It desperately needed the support of the 2 nd US Armored Division reinforcements to annihilate the enemy counterattack. The "Ingouf" farm nowadays, where bullets holes are still visible on the house. In front of the first hedgerows, the paratroopers were under heavy enemy fire and the American soldiers had to wait there. Lieutenant-Colonel Cole ordered the artillery to fire on the farm.
The gunners were only able to attack the position 30 minutes later, at However, the German paratroopers suffered light damages. Lieutenant-Colonel Cole took the decision suddenly and ordered Major John Stopka to request a smoke bomb shelling.
The Ingouf farm was soon under a thick fog. On the left, the G Company was immobilized under heavy enemy fire. When the artillery started shelling the railway behind the farm, Lieutenant-Colonel Cole used his whistle, got up armed with his colt 45 followed only by 21 paratroopers.
Behind, Major Stopka gathered his men, without much success. The paratroopers could not hear or understand the orders of the officers covered due to the artillery blasting away!
Lieutenant Colonel Cole encouraged the twenty or so paratroopers who followed him in single line as they had to deploy across the width of the meadow. The Americans reached the first buildings and discovered there dead German soldiers, the others had moved behind the railway. For his courage and initiative Lieutenant-Colonel Robert G.
Cole was awarded the Medal of Honor, American highest military distinction, posthumously Today a commercial zone has been built on this battlefield, a beautiful memorial commemorates the events.
The Ingouf monument in honor of the st Airborne. This name was given due to the high number of American casualties along the N13 road. As you all know, the Purple Heart is an American military decoration awarded for sustaining wounds in combat. The Liberation of Carentan was one of the first allied objective.
The walk will also lead you to medieval arches, paintings from the 17 th and 18 th centuries, hotels of great architectural beauty, the marina of Carentan and many other wonders …. They are believed to be the remains of an old covered market, which would also have existed in the 14 th Century on the southern side of the square.
The facade of this mansion dates from the 17 th Century. The interior of this hotel until recently still showed woodwork from the 17 th Century. This hotel is located on the church square, Place Guillaume de Cerisay. The hotel became the present Rectory in The church Notre-Dame of Carentan is a listed historical monument and was built in the 11 th Century. The only remains of the Romanesque era are the west portal, the lower part of the pillars, and the four main pillars of the crossing with the Romanesque arches.
In , the English occupied the country. The church was falling into ruins. Reconstruction works started with the nave and the south aisle. Guillaume de Cerisay, a knight and Bailiff of Cotentin, greatly endowed the church. Its surface area was doubled by the construction, around , of the Flamboyant Gothic choir, ambulatories and the north aisle. The consecration of the church was celebrated in In , the Rosary Chapel, dedicated to the Virgin Mary, was added to the end of the choir.
The barrier around the choir and some fifteen windows date from the same era. In June , during the D-Day landings, U. The organ and the roof were badly damaged, stained glass windows were shattered and the clock ceased to function.
Fortunately, the original stained-glass windows had been put to safety somewhere in the provinces in Listed Historical Monument for its case and pipes, the organ was restored in the traditional spirit of the late 17 th Century.
It is one of the few instruments of this style in the department of la Manche. An east-west railroad line bisected the town, and the Douve River flows to its south.
The Germans used Carentan as an armor repair depot and kept several self-propelled guns there. Man-made swamps surrounded the town, and drainage ditches, streams, and canals confined any attacker to the roads.
Well before the Normandy landings, Lt. Omar Bradley had planned for Maj. By June 11, the division had fought continuously since parachuting into Normandy five days earlier on June 6—D-Day, but this would mark the first time the division attacked as a whole. General Taylor planned a three-pronged attack into Carentan for June Robert Strayer, would attack from the southwest while his 3rd Battalion, commanded by Captain Robert Harwick, attacked from the southeast.
All three regiments would press forward at dawn. Matthews had been killed, so Sergeant Buck Taylor had taken temporary command.
The day before the attack, Gen. The Germans, too, prepared for battle. Major Friedrich von der Heydte, commander of the German 6th Parachute Regiment, had been ordered to defend Carentan to the last man, but he thought otherwise. After American division artillery, tank destroyers, mortars, and naval guns had blasted the town on June 11, and with his men dangerously low on ammunition, he ordered them to evacuate and regroup to the southwest, hoping to counterattack the Americans once support arrived.
He left a man rearguard force, consisting mostly of machine gunners and snipers, to occupy key intersections and avenues of approach. Lieutenant Winters and his company would have to march two miles southwest from Saint-Come-du-Mont with the rest of the battalion to reach their attack positions.
It would be no easy trek. They started marching south as the sun set on June 11, staying on the only dry road, D, passing through flooded fields and over blown bridges where Lt. A soldier from Fox Company went back, found Easy, and got its men pointed in the correct direction. Weapons, destroyed equipment, and German bicycles littered the fields. Dead Germans were stacked like cordwood. When German machine-gun fire cracked in the distance, Sergeant Carwood Lipton, the acting company sergeant, ordered one of his machine gunners to set up and point in that direction.
The paratrooper followed orders, but once his weapon was ready, he cocked it. A loud double-clanking sound echoed across the swamps. Lipton looked on in horror, thinking the sound could be heard for a half mile in the still air.
Yet, no attack came. Some men slowed or froze completely; others ducked and dodged until realizing their mistake. While that German was dead, an enemy sniper was very much alive and taking shots at the paratroopers, forcing them to dash across the road individually.
Private Edward Tipper, weighed down by his bazooka, rockets, and M1 rifle, was sure the snipers would get him, but he made it across unharmed. Sergeant Robert Burr Smith was not so lucky. A bullet or a piece of shrapnel tore into him. The exhausted and battle-experienced paratroopers continued to their destination, discovering another dead German.
This one was a paratrooper lying on his back with his arm sticking up. At am on June 12, Colonel Sink called his battalion and company commanders together to review the plan of attack. While the officers conferred, their men dropped where they stood and fell asleep. Captain Clarence Hester, the operations officer, gave out the orders from under a raincoat. Sink planned to have Lt. The meeting broke up, and the officers returned to their units. As Easy Company approached the town in the darkness, Sergeant Lipton, again concerned about a German armored counterattack, ordered his only bazooka man, Private Tipper, to guard a bend in the road.
Easy Company closed in on its jump-off spot at 5 am, just as two companies of the th Glider started their attack from the north. When Germans in a pillbox halted their attack, a gliderman shot a bazooka round into the structure, killing the enemy.
The men continued their advance. General Taylor, who accompanied the attack, counted only two German corpses. Their target: a Y intersection defended by the German machine gun overlooking their approach.
Shallow ditches lined the sides of the road. As they headed off, an enemy sniper fired two shots close to them. When they reached the headquarters, Sink told the two company commanders that their attack had been pushed back to 6 am. Winters returned to his company and prepared for the attack. With the clock ticking down, he had no time to reconnoiter the area.
He and his men would be going in blind. To add to their troubles, they would have no tank support and little artillery support, although one of the batteries firing into Carentan included a German mm gun that some th paratroopers had captured. As the two airborne companies prepared to strike, the Germans struck first. They fired phosphorous shells, burning several Fox men. Then one of the battalion officers, Lieutenant George Lavenson, headed into a field, dropped his pants, and squatted to relieve himself.
Several men had to drag the wounded Lavenson to safety. The Germans knew the Americans were coming. Winters gathered his platoon leaders. Fox Company will handle our left. At exactly 6 am Welsh led his charge, and the German machine-gun fire paralyzed the rest of the company.
The men ducked, and Winters raged as he crisscrossed the street, yelling, screaming, and kicking his men into action. As Winters tried to will his men forward, he grew angrier and angrier. The men in the ditches did not rise; they only looked up at their company commander. Winters saw the mix of surprise and fear in their faces. His rage shocked them. Winters was considered a mild-mannered officer who never cursed. Few, if any, had ever heard him raise his voice. Now he was cursing at the top of his lungs.
It finally did the trick. The attack was on. Easy Company was soon united again. The surviving Germans withdrew, opening the southern entrance to Carentan. As the Easy men advanced down the narrow streets, they became intermixed with Fox and Dog Companies. The Americans began breaking down doors and searching inside, cursing as they went.
Stone rubble filled the sidewalks and streets. Whenever the Germans opened fire, the paratroopers ducked into the doorways and alleys before resuming their charge. The paratroopers fired at any windows they saw, whether they spotted Germans in them or not. They tossed hand grenades through windows and doors and then charged into the homes and shops looking for Germans, sometimes finding civilians in the basements. Sergeants Lipton and Taylor worked together clearing buildings.
At one with an outside staircase, Lipton told Taylor he would head up the stairs and wait for Taylor to throw a hand grenade through the window before he entered. Lipton raced up the stairs, and when he heard the grenade explode, he burst through the door, rifle pointed and ready to fire.
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