Howard asked the topographical people to search the map of Britain and find him some place where a river and a canal ran closely together and were crossed by bridges on the same road. They found such a spot outside Exeter. Howard moved the company down there, and for six days, by day and by night, attacked those Exeter bridges. Townspeople came to gape as the lads dashed about, throwing grenades, setting off explosives, getting into hand-to-hand combat, cursing, yelling, 'Able, Able', or 'Easy, Easy' at the top of their lungs. Howard had them practise every possible development he could imagine - only one glider getting down, or the gliders landing out of proper sequence, or the dozens of other possibilities. He taught every man the basic rudiments of the sappers' jobs; he instructed the sappers in the functions of the platoons; he made certain that each of his officers was prepared to take command of the whole operation, and sergeants and corporals to take command of each platoon, if need be.
Howard insisted that they all become proficient in putting together and using the canvas boats that they were bringing along in the event the bridges were blown. Assault boat training was 'always good for morale,' according to Howard, because 'somebody inevitably went overboard and that poor individual never failed to make sure he wasn't the only one who got wet'.
The hurling about of grenades and thunder-flashes caused some problems and brought some fun. Thunder-flashes were tossed into the river, to provide fish for supper. The local Council protested at this illegal fishing. The Council also protested that all this running back and forth over its bridges, and all these explosives going off, were seriously weakening the structures. (They stand, solid, today.) A homeowner in the area had some tiles blown off his roof by a mortar smoke bomb. Irate, he confronted Howard, who passed him along to Friday, who gave him the proper forms to fill in so that he could get the tiles replaced. One month later, sitting in a foxhole in Normandy, Friday let out a whoop of laughter. The mail had been delivered, and in it was a letter from the homeowner, demanding to know when his roof would be fixed.
Out of all this practice and after consulting with his officers, Howard made his final plan. The key to it was to put the pillbox out of action while simultaneously getting a platoon onto the other side of the bridge. It had to be accomplished before shots were fired, if possible, and certainly before the Germans were fully aroused. The pillbox was a key not only because of its firing power, but because - according to information received from Georges Gondree - that was the location of the button that could blow the bridge. Howard detailed three men from no. 1 glider (Brotheridge's platoon) to dash to the pillbox and throw grenades through the gun-slits. To take physical possession of the opposite bank, Howard detailed Brotheridge to lead the remainder of his platoon on a dash across the bridge. Ideally, Howard wanted Brotheridge to hear the thuds of the grenades in the pillbox as he was mid-way across the bridge.
No. 2 glider, David Wood's platoon, would clear up the inner defences, the trenches, machine-gun nests and anti-tank gun pit along the east bank. No. 3 glider, Sandy Smith's platoon, would cross the bridge to reinforce Brotheridge. On the river bridge, the procedure would be the same, with Friday in no. 4 glider (Hooper's platoon), Sweeney in no. 5, and Fox in no. 6. All six platoons were trained to do all six of the platoon tasks.
Each glider would carry five sappers, the thirty men under the command of Captain R. K. Jock Neilson. The sappers' main job was to move immediately to the bridges, then hand-over-hand themselves along the bottom beams, cutting fuses and disposing of explosives.
If all went well at both bridges, Howard intended to call two platoons from the river bridge over to the canal bridge, sending one towards Benouville as a fighting patrol, and holding the other in reserve. This was because the threat he faced lay to the west. That was German-occupied territory, with a garrison of some sort in every village. The first counter-attack was likely to come from the west, possibly led by tanks. To the east, the 6th Airborne Division would be dropping thirty minutes later and setting up in Ranville to provide protection in that direction.
The landing operation was John Howard's plan. His superiors let him work it out himself, then approved his final presentation. He ran through it again and again, until the men were exhausted and almost too tense and too bored to care any longer.
But each time he ran through it, Howard saw something he had overlooked. One day, for example, he stopped an exercise and said he had been thinking, that if so and so happened, and such and such, I'd need volunteers to swim the canal with a Bren gun to set up flanking fire, or to create a diversion with explosives. As Howard remembers the occasion, 'competition for this hazardous mission was high'. As Parr remembers it, he raised his hand before Howard could call for volunteers. Howard impatiently told him to put it down. Parr waved it some more. 'Oh, all right Parr, what is it?' Parr replied that since Billy Gray and Charlie Gardner were the two strongest swimmers, perhaps they should get this detail. 'Good idea, Parr', Howard pronounced, and it was done. Parr spent the remainder of the week staying far away from Gray and Gardner.
The last night in Exeter was a classic eve-of-battle event. Howard gave the men the evening off, and they poured into and out of Exeter's pubs. There were fights, windows were broken. The Chief of Police got Howard on the phone, and he and Friday jumped into a jeep and tore into Exeter, about three miles away. 'As we crossed the bridge we were picked up by the police for speeding', recalls Howard, 'and we arrived at the station with police escort'. Howard went straight to the Chief's office and said, 'If you find Lieutenant Brotheridge he will soon tell you how to get the troops back'. Then Howard noticed the Chief's World War I medals, 'and I knew the type of chap I was talking to, and I explained to him in confidence that this was likely to be our last night out; his attitude was absolutely wonderful'. The Chief called out the entire force on duty at the time and put it to rounding up D Company and escorting it, gently, back to its transport and encampment.
Brotheridge, in fact, turned out to be no help, although Howard had sent him along with the men specifically to exert a good influence. But he was too much the footballer, too much like the men, to stay sober on a night like this. Besides, he had a lot on his mind, and he needed some mental relief. His baby was due in less than a month, but he could not expect to see his wife before then, and who could tell about afterwards? He was proud that John had chosen him to lead the first platoon across the canal bridge, but he had to be realistic - everyone knew that the first man over that bridge was the man most likely to get shot. Not killed, necessarily, but almost certainly shot. That first man was equally likely to have the bridge blow up in his face.
To escape such thoughts, Brotheridge had gone drinking with his sergeants, and when Howard arrived was drunk. Howard and Friday drove him back to camp, while the trucks took the men home. The people of Exeter, and their Police Chief, never made a complaint.