ONE OF THE results of the misdrop of the 82nd was that several large groups and numerous smaller ones ended up on the west side of the Merderet and its flooded adjacent fields—where they could do little good—and not on the east side, where they were needed. Nearly 200 men of Lieutenant Colonel Charles Timmes’s 2nd Battalion, 507th PIR, were gathered in an orchard northwest of Sainte-Mère-Église. To the south of Timmes’s battalion was Tom Shanley’s 2nd Battalion, 508th, at Hill 30. Cut off from the rest of the 82nd by swamps, the river, and the enemy, these units needed to be rescued and brought back into the fold. There was only one problem: they were practically unreachable.
Located just a couple miles west of Sainte-Mère-Église is a collection of buildings—known as the Manoir de la Fière, then owned by the Leroux family—and a small stone bridge over the Merderet River. It is an undistinguished, ordinary-looking bridge that resembles scores of other stone bridges in Normandy. In fact, it could be a miniature replica of the stone bridge over Antietam Creek near Sharpsburg, Virginia. But great events often imbue ordinary-looking places with historic importance. Therefore, just as Ambrose Burnside’s Union troops and Robert Toombs’ Confederate forces imbued the Antietam Bridge with importance on 17 September 1862, and hallowed the ground with their blood, so, too, did the Americans and Germans at this small stone bridge over the Merderet.
Located on one of the few routes that German forces to the west of Sainte-Mère-Église could use in order to reinforce their other units at Utah Beach—and the only route for the Americans to reach Shanley at Hill 30—the La Fière bridge assumed an importance far out of proportion to its modest size. To seize and hold it, SHAEF had assigned two 82nd regiments: William Ekman’s 505th, which would grab the east end, and George Millett’s 507th, that was supposed to seize the western side.
That, of course, was the plan, but like most of the other plans that morning, this one began unraveling before it got underway. Regiments, battalions, companies, and platoons had been widely blown like autumn leaves all over the Normandy landscape—almost no troops came down on their designated drop zones. Radios had been smashed or lost in marshes that weren’t supposed to be there. Maps were on the bodies of leaders drowned in the swamps or hanging dead from tree limbs. Weapons, ammunition, and other vital supplies were safely inside equipment bundles that had been dropped who-knows-where. To top it off, enemy forces were stronger than anticipated. Yet, the airborne troops had been taught to improvise, to do the best they could with what they had, to take charge of leaderless soldiers and accomplish the mission no matter what the cost. And, out of the confusion of the drop, that’s exactly what the American paratroopers began to do.
Fortunately, the 1st Battalion/505th PIR commander, Major Frederick Caesar Augustus Kellam, and most of the rest of his battalion performed a rare feat on D-Day morning: they landed on time and on the correct DZ. “When I met up with [First Lieutenant John J.] Dolan [commanding A Company, 505/82nd],” Sergeant Robert M. Murphy related, “everyone seemed exuberant, high spirited and ready for action. There is a peculiar elation, a feeling that paratroopers experience after a combat jump. Their chute has opened, and they’ve reached the ground alive.”
Once Dolan had assembled 90 percent of his company—at about an hour before dawn—he started out from DZ “O” toward La Fière bridge, about a quarter mile south of the town of the same name.1
Dolan had the responsibility of seizing and holding the bridge—an assignment that initially didn’t look all that tough. The bridge stands just a grenade’s throw west of the Manoir de la Fière buildings. Beyond the bridge the swamp caused by the flooding of the Merderet was 1,000 yards wide at its narrowest, so the elevated causeway between the farm and the tiny hamlet of Cauquigny was the only dry passage either side could use. If Dolan’s men could take the buildings that overlooked the bridge and causeway, they would have a ready-made fortress from which to defend them.