Absent Friends

Lt. Colonel Timmes landed alone in the flooded marsh and took some time to free himself from his harness. By 04:00 he had gathered ten men. Two gliders landed nearby and the number rose to thirty. The band grew steadily …

1944-06-06

N09

Lt. Colonel Timmes landed alone in the flooded marsh and took some time to free himself from his harness. By 04:00 he had gathered ten men. Two gliders landed nearby and the number rose to thirty. The band grew steadily as Timmes led them past Cauquigny towards Amfreville, in the direction of his battalion objective, As dawn broke, sustained firing from Amfreville suggested to Timmes that Americans - and perhaps men of his own battalion -were already engaged there. He marched to the sound of the guns Approaching Amfreville, Timmes’s force was stopped dead by volleys of fire from the church tower and the rooftops. It suddenly became clear to Timmes that his was the only friendly force in the vicinity, and that the firing he could hear was all directed at himself In moments, eight of his men went down. Four walking wounded were helped back; four KIA had to be left behind. The Germans garrisoning Amfreville were confused and disconcerted by the wide dispersal of the night’s paratroop landings. They sensed themselves surrounded, and responded with keen alacrity when ordered to break out to the east. Following close behind Timmes’s withdrawal, they pressed their pursuit. Around 09:30, Timmes found himself back in the orchard he had left some hours before. He had his men dig in, and the Gennan advance was haired. Here Timmes would make his stand for the next, fateful, forty eight hours.

Outside Amfreville, 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