Turnbull Turns 'Em

lt's D-Day, and the 82nd Airborne Division is struggling to consolidate its defenses at St. Mere Eglise. Expecting a counterattack from the north, 3/505 Commander Lt. Col. Benjamin Vandervoort orders D Company's 3rd Platoon, led by 1st Lt. Turner Turnbull, …

1944-06-06

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lt's D-Day, and the 82nd Airborne Division is struggling to consolidate its defenses at St. Mere Eglise. Expecting a counterattack from the north, 3/505 Commander Lt. Col. Benjamin Vandervoort orders D Company's 3rd Platoon, led by 1st Lt. Turner Turnbull, to block Route D-15 at Neuville-au-Plain. Shortly after arriving, Turnbull's force of 43 men spot a large column of men in feldgrau approaching down the highway, apparently escorted by soldiers wearing American paratroopers' uniforms. Wary of a ruse, an American machine-gunner fires warning shots into a nearby field. The German ”prisoners" dive for the ditches. After fanning out in either direction in order to try and outflank the outnumbered but well-entrenched Americans, the German attack commences.

Neuville-Au-Plain, France

Mission Boston was a parachute combat assault at night by Major General Matthew Ridgway's U.S. 82nd "All American" Airborne Division on June 6, 1944, part of the American airborne landings in Normandy during World War II. Boston was a component element of Operation Neptune, the assault portion of the Allied invasion of Normandy, codenamed Operation Overlord. 6,420 paratroopers jumped from nearly 370 C-47 Skytrain troop carrier aircraft into an intended objective area of roughly 10 square miles (26 km2) located on either side of the Merderet river on the Cotentin Peninsula of France, five hours ahead of the D-Day landings. The drops were scattered by bad weather and German anti-aircraft fire over an area three to four times as large as that planned. Two inexperienced units of the 82nd, the 507th and 508th Parachute Infantry Regiments (PIR), were given the mission of blocking approaches west of the Merderet River, but most of their paratroops missed their drop zones entirely. The veteran 505th PIR jumped accurately and captured its objective, the town of Sainte-Mère-Église, which proved essential to the success of the division.

Wikipedia: Mission Boston

German

Americans