Hello all, Having watched the episode of BOB where Easy Co. attack the town of Carentan the other night (for the umpteenth time ) I was messing about on Google Earth and found these pics. The first is a view along the road into Carentan (the bit where Winters has to 'encourage' the men out of the ditches). In the programme the road slopes uphill towards the town but in reality it actually slopes downwards. The house at the end of the road is where the German machine gun fire came from. The second is a 'Then & Now' picture of the house that was used by 'E' Co. as an aid post.
Good stuff! Never did find the exact location of the attack when I was there. Thanks for sharing! Jakob
Here's the description from the book: "Winters had his old platoon, the 1st, under Lt Welsh, on the left side of the road, just past where the road curved and then straightened out, with 2d platoon on the right and 3d platoon in reserve. The men lay down in the ditches by the side of the road, awaiting orders. The German defenders had not revealed their machine-gun position or fired any mortars. Everything was quiet. At 0600 Winters ordered, "Move out." Welsh kicked off the advance, running down the road toward the T-junction some 50 meters away, his platoon following. The German machine-gun opened fire, straight down the road. It was in a perfect position, perfect time, to wipe out the company. The fire split the platoon. The seventh man behind Welsh stayed in the ditch. So did the rest of the platoon, almost thirty men. They were face down in the ditches on both sides of the road, trying to snuggle in as close as they could. Winter's jumped into the middle of the road, highly agitated, yelling, "Move out! Move out!" It did no good; the men remained in place, heads down in the the ditch. From the rear, Winters could hear Lieutenant Colonel Strayer, Lieutenants Hester and Nixon, and other members of the battalion HQ hollering at him to "get them moving, Winters, get them moving." Assuming the description is accurate, I see all kinds of inexperience on the part of the officers here, as one would expect for a unit with less than a week of combat. For one, running a whole platoon down a straight road is very unsound. Roads, particularly straight roads, make perfect fire lanes for machine-guns. It's actually a mystery to me how the Germans could have missed hitting anyone at 50 meters. Two, once the platoon is pinned down it's pretty stupid to urge them forward down the street when he has two platoons that could advance off the street. The stupidity of the battalion CO and staff is actually to be expected and not corrected until combat experienced officers from the line companies rose to fill those positions, regretably over a very long time. The aggressiveness of the unit is undeniable, however until they gained some experience alot a good men would die in silly actions as decribed here. They got lucky in this case. I would have to say the series really inflated this minor action, if minor is the right word for any situation where somebody is shooting at you.
Paul, Have a search for Battlefield Detectives.com on google. Thye have done many airborne 'Then and Nows' Andy
Paul, Have a search for Battlefield Detectives.com on google. Thye have done many airborne 'Then and Nows' Andy Cheers mate, will do.
