A Bridge So Far…

After a night of uncertainty and confusion, dawn was a lime for the German force based in Amfreville to assess their situation. Little enough was known for certain. Although Divisional headquarters was only a few kilometers down the road, all …

1944-06-06

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After a night of uncertainty and confusion, dawn was a lime for the German force based in Amfreville to assess their situation. Little enough was known for certain. Although Divisional headquarters was only a few kilometers down the road, all lines had been cut, and the roads were not safe for messengers. Rumors were spreading that the Allies had employed a totally new tactic, dropping paratroops in a depth and on a scale hitherto unheard of in warfare. Amid all the uncertainly, the Germans’ duty was clear. The first priority was to secure the Merderet river crossings. While skirmish lines swept the fields around Amfreville of American stragglers, an armored column formed up to take the La Fiere bridge.

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