9.  The Invasion of Southern France

Having been blessed by the Pope, and having thrown three coins in the fountain, the parachute drop in France was looked forward to without fear. There were many other odd happenings. We had a very unusual RAF liaison officer, who, of course, would not jump with us, but was interested in all the preparations. He came out to our airfield to say good-bye, etc. and parked his little Austin beside one of the planes. He stayed to talk, and was shocked when he heard a crash outside. One of the pilots wanted to move his plane to line it up better for take-off, and had no idea that anybody would park his car there. His plane was bent at the tail, so they had to tow it away and find another plane for him.

As many will remember, Patton planned to make the southern France landings “a piece of cake”, using his tanks with such vigour, and having us protect the bridges that he would speed up toward Paris. In fact, they did go so fast that the front-line tanks ran out of maps, and had to have more dropped to them, along with tanks of gas.

As we flew from Rome (August 24, 1944), in the dark, we could barely see the Mediterranean in the moonlight. As we approached our dropping zone, the pilot called out over the loudspeaker, saying that due to an electrical failure of some sort, he had lost the plane that he was supposed to be following. He was afraid we might be some distance from our target, but assured us that we would be in France.

When I jumped out, I wondered if he was right. In the moonlight, I could see the reflection of the moon below, and thought he had dropped us over the sea. Nobody had told us that when you are above a cloud, it reflects light. In any event, as soon as we dropped through the cloud, it was dark and the silence was broken when I crashed through some branches of a tree. The landing was quite soft, and there was silence again, broken only by an “Oh f___!” when one of the Scots fell. Soon we all had gathered together, nobody being hurt. As the only officer, and also the only one who spoke French, they thought that I should lead the way in case we met somebody.

We found only a path at first leading eventually to a clearing where we saw a large target, obviously a German range. There was no other sign of civilization until we came to a small road and found a house with a light on. I knocked on the door, saying ”Bon soir” to the gentleman who stood there. He was happy to see us, saying that they had heard on the radio that parachutists would likely come, with Patton, but he thought they would all be Americans. He told us how to find a road to take us to where we wanted to go, about twenty-five miles walk!  He didn’t think there would be any Germans on the way, and luckily and he was right. Strangely enough we passed a building that we later used as a small hospital for our MASH-type dressing station.

Without going into the details of our first and most important day, our only tragedies were the loss of my corporal, who landed in a tree and was captured by the Germans. Fortunately, they didn’t shoot him as he hung there, but he was a P.O.W. until the armistice, spending his time in a salt mine.

Our only other casualty was our small surgeon, Capt. MacMurray, son of the famous doctor, whose MacMurray instruments are used by orthopaedic surgeons. His parachute had become twisted with the parachute of a container that was released by mistake at the same time, and he and the container descended to earth at an alarming rate. He was badly shaken but operated well, and it was only when he was in hospital a few months later with amoebic dysentary, that they x-rayed his spine and found he had a well-healed fracture!

There were fortunately few casualties. The glider troops didn’t do as well as we did, quite a few gliders striking trees or poles that the Germans had placed in the fields, in case we did use gliders. We were amazed at the success of our operations, having no infections, because our operating rooms had never been used before, so were pretty sterile. We had blood plasma and intravenous fluids and took our own bloods from volunteers, with no RH reactions, since none of our boys had ever been transfused before, and were in good health. And we operated on no ladies. Speaking of which, we were amazed the first day or two, when they cut all the hair off the heads of the most beautiful young ladies. They had obviously been too popular with the Germans, who gave them everything they wanted, in exchange for their “love at any cost” and the Frenchmen had had enough of that!

After about a week, the tanks had moved fast and Cannes had been freed, so we were told that one of us could go there for a day, staying at the best hotel, used by the Germans until two days before. I won the lottery, so went off in my jeep, with another officer, as passenger. Just outside the town, there was a small stream, the bridge over which had been blown.

We had to use our four-wheel drive and go down a steep hill, across the stream and up the other side. Just as we got to the top, there was an explosion and we turned to see the jeep that was following us, fly up into the air, the passenger being thrown out. The driver stayed in the car, holding onto the steering wheel. We ran down to them, found an officer, a Canadian, named Capt. Brown, badly shaken but not injured. The jeep had only one wheel smashed and the spare was put on. They turned back, but we naturally went to town, had a very good time, but didn’t have any bathing suits!

Strangely enough, years later, I had a call from Ottawa. The Pension Commission asked me if I had been a Captain Kerr, serving as a parachutist who dropped in France. A Mr. Brown, previously an officer in the Canadian Army was applying for a pension, due to continuing backaches, which he blamed on an injury. However as he had been with an airborne force under the British, they had no record of the injury. He had remembered my name. I was able to give them an account of the whole thing, so hope that they gave him the pension, but I never did find out.

It was fun going back to Cannes with my wife and four children, although we didn’t afford the luxury of staying in that hotel, having a trailer behind our station wagon. That was in the sixties, when I was a colonel, the senior medical officer in Germany, a slight change for the better.

After we packed up all our equipment, we caught an American ship back to Italy, sleeping on the deck. We had an interesting passage sailing past Capri to Naples, which we were very glad to leave for Rome. Back there, our accommodation was again deluxe, being at the Lido di Roma, a suburb on the Mediterranean, in a modern apartment building. It was only a short run into the city, where we again visited cathedrals, went to the opera, enjoyed going to the Canadian Officer’s Club, called the Chateau Laurier, and generally feeling far from the battlefield. Of course, we had to train quite a lot, keeping very fit and preparing for our next operation.