 had volunteered from a wide variety of backgrounds. Private Bloys, a docker before the war, shared a trench with a gravedigger under the command of a pre-war assistant manager at Marks & Spencer. They had a lot to prove – not just the test of mettle that awaits any unblooded fighting unit but also the value of forming a new regiment to practise airborne warfare. It is just over 80 years since the Parachute Regiment was founded, the anniversary of the Operation Torch landings in North Africa, in November 1942, which marked Britain's first large-scale use of air assault forces is fast approaching. As part of a new history of the regiment, I have been sifting through the records of those early pioneers, unearthing their story, starting with the importance of the fighting in Tunisia in){kind=link}
Eighty years ago, a group of British paratroopers flew into a ‘bloodbath’… and transformed the art of war
As dawn broke on March 8 1943, the British paratroopers defending a hilltop in Tunisia started to sense that they were in trouble. They had occupied their position in darkness, but as it became light, Private Bill Bloys, one of the soldiers recalled “being in the front trench of the battalion; it was rather worrying”.
He was right to be concerned because as it got lighter the Germans launched a furious attack – hundreds of their paratroopers had been quietly infiltrating the British positions, and were about to open up.
As enemy machine guns began pouring fire onto their positions there was a moment when they blanched, several men leaping out of their trenches fleeing to the rear. One young officer “ran past Company HQ so fast he nearly burnt us”, Sergeant Major Macleod Forsyth would later recall.
But after the initial shock of the German onslaught, the men held steady.