'The Human Face of D-Day'
'The Human Face of D-Day'
How the US commanders prepared to take La Fière Bridge on 9th June 1944, in one of the critical battles in the breakout from the D-Day beaches
During a long career in the US Army Colonel (Ret) Keith Nightingale had the opportunity to interview many of the men who fought at D-Day in 1944. Over decades, he spoke to key senior officers - including the remarkable Airborne pioneers Generals James M. Gavin and Matthew B. Ridgway - as well as many others, from platoon leaders to privates. During visits to the scenes of their battles in Normandy, he was able to place their descriptions into context and build a picture of how the various battles unfolded and, often, which individual soldiers fought where.
Remaining along the road, both on the pavement and between the trees were innumerable bodies, mostly German, from previous engagements. Sauls and his soldiers would have to assault what was in effect a bowling alley lane with obstacles throughout, as well as dug in and fully engaged Germans.
The result of his labours The Human Face of D-Day: Walking the Battlefields of Normandy: Essays, Reflections, and Conversations with Veterans of the Longest Day was not published until 2023. It is an extraordinary book, bringing to life these historic battles and individual engagements with fresh insights and perspectives.
The following excerpt looks at the taking of La Fière Bridge, one of the D-Day objectives given to the 82nd Airborne. On 9th June, it was still in German hands:
The La Fière battleground is the Gettysburg of the 82nd Airborne Division. It is the sepulcher of spirit, sacrifice, and service that is the ethos and soul of the division and always will be. What the division means to itself and to the nation was created on this ground.
I consider the taking of La Fière Bridge the ultimate moment of glory for the 82nd Airborne Division. It is the distillation of the spirit and sacrifice that epitomized Normandy for all of the participants. I walked it with General Gavin and dozens of veterans of that conflict. It was the utmost personal privilege to be able to relate their story. If you go nowhere else in Normandy, come here. You will be struck by the seemingly inconsequential small bridge and narrow causeway and may have doubts regarding its importance. Then read the plaque on the Iron Mike paratrooper statue and you will understand. Walk this with me on that day. This description is a composite of the many discussions I had with veterans who were there.
The 82nd Airborne Division (of which then-Brigadier General Gavin was Assistant Division Commander at the time) had three key missions on D-Day: seize and hold Sainte-Mère-Église, seize and hold the bridge and bridgehead at Chef-du-Pont, and seize and hold the bridge and bridgehead at La Fière. The bridgehead was considered to be sufficient land on the far side of the bridge to expand forces. Seizing the bridges at Chef-du-Pont and La Fière were strategically crucial tasks in order to cut the Cotentin Peninsula, stop German reinforcements, and seize Cherbourg. These two apparently insignificant bridges and road networks had to be taken to provide passage for the major forces coming from Utah Beach. The division took Chef-du-Pont on D-Day but battled to take the La Fière Bridge, which it still did not hold by 9 June.
The morning of 9 June, Major General J. Lawton Collins, the VII Corps Commander (of which the 82nd and 101st were a part for the battle), arrived in Sainte-Mère-Église, surveyed the battlefield and troops, and met Major General Matthew B. Ridgway, the 82nd Airborne Division Commander, approximately where the railroad tracks cross under the road to La Fière. Note that the field next to the location was the major medical dressing area and casualty collection point. In Collins’ words, he saw the troops were extremely tired, seriously weakened by losses, and, in his view, marginally effective as a major fighting unit. He went to Ridgway, an old friend, and said, “Matt, your troops are tired and beat up and fought themselves to a standstill. Why don’t I pass the 90th [Infantry Division] through and have them clear the causeway and move west?” in 1983, in General Ridgway’s kitchen, I asked him about this. Then 91, he looked at me with his sharp hawk-like eyes and said with all the youth and vigor of 9 June 1944, “This is the only mission this division has not accomplished and we will complete it. This was our task.” I am fairly certain that this is almost verbatim what he told Collins, as when I corresponded with Collins this is almost exactly what he wrote regarding the meeting.
Also present was Major General Raymond O. Barton, the 4th Infantry Division commander, who was also very close to Ridgway. He turned to Ridgway and with intensity said: “What do you need, Matt? It’s yours. Trucks, guns, ammunition? Whatever you need I will get you.” Gavin and Captain Bob Piper of the 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment said this had an electrifying effect on the 82nd command group. Eyes lifted, they suddenly felt infused with positive energy. Ridgway turned to Gavin and said, “You are in charge. We attack at 0930.” That was about two hours later.
Tieutenant Colonel Frank Norris, the commander of the 90th Division’s 345th Field Artillery Battalion (155mm), was on the scene as well. He told Ridgway and Gavin he was moving his unit off the beach, but it wouldn’t be ready to fire until around 1030. Ridgway looked at Norris and said, “Can you do this by then? It’s imperative that you can do what you say you can do.” Norris thought a moment and said, “Yes sir. We can do it, but not until 1030.” Ridgway turned to Gavin, “The attack is postponed until 1030.”
As an aside, Frank Norris, later a major general, was my next-door neighbor for many years and in his book, The 90th Division, he related how terror-struck he was when Ridgway asked him that question with those cold, brown eyes less than 3 feet from his face. This was a moment he could not fail for he knew how crucial this attack was. Virtually every veteran I have met that described Ridgway, highlighted those eyes and their laser-like abilities to penetrate the soul of the recipient. I saw that in his kitchen and the force had not diminished in 40 years.
Bob Piper described this gathering as one of the best examples of leadership at the higher levels he saw in the war. They were standing in a circle with a map on a C-ration box in the center. Ridgway was tired, haggard, and full of nervous adrenalin-charged intensity. Gavin was tall and somewhat stooped with a uniform in tatters, dirt and sweat on his face like a basic infantryman, and was intent on the map. Collins, immaculate, holding his helmet in hand with a shock of white hair around a pink face, feet spread equally apart, was looking at Ridgway. Barton, shorter than the rest with a prominent stomach (hence his nickname Tubby), exuded physical energy. Norris, the tallest of the group as well as the youngest, nervously moved his feet side to side and looked back and forth to the others as a cat eyes a group of dogs. The respective staffs were equally circled outside the ring of principals.
Within 30 yards and well within view were the wounded and dead of the 505th and other units - a constant reminder to the commanders of the cost and consequences of their deliberations. Gavin mentally went over the division force list available and immediately selected the 325th Glider Infantry Regiment as the assault force. Despite its bad experiences on landing - approximately 30 percent casualties -it was intact, rested, and uncommitted. He ordered them to move immediately from their position in Sainte-Mère-Église and Chef-du-Pont to La Fière where he intended to brief them.
His intent was to force a crossing over the causeway, place one battalion on the left/south of the bridgehead after relieving Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Shanley and his force (2-508th Parachute Infantry Regiment) on Hill 30, place one battalion on the right/north after relieving Lieutenant Colonel Charles Timmes and his force (2-507th Parachute Infantry Regiment) from the orchard along the Merderet, and place the third battalion in the center in the approximate position of Le Motey. The 325 Parachute Infantry Regiment would then assume control of the bridgehead and pass the 90th Division through. Who would actually lead the initial assault was entirely dependent upon who led the march column from Sainte-Mère-Église.
At approximately 0900 on 9 June, G Company, 3-325th led the regimental column on the road from Sainte-Mère-Église, crossed the railroad overpass, and turned the down-sloping corner toward the bridge. The column stopped at the large protective cut in the road just before it turns into the bridge/causeway. This could not have been a pleasant traverse on a warm June day. The cut was the final protected ground from the ongoing raging battles continuously engaging the bridge and its defenders. Casualties had been so high in the 1-505th Parachute Infantry Regiment that Gavin relieved the remnants with a scratch company of 1-507th soldiers and odd pickups organized as A/1-507 under the command of Captain Robert Rae. They now occupied the La Fière/Manoir area (a complex of stone farm buildings) and the ground where the Iron Mike statue stands today.
Only briefly described in historical narratives, but vivid in the mind of participants on site, was the incredible din, smoke, shrapnel, dust, dirt, and materiel continuously assailing the defenders and now the march column. The Germans were engaging the whole area with mortars, artillery, and small arms from the other side of the Merderet. Gavin believed, and it must have felt so to the defenders, that the Germans were giving much better than they got.
Lieutenant Colonel Norris noted that from his position on the high ground looking to the bend in the road where today’s “General Gavin foxhole” is marked, the pavement was continuously dancing with bullet and shrapnel impact. That piece of road, which the 325th had to cross, would surely be Purple Heart alley. The effect of all this was overwhelming to the senses but especially so to the unbloodied G Company.
To add to the psychological impact was the physical and visual nature of the cut. The arriving soldiers were standing on a narrow farm road subjected to the worst noise and realities of a true combat engagement; and this after an extremely bad experience landing into Normandy. The right side of the road cut (west) was stacked with the poncho covered bodies of dead troopers. To the right (east) was the immediate aid station. Wounded troopers were laying on every inch of available space, legs and boots on the road, and medics were going from patient to patient administering aid, inserting IVs, and moving the dead to the other side of the road between the standing rows of soldiers. For G Company, there could have been no better reality check on the true nature of combat than their immersion in the road cut.
Just before the bend in the road, General Gavin and Colonel Harry L. Lewis (325th Regiment commander) met the column. Lieutenant Colonel Charles Carrell, 3-325th battalion commander, and Captain John Sauls, G Company commander, approached the pair. In General Gavin’s description to me, he said the noise and distractions were so great that they had to be almost face to face to effectively converse. Gavin assumed that Carrell was already aware of the task and was going to brief him on the plan. Carrell wavered a bit and told Gavin he felt ill and wasn’t sure he could physically lead the assault. He also made a comment regarding the plan itself that Gavin interpreted as showing a distinct lack of confidence. He immediately informed Carrell that he was relieved and asked for the battalion executive officer. While this was going on, he turned to Sauls and told him to get ready.
In Sauls’ later narrative, he told Gavin, “I think there is a better way to do this rather than down this road. Give me some time to make a recon.” Gavin said, “OK. You have 30 minutes. At 1030 you go.” It was now about 0945 and Lieutenant Colonel Norris, above them on the high ground, was beginning to adjust his artillery. Sauls passed through Norris’ position and went down behind the stone Manoir and followed the defense line established by Captain Rae’s soldiers and crept along the stone wall that reached almost to the bridge road. Satisfied that he had a covered and concealed position as close as possible to the causeway, he returned to the column and briefed his soldiers and began moving them to their assault positions.
Meanwhile, the respective generals were performing their tasks. Ridgway went through all the troop positions and picked up a number of strays, unattached field grade officers, most of whom had lost their units on the jump, but were reliable soldiers such as Lieutenant Colonel Arthur Maloney and Lieutenant Colonel Edwin Ostberg of the 507th. These and several senior NCOs he assembled in the courtyard of the Manoir. His intent, as he explained, was to insert them in whatever critical situation arose to ensure his conglomerate force did what it must to carry the causeway. He positioned himself in what is now the garage of the Manoir, less than 50 feet from the front line.
Collins and Barton, now joined by a colonel from the 90th Division, sat behind Norris’ position on the high ground where they were relatively safe from incoming fire but could still see the objective, brilliant in the morning sunshine but largely obscured by the smoke, haze, and fire of the opposing exchanges. Portions of the church and stone buildings at Cauquigny would be exposed as the smoke ebbed and flowed. Just to the rear of the cut, a number of Sherman tanks from the 4th Infantry Division had arrived as well as two 57mm anti-tank guns. They were deployed in a line on the high ground overlooking the causeway and began to seek and engage targets with their main guns.
Gavin, after seeing Sauls off, went to Captain Rae and pulled him aside. The precise location of this conversation is where the Manoir stone barn abuts the wall leading to the main road. According to Gavin’s description at the bridge in 1984, he told Rae, “I don’t think these guys can take the causeway. At some point they will falter. I need your people to be prepared to carry it. When I give you the sign, move out, and take over. We must take this causeway.” Rae said he understood completely and began to brief his soldiers. This was all done under the heavy backdrop of a continuous rain of artillery, mortars, and machine-gun fire.
The causeway presented a number of issues for Sauls and his assault. The road itself was narrow with a high crown in the center. It was lined with old sycamore and willow trees anywhere from 2 to 4 feet in girth. Over the course of the battle, they had been shattered and shaved to where nothing remained of the trees but 3 or 4 feet of trunk connected by brush and debris. The Germans had dug fighting positions between the trees on both sides of the road and many were still actively occupied. There was less than 20 feet of ground between the lapping waters of the flooded Merderet on both sides. Maneuver space would be at a premium.
Immediately in front of the bridge was an overturned French truck placed earlier by Company A of the 1-505th as a roadblock. They had also scattered a number of anti-tank mines on both sides. The width of the road on the bridge preceding this obstacle, the first thing to be crossed by Sauls, was about 12 feet. Farther along the road were four Renault tanks killed by bazooka teams on 6–7 June. One was less than 50 feet from the truck, partially skewed on the south side of the road. The second was another 50 yards farther along the causeway on the north side astride the road. The third was another 50 yards back on the south side of the road, tilting against the tree stumps. The fourth was flipped on the side of the road less than 50 yards from the Cauquigny church. Remaining along the road, both on the pavement and between the trees were innumerable bodies, mostly German, from previous engagements. Sauls and his soldiers would have to assault what was in effect a bowling alley lane with obstacles throughout, as well as dug in and fully engaged Germans.
The Germans were mindful of the significance of this causeway and were sensitive to any penetration to their side of the bank. They had reacted strongly to Shanley and Timmes’ elements and had ensured they were bottled up and could not assist the units on the other side of the lake. Earlier in the week on 7 June, 1st Battalion of the 325th under Lieutenant Colonel Terry Sanford had attempted to relieve Timmes and secure Cauquigny but had been strongly counter-attacked and had to join Timmes’ force to keep from being annihilated.
© Keith Nightingale 2023, The Human Face of D-Day: Walking the Battlefields of Normandy: Essays, Reflections, and Conversations with Veterans of the Longest Day . Reproduced courtesy of Casemate Publishers.
