Le Moulin
- 105
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Panel text: On June 6, 1944, the mission assigned to 3 Battalion, 506 Regiment of the 101 Airborne Division was clear: seize and secure control of two small wooden bridges crossing the Douve east of Carentan. This mission was vital. The Germans had built these bridges some months earlier to enable them to send reinforcements urgently to the coast, in case of an Allied landing. But on the night of June 5 to 6, the parachute drop of 3 Battalion, under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Wolverton, turned into a massacre. Captain Shettle assembled some thirty men at Angoville-au-Plain and advanced towards Brévands. On arrival, the troop numbered around 100 men. Far from being in a strong position after parachuting into various locations, the men of the 3rd Battalion nevertheless managed to gain the North Bridge and seize its access,
On June 7, the Americans repelled a formidable counter-attack by the Germans of the 6th Parachute Regiment, under the command of Major von der Heydte. During the three-day siege of the Brévands bridges, no contact was made between Colonel Roberty Sink, the regiment's commander, and his men, as Sink took the majority of the 3rd Battalion for dead. Worse still, on June 7, friendly P-47 fighter bombers mistakenly attacked them, wounding and killing several of Captain Shettle's men and destroying both bridges.
