BESIDES THE FLOODED fields, there was another thing that all the Allied planners adequately failed to heed in their briefings about Overlord/Neptune—the hedgerows. Maybe they looked insignificant on a map or aerial photo. Or maybe the French underground—the Resistance or Maquis—forgot to tell the British and Americans, although this seems unlikely. Or maybe they did tell someone and the information was lost or disregarded. Whatever the reason, the invading forces were not adequately prepared to deal with the issue of the hedgerows, and many highly trained men would die needlessly because of it.
The Norman countryside is honeycombed with pastures, apple orchards, and fields in which fat cows contentedly graze, oblivious to the non-bovine world. Forming the boundaries of the individual farms are hedgerows, or what the French call haie and the Germans Hecke. The name is deceptive; unlike the small hedges that sometimes border American and British lawns, these hedgerows were and are strong physical barriers that separate one farmer’s field from another. Often eight or ten feet high, they are made from compacted earth that have been held together for centuries by the entwined roots of trees and shrubs, and are as impenetrable as a stone fortress’s walls. There is usually one gate that serves as the entry and exit point for the farmers and cows that use any given field.
With the Norman landscape fully leafed out in early June, visibility—or the lack of it—could resemble that found in the dark, dank jungles of New Guinea or Guadalcanal. For a panzer or German machine-gun crew hidden by the thick, entangled foliage and armed with an MG-34 or MG42, the hedgerows made for excellent killing fields. Once an unsuspecting man or squad or platoon entered one of these fields, there was no place to hide; they were as good as dead. And if a Sherman or Stuart tank tried to climb the thick earthen berms, it would expose its lightly armored belly to Germans manning anti-tank weapons and be turned into a burning, exploding death trap.
ABOUT 600 MEN of the 3rd Battalion, 501st PIR, had jumped with Major General Maxwell Taylor in order to serve as the 101st’s reserve unit and act as a security detail for division headquarters, but the drop—like 99 percent of all the drops that morning—was completely FUBAR. Instead of a small number of officers in charge of a large number of troops, the ratio was reversed. Rather than the two battalions of paratroopers that were supposed to have gathered here in a cow pasture, there were only approximately eighty-five men of all ranks assembled. Taylor counted two generals, three colonels, a major, several captains, and a collection of lieutenants. Surveying his mix of personnel, Taylor commented wryly, “Never have so few been led by so many.”
But rather than stand around in the dark hoping that more troops would show up, the group sprang into action. At Gavin’s direction, Lieutenant Colonel Julian Ewell, C.O. of the 3rd Battalion, assembled a force that amounted to nearly two platoons and set off from its DZ, northeast of Amfréville West, toward the east to try and find and secure one of the raised causeways that led inland from Utah Beach.1
LIKE TAYLOR, BRIGADIER General James Gavin and others in his 82nd Airborne stick landed in an orchard. “Among the trees were some grazing cows which kept munching quite contentedly,” he said, “entirely unconcerned about what to me was a most momentous occasion. My aide [Captain Hugo Olson] had landed near me, and together we began to assemble the troopers from our plane as per plan. I heard someone across a hedgerow, and we challenged each other at about the same time.” It was an officer from Division Intelligence. Then more men were found. Gavin counted noses; he had about fifteen men.
He spotted some red and green lights in the dark—the assembly lights of the 507th and 508th PIRs—across a swamp that was shoulder deep. Gavin sent Olson across the swamp to make contact with whatever paratroopers might have assembled there. About an hour later Olson returned with the news that he had also found a railroad track, which Gavin—after studying his map—surmised was the one shown running along the east bank of the Merderet. In addition, Olson said that in talking with the officers of the 508th, they were planning to seize the bridge at La Fière, about two miles to the south.2
Some additional troopers, mostly from the 507th, joined Gavin along the way. He now had about a hundred men but, as he said, “To my utter frustration, I found them completely disorganized, lacking unit organization, and even unit leadership…. With the amount of German fire increasing and the troopers milling about and seeking the protection of the nearby hedgerows, it was impossible to get them organized in any rational way.”
At about dawn Gavin decided that the group he had assembled should move east, cross the swamp, follow the railroad track, and head for Chef-du-Pont, passing La Fière along the way. “It was highly probable that the veteran 505th had already captured the bridge,” he wrongly surmised.3
Robert E. Gibson, A/508th, joined up with Gavin’s group while they were on the move down the track. “We proceeded along the railroad with only spasmodic resistance from enemy forces until we reached the Chef-du-Pont causeway where a fierce battle developed,” noted Gibson, who said they dove into a ditch when the bullets and shells came too close. “Our advance toward the enemy was made by creeping and crawling along this ditch, only exposing ourselves for brief moments to fire upon the enemy.”4
ONE OF THOSE 505th men neither with Gavin that morning nor at La Fière was Spencer Wurst, F Company. He discovered that all the night training his unit had done in England seemed to have been for naught: “It was especially tricky to assemble at night, because Normandy was the first experience of combat for many of the men who made the jump…. Luckily, my group and I didn’t encounter any enemy troops while we were assembling. We used sign and countersign, challenging with ‘flash’ and countersigning with ‘thunder’—two words the Germans found hard to pronounce. Anyone who hollered ‘halt’ was to be shot, no questions asked.”5
Some men became prisoners even before they had a chance to fight. Carl H. Porter, 508/82nd, remembered two commands issued the night he and his buddies loaded into their C-47: “Take no prisoners until we meet up with the forces coming in by sea,” and “Do not load your weapon until you are on the ground.” “Fortunately,” he said, “I was not tested on the first and, even more fortunately, I believe the second saved my life.”
“The drop was low and fast,” recalled Porter, “and I was more concerned with the tracers piercing the chute above my head than I was in checking oscillation and where the chute and I were headed. Crashing through the branches of large hedgerow trees and winding up dangling among the lower branches reminded me that it’s always a good idea to check your landing position! By the time I had extricated myself from harness and branches, three German soldiers (who had probably been responsible for the tracers through my canopy) materialized. I made a partial turn toward their shadowy figures and, as realization that I held an unloaded rifle electrified my brain, I dropped the M-1 as if it were a white-hot poker and responded to a harsh ‘Hände hoch!’” [“Hands up!”]
Porter noted that one of the Germans motioned him into a hedgerow-encircled field. “As the moon brightened their figures I saw that one held a rifle and the other two machine pistols. It’s a pretty sure bet that if my rifle had been loaded and put to use, I wouldn’t be here to write this. The two with machine pistols took positions a few yards apart while the rifleman put his weapon down a safe distance away and proceeded to disarm me of my grenades, trench knife, bandoliers (which I had strapped around my thighs above my bulging patch pockets for better balance), and literally everything else that would come off, including my musette bag, my watch and—oh, yes—the pocket knife that was carefully concealed in the ‘secret’ pocket near the collar of my jump jacket.”
“Apprehensively I followed the command to march across the field,” Porter continued. “I admit to a somewhat theatrical conscious thought that, if they were going to shoot me, I would die like a man, so I squared my shoulders and marched, wondering as I did so if I would hear the sounds of the shots that killed me. Crazy thing to think about at a time like that, but the mind has to do something all the time.”
With his hands still held skyward, Porter was marched to a nearby farmhouse that was also being used to hold about a dozen other captured American paratroopers. “They took one boot from each of us,” he said, “so we couldn’t run off, and left us with two guards for the rest of the night.”
The next morning the group of POWs was marched down the road for a mile or two until they came to a manor house with a walled court-yard—Porter assumed it was some unit’s headquarters. They were then locked in a spacious room—thirteen paratroopers from the 82nd and four glidermen. There they stayed for a few hours until the manor house came under attack by Americans from the 4th Infantry Division that had landed at Utah Beach. While the Yanks outside blasted away at the Germans holed up on the ground floor, the Yanks inside tried signaling that they were upstairs by hanging their OD shirts out the windows, yet the gunfire did not slacken. Yelling to the attackers outside that they were also shooting at fellow Americans did no good, as they could not be heard above the din of battle.
Someone found a battered German bugle and began blowing it in hopes that a familiar tune might be heard and do the trick. Carl Porter noted, “The way the sounds came out it’s hard to say whether he was blowing ‘Chow Call,’ ‘Taps,’ or ‘Reveille,’ but whatever it was the men of the 4th Division heard it and the firing did slacken and die.” At that point, the Germans, who numbered about a dozen, decided to surrender to the 4th Division men.
Porter said, “Several of us walked over to congratulate the guy who blew the bugle and to tell him we were surely thankful he knew how to blow one. He replied, ‘Hell, I never blew one of the damned things before in my life, but I had to do something!’” Porter learned later that, just before the bugle sounded, the 4th Division troops outside the manor house were radioing the Navy offshore with a request to bombard the building.6
LIEUTENANT CLARENCE GOLDSMITH, a platoon leader in the 504th PIR but temporarily reassigned to the 505th, was dropped into France a mile north of Sainte-Mère-Église, near the village of Neuville-au-Plain, and was quickly in trouble. “I landed with two others from my stick in an area where a small company of German defenders just happened to be assembled to go on defense. Before we could get out of our parachute harnesses, we were immediately surrounded and disarmed. As paratroopers were dropping near us, the German defenders, not wanting to fire their weapons thus giving away their position, spread-eagled us on the ground and smashed our hands with their rifle butts. So on my very first day of combat I had two broken hands.”
“The Germans locked us in a barn knowing they had to quickly leave to avoid other paratroopers in the vicinity,” explained Goldsmith. “After a short period of time, we broke out of the barn to join other troopers and moved toward our objective. A medic put splints and tight bandages on our hands, and that’s how I spent the next thirty-five days.”
Goldsmith’s injuries did not stop him from leading his men, however. “I took the two from my platoon, and with an assembled group of scattered troopers, headed toward Neuville-au-Plain to locate my company. The ground was covered with weapons bundles so I was able to arm my-self. Firing the weapon with broken hands was difficult, but it could be accomplished. The time was 3:00 A.M., but our little group of paratroopers found our platoon assembled near our objective at Neuville-au-Plain, where I then assumed command of my platoon. I stayed with my platoon for all thirty-five days before returning to Leicester, England, where proper medical care was rendered.”*7
IF THE COMMUNICATIONS equipment had worked and the true extent of the airborne’s problems had been known back at SHAEF head-quarters, it would have seemed as if Leigh-Mallory’s portentous declaration that the airborne drops would meet with disaster had come true. But Ike and Leigh-Mallory and Bradley and Montgomery and everyone else were in the dark as to what was truly facing the American airborne troops on the ground, and they clung to every bit of good news.
The troops on the ground, however, knew that their situation was precarious and that—except for the seaborne troops coming ashore at Utah Beach—there was absolutely no one who would be coming to their rescue. Thus, the paratroopers of the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions had only one thing to do: fight with what little equipment they had, and if need be, die. Never was that more true than at a place called Manoir de la Fière.