D-Day 75 Years Later: Part III – Airborne at Brecourt Manor

Richard “Dick” Winters in 1942 during training. He would go on to lead a textbook assault in Normandy. Source: Wikipedia

This is part three in my series on D-Day, for part two click here.

On the night of June 5-6, 1944, three Allied airborne divisions – the U.S. 82nd and 101st, and the British 6th – were dropped into Normandy. Their objectives were to secure the flanks of the great invasion force that was to come ashore that morning, and to disrupt – as much as possible – the German response to the landings. Most historians now agree that very little went right with the airborne landings. German anti-aircraft gun fire was too intense and the pilots too inexperienced. This caused the pilots to go too low and too fast, and many troopers lost most of their gear jumping out of the plane. The troopers were scattered all over the region meaning that officers above the company level exerted essentially no control for the first few days of the campaign. It was the training of the paratroopers, the leadership of their junior officers and N.C.O’s (non-commissioned officers e.g. sergeants), and the confusion of the Germans that prevented the landings from becoming a slaughter. Due to the confused nature of the drop and the limited space here, I will be focusing on one action from D-Day: the assault on Brecourt Manor made by Easy Company, 2nd Battalion, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division. This engagement does a good job of demonstrating the type of fighting that was done by the paratroopers and why they were ultimately successful given the dismal state of their arrival. Lastly, there will be few foot notes in this post, but I will provide a list of my sources at the end.

The Jump:

Straight ahead I can see the lights set up on a jump field… there’s the green light! We’re down to 150 miles per hour and still eight minutes out. OK-let’s go… there goes my knee pack and every bit of my equipment… There – it landed beside that hedge… Well that wasn’t too bad. Now to get out of this chute. – Richard Winters [1]

Waves of paratroopers landing in Holland in September, 1944 during Operation Market Garden. The Normandy landings occurred in the dark. Source: Wikipedia

Nothing went right during the drop. The enemy’s anti-aircraft fire was more intense than anticipated. Many troopers thought it reminded them of the Fourth of July. Entire companies ceased to exist as their planes were shot down. The pilots – many of whom had never flown a combat mission before that night – increased the speed of their planes and dropped altitude in an attempt to avoid the murderous German fire. The result of these evasive maneuvers was to have the troopers jumping from a height of sometimes only 100 feet going nearly 150 miles per hour. The shock of going out the door knocked many a pack off, and the experience of Lieutenant Richard “Dick” Winters was not uncommon. Winters landed in Normandy with nothing but a combat knife and a compass. Not exactly an auspicious start to the campaign. To complicate matters further, the additional speed meant that the collection and organizational method developed before the drop did not work during the event. Imagine a north-to-south drop. The plane drops eighteen fully equipped paratroopers, or a “stick.” The first trooper lands to the north of the drop zone and the last trooper lands at the southern end. The troopers are all numbered one through eighteen. Troopers one through six move south, troopers seven through twelve gather around where they land, and troopers thirteen through eighteen move north. Thus, within a few minutes all of the troopers are gathered up and they can go on with the job at hand. In Normandy, between the speed of the aircraft, the fire of the enemy, and the terrain – large numbers of hedgerows and farms – very few “sticks” were able to be gathered up in this method. Easy Company, along with the rest of the two American airborne divisions were spread over hundreds of square miles.

Winters, alone in Normandy save for a knife and compass, did what many paratroopers did on that “Day of Days,” found other GI’s in groups of two or three. By dawn, he was commanding less one third of the men he should have been and not all of them were from his unit. Easy Company spent most of the early morning patrolling roads and trying to take German prisoners.

The Battle:

A German 105 mm howitzer in action on the Eastern Front. The same guns were present at Brecourt Manor on June 6, 1944. Source: Wikipedia

By mid-morning of June 6, American troops were wading ashore at both Utah and Omaha beaches. German resistance was fierce at Omaha, but at Utah American troops were streaming inland. The Germans only real defense there was to shell the beach and hope to plug it with wrecked vehicles. Lieutenant Winters was summoned by the commander of 2nd Battalion, Lt. Colonel Strayer. He informed Winters that there was a battery of 88 mm guns ahead shelling the beach at Utah, and ordered him to use Easy Company to take them out. The whole of 2nd Battalion consisted of less than 100 men (it was supposed to be around 600), and Easy Company, was in the words of Winters, “2 light machine guns, one bazooka (without ammunition), 1 60mm mortar, 9 riflemen, and 2 officers.” [2] The normal compliment of the company was around 140. The enemy had machine gun emplacements defending the battery, and previous attacks by other companies had not yielding any positive results.

Map of Easy Company’s assault on the battery at Brecourt Manor June 6, 1944. Winters’ thirteen man assault force approached from the North East portion of the map and attacked through the gun battery before withdrawing. Source: The American Civil War

Winters ordered his men to drop everything but weapons and ammo, for as he said later, “for that’s all we’d need, if things went good or bad.” [3] Once they were near the battery, he divided the group in two. He gave half the unit to Lieutenant Compton, while he took the balance. They set up a machine gun and the mortar to use as base of fire to cover their advance. The machine gun started firing and the groups started moving. One of the troopers, Private “Popeye” Wynn was shot in the buttocks  – a wound that could have sent him home for the war, but he would return to the unit for the jump into Holland – while the rest of his team was nearly wiped out by a faulty German hand grenade. The grenade fell into the trench where they were firing from. Winters told the men to get out of the trench, but one man was merely bounced up and down by the concussion. The had taken one of the four guns.

Covered by his squad mates, Winters stormed the next gun by himself. He claimed that it was done with much yelling and tossing of hand grenades and that in all likelihood no one was hurt. This is difficult to ascertain, but Winters did take the second gun by himself. At this point they were low on ammo and stretched out in a line. He sent back for more ammunition and explosives and while he was waiting he found a map with the position of every German machine gun and artillery piece on the Cotentin Peninsula. When more ammunition came up with Lieutenant Spiers of D Company, they – Winters and Spiers – assaulted the last two guns. With the position neutralized he withdrew to the rest of the battalion. Winters’ force of thirteen had suffered four dead and six wounded. The enemy had numbered at least forty, of that, fifteen were now dead and twelve more were captured. On top of the 105 mm guns, which had been misidentified as 88’s, it was an impressive achievement.

Lieutenant Winters was nominated for the Medal of Honor for his actions during this engagement. He was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross instead (the second highest medal for valor) because of a policy of awarding only one Medal of Honor per division for the invasion. Winters was promoted to Captain at the beginning of July and ended the war as a major. His assault on Brecourt Manor is still taught at West Point as an exemplar for attacking a fixed position with a numerically inferior force. Winters was a guest speaker at West Point until late into his life. He died in 2011.

Notes:

[1] George E. Koskimaski D-Day with the Screaming Eagles (Sweetwater, TN: 101st Airborne Division Association 1970) 82

[2] Ibid. 285

[3] Ibid. 286

Sources:

Ambrose, Stephen Band of Brothers: E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne from Normandy to Hitler’s Eagle Nest (New York, Simon and Schuster 1992)

Koskimaski D-Day with the Screaming Eagles (Sweetwater, TN: 101st Airborne Division Association 1970)