Lieutenant Herbert Denham Brotheridge was a British Army

British Army

The British Army is the land warfare branch of Her Majesty's Armed Forces in the United Kingdom. It came into being with the unification of the Kingdom of England and Scotland into the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707. The new British Army incorporated Regiments that had already existed in England...

 officer, and is often considered to be the first Allied soldier to be killed in action on D-Day, 6 June 1944, during Operation Tonga

Operation Tonga

Operation Tonga was the codename given to the airborne operation undertaken by the British 6th Airborne Division between 5 June and 7 June 1944 as a part of Operation Overlord and the Normandy Landings during the Second World War....

. However, before him a small French and British SAS-detachment having left England before 23:00 hours that night and parachuted into Brittany already had to combat White Russians in German service immediately after landing and some of them had been killed there.

Den Brotheridge was born in Smethwick

Smethwick

Smethwick is a town in the Metropolitan Borough of Sandwell, in the West Midlands of England. It is situated on the edge of the city of Birmingham, within the historic boundaries of Staffordshire, Worcestershire and Warwickshire....

, Staffordshire

Staffordshire

Staffordshire is a landlocked county in the West Midlands region of England. For Eurostat purposes, the county is a NUTS 3 region and is one of four counties or unitary districts that comprise the "Shropshire and Staffordshire" NUTS 2 region. Part of the National Forest lies within its borders...

, the son of Herbert Charles and Lilian Brotheridge. Before going to Normandy, he was married to Margaret who was 8 months pregnant when he left. He was talked into D Company in an early stadium by Major Howard himself who considered him to be a friend. What both men shared at the time was their simple social background and their love of sports. They were sometimes targets for upper class British officers, but gradually deserved even their military respect.

Brotheridge came to command 25 Platoon (also known as first platoon) in Major John Howard's 'D' Company, Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry

Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry

The Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry was an infantry regiment of the British Army.The regiment was formed as a consequence of Childers reforms, a continuation of the Cardwell reforms, by the amalgamation of the 43rd Regiment of Foot and the 52nd Regiment of Foot , forming the 1st...

, 6th Airborne Division, and led the first charge across the bridge at Benouville, now known as Pegasus Bridge

Pegasus Bridge

Pegasus Bridge is a bascule bridge , built in 1934, that crossed the Caen Canal, between Caen and Ouistreham, in Normandy, France....

 during the nocturnal coup-de-main-action. He managed to silence the left German MP-post at the western bank of the Caen Canal, but was hit with a shot in the back of the neck and died of wounds in the early hours of 6 June aged 26 in a Casualty Collection Post situated in a trench between the Caen Canal- and Orne-bridges, where Captain John Vaughan RAMC took care of him. Lt. Herbert Denham Brotheridge is buried in the War Cemetery in Ranville Churchyard near Caen

Caen

Caen is a commune in northwestern France. It is the prefecture of the Calvados department and the capital of the Basse-Normandie region. It is located inland from the English Channel....

 in France

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

. Ranville was the first village in France to be liberated.

Brotheridge received a mention in dispatches for this action

Note that some purists modify this death to be the first death on D-Day, because another soldier in the attack (Lance-Corporal Fred Greenhalgh) died by drowning when thrown out of his glider.

A memorial plaque to commemorate the events of Den Brotheridge's death was unveiled at Smethwick Council House on 2 April 1995 by his daughter, Margaret Brotheridge.