Rare Commemorative D-Day Landing Postcard from the Famous Pegasus Bridge Café signed by Major John Howard DSO c1980
Here on offer is rare mint example of a D-Day landing commemorative postcard from the famous Pegasus Bridge Café signed by Major John Howard DSO, circa 1980.
This rare postcard would have been purchased directly from Pegasus Bridge Café about 45 years ago, circa 1980.
The front of the postcard depicts the photo image of Major John Howard wearing a paratrooper helmet and two crashed Horsa gliders near the bridge of Bénouville.
It has been signed in blue ink:
To Sophie and Fred (or Friend?)
John Howard
On the back it displays the genuine large red ink commemorative frank used by the Pegasus Bridge Café as certificate of authority.
There is also some brief printed information about Major John Howard, in French and English.
I believe that Major John Howard would return to the café to undertake lectures about his D-Day landings and he would sign postcards, if asked by people who attended the lectures.
Therefore, clearly a lady named “Sophie” asked him to sign this example, to herself and Fred or a Friend, it is actually hard to make out?
The postcard is in mint unused condition and makes a wonderful military memento of the events at the start of D-Day.
It measures 5.9” (15cm) by 4.1” (10.5cm)
Some history of the D-Day events led by Major John Howard on the evening of 5th June 1944.
Major (Reginald) John Howard DSO (8 December 1912 – 5 May 1999) was a British Army officer who led a glider-borne assault on two bridges between Bénouville and Ranville in Normandy, France, codenamed Operation Deadstick, on 6 June 1944 as part of the D-Day landings during the Second World War. These bridges spanned the Caen Canal and the adjacent River Orne (about 500 yards to the east), and were vitally important to the success of the D-Day landings. Since the war the bridge over the canal has become known as "Pegasus Bridge", as a tribute to the men who captured it, while the bridge over the River Orne later became known as Horsa Bridge after the Horsa gliders that had carried the troops to the bridges.
Howard initially joined the British Army before the war, serving as a private and then a non-commissioned officer for six years before discharging in 1938 and joining the Oxford City Police. In 1939 he was recalled to the army following the outbreak of the war and quickly rose through the ranks to become a regimental sergeant major in the King's Shropshire Light Infantry. In 1940 he was commissioned as a second lieutenant and eventually rose to be a major in 1942, at which time he took over command of 'D' Company, 2nd Battalion, Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry. Before D-Day, Howard's company was selected to carry out the assault on the Caen and Orne River bridges and he became personally responsible for their training and the planning of the assault. During D-Day he led the company in a successful coup-de-main assault that gained control of the bridges and then held them until relieved. After D-Day, Howard commanded his company until September 1944 when they were withdrawn from the line. Due to the injuries, he sustained in a car accident in November 1944, he took no further part in the war and was eventually invalided out of the British Army in 1946. After this he became a public servant before he retired in 1974.
His role in the assault on the bridges was detailed in a number of books and films since the war, and after he retired, he gave a number of lectures in Europe and the United States on tactics and on the assault itself. He died in 1999, at the age of 86.
The Pegasus Bridge Café
The Café Gondrée is a small coffeehouse in the French community of Bénouville.
The two-story red brick building was built at the end of the 19th century. The nearby Bénouville Bridge was a key objective of the British 6th Airborne Division. A unit of Glider infantry of the division's 2nd Battalion was to land, take the bridge intact and hold it until relieved. The unit was led by Major John Howard. Howard and his men boarded three gliders. Released at 8,000 feet in the pitch black of a storm filled night, all three gliders managed to make a rough landing in a field almost directly on top of their objective. Leaving the broken gliders, the men engaged in a short, fierce firefight which ended with the British paratroopers in control of the bridge. The structure claims without certainty to be the first French house to be liberated,
After the war the café became a place of honour for the men who came and fought in the Normandy campaign. British paratroopers celebrate the D-Day anniversary at the café every 5 June, with champagne offered to the veterans present at 11:16 pm. The walls of the café are decorated with shoulder patch badges, regimental insignia, old uniforms, helmets and photos of the leaders of the operation.
The café was also a destination for speakers at the military lectures that the war colleges put on in Normandy in the summers each year. Officers involved in the Normandy battles were asked by the war colleges to return to Normandy and speak of their experiences fighting there, and included such men as Major General “Pip” Roberts, Brigadier David Stileman, Major John Howard and Colonel Hans von Luck, an officer with the 21st Panzer Division. As the owners were still severely anti-German, Howard covered for Luck by passing him off as Swedish.
The Café Gondrée still serves as a café, though it is now known as the Pegasus Bridge Café. On 5 June 1987 it was listed as an Historical Monument.
Please see my pictures for the details of the condition, which complement this description.
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Code: 51920