D-Day part 4

Sainte-Marie-du-Mont

In the night of 6 June 1944 more than four hundred planes dropped the American parachutists of the 101st Airborne Division in Normandy. The 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment landed on drop zone C near Sainte-Marie-du-Mont. The units were widely scattered. A group of about a hundred men gathered under General Taylor who commanded the division and Lieutenant-Colonel Ewell who commanded the 3rd battalion of the 506th Regiment. They moved toward Utah Beach to take control of the exit n°1. On the way they neutralized a German strong point near Sainte-Marie-du-Mont. Another group of parachutists destroyed a battery west of the town. Several paras hit the ground in the middle of the town, American and German troops killed each other in great confusion. In the afternoon Sainte-Marie-du-Mont was liberated by a group of paras of the 501st and 506th Regiments. The Americans took by surprise the Germans who were pushed back by the Landing on Utah Beach.

A contemporary shot of the village square.  The church is right of this shot but please
note the water pump at the far left of the shot being used by an amreican paratrooper.



This is a shot i took from the same angle with a clearer view of the water pump as it
looks today.  Notice the info board on the pump..





This is just one tale from the battle for Sainte-Marie-du-Mont. On another wall, left of the door
on the picture above it states that this was the spot a paratrooper landed next to a German defender.

What happened next was a duel, one on one around the spot the american landed. The German won

but was wounded also. The American medics tended his wounds once they had overun the village.





Another contemporary shot.  This is looking immediately to the right of the building in the
first pic (behind the armoured car)  When we first swung into the village I parked infront of the
gates seen between the buildings above.

Another shot of the water pump..

The Church...note an info board to the left of the door.  This is what's good about

Normandy, there are info boards and totem poles everywhere telling you what

happened here. This one explains how some Germans tried to take sanctuary in the church.

A contemporary shot at the back of the church...



A shot from the same position as the pic above showing it as it looks today

Dead Mans Corner

Normandy, France - Beginning at 00:15, in the darkness of June 6th, 1944, General Maxwell D. Taylor's paratroopers of the 101st Airborne Division became the first Allied soldiers to touch French soil, and for 33 successive days they carried the fight to the enemy. This was the beginning of the Allies' airborne trail through Nazi occupied Europe.

The 101st had been assigned the mission of capturing the key Norman city of Carentan. Before them lay Saint-Côme-du-Mont, defended by a well-entrenched, crack German unit - the Fallschirmjagers of the Luftwaffe - the famed German parachutists. Here, the troopers of the 101st were to be committed in the first large-scale attack launched by the Division during the invasion. The Germans had been issued orders to hold Carentan at all costs. For the Americans, it was vital to capture the city, so they waited for the supporting light tanks landing on Utah Beach to move inland. Only one road was open to the tankers. This one road led from the beach, passed through Sainte-Marie-du-Mont, and terminated at the Carentan / Saint-Côme-du-Mont road. This intersection later became known as "Dead Man's Corner". A single house located at this intersection served as both a Headquarters

The Dead Man's Corner Museum is located in that house, on this highly historical ground between Carentan and Saint-Côme-du-Mont. The house and surrounding land (1 hectare) are property of the Carentan Historical Center. As the initial site of the Carentan Historical Center system, this historic building houses an impressive collection of authentic WWII German and American airborne artifacts concentrating on local activities of the 101st Airborne Division and the 6 Fallschirmjäger Rgt

On June 8th, from hedgerow to hedgerow, through field after field, then onto the road and on into town, fierce fighting raged as the Eagle troopers swept into the streets of St. Come-du-Mont. As the first American tank reached this intersection and drove toward Carentan, it was struck in the turret by a German rocket. The tank was disabled and the commander was killed. For several days thereafter, the hull remained abandoned at the intersection, with the dead lieutenant hanging out of the turret. The paratroopers at first referred to 'the corner with the dead guy in the tank', but soon shortened it to 'Dead Man's Corner', by which name it will always be remembered.

Aerial view showing the positioning of the building at Dead Mans corner.  The road leading right, the D913 leads to Sainte Marie Du Mont.  The N13 to Carentan is a causeway, a raised road as the fields could be flooded.  Severe fighting took place down this road as the Americans needed to capture this to assault Caraentan and capture the 4 bridges along the way.  The tank that got destroyed was taken out exactly on the corner giving this corner it's gruesome name.

The road entering from the right is from Utah Beach, 4 miles northeast. On D-day, resistance along the road and adjacent fields were costly to Colonel Robert Sinks's 506th Regiment of the 101st Airborne Division. German Colonel van der Heydte, commander of the 6th Parachute Regiment was headquartered in Ste Come du Mont half a mile north of the intersection. Fighting around the important corner lasted several days until the Germans were forced to withdraw westward, their only line of retreat. From here the Americans pushed south to Carentan and north to Ste Mere d'Englise opening up the advance from the Utah beachhead.

A contemporary pic of the tank taken out at Dead Man's corner.

A picture of the building today that was a German Headquarters, then a first aid station and now a museum.  A 'must see' if you visit.  Amongst the items on display are Major Richard Winters actual battle dress and other items.  Major Winters story is portrayed in the superb Steven Speilberg drama the 'Band of Brothers', a true hero and inspiring leader of men.  He led the assault on Breacourt Manor which tactics used are still taught at West point today and cited as a classic example of tactics and leadership in a small force overcoming a much larger force.  

 Richard Winters Normandy belongings, an exhibit inside the Dead Mans Corner museum.





Richard Winters, the commanding officer of Easy Company, the Army unit whose gritty combat from the beaches of Normandy to the capture of Hitler’s mountain retreat was recounted in the book and television series “Band of Brothers,” died Jan. 2 in Campbelltown, Pa. He was 92 and lived in Hershey, Pa.

Rising from lieutenant to major, Mr. Winters became commander of Company E, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division on D-Day. Dropped behind enemy lines hours before Allied forces landed on Utah Beach at dawn on June 6, 1944, the unit went on to fight in the Battle of the Bulge, through German towns and villages and ended the war by joining in the capture of Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest at Berchtesgaden, Germany, near the Austrian border.

Lieutenant Winters became the unit’s commanding officer on D-Day, hours after his superior officer was killed. That day he led 13 of his men in taking out a battery of German gunners that was decimating Allied troops in Carentan, France, shortly after D-Day.

“He was the first one out there, yelling, ‘Follow me!’ ” one of his staff sergeants, William Guarnere, now 88, said Monday. “We knocked out a battery of four guns, 150 millimeters, that was firing on the kids coming on the shore. He got shot in the leg and still kept going.”

“He saved the company a lot of times,” Mr. Guarnere added.

In 1990, Mr. Winters was among D-Day veterans interviewed by the historian Stephen E. Ambrose for a book on the Normandy landings. He suggested that Mr. Ambrose focus on Easy Company, a task made simpler by the facts that its members had regularly held reunions and that many, including Mr. Winters, had kept written records of their war experiences.

“Band of Brothers” — its title taken from an oration in Shakespeare’s “Henry V” before the Battle of Agincourt in 1415 — became a best seller in 1992. And in 2001 the 10-part miniseries of the same title, produced by Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks, was shown on HBO.

Among many other missions, the book and the miniseries tell how Captain Winters climbed to the top of a dike near the village of Zetten, the Netherlands, on Oct. 5, 1944, and spotted hundreds of German soldiers on the other side.

Had the Germans crossed over the dike, they would have posed a serious threat to American forces.

Although his platoon was vastly outnumbered, Captain Winters ordered his troops to open fire. “With 35 men, a platoon of Easy Company routed two German companies of about 300 men,” the book says. “American casualties were one dead, 22 wounded. German casualties were 50 killed, 11 captures, about 100 wounded.”

In March 1945, Captain Winters, who had previously been awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, was promoted to major. Two months later, the 101st Airborne Division received orders to capture Berchtesgaden. After setting out from Thalham, Germany, Major Winters’s unit forced its way through streams of surrendering German soldiers and reached Hitler’s retreat on May 5, 1945. Easy Company was there when the war ended three days later.

Richard Winters was born in Ephrata, Pa., to Richard and Edith Winters on Jan. 21, 1918. Dick, as he preferred to be called, enlisted in the Army after graduating from Franklin and Marshall College in 1941.

After the war, he became a supervisor at a plaster mill in New Jersey. In 1951, he and his wife, Ethel, bought a small farm in Fredericksburg, Pa. He later began selling animal feed products to farmers throughout Pennsylvania. In addition to his wife, he is survived by a son and a daughter.

Mr. Winters received many other decorations besides the Distinguished Service Cross, including the Bronze Star and the Purple Heart. Yet he played down his combat role.

“The cohesion that existed in the company was hardly the result of my leadership,” he wrote in “Beyond Band of Brothers,” his 2006 memoir. “The company belonged to the men, the officers were merely the caretakers.”

Hero and leader of men