The attack was set shortly after midnight on June 10. Unfortunately fire from a 88mm gun in Carentan prevented the 326th Airborne Engineer Battailon from building a span over the bridge. Bridge 2 was blown out by the retreating Germans. Before crossing it had to be repaired. fed up and unwilling to wait any longer, Cole grabbed a rope and, with help of his G company commander an 2 other men, built a rickety footbridge. So finally Cole's battailon began crossing the Douve river followed by I Company, than G and H with the battailons HQ group. The Americans were under intermittend German fire, mostly from 88s or mortars but it was not until they approched the 4th bridge that the fire grew most intense.
This picture is just in front of the 4th bridge which today is under a roundabout. The view is going west across the filed were the german paras held a defende line with Mg42 and a 37mm gun just opposite the Ingouf farm.Cole set up 2 machine gun positions to cover up his attack just in front where the photo has been taken. G company lost in one day 62 of its 85 men.
The Ingouf farm was held by german paras of the 6th FJR and was heavely attacked. The orchard, Cabbage Patch, open fields and ditches around the Ingouf farm was littered with the bodies of wounded or dead soldiers. from the 700 yound men at Cole's command, just 132 were still standing. Also most of von der Heydtes' 6th FJR was shattered trying to prevent the 502nd from crossing the four bridges.
Mont Castre - Gerville la Foret
This old school house was used as the aid station of the the FJR 15 and was run by Dr Dollereder. The withe door on the far right of the house was the exit for bringing out the dead to the near church where they was buried.
The church which was just 500 meters from the school house. The KIA's found their rest on the cemetery first before taken to La Cambe.
This was the site of the Battailon command poste of the I. Bat / FJR 15 just about 2 Km from Gerville la Foret.
At this point, a counter attack led by my veteran friend R. Wulff was started on July 6 1944. The counter attack was made by 16 men and my friend was hit by a US sniper around 08 AM on this moring just minutes later after he had led his men into action. He was hit in the shoulder. The attack was made alonf the D97 in direction to La Haye du Puits
Maisy Battery - the recent dug up Gun Battery
Well I guess many of you have heard of the english guy, Gary Stern who bought some land and found the Maisy 2 battery. I t was clear that our group wnated to see if the site was ready to visit and yes it was. We also had the pleasure to meet the man himself and he told us some very interesting stuff.
Mr Stern dug up a gun emplacement for the 155mm gun shelling Omaha Beach.
If all is true what is said about this new found battery, than the assault to Ponite du Hoc is highly questionable. Could yit really be that the Ranger attacked the wrong strongpoint at D-Day? There are Rangers, after Mr Stern who clearly confimred, that they asaulted the Maisy 2 battery and it took them longer than expected to take them.
Here are some shots of the Maisy 1 battery around 500 meters away of the other site. The bunker is of a type H669. They held 105mm LeFh 14/19 (t) 1916 Skoda guns of the 8./AR 1716 HKAR.
Brecourt Manor
As we have been near the BoB assault site of Brecourt Manor, we decided to pay them a visit again for detailed research.
The first pics show the farmhouse as we had to ask the owner first before we could set foot on the field
We all went to Grand Chemin and walked the route E company took 6/6/44 AM. The road is now called Collins Road. 200 meters before the Brecourt driveway is a very short bridge crossing a storm drainage ditch coming from the Brecourt farm land. That was the point where Winter's little group first heard the 105s firing from a Brecourt field. The action that followed was not in their orders but apparently, although aerial reconnaissance had spotted the four guns, no one had been clearly assigned the task of eliminating the battery. Winters thought it should be done, then. The collapsed gun pits (three facing Utah and one facing NW). I heard a story that the farmers father buried the four guns in the NW corner of the field and is prepared to dig them up and excavate the pits and refurbish the battlesite. The Brecourt skirmish has taken a lot of publicity since the TV series was shown. Rebuilding the four gun positions would produce at lot of tourist traffic which would create a parking problem (tour buses) and block his very active farm driveway. Then of course the tourists would want to see the manor house which would really create problems to a working farm.
The photo shows the treeline where 3 guns were shelling Utah beach.
We belive that this was actually one of the 3 gun pits facing Utah beach
This might be another ex gun pit for the 105mm guns
