Meanwhile an eighty-man group under Lt. Col. Charles Timmes took possession of the hamlet of Canquigny at the west end of the La Fière causeway. When a patrol of four officers and eight enlisted men under Lt. Lewis Levy of the 507th PIR came into Canquigny, Timmes decided that the twelve-man group could hold the bridgehead. He decided to go on the offensive and moved out with his group toward his original objective, Amfreville.
Sgt. Donald Bosworth was a member of Headquarters Company, 1st Battalion, 507th. He had broken his ankle on the jump. With the aid of five other men from his company, he managed to get to a farmhouse. The farmer’s wife was a schoolteacher who could speak a little English. When she answered a knock on the door, Bosworth showed her the American flag on his right shoulder. She jumped for joy, invited all the men in and hugged each one of them in turn. Then her husband offered Bosworth his small, old flatbed truck, and dug up a five-gallon can of gasoline he had buried in the yard. Bosworth and Sgt. A. J. Carlucci signed a receipt for the truck so that the couple would be able to recover its cost from Uncle Sam and set out for Amfreville. On the way they joined up with Timmes. A medic made a splint for Bosworth’s ankle.
He stayed in the fight. Timmes sent him to check out a farmhouse on the other side of a hedgerow. “I started to crawl over the hedgerow to get to the other side when suddenly I was face-to-face with two Germans, not more than four feet away. They were setting up a machine gun. It seemed like an hour before any of us moved.” Bosworth shot the Germans with his semiautomatic; they shot him. He was hit in the right shoulder, went flying backward off the hedgerow, and lost consciousness. Lt. Robert Law got him to the basement of a farmhouse, where he spent the rest of the day.27 Timmes, meanwhile, was unable to penetrate the German defenses around Amfreville.
Gavin and Timmes had moved their main force out of La Fière and Canquigny on the assumption that the small groups they left behind could hold the positions and that they were mutually supporting. But the Germans held the high ground west of the causeway, which was nearly a kilometer long, and they brought the road under highly accurate sniper and mortar fire, preventing the Americans from using it.
About midmorning, the Germans launched a counterattack led by three tanks against Canquigny. Lieutenant Levy and his handful of men fought it off for over an hour. They managed to disable two enemy tanks with Gammon grenades (how the Yanks loved that British grenade; it was the best antitank weapon they had, far superior to their own bazookas—if they could get close enoughI) but eventually had to withdraw northward.
Thus the bridgehead so handily won was lost. The 82nd’s units were separated, each fighting its own lonely battle on either side of the swollen Merderet. Timmes’s group remained isolated for two days.
To the south, at Chef-du-Pont, General Gavin and a group of about 100 men, mainly from 1st Battalion, 507th PIR, under the command of Lt. Col. Edwin Ostberg moved to seize the bridge about a half kilometer west of the village. At 1000, Ostberg led his force on a dash through the main street, headed for the bridge. The Americans were fired on from several buildings simultaneously, taking four casualties. It took nearly two hours to systematically clear the village of the enemy; retreating Germans headed for the bridge.
“We knew the bridge must be taken before the Germans could organize their defense,” Capt. Roy Creek recalled, “so we made a semiorganized dash for it. We were too late. Two officers reached the bridge and both were shot, one toppling off the bridge into the water, the other falling on the eastern approach. The officer toppling into the river was Ostberg (he was rescued shortly after and lived to fight again; the other officer was dead).”
Lt. Col. Arthur Maloney and some seventy-five men arrived “and we set about dislodging the stubborn enemy.” It proved to be impossible. The Germans had foxholes dug into the shoulders of the causeway and they held the high ground on the west bank. The Americans had only small arms; the Germans had tanks and artillery to supplement their machine gun and mortar fire. Two attempts to storm the bridge proved unsuccessful.28
The Germans counterattacked. Pvt. David Jones of the 508th PIR had just come up to the edge of the causeway. He saw tanks coming across, three French Renault tanks, “probably the smallest tanks used during the entire war, but to me they were larger than life.” The lead tank had its hatch open and the black-capped tank commander was exposed from the waist up, hands resting outside the turret.
Jones turned to a buddy and said, “I think it’s time to get our war started.” He took careful aim and fired at the tank commander. His bullet hit the turret “and I can still remember the sound of that ricochet. The black uniform disappeared, the hatch clanged shut, the tank backed off a few feet, and our little group scattered to the four winds. Not only had I missed my first shot of World War II, but was now confronted with where and how to hide.” He found a place in a vegetable garden behind a farmhouse. The tank fired a 20mm round into the side of the house and Jones and his group took off running to the nearest hedgerow.29
The tank moved on toward Chef-du-Pont. The other two followed. The middle tank stopped in front of the farmhouse; on the second floor, Sgts. Ray Hummle and O. B. Hill were watching. Hill handed Hummle a Gammon grenade.
“Just at that moment,” he remembered, “the hatch of the tank opened and raised back and the tank commander climbed up to where his waist was out of the tank and he was looking around. Hummle dropped the Gammon grenade right into the tank. There was one awful explosion, smoke and fire all around the tank, and the commander who was standing in the hatch went straight up in the air like a champagne cork.”
The other two tanks turned their guns on the farmhouse and blasted away. “The mother and the daughter who were in the building downstairs became quite excited and screamed at us to get out. And we figured that perhaps we should.” Hummel and Hill fled to the nearest hedgerow. The tanks withdrew to the west.30
Now there was stalemate at the causeway. The Americans could not advance and would not retreat. The German infantry dug in along the causeway could fire but could not move. One of them decided to give up. He rose out of the embankment.
S. L. A. Marshall described the scene in his classic book Night Drop. “He called, ‘Kamerad!’ Before anyone could answer, a paratrooper, not more than 20 feet away, shot him dead within clear view of the people on both sides.” Marshall wrote that the shot was terribly stupid; had the man been allowed to surrender, his companions would have followed his lead.31
Captain Creek commented: “Having witnessed this action at close range, I would defy anyone to make a split-second judgment on what to do when an enemy soldier jumps up out of a foxhole twenty feet from you in the heat of heavy firing on both sides and in your own very first fight for your life. To this day, forty-seven years later, I don’t know if the enemy soldier was trying to surrender or not. In my opinion any enemy shot during this intense action had waited too long to surrender. He was committed as the attacker was to a fight for survival.”
Shortly thereafter, around midafternoon, General Gavin, who had gone back to La Fière, sent word for Colonel Maloney to bring his men and join him there. That left Creek in command of thirty-four men, with orders from Gavin to hold Chef-du-Pont at all costs. “It was pretty obvious that it couldn’t cost too much. But at the same time, it was doubtful we could hold something we didn’t have.” Making matters worse, Creek saw a line of German infantry approaching from his left rear, while a German field piece began firing from across the Merderet.
“And then, as from heaven, C-47s began to appear, dropping bundles of weapons and ammunition. One bundle of 60mm mortar ammunition dropped right in our laps.” Next came a glider-delivered 57mm antitank gun. Creek turned the mortars on the German infantry and used the AT to fire at the German fieldpiece on the west bank of the causeway. “We didn’t hit it, I am certain, but we stopped it from firing.”
Creek went over to the offensive. A ten-man patrol began to dash across the causeway. Five German infantrymen jumped up from the
ir foxholes along the embankment and made a run for it. They were shot down. The others surrendered.
“That did it,” Creek said. “The bridge was ours and we knew we could hold it. But as with all victors in war, we shared a let down feeling. We knew it was still a long way to Berlin.”
Creek set about organizing and improving the position, tending to the wounded, gathering up the dead, German and American, and covering them with parachutes. Darkness was approaching. “When would the beach forces come? They should have already done so. Maybe the whole invasion had failed. All we knew was the situation in Chef-du-Pont, and Chef-du-Pont is a very small town.
“At 2400 hours, our fears were dispelled. Reconnaissance elements of the 4th Infantry Division wheeled into town. They shared their rations with us.
“It was D-Day plus one in Normandy. As I sat pondering the day’s events, I reflected upon the details of the fighting and the bravery of every man participating in it. We had done some things badly. But overall, with a hodgepodge of troops from several units who had never trained together, didn’t even know one another, engaged in their first combat, we had done okay. We captured our bridge and we held it.”32
• •
Ste.-Mère-Église was a quiet little village with a couple of hundred gray stone houses. The town square, built around a gray Norman church, contained the usual Norman shops selling eggs, cheese, meat, dresses and suits, cider and wine, newspapers, bread, and a pharmacy. It had a hotel de ville and a hospital. It was a village in which nothing much of consequence had happened for ten centuries. The most exciting times were the festivals and weddings.
The N-13 ran through the village, heading north to Cherbourg, south to Carentan, then east to Caen and on to Paris. Without the use of the N-13 the Germans to the north of Ste.-Mère-Église would be cut off; without control of Ste.-Mère-Église, the American paratroopers along and beyond the Merderet would be cut off and the 4th Infantry Division unable to move west and north.
Thus the battle for Ste.-Mère-Église took on an importance out of all proportion to the intrinsic value of the village. The staff of the 82nd Airborne had agreed during the planning stage of the invasion that the place would be the division’s defensive base. If the 4th Infantry failed to gain a foothold or the linkup was delayed, all the division’s units would fall back on Ste.-Mère-Église until relieved. The village had to be held for an additional reason; the second flight of gliders was scheduled to land around the village just before dusk.
The 3rd Battalion, 505th PIR, commanded by Lt. Col. Edward Krause, had taken possession of the town just before daylight. Lt. James Coyle of Headquarters Company was with Krause. Coyle recalled a Frenchman who came out of his house to talk. “He spoke little or no English and I spoke but a little French, but I understood him well enough to sense his concern: He wanted to know if this was a raid or if it was the invasion.” Coyle reassured him.
“Nous restons ici,” Coyle said (“We are staying here”). “We were not leaving Ste.-Mère-Église.”33
Pvt. John Fitzgerald of the 502nd PIR, who had been misdropped, came into town at dawn. He saw troopers hanging in trees. “They looked like rag dolls shot full of holes. Their blood was dripping on this place they came to free.”
On the edge of town, Fitzgerald saw a sight “that has never left my memory. It was a picture story of the death of one 82nd Airborne trooper. He had occupied a German foxhole and made it his personal Alamo. In a half circle around the hole lay the bodies of nine German soldiers. The body closest to the hole was only three feet away, a potato masher [grenade] in its fist.II The other distorted forms lay where they had fallen, testimony to the ferocity of the fight. His ammunition bandoliers were still on his shoulders, empty of M-1 clips. Cartridge cases littered the ground. His rifle stock was broken in two. He had fought alone and, like many others that night, he had died alone.
“I looked at his dog tags. The name read Martin V. Hersh. I wrote the name down in a small prayer book I carried, hoping someday I would meet someone who knew him. I never did.”34
Colonel Vandervoort, despite his broken ankle, was moving his battalion, the 2nd of the 505th, toward Ste.-Mère-Église. His mission was to guard the northern approaches to the village. He therefore detached 3rd Platoon of D Company (Lt. Turner Turnbull commanding) and sent it to Neuville-au-Plain with orders to set up a defense there.
Vandervoort entered Ste.-Mère-Église, where he got lucky. There was a glider-delivered jeep in good working order, which allowed Vandervoort to get out of his wheelbarrow and become more mobile. He conferred with Krause (who had shrapnel wounds in his leg); they agreed that Vandervoort would be responsible for the eastern and northern sides of the village, Krause for the southern and western ends. They did not have enough men to set up an all-around perimeter defense but they could block the roads.
Vandervoort had another piece of luck. Capt. Alfred Ireland of the 80th Airborne Antiaircraft Battalion, who had come in by glider shortly after dawn, reported that he had two working 57mm AT guns. (Commenting later on his ride into Normandy and the crash landing of his glider, paratrooper Ireland said of the gliderborne troops, “Those guys don’t get paid enough.”35 That was literally true; the glider troops did not get the extra $50 per month jump pay the paratroopers received.)
Vandervoort set up one of the AT guns at the northern end of Ste.-Mère-Église and sent the other north to Neuville-au-Plain to support Turnbull.
Turnbull was half Cherokee. His men called him “Chief,” but not in his presence. “He was a good guy,” Pvt. Charles Miller remembered. “I used to box with him.”36 Turnbull had put two of his squads along a hedgerow to the east of Neuville-au-Plain, the third to the west. Vandervoort set up the AT gun in town, pointing north, then talked to Turnbull, who told him nothing much had happened since he set up some four hours earlier. It was now about 1300.
While they were talking, a Frenchman rode his bicycle up to them and announced in English that some American paratroopers were bringing in a large contingent of German prisoners from the north. Sure enough, when Vandervoort and Turnbull looked in that direction there was a column of troops marching in good order right down the middle of the N-13, with what appeared to be paratroopers on either side of them waving orange flags (the American recognition signal on June 6).
But Vandervoort grew suspicious when he noticed two tracked vehicles at the rear of the column. He told Turnbull to have his machine gunner fire a short burst just to the right of the approaching column, which by now was less than a kilometer away.
The burst scattered the column. “Prisoners” and “paratroopers” alike dove into the ditches and returned fire, the perfidious Frenchman pedaled madly away, and the two self-propelled (SP) guns that had aroused Vandervoort’s suspicion began to move forward behind smoke canisters.
At a half kilometer, the SPs opened fire. One of the first shots knocked out Turnbull’s bazooka team, another was a near miss on the American AT gun. Its crew scattered, but with some “encouragement” from Vandervoort the gunners remanned the AT and with some fast and accurate shooting put the German SPs out of action. But the German infantry, a full-strength company from the 91st Luftlande Division, outnumbering Turnbull’s force more than five to one, began moving around his flanks, using hedgerows for cover.
Vandervoort saw that Turnbull would be overrun quickly without reinforcements, so he had his jeep driver take him back to Ste.-Mère-Église, where he dispatched Lt. Theodore Peterson and Lieutenant Coyle with 1st Platoon of E Company to go to Neuville to cover Turnbull’s withdrawal.
Turnbull, meanwhile, was extending his lines to the east and west in order to force the Germans to make a wider flanking move, but by 1600 he had about run out of men and room. He was taking heavy casualties, primarily from accurate German mortar fire. Of the forty-three men he had led into Neuville-au-Plain, only sixteen were in condition to fight, and some of them were wounded. Nine of Turnbull’s men were dead.37
Turnbull was pre
pared to make a last stand, a sort of Custer at the Little Big Horn in reverse, when the platoon medic, Corp. James Kelly, volunteered to stay behind and look after the wounded. Pvt. Julius Sebastain, Cpl. Ray Smithson, and Sgt. Robert Niland offered to form a rearguard to cover the retreat of the remainder of the platoon, those who could still walk.
Just as Turnbull began the retreat, E Company moved into Neuville-au-Plain. “We hit fast and hard,” Sgt. Otis Sampson recalled. He was handling the mortar and he was good at it. He began placing shells smack in the middle of the German force that was coming in on the flank.
“The Jerries were trying to move some men from the left of a lane to the right. One man at a time would cross at timed intervals. I judged when another would cross and had another round put in the tube. The timing was perfect.”
Sampson kept moving his mortar around “so as not to give Jerry a target.” The rifle squads kept up a steady fire. The momentum of the German advance was halted. Meanwhile Lieutenants Peterson and Coyle took a patrol to meet Turnbull and the few men he had left with him.
“And we started our journey back to Ste.-Mère-Église,” Sampson said. “I could hear the Jerries yelling as we were leaving. It reminded me of an unfinished ball game, and they were yelling for us to come back and finish it. We withdrew in a casual way as one would after a day’s work. I walked alongside Lieutenant Turnbull. He was a good man.”38
The twenty-eight badly wounded men left behind and two of the three volunteers who provided a rearguard were captured. (The third volunteer, Sgt. Bob Niland, was killed at his machine gun. One of his brothers, a platoon leader in the 4th Division, was killed the same morning at Utah Beach. Another brother was killed that week in Burma. Mrs. Niland received all three telegrams from the War Department announcing the deaths of her sons on the same day. Her fourth son, Fritz, was in the 101st Airborne; he was snatched out of the front line by the Army.) The most critical of the wounded were evacuated to a hospital in Cherbourg by the Germans and were eventually freed when that city was taken on June 27. The others were freed on the night of June 7-8 when American tanks overran Neuville-au-Plain. Turnbull was killed in Ste.-Mère-Église on June 7 by an artillery round.39
The Victors: Eisenhower and His Boys Page 75