AFTER GENERAL GAVIN ARRIVED AT CHEF-DU-PONT town center, he and his group had a firefight at about 1030 hours with a stopped armed train and its German guards. After repulsing this force, Gavin immediately went to find the other bridge running over the Merderet River. He found the Chef-du-Pont bridge and raised causeway over the flooded marsh one half mile outside of town, to the southwest. From there, he could see Hill 30 over to his right, about one mile away. It looked as if it was surrounded by the marsh (although this was not the case on its northwest side).
During the original approach to Chef-du-Pont, Gavin and Lieutenant Colonel Maloney split up into two forces of about 75 men each, later meeting about 100 yards from the bridge, but not before a little firefight on the way. General Gavin, Lt. Col. Ostberg, and their 75 507 men went straight down the railroad tracks and to the right, around the rear of the houses about 1,000 yards from the bridge.
A Frenchman along the way said there were no Germans in Chef-du-Pont. He was wrong. There were roughly 40 Germans in and around the houses, but after a short skirmish, the enemy took off for the causeway with the paratroopers in pursuit. General Gavin and his 508 group left Ostberg to seize the bridge at about 1100 hours on D-Day, for opposition seemed very light.
However, outside of town, the enemy had a solid defense line dug in at the Chef-du-Pont bridge and all along the causeway with machine gun emplacements and riflemen in foxholes. Some fleeing Germans dove into their dugouts east of the bridge, but most got across to the other side. Ostberg and his men stopped firing and waited a few minutes on the east side of the bridge. The remaining Germans could now only do one thing: fight to the finish. And that they did, because they could not escape.