– There you go.

– An American parachute piece.

It’s crazy, it’s crazy.

– You have your souvenir.

– Yeah, a hell of a souvenir.

It’s huge.

It’s huge.

– Live history.

– Live history.

An American parachute piece.

Not too far from
the Pont de la Barquette.

– Right next door.

– It’s huge.

If Drop Zone helpers, the width areas
marked with different letters, were defined and distributed among
the six parachute regiments of the two airborne divisions.

Two landing zones, the Landing Zone
or LZ, were also chosen for gliders, in the center
of the area of operation and near the national road 13.

The entirety is located in an area
of approximately 57 km².

The operations must take place
one after the other in Normandy.

Starting at 9:50 p.

m.

, the first
aircraft would take off from England.

These are the coded Boston operations
for the 82nd Airborne and Albania for the men of the 101st Airborne.

Starting at 4 am,
gliders would join the dance.

These are the Chicago operations
for the 101st and Detroit for the 82nd.

In the early evening, on 6 June 1944, additional reinforcements would
be carried by gliders.

Elmira and Keokuk Operations.

Two hundred pathfinders,
the scouts of the airborne troops, would have the mission
of marking the jumping areas.

Dropped alone, in the middle of
the night, in enemy territory, they would be the first soldiers
of the day on Normandy soil.

Captain Frank Lillyman, chief
pathfinders of the 101st Airborne, would be the first Allied soldier
to jump in Normandy.

The technology that pathfinders
use is classified as top secret.

The teams, generally composed
of 18 men, have seven Holophane lamps which would be placed on the ground
in order to form a T.

The base of the T indicates
the direction of the jump, the crossbar, the point of arrival.

The pathfinders were also equipped
with Eureka post-transmitters, that would send picked up radio
frequency pulses by the Rebecca receivers, installed
under the fuselage of the aircraft at the top of the formation.

Pilots would thus be able to orient
themselves to the drop zones.

To experience the intensity of a jump
in operation, that’s what I wanted.

I had to try to understand how
men parachuted in enemy territory could constitute an effective force capable of destabilizing
the adversary, or even defeat him.

First observation, only the equipment
and the planes have changed since 1944.

The jumping instructions
and the atmosphere seem the same.

During the night, the scouts of
the Second REP reached the drop zone which they marked out while avoiding
being spotted by the enemy.

They established a connection
with the airplanes.

The aim, to gather the parachutes
in the smallest possible space, concentrate intervention forces.

On the plane, meeting the eyes
of the soldiers, I find the dull apprehension described by American paratroopers
in June 1944.

Jumping from an aircraft launched
at 200 km/h is nothing natural.

It takes a lot of courage.

The minutes go by,
and the pressure is on.

After an hour of tactical flight designed
to put the men in the bath, I feel that everyone has only one
desire left, to go through the door, get rid of this carlingue that locks
them up, jump and start the operation because
the mission would actually only begin when the paratroopers hit the ground.

When the doors open
and the men get up, close to each other, broken by the weight of their loads
and the straps that constrain them, the tension is at its peak.

Then the siren finally sounded.

Once on the ground,
the skydiver is left alone, possessing nothing else only its own armaments
and a limited quantity of ammunition.

He is particularly vulnerable.

The rest of the operations
was repeated dozens of times.

Nothing was left to chance.

First you have to come together,
rearticulate, so that the scattered men reconstitute a real battle force.

– Now, we’re on an exercise in which
there are 200 staff, let’s say, approximately.

– 280 in total.

– We imagine, in 1944, that several
thousand of them jumped at night, with means of communication
that were inferior to what you have today.

It must have been very complicated
for them.

– It’s good for this reason that
they have repeated and repeated for months the operation.

It’s so complicated that it needs
to be rehearsed in detail so as not to be surprised
when the surprise comes.

Our work, is to make sure that we all meet
up as soon as possible and that we have the people
who have trained together, who can resume their mission.

Each company,
depending on the elements, from their area of deployment,
their action, they group together.

There are what are called
initial points, that is, countries.

We group by country, we pass
the country, then behind the country, further on, we have an area
of articulation out of sight, allowing the country to count everyone,
because that’s a bit of the problem when you jump, you are disorganized.

So we all know where we have to go,
knowing that we took a flight, one hour, it was light, but when you can do 2, 3, 4 hours
in the heat, in the cold or other, in stress,
we are quickly disoriented.

What is simple on paper becomes
complicated to implement.

So rearticulate and make sure that
everyone, from the last soldier all the way to the boss,
go to the right place.

And everyone in their right
place is complicated.

Each element has its initial point,
its area of articulation.

It goes to the initial point where
we count everyone, It is re-articulated as the name says, where we’re going back to
the fighting position.

We will be able to reform the sections,
the groups, the company, and once everyone is ready
and reporting on the radio we start the mission.

But the zone part, the jump part,
it’s a technical part, where you have to go very quickly.

We jump, we take our parachutes
because we don’t leave them, plus the bag, so quickly
we’re at 30–40 kilos.

We have about 1500 m to do
in less than 9 minutes to get out of the way as quickly
as possible, leave the jump zone because it’s a field,
a flat piece of land in which we are very vulnerable
to go to areas of rearticulation where we will be somewhat sheltered.

Afterward, we have one hour to do 8 km more because
it is estimated that one hour, is how long it takes
for a fairly ready unit to complete an area of 8 km
in diameter.

It allows us to say that we can
leave the zone and be outside the ability
to react of an enemy.

Once your parachute is opened
and checked, first, where are the other guys? And only then, where am I? More than 70 years after
the American paratroopers dropping above Cotentin, Men commemorate the event by jumping under almost
the same conditions.

Listening to the instructions,
I understand.

Jumping out of a working plane
is not natural.

The danger is real.

Why take such a risk? One of the participants, Thomas Keller,
of German nationality, challenges me.

– Where do you come from? – I am from Germany, and I am
a former paratrooper, what we call Fallschirmjäger.

– Your presence here today
is very symbolic.

– Yes, absolutely, for two reasons.

We have been in France, we have
fought against each other.

And today, we are united
within Europe.

The second reason is that we’re
here to honor those who freed us, especially the parachutists
who were in the lead.

– But you’re doing this jump for someone
or something in particular or for fun? It’s not for fun, it’s a part
of our history and we’re doing this
to honor skydivers.

To honor all these young men
aged 18, 20 who died here and who were not prepared
to fight for Europe.

It’s our story, and we feel
close to it.

We jump with Americans, British,
French comrades that we love.

It’s like a big brotherhood
it’s really special.

– How do you feel? It’s not really a sensation.

It’s a visceral feeling when
we see these elders, these 47, from where we jump.

It’s a part of our history.

It’s not Hollywood.

It’s not a movie jump.

You see, we’re training,
we’re following orders.

It’s still dangerous.

That way, we experience the story.

– All I have to do is wish
you a good jump.

On D-Day, the transport fleet
consisted of 821 planes Douglas C-47 Sky Trains,
the sky train.

A civilian aircraft put into
service from 1935 and adopted by the US Air Force
as early as 1942.

Like all Allied aircraft,
it bears identification marks of D-Day in order to avoid
friendly fire.

Three white and two black stripes.

The aim is to avoid
the Sicilian fiasco.

In July 1943, half of
the reinforcement planes had been hit by the fire of the Allied fleet.

– Charles Donnefort is an aeronautical
engineer and pilot.

He has an unlimited passion
for everything that flies, and particularly to military
aircraft of the Second World War.

– Charles, is this C-47 a good plane? – Yes, it was the best plane
of the time for transport.

It’s much better than its German
equivalent, the Lunker 52.

It’s also an airplane
that is sturdy, simple and not very expensive
to manufacture.

– However, it still seems
particularly vulnerable.

It has no weapons.

This plane doesn’t really
seem to be made for war.

– It’s basically a civilian plane,
the DC-3.

This is its military version,
the C-47.

It doesn’t have an armor system
at all.

It’s relatively slow compared
to a hunter.

It’s not protected by any defense.

It’s therefore very sensitive
to Flak fire and small arms fire.

– This means that the flight
conditions for the pilots had to be quite challenging.

– Yes, it’s quite challenging.

They didn’t have escorts.

And over Normandy, it was even worse.

The flight was done at night,
under instrument flight conditions and without any light.

The pilots were focused on
the leader’s position lights.

And arriving above the Cotentin, they arrived in a complete fog
that they didn’t expect.

So the groups dispersed,
and each pilot had to find individually his drop zone.

– They really had to be
very courageous.

– Of course, and find the drop zone
under these circumstances, with Flak some of which they had never
encountered, the anxiety of the pilots, the anxiety of the paratroopers,
and the enemy fire, the poor visibility and especially the risk of being shot
down, of not finding the drop zone or possibly having to improvise
in case the drop zone was busy.

– It must have been vibrating inside,
it must have been a very trying flight.

– Yes, they were comparing Flak’s
impacts to hail.

Nevertheless, the drivers had
to keep their cool to find the DZ.

Whatever happens and let
the paratroopers go at all costs.

– I can’t wait to fly in and see what
it looks like in real life.

The C-47 formations will take off
from England to complete a loop above the Cotentin Peninsula,
passing in turn off the islands from Guernsey and Jersey,
over the drop zones, then from the beach in Utah.

Each parachutist infantry regiment
embarks on board 3 to 4 formations, composed according to the cases
of 36, 45 or 54 C-47.

These formations, called Serials,
are spaced 6 minutes apart on the jump zone.

On board, paratroopers are made up
of sticks of 15 to 18 men, depending on the equipment
transported.

The endowment of paratroopers is very
different from that of foot soldiers.

Their outfit is even very specific.

They wear a modified helmet with
a chin strap, a jacket, a pair of pants and jumping boots.

Paratroopers are equipped
for a very particular mission.

They will fight behind enemy lines
in small autonomous units.

In addition to their diet,
a survival diet of super vitamin chocolate was added, which provides the necessary
energy for three days.

Their first aid kit is enriched with
a tourniquet and a dose of morphine.

Their weapons are adapted
on a case-by-case basis.

But they all carry ammo, grenades, and even additional
light mines.

Stewardship does not seem to be
too careful about the supply of daggers or machetes, nor necessarily
strictly enforce the rules on handguns.

Some, even before equipping
themselves with their parachutes and their life jackets, already
carry more than 40 kg of equipment.

Anything that’s not carried
directly by men is stuffed into drop containers, the parapacks, loaded into
the units or directly stowed under the C-47s.

At dawn on 5 June 1944,
the invasion fleet, composed of more than 5,000 boats,
set sail.

Direction the Normandy coast, which
it must reach 24 hours later.

On the same 5 June,
at the end of the day, the Chief of the Allied General Staff,
General Eisenhower, visited the 502nd Parachute
Infantry Regiment of the 101st Airborne.

Unlike those of the 82nd, a unit
already dropped over Sicily and from Italy in 1943, most of
these men never jumped in operation.

But they were apprenticed
to elite troops.

37 weeks of intensive training.

The 40 km walks in 8 hours,
the short morning jogs with a 15 kg bag on your back,
the live ammunition exercises and lack of sleep have become
their daily routine.

They had forged their corps spirit
and were a great troupe.

They were ready for any challenge.

That was good news.

The operation in Normandy would
give them the opportunity to shine.

The latest estimate of losses
was chilling.

One in two could be killed
or injured in the coming hours.

After skipping during the day, the paras
of the 2nd REP will repeat the operation, in total darkness this time,
as their elders did on the night of 5 to 6 June 1944.

– This evening, a special atmosphere
for you.

I guess that the night jump
is completely different.

The constraints are completely
different from a day’s jump.

– Yes.

At first, the darkness and the night
create a slightly different atmosphere.

People are very focused, getting
a little bit more into their jump.

The skydiver is very isolated, even more isolated than when
he jumps during the day.

Both during the jump,
during the descent under sail and during rearticulation.

– It also complicates the deployment
of troops and the smooth running of the mission
in some respects.

– Technically, we have to prepare
differently to regroup, orientate and fight at night.

And we’re very well-equipped
for that.

And tactically, we’re taking more time
and getting ready to attack the mission with some of the personnel who
didn’t join the unit, or even legionaries who joined the
neighboring unit because they were lost and that they hooked up
with another paratrooper or another non-commissioned officer
who picked them up.

– So you start your mission,
and you think that the objective can be reached from what percentage
of paratroopers gathered on the drop zone? – We generally considered that 75%
of the mission can be attacked.

– The overall state of mind is ultimately
the same or it looks a lot like it to what the fighters of 1944 lived
and what they thought, I suppose.

– Yes, because when you go through
the door of an airplane launched at 200 km/h at night, it’s probably always the same
effect on the skydiver.

When you are plugged into a tree
without knowing where you are, Even in 2016,
it’s the same isolation, that you are asking yourself
“How to join my comrades?” “Where is the North?” “What are these signals?” “Does this guy I see passing by
in the shadows belong to my unit?” Today like yesterday, the parachutist,
the fighter par excellence of isolation, of initiative and lightness, must be daring, sense of initiative and ability
to adapt, aggressiveness.

And that’s what undoubtedly makes
him a bit different from the others.

At 9.

30 p.

m.

, Captain Frank Lillyman’s
C-47 and his pathfinders, were the first to take off
from England, heading for Cotentin.

Starting at 22:48 and every 11″,
the other planes carrying the big of the airborne troops took off
from 14 English airfields.

Paratroopers were now flying
to France and to their destiny.

Veteran Dan McBride of F Company of the
502nd Regiment of the 101st Airborne remembers the feverish hours that
preceded his parachuting into France.

– What memories do you have
of your flight to France, before and during the flight? – We took off around 22:25, On the evening of June 5th, and we started training,
and we went to the coast.

We went through the Channel
in a very tight formation, and everything went well
during the flight.

We flew over the invasion fleet,
and I didn’t know that there could be so many boats
in the world.

Our plan was to shoot off the islands
of Guernsey and Jersey, in the direction of the coast.

Hard to imagine the atmosphere
in the C-47s en route to France.

Many paratroopers are doped
with the drapomine drug against air and sea sickness.

Above the islands of Guernsey
and Jersey, German anti-aircraft guns
were waking up.

The cabins are shaken
by the explosions.

Through the windows,
soldiers could see burning C-47s.

They broke the formation before
coming down like shooting stars, leading to death men and crews.

– We were asked to get up, to hang on and to keep us ready to go By the time we passed the coast,
in case we were hit and for a chance to get out of it.

And then, if we were to be hit
by German gun fire, we wanted to die standing like men.

So everything was fine until
we reached the coast.

There we went into a fog band
and all the drivers were afraid of colliding
with each other and they went their separate ways.

The pilots were doing their best
to reach the goals, but above the Cotentin the engines penetrated
a huge cloud mass and a thick fog masks
the ground.

Impossible to orient
yourself correctly.

Yet, the airdrops were
going to take place.

– Our pilot, who was a kid like us,
started zigzagging between the shells while we were standing
with our SOAs hooked up and that we try to keep our balance.

He went one way and the other,
dodging the shots.

And instead of slowing down and letting
us jump, he dove and accelerated.

We were not very happy
with this maneuver.

He flew too low and too fast
when he turned on the green light.

And since I was jumping in third
position, I had to swing a container before jumping.

So he turned on the green light,
the lieutenant jumped, the sergeant jumped, I went to the door and I had just
had time to release the container when the plane swerved again.

So much so that I lost my balance
and found myself thrown head first into the void.

So I hit the plane.

I was half stunned and so I had
a hell of a shock when my parachute opened.

Between midnight and quarter past
midnight, Lillyman and his men landed in the field behind the church
of Saint-Germain de Vareville.

The captain issues his signal
between 00:20 and 00:30.

Twenty minutes later, C-47 waves
drop the paratroopers on drop zone A.

In this sector, the pathfinders’ mission
was accomplished.

Unfortunately, this was not
the case everywhere.

Only three parachuting areas
had been properly marked out.

The other Pathfinders bands
had been dumped too far.

Some were massacred, others captured.

This first phase of the airborne
operation was a failure.

And that has dramatic consequences
for the rest of the airdrop.

A map is enough to understand
the extent of the disaster.

In blue, the DZ of the 82nd Airborne.

In red, those of the 101st Airborne.

The blue and red crosses represent
the real places where the sticks of both divisions had landed.

In Normandy, the Allies were
on the brink of disaster.

Generally speaking, only men
from the 505th Regiment of the 82nd and those of the 506th regiment
of the 101st landed on the planned DZs.

The others were totally dispersed.

The paratroopers of the 508th
were scattered all over Cotentin.

Some are lost 40 km
from the initial objective.

Paras fell into the tides where
they drowned in 50 cm of water because of the weight of their equipment
and entangled in their parachutes whose harnesses were almost impossible
to unfasten without cutting the straps.

Some sticks were dropped into the sea
where men disappear body and soul.

Much of the radio equipment
has been lost or destroyed.

Inhabitant of Saint-Germain-
de-Vareville, Auguste Robiole was 10 years old when American
paratroopers jumped over Normandy.

He was in the front row
of this incredible show.

– So you lived in this house
on the evening of June 5-6.

– Exact.

Absolutely, I was even born
in this house.

And on the evening of June 5 to 6,
we were there.

And it was from that moment
that the bombing took place on Saint-Martin.

And since it went on
for quite a while, And that it slammed hard,
my father said don’t stay in the house and we went with the neighbors
into this ditch a little bit lower.

– To protect you, was it some
kind of trench? – In his idea it was protection.

In his idea that was it.

And we heard the end, of course,
of the bombing… until the arrival of planes from which the famous
paratroopers emerged.

– You are in your ditch,
what time is it? – I put that around one o’clock
in the morning.

– Alright.

– We’re still in the ditch
around 1am.

– Were there a lot of planes? – A lot.

Oh yeah, yeah.

It was full.

It was a blanket of airplanes.

They went out of the planes non-stop,
and then it opened up.

– And you really saw them
with the naked eye? – Yes, when they were
lower, of course.

Unfortunately, some of them
were falling into the trees, they are everywhere, of course.

– They really came across
the village.

– And then, yes, there were
everywhere, everywhere, Of which the closest, in the tree here.

One in the tree here.

– Who hung on to this tree? – Hanging in the tree, on the left he was.

On the left.

And it was my father and the village
priest who unhooked him.

The second, closer, on the chimney
of the house in front.

I can still see him, the guy.

I can still see him fighting
to get unhooked.

I can still see it.

I was there.

And the third, there, at the end of
the garden, of the house, over there.

It was the three closest.

Afterward, they were everywhere,
of course.

– It must have been extraordinary
for you, at the age of 10, to see these men fall from the sky? – We didn’t expect that.

We couldn’t imagine.

The very first, the very first
ones that emerged, there were five or six who had
come into the house.

They were standing there,
all smeared, with all the junk, and they were putting candy
on the table for us.

– Did those who fell here stay here
or did they leave? – Oh no, they left.

There were some who stayed
for a while, but they didn’t linger.

– They were off to the rest
of their mission.

– Well, I was going to say,
they had their mission.

Just like those who came
into the house, their mission, was Saint-Martin.

They had to go.

So they asked my dad
for a lot of information to go to Saint-Martin.

To identify themselves in the dark
night, the paratroopers of the 101st have a clicker, a chromed brass blade that makes
a clicking sound when pressed.

The identification
code was simple.

Two clicks should respond
to the one-click identification request.

Other ways of recognition have also been developed,
including a voice code.

On the night of June 5 to 6,
the paras must say “thunder”, “thunder”, when they were called up with
the word “flash”, “lightning”.

On paper, the instructions
were simple.

On paper only, because some
parachutists are alone in areas infested with enemies.

This is the case with Dan McBride.

– It must have been one o’clock
in the morning.

I walked by myself, very slowly,
trying to find someone and at the same time not
to be detected.

After about three-quarters of an hour,
I heard someone walking very fast in the grass,
but I couldn’t see him.

It was too dark.

And in my head, I imagined
a two-meter German coming at me.

I was going to shoot.

But again, I pulled
out my clicker.

And then I heard at least
10 clicks in response.

I saw this guy, one of the comrades.

He hadn’t seen anyone either.

He was lost like me and we almost kissed.

We went forward together
and noticed traces in the grass, as left by a cart.

We thought they would
lead us somewhere and we started following them.

And as it was getting darker,
we were walking faster and faster.

And I told myself that everything
was quiet around.

And all of a sudden,
we heard “flash.

” And we said “thunder.

” Those were our passwords.

He was a lieutenant and two other
paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne.

– And they were lost like you? Yes, yes.

And when I asked him, “Lieutenant,
where are we?” He answered, according to my map
and from what I see around me, I think we are somewhere in Europe.

We had narrowed it down.

Most of the time, American paratroopers
would have to complete their mission without means of communication, with
less than one third of the planned staff.

Yet, they would have to move forward,
attack, hold on and not let go until the landing by sea takes place.

At two o’clock in the morning on 6 June
1944, the 1,000 boats of Force U, For Utah, are about fifteen
kilometers away from the beach of Saint-Martin
de Vareville, Where will more than 30,000 GIS
from the 4th Infantry Division land and 3,500 vehicles.

Half an hour later, at 2:29, the USS Bayfield, carrying
the captain from Utah beach, Major General Collins,
dropped the anchor.

Despite the scattering, the goals of the paratroopers of the 82nd
and 101st Airborne remain unchanged.

The four causeways leaving Utah Beach
must be secured as soon as possible.

This would be the primary mission
of the 101st men, who must also silence the battery of Saint-Martin-de-Vareville,
destroy the bridges over the Douve, North of Carentan, seize
the bridges facing Brévands and the Barquette lock.

The paratroopers of the 82nd must
take and hold Sainte-Mère-Église, Baudienville, and Neuville-au-Plain, conquer the crossing points
on the Merderet River and destroy the bridges
over the Douve.

After regrouping, American paratroopers were engaging
in combat almost everywhere.

They carry out daring actions,
set up ambushes.

A terrible game of hide-and-seek
began.

Para took advantage
of every opportunity.

Some, unable to fulfill
their mission, would make the choice
to set up defensive positions.

They must then gather the few
resources available and find favorable positions.

It’s the case
in the village of Graignes, where 182 parats
from the two divisions decide to barricade themselves while
waiting for hypothetical reinforcements.

– We can consider that the parachuting
of the 82nd, the 101st, due to the scattering,
didn’t go well.

How did the Germans react? – It’s true that the hours of drops,
the miss-dropping of the paratroopers, was a problem at the beginning.

They were really having
a hard time grouping together.

But it also has a certain virtue,
it is that it would completely disrupt the Germans, in addition
to diversionary operations.

– There were diversionary operations
in addition to the airdrop.

– Absolutely, I present to you Rupert,
a veteran of Operation Titanic, the airborne component of the Allied
diversion operation which consisted to drop fake paratroopers.

– That’s a fake paratrooper? – He’s a fake skydiver, it was a mannequin filled
with paper and straw which was intended to burn with delayed
charges when it reached the ground, which simulated a parachute
that would have burned like a para who had abandoned him and
who was prowling around somewhere to trample on the Germans.

– The Germans started looking
for Rupert where he was parachuted.

– Even though they weren’t looking
for them, they were disoriented because these operations were
really to simulate drop zones beyond real drop zones.

This one was dropped in the Marigny
sector, there is another DZ on the other side of St-Lô, one
in the Caen area and even further in the Le Havre sector.

– Did it succeed in deceiving
the Germans? – That, plus English SAS commandos
who on each of the drop zones of these famous models,
fake paratroopers would also broadcast
with sound amplifiers explosions or even swear
words to simulate battles elsewhere.

– I suppose that worked
at the very beginning.

The Germans, it made them
lose their minds, but they have to pick up
again at some point They realized that they
were being attacked.

– Wherever the Americans were in
the middle of the German lines, in fact, there would be opportunities fights.

All the actions, all the movements
of American paratroopers are going to be opposed quite
severely by the Germans.

And here, we are in La Fière,
west of Sainte-Mère-Église, it really is the best example.

The Pont de la Fière, here, it took
three attacks and the morning of June 6 to the US paratroopers
to be able to take it over.

Then, cross the Chaussée de La Fière,
reach the Cauquigny Chapel.

where another group of paratroopers
from the 507 had managed to regroup.

But, in one hour, they would
lose the position again.

The Germans were fighting back, Artillery began to pound
the Cauquigny sector.

So the Americans would drop out,
stay on the defensive, they only have grenades
and individual weapons at the time, they have no support.

It’s the same thing further south,
on Chef-du-Pont, a German gun, a few grenadiers behind the bridge,
would hold a group of 75 men for several days.

– In fact, paratroopers
found themselves stuck.

Their only hope is that the landing
would finally go well and that the troops that arrive
in Utah can break the encirclements.

– Indeed, it is to be able to hold
the field, the first positions that they had conquered, but they
needed support, reinforcements.

Three German divisions held Cotentin.

Among them, the 709th, lined up
in first defense along the coast.

This division is made up of elderly
men and volunteers from the East, the Ostruppens, who were far
from being the wrath of war.

If the 8,000 men of the 91st division,
positioned in the middle of the zones American airdrops, are much more
seasoned, an unexpected event would interfere with their ability
to react.

In the middle of the night
of 5 to 6 June, General Wilhelm Falley left
his headquarters, the castle of Bernaville.

His vehicle drove
to the Minoterie farm.

General Falley had an appointment
with death.

– What happened here, Régis? – On the night of 5 to 6 June 1944,
General Falley, who had left for Rennes for a Kriegsspiel, a strategic
exercise, would come back hastily.

Allied planes were filling up
the sky.

He will decide to return hastily
to Picauville, to return to the field.

When would he return here, on the other
hand, the American paratroopers had already fallen about an hour ago.

There were about ten, dozen
paratroopers around Lieutenant Brannon, of the 508th Para regiment,
of the 82nd and when the general’s car arrived
on this small country road, right here, he comes across the ambush
improvised by the paratroopers.

Brannon got in the way of the road
to order the car to stop.

The driver continued, the paras shot
at them at the same time.

The car riddled with bullets finished
its course against the farm wall.

– Exactly there?
– Exactly there.

The general was killed on the spot.

The driver tried to get out,
he was taken prisoner.

And Major Bartuzas, his aide-de-camp,
Falley’s aide-de-camp, tried to get his gun back,
he’s shot dead.

An aerial reconnaissance carried
out a few days later brought back a series of photographs of Château
de Bernaville surroundings.

On one of them appears a vehicle
abandoned on a country road, just up to the Ferme de la Minoterie.

It’s General Falley’s car.

– What is that, Régis? – This is the hubcap from General
Falley’s car, which was recovered a few decades later,
there in the ditch.

– It was there the whole time.

It’s always very impressive
to have.

.

.

that kind of testimony
to a historic event.

– General Falley’s hubcap.

– Falley’s death was a big loss
for the Germans at this point in the landing.

Yes, if we consider that the 91st
Division, of which he is the commander, is the main German force capable
of reacting to the landings, once decapitated, we understand
that the plans are really thwarted.

They’re going to have a really
hard time reacting.

– Adolf Hitler, by the way, was still
unaware of what was going on here.

– History says he’s asleep.

At 4 in the morning, Field Marshal von Rundstedt
asked the Supreme Command the authorization to deploy
two divisions to the coast.

He would wait a long,
long time for the answer.

Hitler had just gone to bed in
the eagle’s nest in Berchtesgaden.

The Führer listened to Wagner
for a good part of the night.

He specifically requested to
be oaken at 9 am.

And no one was going to dare
to disturb his sleep.

Just as the Führer entered his bed,
off the coast of Normandy, the transshipment of the assault
units into the landing barges began.

In the sky, a new wave of engines
was emerging.

The first airborne reinforcements
would start the battle that was raging on the ground.

Between 4 a.

m.

and 4:10 a.

m.

, a hundred
gliders landed as best they could in the dark.

These are the ones from Operations
Chicago and Detroit.

52 gliders of the 82nd land on the LZ W,
south of Sainte-Mère-Église, but were unable to land
eight anti-tank guns, 11 jeeps and 220 soldiers, gunners, divisional communications
and command team personnel.

49 of the 52 gliders planned
for the 101st landed on the LZE, near Hiesville, bringing 155 men,
16 57 mm anti-tank guns, a small bulldozer, a surgical
post and a radio jeep with a trailer
equipped with a SCR199 station allowing communication with England.

Unfortunately, General Dan Forester
Pratt, second in command of the 101st, died in the crash of his glider.

He is the first senior Allied
officer to die in Normandy.

At 4.

30 am, von Rundstedt ordered
the 12th SS Panzer Division, as well as at the Panzerlehr, to set off immediately for Calvados.

Furious, the Chief of Staff
at the command of the Wehrmacht, General Alfred Jodl, cancelled
the order at 6:30.

He preferred to wait for the Führer
to wake up.

At that time, Sainte-Mère-Église
was already in the hands of the American paratroopers
of the 82nd.

They cut the main cable from
the military telephone to Cherbourg and established roadblocks
to the east and south of the town.

The 101st parachutist, Robert Noody, including the photo taken on the night
of June 5 to 6 would be on the front page of Air Force Magazine,
jumped to Sainte-Mère-Église.

He was 19.

– Almost immediately, I ran into
two guys on my stick.

There was a guy hanging in a tree.

And so, they decided to go cut
the parachute to bring him down.

And that is exactly what they did.

They cut, and the guy fell with
his harness on.

I don’t know how this guy
experienced it at the time.

We were told not to load
our guns right away fearing we would shoot at each other.

But we had to fire on the Germans.

And I immediately loaded my gun.

I was actually behind
the mayor’s house.

I forgot his name now,
but I was in a field right behind her house.

We were, I would say,
six or seven guys when we arrived on the place of Sainte-Mère-Église.

We quickly went behind the church.

I didn’t see guys hanging from
the bell tower or that kind of thing, but they were shooting anyway.

A few guys got hit.

I remember a guy,
I remember his name.

His name was Brown.

He was on the left side of the church
when you came in from the front.

There was a wall there, all the way.

I think it’s still there.

The guy was hiding there
and when he saw us he said: “I didn’t think I would
make it through.

” In fact, he was just as frightened
as we were.

Even though counterattacks
threatened, since 4.

30 am on 6 June 1944, The star-spangled banner flies
over Sainte-Mère-Église.

The Western front is open.

– Régis, do we know Sainte-Mère-
Église thanks to or because of the movie “The longest day”, with this sequence inside
the John Steele movie who clings to the bell tower and
sees his comrades being massacred.

It has become a bit of a myth,
but we often forget that Sainte-Mère-Église was really
one of the objectives of the American airborne troops.

– Cinema and our own imagination
have arranged the historical truth, but Sainte-Mère was
really a main objective.

This was the major objective
for D-Day paratroopers.

It’s a six-road junction.

That’s where all the troops
and reinforcements would pass, at least for the operation to Cherbourg
and other battles, the rest of the Battle of Normandy.

It was the main objective and
the symbol is better understood today.

– How is the capture of
Sainte-Mère-Église really going? Sainte-Mère-Église, during the drop,
it’s three sticks.

Two sticks from the 101st,
one from the 82nd.

Fifty parachutists were dropped
by mistake above Sainte-Mère.

A dozen fell on the village.

The capture of Sainte-Mère, veritable,
took place with two companies of 505 who were dropped properly.

It’s the best D-day drop,
just north of Sainte-Mère.

They entered Sainte-Mère relatively
easily.

At 4:30 in the morning, they cleaned
up the town of Sainte-Mère.

There were a few exchanges,
mainly with grenades.

There were 10 killed on the German
side, about thirty prisoners, and the goal of the Americans,
of the 360 paraswho enter Sainte-Mère, was to quickly install dams
on the exits from Sainte-Mère-Église.

– To deal with German counterattacks? – Exactly, and at dawn, it was time
for landing by sea since all the dams were in use.

Machine gun fire, mortars, artillery.

South of Sainte-Mère,
we saw self-propelled guns and tanks that were beginning
to prepare counterattacks.

– So, the complexity was
not taking Sainte-Mère-Église, it must be defended
and defend this strategic point.

– In fact, it was not about taking it,
but really about holding it, once invested quickly.

Again, from 4:30am until dawn,
the fighting was swift and really sporadic exchanges.

Starting at 5:45am
off the coast of Utah, 18 warships steer their guns to the coast and open fire on
the fortifications of the Atlantic Wall.

At 6:10, the tactical bombardment
of the beach defenses began thanks in particular to 300 B-26
Marauder medium bombers.

The courageous pilots descended
under the cloud ceiling and dropped their bombs
at very low altitudes.

They provided one of the most
effective bombings on D-Day and only lost two planes.

Landing on the beaches
of Normandy began at 6:30am.

At Utah Beach, the men were launched
2 km south of their objective.

As luck would have it, they landed
on the least fortified beach area, bombed from dawn by 100 tons
of explosives.

28 Sherman tanks managed
to reach the shore.

At 8:00, 4 battalions, nearly 1,000
soldiers from the 4th Infantry Division were already at the beach.

Inland, the paratroopers
of the 101st, who didn’t hold beach outings, were scrambling to make
the artillery batteries arranged in the second line of defense
that they had just discovered around Sainte-Marie-du-Mont.

If the cannons of the Hammermain
were not in battery, and would quickly be neutralized, the Paras would have to engage
in combat in Brécourt and in Holdy, where they have
to seize eight 105mm Howitzer howitzers shooting on the beach in Utah.

In Holdy, around fifty Germans
defended the position.

But a handful of intrepid American
paratroopers decided anyway to storm it.

Jean-Noël Ferrolliet devoted
eight years of his life to an incredible investigation.

He still lives in the house that housed
the German gunners from Holdy, actually Ostruppens,
soldiers from the East.

He reconstructed in every detail the battles of the paratroopers
of the 101st, to get hold of the battery.

– Jean-Noël, here, we are not very
far from Sainte-Marie-du-Mont.

It was a parachuting zone for the Americans on the night
of June 6, 1944.

– Yes, just behind Sainte-Marie-du-Mont,
it’s drop zone C.

And by accident, some paratroopers
would fall along the Holdy battery,
that is just behind, and who were literally going
to be massacred.

– Were there any specific goals
for Americans in this zone? – So yes, behind Sainte-Marie-du-Mont,
there is this Holdy battery.

They didn’t really
know where it is.

They located it in Holdy.

It may also be on the road
to Brusvily.

– I have the impression, when you
talk to me about it like that, that there is a small game of hide-and-seek
on the night of June 6.

Americans didn’t necessarily
know where they’re parachuted.

They still have goals.

This Holdy battery is one
of the objectives of the American forces.

– So yes, it is one of the objectives
of American forces.

Why? Because of Holdy, you can shoot
on the beach at Utah Beach.

So you definitely don’t see Utah
Beach from Holdy but the fire adjusters were
in the church of Sainte-Marie-du-Mont.

So from the church of Sainte-Marie-du-
Mont, you can see Utah beach very well.

It was such a discreet
and invisible battery that was perhaps more dangerous than
the blockhouses for the landing.

– And the battery
is not far from here? – It’s just behind the hedge,
now I’m going to take you there.

– Let’s go.

– Special operation on the Holdy.

– It’s really close.

So this is where the battery was.

That’s where the battery was,
right in the meadow, and the cannons came out exactly between
the trees here.

And it went down almost
to 3/4 of the field.

– How many were there? – Four.

Four Howitzer-type guns, fired by… Those trees were there.

When you look at the vintage photos,
they were a bit smaller.

It’s much more clear because
we still have an artillery position.

The ditches were clean.

You have the same trees, except for
one or two that I saw, that I knew but which fell with the storms.

But you had.

.

.

All the way, like that.

You had a whole defensive system,
you had foxholes on the German side, and you had trenches
like this, you see.

– That’s actually
a trench.

– There you go.

You find this photo,
with… on Mark Bendo’s books, American historian, you find
this photo, where there is Joe Piston, this famous para-American, who is quoted,
where they are like that, and there, you had dead
German soldiers.

If I clear the whole gap, you are
in the same place as in the photo.

– We really are in a trench.

So now we’re really
on the battlefield, actually.

– Now, we’re really
on the battlefield.

This battery, at 6 am, was captured.

They would never be able to shoot
on the beaches of Utah Beach.

– This means that the paratroopers,
finally, by silencing the battery, certainly saved lives on Utah Beach, otherwise, these guns would have
continued to fire on the beach.

– That’s for sure, that’s for sure.

If the battery had been able to fire
on the landing, it would have caused Hundreds of deaths, that’s for sure.

In the 101st sector, the Barquette
lock and the Brévands bridges had been taken and held since early
morning, despite German counterattacks.

At noon, the first beach exit from Utah
beach, not far from Poupeville, fell into the hands of American
paratroopers and contact was established.

with elements of the 4th Infantry
Division disembarked in the morning.

In a few hours, the other three
outings, Oudienville, Audouvile-la-Hubert, Saint-Martin-de-Vareville,
were secured.

But the Germans still held
the Saint-Côme du Mont sector and the road to Carentan.

The situation in the 82nd
was more critical.

Sainte-Mère-Église is occupied,
but its defense was complicated and the establishment of a bridgehead
on both banks of the Merderet failed.

Many units were isolated
on the western shore.

In the early afternoon, the 2nd and 3rd
battalions of the 8th Infantry Regiment left Utah Beach and headed inland by using carriageways number 1 and 2.

Supported by Sherman tanks,
they would participate in the taking of Sainte-Marie-du-Mont.

But on June 6, around 4 p.

m.

, the Germans counterattacked in
the direction ofof the Pont de la Fière.

The paratroopers of the 82nd
Airborne were facing 200 grenadiers and the Panzers from
an armoured instruction battalion, equipped with French tanks, Renault R35s and Hotchkiss H39s.

Throughout the early afternoon, paratroopers were under
continuous artillery fire.

At 4 p.

m.

, two tanks appeared
on the Chaussée de la Fière.

A 57 mm gun and two teams tank destroyers armed
with bazookas destroy them.

As a third tank approaches dangerously
and threatens the position.

American, two intrepid paratroopers,
yet out of ammunition, manage to destroy it too, thus
stopping the violent German charge.

This scenario was repeated
everywhere.

The paratroopers were not giving up.

Despite their dispersal, men grouped
together and often met again with those of other companies,
other regiments.

Those of the 82nd sometimes
mixed with those of the 101st.

The most highly ranked took control
of these disparate groups.

All are trying to accomplish
their mission, despite their numerical inferiority,
the lack of equipment and ammunition.

When they were unable
to attack strategic points, these men were mining the roads, set up ambushes
and established fortified points that the Germans tried hard
to reduce by drowning them under a flood of fires.

On Hill 30, not far from Picoville, 500
American paratroopers from the 82nd, would remain under siege for several
days, subjected continuously to the shelling of German batteries.

They lacked water, ammunition,
plasma for the injured, but they would hold for five days.

– Beyond the myth and
the Sainte-Mère-Église postcard, can we consider that
the American airborne operation, on the evening of June 6, 1944,
was a success? – If we go back to
the goals one by one, it is difficult to reach
that conclusion.

The 101st sector, the bridges
over the Douve were not destroyed, the Germans were still
in Saint-Côme-du-Mont, the 82nd failed to bridgehead
on the Merderet.

On the other hand, you mentioned it,
Sainte-Mère-Église is taken, was held, and above all, all the pavements,
all the beach exits of Utah Beach were taken,
were secure, and so it would allow a landing of troops by sea which
would be under favorable conditions that they could never have had
it not been for the airborne assault.

So in that sense, it’s a success.

– So in fact, the skydivers made
up a first wave in front of Utah Beach to allow
the advance of ground troops.

That is exactly it.

The losses here are comparable
to Omaha, as already mentioned.

It’s 60% loss for the 82nd,
40% for the 101st.

It is estimated that 90% of the equipment
was lost during the assault.

But for all that, the Para-American
generals, especially in the 82nd, will note that, the action was excellent, the combat
behavior of the paratroopers was very good.

– They really showed
what they could do.

– Yes, they demonstrated that the
para doctrine, vertical wrapping, It was modern warfare,
something really effective to get on a front in front of
a landing.

At 9 pm on 6 June 1944, the Allies launched Operations
Keokuk and Elmira, the sending by gliders of important
reinforcements that would considerably increase the firepower
of American paratroopers.

On the beaches,
operations were continuing.

In Utah, at the end of the day,
more than 23,000 men, 1,700 combat vehicles and 1,695 tons of supplies
have been landed.

At midnight on June 6, 1944, the bridgehead was well
and truly installed in Utah Beach.

But, the routes to St-Sauveur-le-Vicomte
to the west and Carentan to the south to cut the Cotentin and connect
with the troops who landed in Omaha
remained.

The hoped-for beachheads boil
down to large pockets of paratroopers still isolated.

Two groups were separated
on each side of Amfreville.

A group occupied Hill 30 between
Picauville and Chef-du-Pont.

Some against Brévands around La Barquette,
remained threatened by the Germans holding the height of Saint-Côme-du-Mont.

And much further south,
far from any objective, The lost paratroopers of two
regiments are entrenched in Graigne.

The American paratroop divisions
paid a heavy price on June 6, 1944.

2,500 paratroopers were killed
or injured.

The 101st lost 40% of its workforce,
the 82nd lost 60%, many of whom, on the evening
of 6 June, were still lost or isolated in the Normandy countryside.

The people helped them
in any way they could.

Some stray paratroopers
would wander for days, others would never be found because
German reinforcements were coming.

At dawn on Sunday 11 June 1944, the 182 American paratroopers

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