D-Day part 5

Point Du Hoc


On Pointe du Hoc (sometimes erroneously known as Pointe du Hoe following a typographical error by an American military cartographer) the Germans had built, as part of the Atlantic Wall, six casemates to house a battery of captured French 155mm guns. With Pointe Du Hoc situated between Utah Beach to the west and Omaha Beach to the east, these guns threatened Allied landings on both beaches, risking heavy casualties in the landing forces. Although there were several bombardments from the air and by naval guns, intelligence reports assumed that the fortifications were too strong, and would also require attack by ground forces. The U.S. 2nd Ranger Battalion was therefore given the task of destroying the strongpoint early on D-Day.


From the barbed-wire fence along the cliff top, you can look down the hundred-foot cliff to the east beach where three companies of the 2nd Ranger Battalion, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel James E. Rudder, landed on D Day. Their mission was to scale the cliff, then silence the six 155 mm howitzers thought to threaten the landing operations on both American beaches. On the morning of D-day the Rangers (3 Companies of 2nd Battalion) set off in ten British crewed landing craft, but three sank on the approach to the beach. The tide here pulls to the east, and the boats drifted off course, and they landed at Pointe de la Percée, just to the east. Because of this they landed some quarter of a mile to the right of the gun emplacement. The method of scaling the cliffs had been practised using specially equipped DUKWs with firemen’s ladders. The beach was under fire and had many large craters, caused by shells from the battleship "Texas" which was supporting the assault. The rocket fired ropes had also become wet and very few reached the top of the cliffs. Rommel, in anticipation of an attack here, had ordered the cliffs to be mined and trip wire placed along the cliff top. The Germans also dropped grenades over the cliffs to deter the Rangers from scaling the cliffs. Air support was called for and medium bombers succeeded in making the defenders take to their underground bunkers. This enabled the Rangers to gain a foothold on the cliffs, and the British and American destroyers Talybont and Satterlee moved as near to the cliffs as possible to give supporting fire. By the time the Rangers had regrouped on the cliffs very few defenders remained, but they took a lot of dislodging from the bunkers. Later that morning, a patrol found the 155s unguarded and spiked them. Colonel Rudder then set up a defensive perimeter and waited for reinforcements. "Located Pointe du Hoc," he managed to signal V Corps that afternoon, "mission accomplished need ammunition and reinforcement many casualties." Those reinforcements were to have come from Rangers of the 2nd and 5th battalions waiting offshore. Because Rudder’s assault was late, the Rangers assumed that it had failed and landed instead on Omaha Beach. It took them two days to fight their way overland to Rudder’s relief. By then, his force had been reduced to about ninety effective men. Rudder received the Distinguished Service Cross for continuing to lead his men, although twice wounded.

An ariel view of Point Du Hoc showing the poc marked landscape.  Apparantly it has been left
in the same condition as it was on D-Day.

The Rangers taking a well earned rest after taking the poistion...see the pic below which shows this
spot as it looks today..

The exact same spot as the pic above...

The place is full of the remains of the bunkers and gun emplacements

Most show the signs of the effects of war..

Most of the bunkers you can still enter..the room behind this heavy door probably contained
the defenders weapons

looking out on the position from inside the bunkers

"Krappel de Kopf, Krapple de Kopf, Tomata Heinz, Tomata Heinz!"  Popping up from

a gun position to shoot at Eddie!



Inside the main sea view bunker..





Looking seaward..you can imagine the sight of the D-Day armarda that must have greeted the Germans

that morning on 6th June 1944...

A view down onto the 'Point' and the shallow shingle beach

Looking right from the same position as the pic above

The Point Du Hoc is a very special place.  When you see it in it's natuaral state, as it's

been left as it was since D-Day, it's quite moving as you imagine the struggle that went on here.

Here is a very good link to the story of the Point Du Hoc that i highly recomend..

http://media.oaktreesys.com/abmc/pointeduhoc/popup.html

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

Londinium

Thursday, and at half past six in the morning it was all aboard the fun bus and off to the capital...

Ollie, all packed and ready!

Big Ben, no St Stephens Tower, Big Ben, no St Stephens Tower, Big Ben....



Outside Downing Street, Ollie has been chatting to a policeman about his machine gun!



The Lions at Trafalgar Square.  Ollie put his hand in the Lions mouth, I roared, he jumped lol

Ollie at the Palace.  Er indoors wasn't in.

Ollie outside the cab that he actually hailed.  He did his cockney impression for the

driver who laughed and said it was very good....." ello Gavnor"

Time to see London from on high, so off we went to the London Eye..

Going up...

"Wow Dad, the Houses of Parliament..."

I wonder what else I can see..

"Dad....what's that rumbling noise..?"  Ollie nervous on his first ever Tube Train journey

Wow Dad, I like this!!

Ollie watching the train whizz out of the station...

With a cheeky grin, it's back up to the surface..

Ollie, that Guardsmans horse is looking at you...!

Onto the British Museum...a truely astonishing place in a fabulous building.

"Dad....I can see dead people..."

The Water boy...Ollie in the fountains in the courtyard of Somerset House, the office I work

out of when I'm in London.

Ollie enjoying the fountains...

We had a wonderful day son...x

York Maze

Further D-Day postings will follow but in the meantime ollie has been stopping with me for three days and we've been having fun!  On Wednesday we went to the York Maze.  This is purportedly the largest maze in the world - i'm not disagreeing!  There's also other things to do and see as well as the maze and we finished the day watching pig racing!  Here's a few pics..

"Hmmmm, where to start??  It's rather large Dad!"

"Come on, lets go..."

So much ground to cover...

"Hmmm...which way...?"

There are answers to find at six way stations hidden in the maze.  Each correct answer gives

a code number.  You need to key in the correct code number atthe exit to open a box

to post your entry.  Ollie closes in on way station number 4..

Next to the main maze is a maze of illusions, very good and very funny.  Lot's of Optical illusions

abound and lots of funny mirrors..

Shaaaaaaaggy!

Now he's Nigel Mansell!

Our favourite game of the day - Water Wars!  Ollie has his catapult ready to fire a water bomb.

I've just soaked him with a direct hit.  Not only did I soak him with my water bomb but

he gets depth charged from the tank of water in front of him.  We both got drenched....