To The Manor Drawn

After taking the La Fiere manoir, Captain Schwarzwalder’s contingent crossed over the causeway. Finding no enemy present at Cauquigny, they moved out to the north, seeing no need to garrison Uie west end of the causeway. Able Company, still unaware …

1944-06-06

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After taking the La Fiere manoir, Captain Schwarzwalder’s contingent crossed over the causeway. Finding no enemy present at Cauquigny, they moved out to the north, seeing no need to garrison Uie west end of the causeway. Able Company, still unaware that any other friendly force had been engaged at La Fiere, sensed the slackening of German fire and advanced to fill the vacuum left by Schwarzwalder. At La Fiere, they dug in around the Merderet bridge. Led by decrepit French annor, the German counter-thrust swept through Cauquigny, losing tanks to Levy’s patrol but evening the score by effectively wiping out the ad hoc ‘Company B’ formed by Lindquist. Flushed with this success, the Germans advanced onto the causeway. Both tanks were flamed by a four man advance guai'd thrown out in front of the hastily improvised bridge defences. Hearing the armor, General Ridgway and Gavin arranged reinforcements to shore up the east bank defences. Unaware of this nearby backstop, Able Company fought on. Having lost their armor shield, the leading German com pany was lashed by grazing fire from Able Company’s machine guns; the second German company fell back and the attack faltered. By the time reinforcements of (mainly) 507th P.I.R. men under Lt. Col. Maloney arrived, it was all over. For the day.

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