Americans Are The Only Ones In The Town, There Are No More Germans

Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the riveting Part 3 of our Normandy Invasion series, where we delve into the heart-pounding details of the airborne night assault on D-Day. Today’s episode unfolds a critical chapter in history as we explore the daring missions executed by Allied paratroopers under the cloak of darkness. Join us as we dissect the intricacies of this airborne operation, a crucial prelude to the Normandy landings, where courageous men descended from the night sky to secure key objectives and disrupt German defenses.
In this gripping episode, we’ll unravel the challenges faced by these airborne heroes as they navigated through anti-aircraft fire and adverse weather conditions to execute precise drops behind enemy lines. The element of surprise, the scattered landings, and the sheer bravery displayed under the cover of darkness set the stage for the success of the broader D-Day invasion. So, buckle up for a journey into the heart of the night, as we recount the extraordinary feats of those who paved the way for the liberation of Western Europe. Don’t miss Part 3 of our Normandy Invasion series – the Airborne Night Assault on D-Day. #worldwar2 #ww2 #american #dday #germany #warstories #wartales #audiobook #americanarmy @WW2Tales @WorldWarTwo
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Link of (Part 1) Normanday Invasion : https://youtu.be/-guWFGDTDjk
Link of (part 2) Normanday Invasion : https://youtu.be/s9ECCDY6Spg

at the Glee Mount house debriefing in August 1944 the ATC seconds regimental and Battalion commanders concluded that the troops should be trained to assemble more quickly and to send out search parties for the equipment bundles it is most important however that the hours of Darkness be used for the seizure of key points and objectives the enemy reaction becomes increasingly violent with daylight further prompt aggressive action by each individual is imperative in immediately upon Landing an individual or small unit that holds up and does nothing is ultimately isolated and destroyed an Airborne unit has the initiative upon Landing it must retain it this is the essence of successful reorganization and accomplishment of a mission obviously the commanders were unhappy with some of their Troopers too many had hunkered down in hedge RS to await the dawn a few had even gone to sleep part Francis Palace of the 506th saw what was perhaps the worst dereliction of Duty he had gathered a squad near viville hearing all kinds of noise and singing from a distance he and his men sneaked up on a farmhouse in it was a mixed group from both American divisions the paratroopers had found the Calvados Barrel in the cellar and they were drunker than a bunch of hillbillies on a Saturday night wingding unbelievable the 55th historian Alan Langdon attempted to explain the actions of these and other men who were not acting aggressively he wrote a parachute jump and in particular a combat jump was so exhilarating that first timers were apt to forget the real reason they were there to kill Germans the feeling was we’ve made the jump now the Germans should roll over and play dead in every regiment it seemed to take one combat jump to instill the idea that jumping was only a means of transportation another phenomenon unnoted was the shock of the quick transition from a peaceful situation to a war zone because of it troopers were oftimes reluctant to shoot poet Wayne Burns was crouched beside a hedg he heard a noise on the other side I climbed up and slowly looked over and as I did a German on the other side raised up and looked over in the dark I could barely see his features we stood there looking at each other then slowly each of us went back down they moved off in opposite directions others had similar experiences llin Tomlinson of the 508 was moving down a hedge row he looked across at a low point in the Hedge and saw four German soldiers going in the opposite direction they were kids I was within 5 ft of them the moon had come out and one of these kids saw me and smiled I decided that if they would stay out of our way we would stay out of theirs peritter J neas of the 58th was crouched beside a hedge with a paved road on the other side his company CEO had ordered him not to fire he heard hob nailed boots on the road then saw a German Patrol marching past these were young fellows kids well we were too and their sharp uniforms impressed me we didn’t fire and I thought at the time God I don’t know if I could Fire Point Blank at an unsuspecting man some of the Battalion and Company commanders had given their men orders not to shoot at night for fear of revealing their positions a few went so far as to order the men not to load their rifles or machine guns they should use grenades or even better their knives the 82s commanders agreed at their debriefing that those orders had been a big mistake Sergeant Dan Furlong of the 5008 would not have agreed he came down alone and sneaked up to a farmhouse it was full of Germans he could hear them talking they must have heard him too because a soldier came to check out the farmyard he came around a corner and I was standing up against the wall I hit him in the side of the head with my rifle butt and then gave him the bayonet and took off Furlong was alone the remainder of the night so were hundreds of others Dutch Schulz wandered trying to move to the sound of firefights but before he could hook up with fellow Americans the area would become tranquil the peace would come and then the noise the violence then the peace it was almost like taking a walk in the country on a Sunday afternoon very peaceful the peace and then again violence of course it was the Commander’s job in a debriefing to be critical at the time August 1944 they were planning for the next mission which for all they knew could be at night so they concentrated on the shortcomings and mistakes of the D-Day operation rather than congratulating themselves on how well they and their men had done but although the Airborne assault had not been a complete success in the sense of accomplishing all assigned missions the Troopers had done enough that night to justify the operation the overall missions of the three Airborne divisions were to disrupt and confuse the Germans so as to prevent a concentrated Counterattack against the seabo troops coming in at dawn and to protect the flanks at sword and Utah beaches for the sixth Airborne that meant destroying the bridges over the Dives River and capturing intact the bridges over the or canal and River holding the dividing Ridge between the Dives and the orn and destroying the German battery at merville the merville battery Four Guns of undetermined size in four casemates stood just east of the mouth of the or river on flat open grazing ground the Assumption by Allied planners was that those guns could cover sword Beach to disrupt and possibly drive back the third division’s Landings so they had made it a priority Target the battery would be attacked by air land and if necessary by Naval gunfire the Air Attack by 100 Royal Air Force Lancaster bombers would begin at O2 grow it was designed more to create foxholes around the battery and to stun the German Defenders than to destroy it even a lucky Direct Hit would not be sufficient to penetrate the thick steel reinforced concrete next would come an attack by land but just as the casemates were well defended against air bombardment so were they prepared for a ground attack there was a wire fence surrounding the area with a Minefield inside then a barbed wire entanglement another Minefield an inner belt of barbed wire finally a trench system for the German infantry reinforced by 10 machine machine gun pits there were estimated to be 200 German soldiers defending the battery so formidable were these defenses so critical were the guns that the British assigned more than 10% of the total Airborne strength of the sixth division to the task the job went to 29-year-old leton Cole TBH Otway and his ninth Battalion he planed to execute it by a Kain operation somewhat similar to Major Howards at the or Canal but on a much larger scale Howard had six gliders and 180 men Otway had 750 men 60 of them in gliders the remainder paratroopers his plan was to assemble his Battalion in a wood a couple of kilometers from the battery move into position and attack when the gliders crash landed inside the defenses right against the walls of the gun imp placements if successful he would then fire a very pistol as a signal of success the job had to be completed by 055 if there was no success signal by then the British warships off sword would commence firing on merville so much for plans in the event whereas Howard’s glider Pilots had put him down exactly where he wanted to be ot’s Pilots badly scattered his Battalion they had not hit a cloud bank but like their American counterparts they were not accustomed to Flack and thus were unable to judge how dangerous it was they took excessive evasive action to escape what was essentially light Flack as a consequence the ninth Battalion had a bad drop Otway came down just outside a German headquarters he made his way to the assembly point in the wood where his second in command greeted him thank God you’ve come sir why Otway asked the drops are bloody chaos there’s hardly anyone here it was nearly do to a OT had fewer than 100 men with him he needed to get into place around the batter’s defenses before the gliders came but he needed more than 17th of his strength to do the job he fumed and waited by 0230 a total of 15 men had come in between them they had but one machine gun they had no mortars anti-tank guns radios Engineers or mine detectors the gliders were due in 2 hours Otway decided to attack back with what he had at 250 the company sized party set out hoping to meet outside the battery a small reconnaissance party that had landed earlier with the Pathfinders on the single file March to merville the main group passed a German anti-aircraft battery shooting at incoming British planes and gliders it was a tempting Target of opportunity and the men wanted to attack it but ot’s task was specific and Urgent he did not want to reveal his position and in any event his time was running out he passed the word back down the file no shooting shortly the commander of the reconnaissance party met Otway his report was mixed he had cut the outer wire fence and crossed the first Minefield the barbed wire was not as bad as had been feared but he had no tape with him to Mark the path he had followed searching for mines with his fingers worse the RAF bombardment had been a bust not a single bomb had hit anywhere near the battery at 0430 precisely on time the gliders were overhead flying in circles watching for the mortar flares from Otway that were the signal to come on in Otway watched helplessly his men had failed to find the bundles carrying the flares without the flares the pilots of the gliders assumed that something had gone wrong Otway saw one glider skim over the battery no more than 100 ft off the ground then turn away to land in a field to the rear Otway had no choice he gave the order to attack it would be a frontal assault from One Direction only he did not have sufficient troops to encircle and attack from all four sides he told the lead groups to ignore the trenches and go straight on into the casemates follow-up groups would take on the Germans in the trenches men crept forward to blow gaps in the inner wire when they did German Riflemen and machine Gunners in the trench system began firing otways men dashed forward ignoring the mines shouting shooting many fell but others reached the walls and put fire through the openings the Germans who had managed to survive the onslaught surrendered in 20 minutes it was over Otway sent up the very light to Signal success a spotting aircraft saw it and passed the word onto the Navy 15 minutes before the shelling was due to begin Otway signals officer pulled a pigeon from his jacket and set it free to take word back to England that the merville battery had been captured the Germans had extracted a terrible price fully half of ot’s 150 Man force had fallen dead or wounded the Germans too paid a terrible price of the 200 Defenders only 22 uninjured men had been taken prisoner Otway destroyed the guns by dropping gam grenades down the barrels it turned out that they were old French 75 mmms taken out of the magino line set up for coastal defense against an attack east of the mouth of the orn they did not pose a serious threat to sword Beach nevertheless it was a brilliant feat of arms the British Airborne had gotten off to a smashing start before daylight they had taken control of the bridges over the or canal and river and they had taken the merville battery in both cases exactly on schedule Howard’s men had hurled back a sharp local Counterattack led by two old small French tanks they had been reinforced by paratroopers from the seventh Battalion Howard’s plan at Pegasus Bridge had worked down to the smallest detail ot’s plan at the merville battery was a shambles before he hit the ground ‘s ability to improvise and Inspire and Howard’s calm confidence and brilliant plan both showed the British army of World War II at its absolute best the sixth Airborne Division had many other adventures and success es that night one of the more spectacular was the Odyssey of Mage AJC roosev an engineer with the eighth Battalion a civil engineer before the war rosev was given the task to blow the bridges over the Dives River at bores and Troon for that job his Squad had brought along in equipment bundles a few dozen specially shaped General Wade charges with 30 pounds of explosive in each Ros landed in the wrong Drop Zone wandered around a bit hooked up with lit David Avid Breeze and some of his chaps and did an infantry the squad consisted of seven men they had a folding trolley and a container of General Wade’s they knew where they were and where they wanted to go to troan the larger of the two Bridges 8 km to the southeast rosev had commandeered a bicycle even better a medical Jeep and trailer brought in by glider had joined up as rosev remembered it the trailer was packed to the gun Wells with bottles of blood and bandages and splints and all sorts of field dressing equipment instruments and I told the doctor to follow me I thought maybe in desperation it would be good to have some transport along the way in hero vet we cut down the telephone wires it seemed a reasonable thing to do Sergeant Bill Irving went to do the cutting I had climbed dozens of telephone polls like this in training he said I got halfway and that was it my equipment was too heavy so in fact the wires were not cut the Caravan with the Jeep and trailer in the rear carried on at a road Junction 5 km from troan eight troopers from the eighth Battalion joined them rosev was greatly relieved he explained his task to them said his sappers were ready to blow the bridge once it was secured and concluded infantry lead the way there were no officers or noncoms in the group The Eight PR looked at each other and shook their heads the deflated rosev regained his composure and made a new plan he ordered the doctor to unload the trailer did he protest rosev was asked in his interview he didn’t have the rights to any feelings so we loaded all the special charges and detonating Equipment into the trailer Ros sent his sappers to move down to the bridge at bu’s giving them half his General wads to blow it Ros insisted on driving the jeep I like to be in command of things and the remaining seven men piled on while an eighth sapap Pichi climbed onto the trailer he had a Bren gun and would act as tail Gunner on the front corners of the hood Sergeant Irving and Sant Joe Henderson sat Sten guns in hand the men inside the Jeep had their weapons at the ready covering to the flank the Jeep moved out straining against the overload struggling to pick up speed fortunately Ely there were no Hills to climb and the route gradually descended toward the river Ros nursed the Jeep along gradually gaining momentum he turned a corner without slowing and we went crash Bang into a barbed wire entanglement Irving recalled Irving was thrown off the Jeep there was a pile of arms and legs the axles were entangled by barbed wire rosev expected a German attack and put his men in positions of immediate defense then held a torch for Irving as he went to work with his wire cutters with the torch on him Irving said I felt just like a pee waiting to be plucked out of the Pod but there were no German troops in the area The Garrison in troan seemed to be asleep Irving finished cutting the wire and everyone mounted up for the journey through troan they crept into troan rosev stopped short of a Crossroads and ordered Irving to go on ahead to see if all was clear nothing was moving Irving signaled the Jeep to come forward and I turned around to check again and whistling past me was a German soldier on a bicycle obviously returning from a night out the men back in the Jeep cut down the German with a burst of fire that’s done it said Ros he jammed the Jeep into gear and drove straight into the main street of troan running downhill to the river Beyond The Village almost immediately the Germans had roused them themselves and commenced firing and the further we went Irving said the more the fire coming at us and the faster Ros ofir drove the Jeep and the more we fired back and started to take evasive actions Irving estimated that 18 to 20 Germans were firing at them he had started off the run perched on the left front corner of the Jeep blazing away with my Sten gun at anything that moved when the Jeep reached the end of town I don’t know how it happened but I was lying flat on the Bonnet of the Jeep Irving added we were all so excited that there was no real feeling of being frightened toward the end of the street a German rushed out of a house with an mg34 and put it down in the middle of the road he was a second too late the jeep was nearly on him but Ros remembered he was terribly quick he grabbed the gun and tripod and ducked into a doorway as soon as the Jeep passed he set up and when suddenly tracers were streaming over our heads once again a second too late the jeep was now on the final long gradual slope down to the river it picked up speed Ros began taking severe zigzags the machine gunner could not depress his weapon enough to make it effective the Jeep kened pichy fell off the trailer he was injured and captured and somehow Irving said Joe Henderson who started out on the front of the Jeep with me finished up sitting back on the trailer so in the process he climbed right over the Jeep don’t ask me how it was done but he did it the squad reached the unguarded bridge roosev stopped unloaded gave out orders he set up guards at each end and told the sappers to place the general Wades across the center of the main arch in a few minutes everything was in place Irving asked Ros if he wanted to light the fuse no you light it I always thought he wanted to say if the damn thing didn’t go off it had nothing to do with him Irving said in recalling the exchange the bridge went up in a great bang it had a 6-ft gap in the center Ros drove down river on a dirt road that soon gave out the party abandoned the Jeep to set out on foot for Battalion headquarters they got deeper into a wood Ros called a halt for a rest after all that excitement Irving said we would desperately tired we literally flopped down and went to sleep the sun was appearing on the Eastern Horizon they woke within the hour and got to HQ without event there Ros learned that the sappers sent to do the bridge at buz had accomplished their mission for the Canadian Airborne Battalion the objective was the downstream bridge over the dives by zo2 ENT John Kemp had his Squad gathered but did not know where he was his mission was to provide protection for a team of sap who were to blow Rob home Bridge of all things in the dark of the night Kemp heard a bicycle bell ringing the rider turned out to be a French girl who had probably been out cutting telephone wires as was being done all over Normandy adding to the German communication wo french-speaking Canadians talked to her she agreed to lead them to the bridge they wanted off they set but she led them to a German headquarters and demanded that they Assault It Kemp refused his job was to blow the bridge not Rouse the Germans reluctantly she led on when they arrived at robol Bridge Kemp checked and found the bridge was unguarded he posted sentries at each end and sat to wait for sappers to come up with explosives the girl was indignant are you going to do nothing she asked she had taken great risks bringing them here are you going to just sit there for fortunately the sappers came up the bridge was blown and the girl was satisfied the British Airborne as a whole had caused to be satisfied with its performance that night it had blown the bridges it had been told to blow captured intact the bridges it had been told to capture it had seized some of the key Villages and Crossroads scattered throughout the peninsula between the Dives and or Rivers it had knocked out the merville battery it had accomplished its Mission the left flank at sword Beach which was the Left Flank for the entire invasion was secured by the sixth division before Daybreak but the division was Behind Enemy Lines it was desperately short of heavy weapons of all kinds except over the narrow bridges on the or waterways it had no land lines of communication with the rest of the British Army and no one could say how long it would take the Commandos to get to Pegasus bridge on the right flank the Americans were not not accomplishing their specific missions as well as their British counterparts for the h1st Airborne the primary task was to seize the four Inland exits at the Western ends of the causeways in the inundated area west of Utah between St Martin Dev araville and Poopville other missions were to destroy two Bridges across the duv river the one on the main Highway Northwest of Karan and the other the Railway Bridge to the West in addition the 101st was to seize and hold the laret lock and establish Bridge heads over the do Downstream from the lock in some the 101’s mission was to open the way to the battlefield for the fourth infantry division landing at Utah while sealing off the battlefield from the Germans in carentan the execution of the mission got off to an agonizingly slow start it took hours until dawn and after for units to come together in Battalion strength and then another week to sort out the1st men from the 82nd toal colon Robert Cole commanding the Third Battalion 52nd Pier landed near s eles his objective the two Northern exits from Utah was 10 km away it took time to figure out where he was time to gather in the men by oo for Ras he had less than 50 men gathered together he set off in a couple of hours of moving around San iges the group snowb called to 75 men it made contact with a small German Convoy killed several of the enemy and took 10 prisoners as Dawn came up Cole was still an hour short of his objective for lieutenant Cartage Dawn brought a welcome respite he had thought he was on the do river when he was actually on the murette by 04 Coral he had gathered nine men his Squad was representative of many such units across the cotent town cartilage had litner Meer from intelligence attached to division HG As an interpreter a Demolition Man three radio men one company Clark two men from his own company with only three of us trained to fight Cartage said it was imperative we get with a larger group he set off toward what he thought was the coast when daylight came we stopped on a hillside along a dirt road set out our landmines in a giant Circle and pulled out our deed chocolate bars and cens and ate breakfast mea Bravo foric and I sat down together and talked it over deciding which way to go at that moment quite a lot of 101st troopers were sitting down talking it over perer John Fitzgerald had much to talk about but no one to talk to Fitzgerald was from The Wonder of first Airborne at about 04 era he found a captain and a private from the second they set out in search of others the gliders were coming in and a German anti-aircraft battery opened fire with all the noise we were able to crawl to within 25 yards of the battery Fitzgerald related it was firing continuously the captain whispered a brief plan of attack then called out letun get those stupids the private from the 8 second opened up with his bar hitting two Germans on the right of the platform the captain threw a grenade that exploded directly under the gun I emptied my M1 clip at the two Germans on the left Fitzgerald said in a moment it was over perspiration broke out on my forehead my hands were trembling it was the first time I had ever fired at a living thing I noticed the torn condom hanging Loosely from the end of my rifle I had put it there before the jump to keep the barrel dry then forgot about it they came on another larger battery they attacked it and were repulsed in the retreat they got separated so as Dawn broke Fitzgerald was alone wondering where he was Captain Gibbons of the 51st P put together a mixed group of a dozen men and at O3 Yos set off they drove off a couple of Germans from a tiny village roused the French residents pointed and gestured at the map and discovered that they had just liberated kaboot Gibbons knew that kaboot was outside the 101st sector it was an 8C second objective he decided to move South toward his original objective the bridges across the dove it was a long way off when we left kabert Gibbons remembered Dawn was just beginning he set off with a dozen strangers toward an objective nearly 15 kmet away without any equipment for blowing a bridge later Gibbons remarked this certainly wasn’t the way I had thought the in Invasion would go nor had we ever rehearsed it in this manner but he was getting on with his assignment throughout the cotona junior officers from both divisions were doing the same this was the payoff for the extensive briefings the platoon and Company leaders knew their Battalion assignments by oo 400 many of them had set off to carry out their missions however far away the target was Captain shettle found his objective before door one of the few to do so after he had blown up the communication link up north of Karan he moved toward the two bridges over the do Downstream from the lock he was to establish a bridge head on the far Bank not blow the bridges which would be needed later for the hookup of the far left at Utah and the right flank coming from Omaha shettle had about 15 men with him they came to a French Farmhouse surrounded it called out the family and discovered that the only German in the place was a pay Master carrying the pay for the entire sixth parachute regiment shettle made him prisoner and confiscated the money the farmer led the group to the bridges they were defended by Machine Gun positions on the South Bank but volunteers dashed across and drove the enemy off as Dawn broke however German machine Gunners forced shettle Advance guard to retreat to the North Bank Just Before Dawn Colonel Johnson Co of the 51st P had been able to take the laret lock and establish a couple of squads on the far side the 80cs mission was to seal off the kotona from the south by destroying the bridges over the duv river Upstream from its Junction with the merder at p laay and bville by occupying and holding both banks of the merder river then protecting the Southwest flank of zeven core by securing the line of the dove River to the north the critical objective was sent M iges at 0400 let colum Ed Krauss Third Battalion 55 P had gathered approximately 180 men he put them on the road for his objective s mer eles in the village the fire was out the residents had gone back to bed and so had the German Garrison it was astonishing and inexplicable but true when Krauss got to the edge of town without being challenged he sent one company to move as quietly as possible through town to set up roadblocks with mines in front after giving the men a 30-minute Head Start Krauss sent the other company into town to clear it out a local Frenchman half drunk who had guided the Battalion into the town pointed out the billets of the Germans 30 of them surrendered meekly 10 were shot trying to resist that quickly a key objective had been taken Krauss cut the communications cable Point his men held the roads leading into s Mar EES most importantly the main highway from KH to cherborg at dawn a disaster a glider landed Jeep Towing an anti-tank gun came barreling down the road from Chef dupon before any of krauss’s men could stop it the Jeep hit one of the mines which not only blew the hell out of it and the gun but also killed the two men in the Jeep and destroyed the roadblock fortunately Krauss had already brought in two anti-tank guns as the sun rose he was holding the town the Americans had to have nowhere else had either American Airborne Division achieved its pre-dawn objectives Bridges had not been taken or blown the causeway exits were not secure not a single American company was at full strength only a handful were at half strength an hour and more after Sunrise Americans were still trying to find one another it led to the sobering thought that it might have been better to have come in at dawn a daylight assembly would have been much quicker so that by 0730 units would have been on the move the same time or earlier than many of them got on the Move in fact 22 hours after the drop at the end of D-Day the 1001 had assembled only about 2,500 of the 6,000 men who had dropped but despite the time lost and relative failure at assembling the night drop had accomplished a great deal it had certainly confused the Germans the junior officers taking the initiative had gathered together however many men they could and were setting out for their company objectives Sant eles was Secure but as Dawn broke every Commander from company level on up in the American Airborne felt cut off and surrounded and was deeply worried about his unit’s ability to perform its Mission despite the mixing of personnel the two divisions were not in contact or communic on this was not a raid no one was coming to pluck them out they had to fight to take ground and ho it and link up but they had only about onethird of their men to fight with what they most feared was being forced to circle the wagons and fight defensive actions without radios or any idea where other Americans were rendered Passive by their weakness in numbers perhaps even overwhelmed Just Before Dawn colel haer finally got through to General Marx and received his orders he should attack with his regiment northward out of of Karan and clean out the area between that City and St EG haes set out confident he could do just that he had under his command an overstrength regiment that was in his opinion worth two American or British divisions his paratroopers were tough kids 17 and a half years old average age they had been 6 years old when Hitler took power they had been raised in a Nazi ideology that had been designed to get them ready for precisely this moment they had an experienced and renowned commanding officer a professional soldier with a record of audacity the sixth parachute regiment was a quintessential creation of Nazi Germany the Nazis had brought together the professionalism of the German army with the new Nazi youth they gave it new equipment they would hurl their best against the best the Americans could put into the field let them come GBL had sneered now they had come and they were in scattered Pockets highly vulnerable as the first of the sun’s Rays appeared he and the elite of the Nazi system marched off to take them on the first significant Counterattack of D-Day was underway fittingly it would pit an American Elite Force against a German Elite Force a trial of systems later that day nebas saw a paratrooper hanging from a tree although he was obviously helpless the Germans had shot him that made nibas Furious and settled my problem about shooting an unsuspecting enemy if he wore a German uniform i’ shoot M Andre Mar hiding in a garage in the village wrote in his diary it is real hell all over with the firing of guns machine guns and artillery around 3:00 a.m. we risk a peak to see what is going on the Americans are the only ones in the streets of the town there are no more Germans it is an indesirable Joy I was never as happy in all my life