The Milling Crowd

Following their successful drop, intact and in almost perfect order, Able Company of the 505th P.I.R. moved speedily to their D Day objective: the Merderet bridge at La Fiere. The large manor house adjacent to the river bridge had been …

1944-06-06

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Following their successful drop, intact and in almost perfect order, Able Company of the 505th P.I.R. moved speedily to their D Day objective: the Merderet bridge at La Fiere. The large manor house adjacent to the river bridge had been occupied earlier that night by a detachment of the 1057 Grenadier Regiment of the 91st Division: 28 men in all. First to draw fire from the vicinity of the manoir was Lieutenant Presnell of 1st Platoon. His team were followed soon after by the remainder of Able Company, and later by a succession of groups including elements of all the scattered parachute regiments of the 82nd. Each in turn advanced to contact and made their uncoordinated moves against the manoir, quite unaware of the presence of numerous friendly forces. The German resistance was finally worn down, the outpost soon surrendering to a band of 82nd paratroopers who promptly moved on to Cauquigny. As fire slackened about the manoir, Able Company displaced forward to take up positions around the bridge. As they dug their foxholes, the sound of approaching tanks could be heard across the Merderet.

La Fiere Manoir, 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

American