US Airborne and cutting the Cotentin – Paul Woodadge Battlefield Tour.

Today is the 4^th April 2023 and it is the fourth day of Paul’s Battlefield Tour in Normandy. This is US Airborne Day. We are moving back from yesterday’s date line and looking at the US Airborne, initially the 82nd Airborne post D-Day. Most tours remain around the well-trodden battlefields of Sainte-Mere-Eglise, but we are looking to move away from that area and experience the push to cut off the Cotentin Peninsula.

After driving through Sainte-Mere-Eglise, just to check if they had removed John Steele from the church, Paul took us to La Fiere. There we met General Patton’s Granddaughter who is renovating one of the buildings adjacent to the bridge into a guest house. She was very accommodating and took time to chat to us.

The battle for the bridge is that great mix of airborne daring and selfless resolve to win at all cost. With a mix of paratroopers and glider troops under command of General Gavin. The knocking out of three German tanks trying to retake the bridge, having to wait until the lead tank was only feet from the bridge and having to stand in the firing line with a bazooka as well as having to find more shells to load so that all three tanks could be put out of use. Then to storm a causeway, flooded on both sides headfirst into enemy fire. This is an action where legends are born, and the units and regiments become remembered forever. It is certainly a small part of Normandy I will re-visit. We walked the short distance on the causeway to Cauquigny with a wonderful church full of memorials and even a bullet stuck in a railing.

The Glider Infantry Regiment have a memorial here. The fighting was fierce, and the church took the brunt of the action.

Paul wanted to show us the difficulty the Americans had moving southwards and much of this was evident in the area near La Haye-Du-Puits. Which is surrounded by numerous high points. The 82^nd Airborne were nearing their end of their 33 days in Normandy, yet they were involved with the attempts to capture Hills 131 and 95 in July 1944. Paul took us to the summit on Hill 131 where you can view the sea on both side of the peninsula. You also get full appreciation of how the five hills around La Haye-Du-Puits played their part and had to be taken by the American forces to sweep southwards.

Paul then took us to Hill 95 which was a costly battle with the Germans entrenched in multiple lines on the northern slopes. As the allies thought they had just taken a position, fire would be brought down on them from a sunken road further up the hill.

We then had lunch in La Haye-Du-Puits, and a wonderful Frenchman spoke to us via Mag’s great interpretation skills, explain he was a child during the events we had discussed today and remembered the US Troops handing out candy. It was wonderful to hear what it meant to a local man who had lived through these events.

The final stop of the day was the Church at Angoville-au-Plain. Paul had written a book, Angels of Mercy, about the two Medics Robert E Wright and Kenneth J Moore of the 101^st Airborne Division.

Paul explained the medics cared for more eighty soldiers and one child on the 6^th June 1944. They cared for both American and German casualties and guns had to remain outside of the church. The pews were used for wounded soldiers and their blood stains can still be seen in the wood.

Paul knew the two medics well and felt emotional a couple of times when revealing the events of that day. For example, a soldier who was severely wounded in the face and had no chance of surviving was placed behind the alter away from others as he was dying. Yet they could not give him any morphine for the pain, as they only had enough for those who had a chance of surviving. Also, when a German soldier burst through the double closed doors at the end of the church, Machine Gun in hand. When he saw what was happening in the church, he lowered his gun, stepped backwards, closed the door behind him and left. There are so many remarkable stories about what happened in this church, I had to get a copy of Paul book and look forward to reading it when on the Western Front next week.