Brécourt Manor
Introduction
As effective commander of Easy Company, 2nd Battalion, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment of the 101st Airborne Division during D-Day, First Lieutenant Richard Winters was tasked to take on a battery of German 88 mm howitzers that were firing onto causeway #2 off Utah Beach. Some other units had stumbled onto the enemy position head-on earlier in the day, and were repulsed.
About 0830, Winters gathered a team of thirteen men from his and other companies. Knowing little more than a general location of the gun emplacement, his team scouted the area north of a farm house called Brécourt Manor, located 3 miles west of Utah Beach, just south of a small village Le Grand-Chemin (near Sainte-Marie-du-Mont). There they spotted a battery of four 105 mm guns connected by a trench network and defended by nests of MG42 machine guns. In total, they were up against about sixty German soldiers.
Upon arrival at the battery location, Winters developed a quick plan of attack. He positioned a pair of M1919 .30 caliber machine guns to serve as a base of fire (the fulcrum of an attack) and several soldiers with rifles positioned on one flank to provide covering fire, then led an attack down the hedgerow leading to the first gun position.
While the trench network linking all the guns was sound military practice by the Germans, providing them with an easy way to resupply and reinforce the guns, it also proved to be their biggest weakness; after taking out the first gun position, Winters' team attacked the remaining guns by using the trenches for cover and approach routes. The danger of the trenches to Winters' team were that they were extremely vulnerable to grenades. Reinforcements from D (Dog) Company, led by Lt. Ronald Speirs, arrived to aid the assault on the last gun. After the four guns were disabled, the small team was low on ammunition and withdrew. Winters had discovered an enemy map in one gun position that showed all of the German artillery and machine gun positions throughout that area of the Cotentin Pensinsula. This was an invaluable piece of intelligence and was handed up the chain of command. Later, when two tanks from Utah Beach arrived, Winters directed their fire to clean up the position. Winters lost one man under his command, PFC John D. Halls from 2nd Battalion's Headquarters Company [1], and another one of his men was wounded during this attack, Private Robert "Popeye" Wynn from Winter's squad (Wynn was evacuated back to England and recovered from his wound and rejoined the Company days before Operation Market Garden). Another casualty was Warrant Officer Andrew Hill, who died when coming to the battle to look for Regimental HQ.
Source, Brécourt Manor Assault Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia
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