridors through the fields. If the attack, set for 0430 hours, had not succeeded by 0530, the light cruiser Arethusa had orders to bombard the battery.

The brigade commander called it a “Grade A stinker of a job”. Major General (later General Sir) Richard Gale, commander of 6th Airborne Division, addressing the battalion before the operation, said: “Only a fool would go where we are going.” Years later, Newton learnt that the planners regarded his unit’s role in the assault as a suicide mission. Members of G-B Force were armed with automatic weapons, grenades, and fighting knives. Newton, a heavily built man, carried the flame thrower. The three Horsa gliders, high-winged monoplanes with a tricycle undercarriage, were mostly constructed of laminated plywood.

The last of the three gliders took off from RAF Brize Norton at about 0230, but the towrope parted over the Channel and it returned to England. The remaining two, drawn by Albemarle bombers, were heavily loaded. Even in ideal conditions, it would take great skill to make a pinpoint landing. They had to make a dive approach at night, pull up at the last moment, touch down at about 70 mph and rely on the arrester parachute to bring them to a dead stop. If they hit the stakes planted by the Germans, it could turn the glider into matchwood. The main group had encountered gusting winds, low cloud, dust and smoke from Allied bombing, incoming tracer and, as they approached the dropping zone, heavy anti-aircraft fire, forcing them to take evasive action. Some of the crews were inexperienced, much equipment was lost, and most of the battalion was scattered over 50 square miles of Normandy. Many of the men, weighed down by kit, drowned in marshes and submerged irrigation ditches.

Halfway across the Channel, the airspeed of the glider in which Newton and Gordon-Brown were traveling suddenly dropped. The arrester mechanism had broken and the parachute was trailing behind in the slipstream. It had to be cut free before it dragged the glider and the tug aircraft into the sea. As they approached the battery, while still under tow, tracer bullets burst through the floor of the glider, splintering wood and metal before going out through the roof. No marker flares or mortar star-shells were visible, and the pilot of the tug aircraft gave them the choice of being cast off or being taken back to Britain.

Staff Sergeant Stanley Bone made his choice by pulling on the towrope lever and they were in free flight. He saw a light and, thinking it was the battery, put the glider into a steep dive. At about 500 ft, however, he realised that it was Gonneville-en-Auge under fire. He banked away, landing about 1,000 yards from Gonneville and a mile from the battery. Newton had been seated at the rear of the glider but decided to move further forward. When the aircraft landed, the tail broke off. He would have been killed had he remained where he was. He tumbled out into a flooded field and the weight of his kit almost drowned him. Anti-aircraft fire had damaged the flamethrower. He heard it bubbling and was relieved to jettison something that he regarded as a ghastly weapon.

As the second glider, flying two minutes behind, arrived over the position, it came under heavy anti-aircraft fire. It was on the point of touching down in a minefield in front of the battery when the pilot realised his mistake. He lifted the aircraft again, swooped over the heads of the troops waiting to make their assault and landed near an orchard some 500 yards away.

After the disastrous parachute drop, 9th Para Battalion was under-strength. Only 150 men out of the 640 who flew out of England mustered in time for the main assault. The heavy guns were neutralised after a ferocious firefight. The Germans re-occupied the battery after the battalion had moved on to attack the next objective. They managed to get two guns working again, albeit at a reduced rate of fire, but too late to stop the landings. On August 16, the Germans withdrew their troops from the battery.

After the raid on the Merville Battery, Newton and his comrades in GB Force moved to 3rd Para Brigade HQ, and subsequently took part in some of the fiercest fighting in the Normandy campaign. Dozulé Station was captured during the night of August 18-19. With daylight came the enemy counter-attack. Withering fire from machine guns was followed by a determined assault in five waves. When these were driven off, the Germans opened up with 88mm guns and mortars at a range of a few hundred yards. Newton said afterwards that he thought that he would not live through the day. “A” Company suffered 40 casualties, almost half its strength.

In September 1944, after the break-out from Normandy, 9th Para Battalion was withdrawn to England to re-equip. Newton fought in the Battle of the Ardennes and the forced crossing of the Rhine, before finishing the campaign at Wismar on the Baltic.




Pte. James Davies 9th Parachute Regiment Army Air Corps

Jimmy Davies was captured in Normandy and held as a Pow.

Susan Bannard









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