They Thought She Was Just a Field Nurse — Until the Enemy Realized Who Was Covering the Marines – Part 3

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

entrenched in the village of Graigne, were assaulted by 2,000 grenadiers

from the 17th SS Panzer Division.

A first assault was repelled.

The fighting continued all day.

At nightfall, the overwhelmed

Americans broke up the fight and withdrew in a mess.

They left their injured behind and the inhabitants of the village

who did not flee.

Reprisals on the civilian population

who supported their liberators were going to be terrible.

The village was ransacked

and then set on fire.

The Waffen-SS executed the survivors.

32 civilians and at least

50 American soldiers would perish.

The others managed to get away,

but the attitude of the SS said a lot on their state of mind.

They would fight to the end.

Started on the beaches

and in the woods, the battles to liberate France

and Europe had only just begun.

The paratroopers of the 82nd

and the 101st Airborne had not finished fighting.

They participated

in many more battles.

They would be in every fight, in September 1944 in Arnhem, Holland, in December of the same

year in Bastogne, Belgium.

In this month of June 1944,

the Battle of Normandy began.

The Second World War

was far from over.

The angels of victory had just

opened the way.

 

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