John Howard (British Army Officer)

John Howard (British Army Officer)

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 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 After D-Day, Howard commanded his company until September 1944 when they were withdrawn from the line.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 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.