2
THE ORIGINAL D-DAY MISSION of the 82nd (“All American”) and 101st (“Screaming Eagles”) Airborne Divisions was very ambitious – more so, perhaps, than that of their British counterpart, the 6th Airborne Division, to the east. The Americans’ mission was to cut the Cotentin Peninsula in half and at the same time secure forward positions so that the troops landing on Utah would be able to get off the beach and move inland. As early as June 1943 the Germans had flooded the low-lying fields behind Utah beach as an anti-invasion barrier. In some places the water was three to four feet deep.
The only access to the beaches across these flooded fields was by means of small causeways. By the end of May 1944, Allied intelligence had discovered that the Germans had reinforced their forces on the peninsula by adding the 91st Airlanding Division to the garrison in the area of Carentan.
This caused the US VII Corps to scale down their original plan. The mission of the 82nd Airborne Division was now to drop and secure both banks of the River Merderet and to hold the bridges south and west of the town of St Mère Église. With any forces available, they would then try to expand west and stop any German reinforcements from entering the area. The 101st would now drop further east and secure the Utah beach exits, of which there were four; at the same time, they would protect the southern flank of the invasion by holding the roads and rail bridge over the Douve river north of Carentan.
General Eisenhower talks informally to troops of the 101st Airborne Division prior to take-off.
As the last light of June 5th began to dim, thousands of paratroopers, their faces blackened, waddled out to their respective planes. The same thing was happening at over twenty different airfields scattered around England. The men were wearing their distinctive tan two-piece jump suits, high-legged Corcoran boots, and carried a vast array of weapons, rations, ammunition, gadgets, plus of course their parachutes. Most of the paratroopers were carrying more than 100 pounds of equipment.
General Eisenhower, the supreme commander, felt an almost personal responsibility for the fate of these men, and went off that evening to one of their bases, Greenham Common, to wish them well. There he walked and talked among the young men of the 101st Airborne Division.
EYEWITNESS
We saw hundreds of paratroopers, with blackened and grotesque faces, packing up for the big hop and jump. Ike wandered through them, stepping over packs, guns, and a variety of equipment such as only paratroops can devise, chinning with this and that one.
All were put at ease.
Captain Harry Butcher, aide to General Eisenhower
Feeling more at ease, with coffee drunk and cigarettes extinguished, the men climbed aboard their transport planes. These were C-47 Skytrains, the workhorse of the US Army Air Force. Powered by two 1200 horsepower Pratt and Whitney engines, they could each carry about twenty-seven fully-equipped assault troops.
Just after midnight on June 6th, eighteen teams of Pathfinders, volunteers from the 82nd and 101st, parachuted into Normandy. Their purpose was to mark the drop zones for the rest of the airborne assault. They were to set up special lights in the shape of the letter “T” and send out homing signals on their direction finder radios.
A C-47 “Skytrain” in the museum at St Mère Église.
Brigadier General James M. “Jumpin Jim” Gavin told them, “When you land in Normandy you will have only one friend. God!”
The C-47 transport planes carrying the Pathfinders approached from the west. They came in too fast, and to add to the troubles there was a thick cloud bank over the area. This caused the pilots to fly too high or too low in order to avoid it. At the same time German anti-aircraft gunners opened up with their vast array of flak batteries. For many pilots it was their first time under fire and the young and inexperienced pilots started throwing their transport planes into violent evasive actions. As a result, only one team of Pathfinders landed in the correct spot. The rest were scattered over a wide area. One team missed land altogether and ended up in the sea.
Behind the Pathfinders came the main force of Major General Maxwell Taylor’s 101st Airborne Division and Major General Matthew Ridgway’s 82nd. They were packed into nearly 900 aircraft, flying in tight, nine-plane “V” formations. For over two hours the planes droned on, out over the channel, flying low to avoid German radar, and picking up route markers as they went along. The planes swung southeast, gained height to avoid flak from the Channel Islands, then dropped again as they crossed the western Cotentin coast. Strict radio silence had been observed, so no one got the message that the area was shrouded in cloud.
Immediately on beginning their drop run the C-47s were lost in the dense mist. Pilots never before confronted with flying in such tight formations lost sight of each other and panicked. Up and down, left and right they went, anywhere they could get clear vision and eliminate the risk of a mid-air collision. At the same time, anti-aircraft fire came up at them compounding their fears. One trooper remembers hearing, “Stand up and hook up; it’s safer than sitting down.”
Hardly any planes were at the correct height or speed in order to drop their men safely, but still, the green jump lights above the doors flicked on. It might not be the exact drop zone, but it was the Cotentin – and that was good enough for the pilots.
Chaos reigned in the skies. Planes were being hit, exploding, or crashing to the ground in flames. Anti-aircraft fire rose like a solid wall from the ground. In between all this, paratroopers were being hurled to the floor of their aircraft and cursing the pilots. Eager to get away from the aircraft, the men sometimes jumped blindly, only to find themselves floating down by parachute wondering what they had let themselves in for, and if it was all worth that few extra dollars a week of jump pay. Sergeant Louis Truax saw his plane’s left wing hit, and then the paratroopers went sprawling.
EYEWITNESS
One man dived out the door headfirst. I grabbed the ammo belt of the man I thought next and gave him a heave out nose first. The next man made it crawling . . . then I dived.
Sergeant Louis Truax, US Airborne
A little over an hour later most of the men were on the ground, spread far and wide, hopelessly lost, and miles from their assigned drop zones. Some had been dropped far out to sea; others had been dropped so low that their parachutes hadn’t opened. Private Donald Burgett recalled that the unlucky ones “made a sound like large, ripe pumpkins being thrown down against the ground.” Those that survived the drop started to gather in the small dark fields and hedgerows, challenging each other. In the 101st, the men were issued a small tin plate child’s toy, called a “cricket.” One click was to be answered by two clicks. The 82nd had opted for a password, “Flash” which was to be answered by “Thunder.”
EYEWITNESS
“God must have opened the chute.” [Reaction on being dropped from an altitude of 500 feet]. “When I began to use my cricket, the first man I met in the darkness I thought was a German until he ‘cricketed.’ He was the most beautiful soldier I’d ever seen, before or since. We threw our arms around each other, and from that moment I knew we had won the war. ”
Major General Maxwell Taylor, commander,
101st Airborne Division
So scattered were the troopers of the 82nd
Major General Maxwell Taylor, Commander
of the 101st Airborne Division.
and the 101st that many fought alone or in small groups; often men from different divisions fighting alongside each other. There was one other mission both divisions had, and that was to clear and mark pre-designated fields, so that the gliders bringing in more troops, jeeps, and anti-tank guns could land safely. The gliders were due in at about 0300.
Only one regiment of the 82nd Airborne Division, the 505th PIR (Parachute Infantry Regiment), landed roughly where it was supposed to. The other two regiments, the 507th and 508th PIR, landed in the swampy flooded ground of the Merderet. Many men drowned. So heavily weighed down were they with equipment that some perished in less than two feet of water. The majority of the 82nd were fighting small but crucial actions where they landed. For these paratroopers, with their minds on survival, getting out of the flooded fields and onto terra firma was paramount. The embankment of the Cherbourg-Carentan railway was the best bet to lead to safety. Among the men headed for the embankment was Brigadier General Gavin, the 82nd’s assistant commander, who at this time was busy trying to salvage some much needed equipment from the swamps, along with a few lost men. Finding more men, General Gavin began to get them organized and marched them south along the railway embankment to seize his objectives – the bridges over the Merderet. All around them was heavy fighting, for they had come down virtually in the middle of the German 91st Airlanding Division.
EYEWITNESS
The Germans were all around us, of course, sometimes within 500 yards of my command post, but in the fierce and confused fighting that was going on all about they did not launch the strong attack that could have wiped out our eggshell perimeter defenses.
General Matthew B. Ridgway, commander, 82nd Airborne Division
The 505th PIR had landed northwest of St Mère Église. This had been through the sheer determination of their pilots. Their mission was to seize and hold the vital crossroads of the town. At about 0100 that day, the inhabitants of St Mère Église were busy fighting a house fire on the east side of the town square. It was thought to have been started by a stray incendiary bomb or tracer bullet. The fire was getting out of hand and the small fire brigade could not cope. The mayor rushed to the German headquarters to see if he could get the curfew lifted so as to get as many volunteers as possible to form a bucket chain. The Germans agreed and turned out the guard to supervise the townsfolk. The church bell was ringing loudly, but above all the commotion, aircraft engines could be heard approaching from the west. It was not long before anti-aircraft batteries around the town were adding their own noise to the now deafening din. Parachutes were spotted floating down. This was a stick from the 506th PIR of the 101st Airborne Division, who were supposed to be landing about seven miles away. These men dropped in and around the town. Four were killed immediately, riddled by German bullets as they tried to free themselves from their harnesses. The remainder scattered.
Major General Matthew Ridgway (right) and Brigadier General James Gavin, commander and deputy commander, respectively, of the 82nd Airborne Division.
Lieutenant Charles Santarsiero of the 506th PIR was standing in the door of his plane as it passed over St Mère Église, “We were about four hundred feet up, and I could see fires burning and Krauts running about. There seemed to be total confusion on the ground. All hell broken loose. Flak and small-arms fire was coming up and those poor guys were caught right in the middle of it.”
About fifteen minutes later a platoon from the Fox Company of the 505th PIR landed directly in the town, right in the middle of the now fully alerted German garrison. One soldier floated down into the blazing building and the explosives he was carrying blew up; others came down in the square itself or got snagged up in the trees surrounding it. They were immediately shot. The mayor, Alexandre Renaud, remembers standing in the square when a paratrooper plunged into a tree. Almost immediately, as he tried frantically to get out of his harness, he was spotted. “About half a dozen Germans emptied the magazines of their sub-machine guns into him and the boy hung there with his eyes open, as though looking down at his own bullet holes.”
One man, Private John Steele, had his parachute catch on the steeple of the church and he just hung there unable to move. On the way down something hit him that felt “like the bite of a sharp knife.” He had been shot through the foot. He hung there feigning death. The noise of the church bells alongside his head temporarily deafened him. Finally he was saved by a German observer stationed in the belfry.
Private First Class Ernest Blanchard heard the church bell ringing and saw the enemy bullets passing all around him. The next minute he watched, horrified, as a man floating down almost beside him “exploded and completely disintegrated before my eyes.” No doubt this was caused by the explosives the man was carrying. The majority of the 3rd Battalion, 505th PIR, later rallied and slipped into the now relatively quiet town, which the Americans captured, thanks to a panic flight by the conscripted Austrian soldiers who were occupying it.
At 0430 hours on June 6th Lieutenant Colonel Krause of the 3rd Battalion pulled a battered Stars and Stripes from his pocket, went over to the town hall, and ran it up the flagpole. It was the very same flag that the battalion had hoisted over Naples.
St Mère Église became the first French town liberated by the Americans. Now the 1st Battalion of the 505th PIR set out to capture and hold the bridges over the Merderet at La Fière and Chef-du-Pont, while the 2nd Battalion was to establish a blocking line to the north.
Lieutenant Colonel Vandervoort, commander of the 2nd Battalion, had broken his ankle on landing. (On the whole, however, the battalion had had a comparatively good landing. Its pathfinders had marked their drop zone exactly, and the majority of the men had come down within it). Vandervoort laced his combat boot tighter and began using his rifle as a crutch. In a very short space of time he had gathered about 600 men. None of the other units dropped that night could boast of such an achievement. Starting out for their objective, Neuville-au-Plain, Vandervoort caught sight of two men pulling an ammunition cart. They were quickly, if grudgingly, commandeered as chauffeurs.
Meanwhile, the 101st Airborne Division had a more difficult landing to achieve, for if they overshot their drop zones they would risk landing in the flooded area behind Utah Beach, or, worse still, in the sea. If they landed too short they would come down in the area of operations of the 82nd Airborne Division. In all, the landing was a complete mess with the men scattered like chaff.
Captain Charles G. Shettle jumped near the village of Angoville-au-Plain,
A dummy of a US paratrooper hangs
from the church of St Mère Église.
just north of Carentan. He blew up a vital German communications line, and then, with about twenty men, the best he could muster in the darkness, he marched to the north bridge near Le Port reaching it at 0400. Shettle’s tiny command tried to cross the second bridge and seize a foothold on the other side, but the Germans counter-attacked and forced the small band of paratroopers back onto the northern side.
Colonel Johnson, 501st PIR, was about
Paratroopers of the 82nd
Airborne Division check the
church in St Mère Église
for snipers.
to jump from his plane (the green light was on) when suddenly a bale of supplies fell in front of the door blocking his exit. When they got it clear and finally jumped, the men landed just north of their objective, right where they wanted to be, at the locks at La Barquette. The green light had come on prematurely! The lucky troopers seized the locks, which controlled the flood waters in the area, without a fight.
The 506th PIR had the task of securing Exits One and Two from Utah Beach, plus capturing the two bridges that spanned the Douve. Colonel Sink, commander of the 506th PIR, landed west of Sainte Marie-du-Mont and, with about forty of his men, linked up with the1st Battalion of his regiment, which had landed nearby. He established his command post at the small hamlet of Caloville. Not far away at Hiesville, Lieutenant Colonel Ewell of the 501st PIR was setting up the first divisional Command Post.
Paratroopers of the 101st Airborne Division show off their trophies.
At a little after 0600 the decision was made to attack and capture Exit One from Utah, to help the troops coming in from the sea. Their attack began at Pouppeville with only forty men. The village was heavily defended by men from the German 91st Airlanding Division and it took the small American force over three hours of determined house-to-house fighting to finally overcome the garrison. With Pouppeville in American hands so was Exit One. The US 4th Division coming into Utah first made contact with the 101st Airborne Division here on Exit One at a little after 1100 on June 6th.
The 502nd PIR was responsible for the two northern exits from Utah. Lieutenant Colonel Cole, commander of its 3rd Battalion, had landed not far from St Mère Église. He had spent the night making his way toward the objectives, picking up stragglers on the way. By dawn he had a force of about seventy-five men, mostly from his own battalion, but also some from the 82nd Airborne Division, and was heading toward St Martin-De-Varreville. After a slight brush with a German patrol, he reached the enemy battery there.
The Germans had set up a mobile gun position on the outskirts of the village, which they kept switching about to avoid Allied bombing. The village itself was damaged and deserted. Cole split his group and sent each half to seize Exits Three and Four. Near Audouville-la-Hubert the Americans could see large numbers of enemy troops retreating from Utah Beach across the causeway. By 0930 the Allies were slaughtering the Germans. By midday both exits were safely in American hands.
Many acts of heroism took place in the early hours of June 6th, too many to mention, but one in particular must be told. Another objective of the 502nd PIR was a large group of buildings being used as a barracks by one of the coastal artillery batteries. It was about a mile inland from St Martin-de-Varreville. Sergeant Harrison Summers, with about fifteen reluctant men, was sent to secure the barracks. He set about it with a vengeance. Kicking in the door of the first building he sprayed the interior with bullets from his Thompson machine gun. Four Germans fell dead. The rest vanished out the back door. Looking around for support, but not seeing the rest of his men, Sergeant Summers went on to the next building. In he went shooting and out came more fleeing Germans. He gave a third building the same treatment, this time with covering fire from some of his shy comrades, for by now the Germans were awakening to the fact that they were under attack. On and on he went until finally one of his men joined him. Two buildings to go. In Summers went again. To his surprise, a group of German artillerymen was sitting down eating breakfast, oblivious to what was going on.
With no compunction Summers mowed then down. Finally, he came to the last and largest building, which had alongside it a shed and haystack. One of Summer’s group fired tracers and set the shed and haystack alight. (The shed was being used as a stowage for ammunition and very soon exploded). At this point, a large party of Germans ran out and were either killed on the spot or fled. Some of the enemy artillerymen were now returning fire from the ground floor. Another American arrived with a bazooka. With one well-aimed shot he set the roof of that building on fire. As the fire intensified, the Germans ran out and again faced a hail of lead. Mission accomplished, Summers slumped to the ground and lit a cigarette, feeling “not very good, ” as he put it.
In the meantime, the American glider force had approached the peninsula from the same direction as the American paratroopers. The Americans preferred using the Waco Glider, which was smaller than its British counterpart, the Horsa, and not so heavy or prone to splintering on impact. The Waco was made of canvas and plywood on a tubular steel frame and was much easier to land in small fields; it could carry fifteen men or a small vehicle. Once released from the tow aircraft, and with its elementary controls, it would go into a steep dive as it approached the ground.
A Douglas C-47 “Skytrain” about to snatch-lift a Waco glider. France, June, 1944
At 0330 the aircraft dropped to an altitude of about 160 meters and continued at that height to the landing zone. It was an uneventful trip, until about halfway across the twenty–two mile peninsula, when the German gunners opened up. From there on in, tracers filled the sky. Many men described the multi-colored flak arching into the sky around them as “the biggest fireworks display ever.” Gliders at that height were also taking small arms hits which, according to Lieutenant Colonel Michael C. Murphy, who was the most senior pilot and flew the No. 1 lead glider, “Sounded like popcorn popping when the slugs passed through the fabric.” It was later discovered that the No. 2 glider had taken ninety-one hits in the tail section alone!
In Murphy’s glider was Brigadier General Don Pratt, assistant divisional commander of the 101st, and his jeep. He was not jump qualified and was supposed to be coming ashore with the remainder of the division on Utah Beach. However, he had arranged with General Taylor to go in by glider instead, so as to get into the battle quicker. Pratt’s aide, who carried top secret documents and maps, flew with them as well. As a precaution, because of its “precious load,” glider No. 1, nicknamed “The Flying Falcon,” had been secretly armored. This of course made the machine much heavier than it should have been.
Just west of the landing zone, near the little town of Hiesville, Murphy saw the release signal, a green light shining from the plexiglas dome of the tow aircraft. He hit the release knob and heaved a sigh of relief. It had been hard work keeping the glider on a level course for over two hours.
A fully loaded CG-4A Waco glider touching down at seventy miles per hour could normally be stopped in 200-300 feet but, because of the extra weight it carried, No. 1 came down at over eighty miles per hour. To make matters worse, the ground was slick with dew. Murphy immediately stood on the brakes, but to no avail. The glider carried on for an extra two hundred feet before crashing into a hedgerow. General Pratt died instantly, his neck broken. Murphy suffered two broken legs, but still managed to crawl out, brandishing his pistol. His co-pilot was dead. Lieutenant May, the general’s aide, was stunned but unhurt. General Don Pratt became the first general to die that day.
The fields and hedgerows of Normandy, known as the Bocage, were more of a hazard to the gliders than were the Germans. Pilots were not expecting banks of earth four to five feet tall topped with a thick impenetrable hedge. The fields were smaller and the trees taller than they had trained for in England. Many gliders slithered out of control in the wet grass and ended up crashing into these deadly banks. Others hit tree tops and the roofs of buildings, spewing out their cargo of men. Over 300 men became casualties. The men that survived, rallied and linked up with the paratroopers; the anti-tank guns and equipment salvaged from the gliders was to become invaluable.
EYEWITNESS
We could hear the sounds of planes in the distance, then no sounds at all. This was followed by a series of swishing noises. Adding to the swelling crescendo of sounds was the tearing of branches and trees followed by loud crashes and intermittent screams. The gliders were coming in rapidly, one after the other, from all different directions. Many overshot the field and landed in the surrounding woods, while others crashed into nearby farmhouses and stone walls.
In a moment, the field was complete chaos. Equipment broke away and catapulted as it hit the ground, plowing up huge mounds of earth. Bodies and bundles were thrown all along the length of the field. Some of the glider troopers were impaled by the splintering wood of the fragile plywood gliders.
Private John Fitzgerald, 502nd PIR, 101st Airborne Division
At this point, the men of the two airborne divisions scattered widely over the Cotentin Peninsula that morning, heard a new sound. It was the sustained rumbling of a terrific bombardment coming from the coast, the prelude to the seaborne invasion.
Despite the bedlam and disorganization, the 82nd and the 101st had achieved much more than the average trooper could imagine sitting in his hole, or crouching behind a Norman stone wall. The airborne divisions had taken and secured their primary objectives, perhaps not in such great force as their commanders might have wished, but nevertheless, with sheer guts and determination small groups acting on their own initiative had done what they set out to do. In a way the scattering of their units had helped them. The Germans could see no set plan, no definite drop area that would give them a clue as to where the invasion was going to take place. With the help of the dummy parachutists (codenamed “Ruperts”), the enemy had been thrown into total bewilderment.
Also, unfortunately for the German 91st Airlanding Division, their commander, Lieutenant General Wilhelm Falley, was ambushed and killed by American paratroopers. He was rushing back to his headquarters after taking part in war game exercises in Rennes. Ironically, the games were concerned with how to repel an invasion. The ambushing of General Falley was reported to General Ridgway, to which he replied:
EYEWITNESS
Well, in our present situation, killing divisional commanders does not strike me as being particularly hilarious.
General Matthew Ridgway, commander, 82nd Airborne Division
By morning, the 101st Airborne Division had secured most of the causeways leading inland from Utah Beach, and had thrown up a hasty defense line on the southern flank, guarding against counter-attacks from the direction of Carentan. The 82nd Airborne Division had had a disastrous drop in the flooded area of the Merderet and Douve valleys. The flooding was far more extensive than the allies had thought. What looked like solid ground in aerial photographs actually turned out to be water with high grasses growing out of it. Despite not being able to capture or blow the bridges over the Douve nor to secure the west bank of the Merderet, the 82nd had nevertheless gone on to create chaos throughout the enemy positions. Their primary objective, St Mère Église, had in fact been taken and held. All through the day the Germans counter-attacked the town, desperate to reclaim it, but the paratroopers defended it stubbornly, often against overwhelming odds.
A patrol from the 82nd Airborne Division in the streets of St Mère Église. Two troopers have found an alternative means of transport.
Soon the infantry from the beaches would be with them to relieve the pressure. The airborne story continues when they link up with the seaborne infantry and together fight for the liberation of the Cherbourg Peninsula.
CIRCUIT TWO
Circuit two. Cherbourg – St Mère Église – Oglandes – Sainte Marie-du-Mont – Cherbourg
FROM CHERBOURG TAKE THE
The Route of Liberty begins at kilometer 0 St
Mère Église or (right) at kilometer 00 Utah
Beach.
MAIN ROAD south (N-13); this will be signposted Valognes, Carentan, and St Lô. Sixteen kilometers south of Valognes take the turning signposted for St Mère Église. Drive into the center, where there is ample free parking in and around the town square. The church, in the center of the square, has a model of a parachutist hanging from the stone buttress throughout the summer months. This is the place where Private John Steele landed in the early hours of D-Day. Standing opposite the church is the Musée des Troupes Aéroportées [Airborne Troops Museum]. This is built on the site of the burning house where one of the paratroopers landed during the massacre in the square. General Gavin laid the first stone for this superb museum on June 6th, 1961. The museum houses many exhibits contributed not only by local people but also by veterans from the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions. Pride of place in the two buildings that make up the museum are a Douglas C-47 transport plane and a fully restored Waco glider.
Also in St Mère Église, in front of the Mairie [Town Hall], is the marker stone for Kilometer 0. This is the first in a number of stones that retrace the “Voie de la Liberté” [Road of Liberty]. Kilometer 0 marks the start of the trail (since St Mère Église was the first town to be liberated by the Americans on D-Day). The trail is marked all the way from St Mère Église through France, Luxembourg, and into Belgium until it finishes at Bastogne. Stones are also located on the roads running north to Cherbourg which was liberated at the end of June, and east to Utah Beach where the Kilometer 00 stone marks the site of the first seaborne landings by Allied troops.
A walk around the square will reveal different plaques on trees and walls dedicated to the paratroopers landed or who were killed nearby. There are plenty of cafés and souvenir shops in the town center, as well as a US Army surplus store that will be of interest to the Battlefield Tourist. The shop fronts often have displays that change periodically and sometimes include photographs of visiting veterans. Also in the square is one of the eleven stones erected by the Comité du Debarquement. The church itself is also worth a visit, for inside there are two beautiful stained glass windows that have been dedicated to the American Airborne troops that liberated St Mère Église.
It is very difficult to organize a tour around the drop zones, since the paratroopers were so scattered (in fact the area in which they landed would cover over 180 square miles). Also, today, there is very little to see. What we can do, though, is take the Battlefield Tourist around the various villages within the area, so that they can get an idea of what the countryside was like for the soldiers who fought there.
Most of the towns and villages in the area were liberated within a few days of D–Day by the combined efforts of the paratroopers and the seaborne troops that came ashore at Utah Beach. So we will mention some of these places in the chapter on Utah Beach (see Chapter 3).
From St. Mère Église head west and cross under the N-13, taking the country road marked D-15. This road will also cross the Cherbourg-Carentan railroad and the River Merderet. Back in 1944 this whole area had been extensively flooded. When you reach the hamlet of Cauquigny turn right onto the D-126 for Amfreville. The American pathfinders had trouble marking the drop zones north of here and, consequently, many men overshot and landed in the flooded marshes. Some drowned, weighed down by their equipment, while those that survived were forced to fight alone in the waterlogged fields until they could join up with their own, or other, units. The railroad, which was above the waterline of the floods, helped some of the lost troops get their bearings as they struggled to reform.
General Gavin had jumped east of Amfreville along with elements of the 507th PIR. Most of the 508th PIR jumped further to the south, around Gueutteville, and the 505th PIR jumped to the east between Amfreville and St Mère Église.
Continue along the D-126 through Gourbesville and turn right, onto the D-24, at the village of Orglandes. After leaving the village, on the left hand side, there is Orglandes German Cemetery. There are five German cemeteries in Normandy, in which are buried the remains of some 70,000 Axis servicemen killed in the battle for Normandy. The Orglandes was originally an American cemetery started as the Americans fought their way toward Cherbourg. The Americans later exhumed their dead and either concentrated the bodies in one of the two American cemeteries, at Saint James and Colleville–sur–Mer, or repatriated them to the US. In total some 14,000 American servicemen were flown back to the US at the government’s expense. It was then that this area was taken over by the German Volksbund [a German peoples’ association] who started the German cemetery in 1956. Completed in 1961, Orglandes cemetery is now the final resting place of some 10,152 German servicemen.
Drive back along the D-24. After five kilometers turn left onto the D-15 and drive through Pont-l’Abbé. Continue on the D-70 to Chef-du-Pont. Continue along the D-70, crossing under the railroad and N-13, toward Sainte Marie-du-Mont.
Looking right along this road toward the hamlet of Hiesville is the landing zone where many of the gliders of the 101st Airborne Division came down. Colonel Sink landed just west of here and established his command post at Caloville, a hamlet between Sainte Marie-du-Mont and Hiesville. This was also the area where Colonel Ewell of the 3rd Battalion, 501st PIR established the first divisional command post. Drive into Sainte Marie-du-Mont and turn right onto the road that circles the church. The Germans held onto the village until late in the afternoon of D-Day but were eventually forced to withdraw when the Americans brought up armored support from the 4th Infantry Division that had landed on Utah Beach.
Take the second turning opposite the church and follow the D-424 to l’Église. Turn left onto the D-329 and left again onto the D-115. Take the next right back onto the D-329 and drive into Pouppeville. This is where the paratroopers made the first contact with the seaborne forces. Continue through Pouppeville, on the D-329 and follow the road until you reach the Utah Beach Museum (see Chapter 3). You will notice that all the roads in this area have been named in honor of soldiers who landed on June 6th, 1944.
Drive along the D-421 coast road named “Route des Allies,” heading north toward the Varreville dunes where it was planned that the first waves of combat troop and DD (duplex drive) tanks would come ashore onto Utah Beach. You can still see evidence of the excellent construction of the German bunkers along the sea front. Despite a heavy naval and aerial bombardment prior to the invasion, many of these bunkers remained intact on D-Day. Fortunately, the landings took place further south, next to where the Utah Beach Museum is now situated, and so avoided the heavily fortified positions along this part of the coast.
Take a left turn onto the D-423 and drive into St Martin-de-Varreville. It was here that the Germans had a mobile battery which, on May 29th, was bombed with great accuracy by the RAF. Lieutenant Colonel Cole, having landed near St Mère Église, mustered his men and marched on this village, which was one of his objectives. He found the battery empty and went on to secure the area and the beach Exits Three and Four near Audouville-la-Hubert, where they were finally able to link up with the seaborne troops of the 4th US Infantry Division.
Drive along the D-423, straight on at the crossroads with the D-115, and onto the D-129. Turn left onto the D-70 and join the southbound carriageway, on the N-13, to Carentan. Turn off the N13 onto the D913 and head towards Carentan. Before you reach Carentan take a left turn at the small hamlet of le Pont Douve and follow the road that runs parallel with the River Douve to la Barquette. Along this part of the river were the two bridges that were the objective of the 3rd Battalion, 506th PIR. Further along, at la Barquette, the 1st and 2nd Battalion of Colonel Johnstone’s 501st PIR were tasked with the capture of the lock gates and with blowing the bridges on the main Carentan-Cherbourg highway and railroad.
From la Barquette you can make your way into Carentan or else rejoin the N-13 and head north to St Mère Église and Cherbourg.