JUNE 7, 1944
AFTER A NIGHT WITH A BRIGHT moon, the dawn of D+1 brought forth an early morning mortar attack on our A Company 505 positions on both sides of the Manoir near the foot of the Merderet River. About 800 yards further back, Colonel Lindquist’s 508 PIR men were dug in along the railroad embankment. The Germans owned the western real estate across the causeway in Cauquigny. They had been seriously mauled the previous afternoon by the A/505 bazooka team, the 57mm gun and the entire 1st Battalion 505 RCT troopers. It was just as obvious to any combat-wise buck private as it was to General Gavin that the German 91st Air Landing Division was going to mass its forces to get into and through Ste. Mère-Eglise and try to push the Americans off Utah Beach. They didn’t waste any time on that fateful Wednesday morning of June 7, 1944.
The battleground had been cleared of the dead and wounded. We had lost a quarter of our men in A Company, and would tie that amount again in the impending enemy attack, the worst of all we would face. But A Company had gained a lot of valuable experience in Sicily in July 1943, when we had taken on six tanks at one time, knocking out two, damaging two and driving off the remainder. Capt. Edwin Sayre (DSC, Colonel, USA, ret.), our former company commander, who had been seriously wounded during action in Italy, had had one simple, but tough philosophy: “Don’t back down.” Now leading the company, Lieutenant Dolan was cut from the same cloth, and Sayre’s attitude was engraved in the minds of all the A Company men.
During the night, enemy artillery and mortars were unrelenting. In the La Fière area, artillery took out six more A/505 men along with some of the supporting 507 and 508 troopers. Corporal Kelly Byars, a Sicily and Italy combat medic, took care of wounded men at the aid station during the night. Byars never slept and evidenced no fear of shelling while he went about his work. With daylight, 185 C-47 aircraft dropped resupply parachute bundles on DZ O, beginning at 0611 hours and completing the mission at 0629 hours.