D-Day. The Battle for Normandy

division on both sides in Normandy were to exceed those for Soviet and German divisions during an equivalent period on the eastern front. 11

8
    Utah and the Airborne
    The dawn of D-Day on the Cotentin peninsula brought only a little clarity to the scattered American airborne troops. The tall hedgerows of the Normandy fields made it hard to orientate themselves. For many, daylight meant that they could at last light a cigarette without giving their position away. Finding containers and equipment bundles also became easier. A French boy with a horse and cart helped an airborne staff officer gather them up. German soldiers also profited as a result of the manna from heaven which had rained down in containers during the night. They helped themselves to American K-Rations and cigarettes.
    Those paratroopers who had survived the drop began to coalesce into mixed groups and attack their objectives, although they had no radio contact with their divisional headquarters. They were, however, aided by an even greater German confusion. The cutting of telephone wires by paratroopers and the Resistance had proved an invaluable tactic. German forces on the peninsula were also uncertain in their reactions. They had no idea where the main American paratroop forces were concentrated and they lacked leadership. Generalleutnant Falley of the 91st Luftlande-Division was dead from the ambush near his headquarters, and Generalleutnant Karl-Wilhelm Graf von Schlieben, the commander of the 709th Infanterie-Division, was still absent.
    Schlieben had been asleep in a hotel in Rennes prior to the Seventh Army map exercise planned for that day. The telephone rang at 06.30 hours, waking him. ‘The war game has been cancelled,’ a staff officer informed him. ‘You are requested to return to your unit.’ Schlieben, realizing that the Allies had stolen a march on them, told his driver to take the road up the west coast of the peninsula. They drove as fast as possible and turned inland, stopping only to collect a wounded German soldier spotted in a hedgerow by the side of the road. Schlieben could hear heavy guns firing to the east.
    When the curfew expired at 06.00 hours, French civilians emerged from their houses to find out what had been happening during the night. In Montebourg, north of the main drop zones, they went to the central square, where they saw ‘American prisoners with blackened faces’ guarded by German soldiers. The Americans winked at the French and made V for Victory signs. When the Ortskommandant appeared, the mayor could not resist asking him if he needed any workers that day for erecting the ‘Rommel asparagus’ poles against glider landings. ‘It is not necessary,’ he replied stiffly. The Germans, they noticed, were very nervous.
    The 82nd Airborne Division had taken its chief objective of Sainte-Mère-Eglise, but it had landed close to the main units of the 91st Luftlande-Division and would suffer numerous counter-attacks. Its other task was to secure the line of the River Merderet in preparation for VII Corps to advance right across the peninsula. This proved hard, since its units were so scattered. Many small groups of paratroopers made their way to the La Fière crossing by following the railway embankment. Brigadier General James Gavin, the second in command of the division, took a large group further south to help the attack on Chef du Pont and the bridge there.
    When a small bridgehead had been taken across the Merderet at Chef du Pont, the regimental surgeon of the 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment had to operate in the field with the barest equipment. All their medical bundles had been lost in the drop. ‘A soldier had his leg blown off right by the knee and the only thing left attached was his patellar tendon. And I had him down there in this ditch and I said: “Son, I’m gonna have to cut the rest of your leg off and you’re back to bullet-biting time because I don’t have anything to use for an anesthetic.” And he said: “Go ahead, Doc.” I cut the patellar tendon and he didn’t even whimper.’
    Another medical officer in the same regiment, who had found himself having to hold up plasma bags while being shot at, was soon captured by the Germans. They took him to the 91st Luftlande-Division’s Feldlazarett, or field hospital, set up in the Château de Hauteville, five miles west of Sainte-Mère-Eglise. The German medics treated him as a friend, and he went about his work tending wounded