Jumping on the night of D-Day, the 82nd Airborne had to capture the town of Sainte-Mère-Église. Holding the town, however, would have meant little without also holding the roads to and from it. One such route had a bottleneck:  the La Fière Bridge a small stone bridge at La Fière manor, 700 yards to the west of the outskirts. The manor itself was a small group of buildings a grenade-throw away from the bridge. On the far side of the bridge, the road led west, the small hamlet of Cauguigny standing by it two-thirds of a mile away.

Securing La Fière Bridge fell to the 505th PIR. The 1st Battalion was one of the few units that night to jump on time and land in its designated drop zone to the east of the bridge, between it and the town. They quickly learned that things were not as expected: the Germans have flooded large areas of Normandy and the tiny Merderet River running north-south under the bridge was now a marsh 1,000 yards across at its narrowest. The elevated road between the bridge and Cauguigny became a causeway surrounded by water, providing no cover.

An hour before dawn, 1st Lt. John “Red Dog” Nolan, nicknamed for his hair and his canine tenacity, led his company towards La Fière Bridge and manor. With visibility low due to hedgerows, stone walls and the darkness, Nolan told Lt. Dolan Coxon to send his scouts forward. Coxon didn’t have the heart to send his men alone into harm’s way and accompanied them. A few moments later, German machine gun fire barked up and killed Coxon and another man. With two platoons trying to flank the foxhole, a firefight developed and the Americans got pinned down. After about an hour, the Germans quietly withdrew without losses.

Unknown to Nolan and his men, they were not alone. Many of the airborne who were misdropped in the area honed in on the only landmark in the flooded plain: the causeway. They were now arriving piecemeal, but most of them have lost their radios in the water and couldn’t inform others of their presence. When these surprise reinforcements started showing up, Nolan drew up a plan to attack the manor from the north and the south simultaneously. Units were put in place, one of them wading through the neck-deep swamp with bullets ricocheting off the water around them. However, the runner who was supposed to give the message to attack got lost and coordination was broken. At 9 am, Brig. Gen. James Gavin arrived with 300 men from the northwest on the far side of the causeway. After being briefed on the situation, he decided it was in good hands and moved on south to capture another bottleneck along another road further away.

Despite the lack of coordination between units, the airborne finally reached the manor. Some 10 to 12 Germans fought back from inside but were suppressed in 10 minutes of fierce fighting. Seeing a white sheet being hung from a window, a paratrooper went forward to accept the surrender, only to get shot by a German who was standing by another window and didn’t know his comrades had already given up. After another round of furious firing, the defenders finally surrendered for good.

At 1:45 pm, with the manor in American hands, two men were sent to scout out the La Fière Bridge. German soldiers hiding on the far side tried to ambush them, but one of the men, Pvt. James Mattingly, shot the first man then wounded and captured the rest, later receiving the Silver Star for what one officer called “the best piece of individual soldiering I have ever seen.” The La Fière Bridge and the causeway were clear and a nine-man force was left on the west end in the half-dozen stone buildings of Cauguigny. The causeway was blocked by a truck, mines were laid and three anti-tank guns brought in by glider were set up.

The German counterattack came at 4 pm. Three German-driven French light tanks appeared with infantry in tow from the west, overrunning the force in Cauguigny and heading for the causeway. About a dozen US airborne were driven in front of the tanks as human shields, forced to pick up mines and throw them into the water. Once they were 40-50 yards from the defenders, American bazooka teams and anti-tank guns opened up while the captured paratropers dove for safety. The first tank was destroyed, followed by the other two, but at a high price: German infantrymen, using the tanks as cover, poured automatic weapons fire into the defenders, causing heavy casualties before retreating to the west end of the causeway. With depleted numbers and low ammo, but in a strong position and with additional reinforcements arriving, the American dug in at the manor while the Germans did the same on the far side of the swamp.

With the fight for Sainte-Mère -Église still going on, both sides started building up their numbers at La Fière Bridge, until June 9 brought a need to break the stalemate. By this point, the 4th Infantry Division had made its way up from Utah Beach and needed the road cleared to proceed. Twelve Shermans and an artillery battery were brought up for the final push with the airborne to spearhead the attack with a suicidal charge down the exposed, 1,000 yard long causeway into German machine gun and mortar fire. Lt. Col. Charles Carrell’s 2nd Battalion, 401st Glider Infantry Regiment was given the thankless task.

Carrell lost his nerve in the last moment and declined to attack and was replaced on the spot. At 10 am, rifles, machine guns, tanks and artillery all opened up, and G Company’s Cap. John Sauls was the first to jump onto the causeway with a shout of “Follow me!” Some men faltered in the face of certain death, other were cut down running and yet others fell down wounded or trying to scramble for some cover. Miraculously, Sauls himself made it across the corridor of fire and ran past the first line of German defense, shooting Germans with his Thompson SMG.

The causeway got quickly congested with the dead, the dying and the terrified; but the push got going. At one point, General Matthew Ridgway, commander of the 82nd Airborne Division was spotted on the causeway, trying to remove a cable from a knocked-out tank to make it easier to pass. He was soon joined by General Gavin. The sight of the division’s two highest-ranking officers in the middle of the killing zone has inspired the troops to push themselves beyond all limits and the Germans were forced to flee. A final, heavy counterattack was repulsed later that night and the battle for the La Fière causeway was won, allowing allied forced to move west and further into the Cotentin Peninsula.

Visiting La Fière in the 1980s, General Gavin recalled the aftermath of the battle: “When I came to this point […], I had no idea as to how hard this fight was. I looked back down the causeway. It was covered from the church to as far as I could see with bodies. I could have walked back to the bridge and never stepped on pavement. I just had no idea as to the strength of the position. It took airborne soldiers to do this.”

After landing on the beaches on D-Day, the Allied troops had to make their way further inland, capturing key locations to allow forces from the various beaches to link up. The road, known as causeway #2, leading inland from Utah beach passed through the villages of Sainte-Marie-du-Mont, Verville and Saint-Côme-du-Mont, leading into the town of Carentan, an important target. The junction of the roads from Sainte-Marie-du-Mont and Saint-Côme-du-Mont would come to be known as Dead Man’s Corner.

The area was defended by the German 6th Fallschirmjäger Regiment, the “Green Devils” of Major von der Heydte (who, coincidentially, was cousin to Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, who tried to kill Hitler with a bomb on July 20, 1944 during Operation Valkyrie). Fate pitted the heavily dug-in Green Devils against their American counterparts, the Screaming Eagles of the 101st Airborne Division.

On June 7, the paratroopers have linked up with a platoon of 6 Shermans and several M5 Stuart light tanks, and were approaching the outskirts of Carentan amidst heavy fighting in the hedgerows. Not far from the town, they came up on a crossroads dominated by a large building, its corner painted red and white: the headquarters and aid station for the 6thFallschirmjäger. The Stuart at the head of the line was knocked out right at the crossroads by a Panzerfaust fired by Bruno Hinz. The shot killed the tank commander 1st Lt. Walter T. Anderson, whose body was left hanging halfway out of the hatch.

In the first days following D-Day, priority lay with getting the troops and artillery off the Utah Beachhead and moving inland; there was no time to deal with the dead and wounded. The Stuart, with Lt. Anderson still hanging out of the turret, was moved to the side of the road to make way for the line of tanks to proceed towards Carentan. With D-Day being imminent, the Germans had removed all road signs in Normandy to make it as hard as possible for the Allied invasion troops to find their bearings. As a consequence, there was no road sign at this particular crossroads pointing the way to Carentan. The Stuart tank became a reference point for the troops moving inland and they soon started to refer to the crossroads as “the corner with the tank with the dead man in it,” which was later shortened to Dead Man’s Corner, the name by which it’s known today.

At least that is the best-known version of the story. Some historians, such as Mark Bando, a specialist on the 101st Airborne, suggests that it wasn’t the commander who died in the tank, but the driver, and that rather than hanging out through the hatch, he remained in his seat, only visible if someone walked up to the vehicle and peered inside from a specific angle. While the opinion might forever remain in contention, it’s a fact that there are no visible corpses on the two contemporary photographs of the tank.

Today the former headquarters is the heart of the D-Day Experience with a C-47 simulator as well as the Dead Man’s Corner Paratrooper Museum, which not only documents the incident, but also displays several unique historical artifacts, including items owned by Dick Winters and other notable members of Easy Company.

The Brécourt Manor Assault began early on the morning of June 6, 1944, after the chaotic nighttime drops, Lt. Winters and some men of Easy Company, 506th PIR, arrived at the Command Post of the 3rd Bn 506th PIR in the hamlet of Le Grand Chemin. The command post at the hamlet was aware of a nearby German artillery position to the south, overlooked by the Brécourt manor house on the opposite side of the field.

Assault on Brécourt Manor – The ditch Winters and his men used to approach the guns

The guns, believed to be 88mm flak cannons, were firing at one of the causeways leading off Utah beach. A small groups of  soldiers had already attempted to take the guns but had been repulsed. Lt. Winters received curt instructions: “There’s fire along that hedgerow there. Take care of it.” After reconnoitering the battery alone at around 8:30 a.m., he gathered 12 men of Easy Company he had at that point, telling them to only carry their weapons, ammo and grenades.

Rather than the expected 88mms, the battery was comprised of four 105mm howitzers, three firing towards Utah beach and one facing the opposite direction. Descriptions usually state that the firing positions were connected by trenches, but in this case, these weren’t properly built-up and reinforced trenches like the ones used in World War I, but rather a drainage ditch running along the tree line, fortified by logs and sandbags. It was this hasty construction of the position and the cover of the hedgerow that protected the site from being discovered by air reconnaissance during the preparation for D-Day.

Brécourt Manor Assault – Overview of the site. Brécourt Manor is off the lower left corner of the picture, overlooking the field

Once near the site, Winters ordered four of his men to set up their machine guns and suppress the German MG-42 nest. Another two men were sent a bit further afield to give covering fire from yet another direction. Sgt. Lipton, one of these two, climbed up a tree, getting a good view of the enemy but exposing himself to fire.

Over looking the guns at Brécourt Manor Assault – Lipton climbing up into a tree to lay down covering fire in the series

Once the machine gun nest was suppressed, three men threw their grenades and charged in, knocking it out, allowing Winters and his men to run to the trench and dive in, quickly taking the first artillery position. They started preparing for an attack on the second gun and Winters peered down the trench – at the last moment, as the Germans were setting up a machine gun to fire down it, preventing any further American advance. By this point, other German machine guns were firing across the field, limiting safe movement to the trench.

The assault shot from Band of Brothers: Winters spotting the German machine gun being set up to prevent American advance beyond the first gun.

Winters quickly shot both men, preventing them from pouring lethal fire down the trench and trapping the Airborne at the first gun, unable to move in any direction. Moving further on, Winters led his men in an attack on the second gun. It was here that he located a radio and map room, finding a map of all German batteries on the Cotentin peninsula. After capturing the third gun, he ordered all the guns destroyed. The men placed C4 charges down the gun barrels and ignited them with looted German stick grenades.

Brécourt Manor Assault – Winters dropping a grenade down a gun barrel in the series. True to history, a C4 charge can also be seen being inserted shortly before.

Lt. Ronald Speirs arrived with 5 more men as reinforcements. Speirs, known as an extremely aggressive commander, led his men out of the trench and charged the final gun position by running through machine gun fire in the open. Once the last gun was destroyed, Winters ordered everyone to fall back, as crossing the field and assaulting Brécourt Manor itself was far beyond their abilities.

Brécourt Manor Assault – Speirs and his men outside the trenches, charging the last gun position (on the right, in the background) in the series

While Band of Brothers does a good job at depicting the assault and includes numerous historically accurate details, it does fail in getting across the scope of combat. Rather than the 10-15 minutes of furious fighting the viewer is lead to imagine, taking the 200 yard stretch of trenches and the four guns took 2-3 hours, including at least one mission back to the hamlet for ammunition.

Consolidating after the Brécourt Manor Assaulte – Scene from Band of Brothers, condensing the events into a much tighter timeframe.

Back at the hamlet of Le Grand Chemin, Winters handed over the captured German map to his friend, intelligence officer Lt. Lewis Nixon. Recognizing its importance, Nixon ran three miles to Utah beach to deliver it to his superiors immediately. Command on the beach was so impressed that they sent their first two tanks to Le Grande Chemin to support Easy Company. Once the tanks arrived, it was finally possible to assault and take the manor house.

After the Brécourt Manor Assault – Nixon arriving with the first two tanks off the beach in the series

During the fighting, a young French boy named Michel de Vallavieille, son of the manor’s owner, was mistaken for a German soldier and accidentally shot, becoming the first French civilian casualty of the invasion. Luckily, Michel survived and was evacuated to Britain. He went on to become the mayor of the village of Sainte-Marie-du-Mont and founded the Utah Beach Museum. Several generations of the de Vallavieille family have devoted their lives to keeping the legacy of the Normandy invasion alive in the Utah Sector.

The assault on the Brécourt Manor guns is a textbook example of frontal assault on a fixed position and is taught West Point, as a case study. With 24 men, including reinforcements, Winters defeated approximately 60 Germans in a defensive position, killing about 20 and taking 12 prisoners, at the cost of only 6 American casualties: 4 dead and 2 wounded. Originally, the commander of the 506th PIR put him up for the Medal of Honor, but US Army policy at the time limited the highest award to one per division: the MOH was awarded to Col. Robert G. Cole for his bayonet charge and taking the last 4 bridges on the road to Carentan.  Lt. Richard D. Winters was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross.