Sainte Mère Église
The aircraft rocked back and forth and dipped in evasive action. Flack hit the aircraft in multiple bursts that grew in intensity. It was a sound which many soldiers described like the sound of gravel hitting a tin roof. Green light meant go and out they went. As Clancy dropped towards earth, tracer rounds tore holes in his chute above his head—a not uncommon occurrence for paratroopers that night. Miraculously, he was unwounded as he landed amid the cacophony of the battle. According to some accounts, he landed in a tree or in an orchard, and in another he landed waist deep in water. When I asked him about the disparity, he did not seem to recall one of the accounts.
Now that he was out of sight --obscured for a time in the shadows on the ground, the attention of the enemy was drawn to other troopers and aircraft in the skies above. It was not long before one of his buddies James (Jim) Campbell (Later killed in Holland), helped him get out of his harness. Clancy had lost a lot of his gear on the jump due to the speed of the aircraft. The “prop blast” had literally ripped it from him as he exited the C-47, another all too common experience of that jump. But, he was still weighted down and caught up with what remained to need the assistance of his friend to get free of the chute. In terms of weaponry, Clancy managed to hold on to his rifle, a .45, a few clips of ammunition, and his trench knife.
Looking around it was easy to see they were far from their intended Drop Zone. Their surroundings were totally unfamiliar. They began to move, hoping to link up with others in their stick and unit, and complete their objective. For Clancy, that was to land.
Clancy eventually got rid of his signaling cricket after they landed. He found it more of a liability than an asset. At one point, they saw a few Germans on a road and hid under a small footbridge. Later, they came across a track or road that cut to the south toward the Carentan road. There, they spotted several Germans moving south towards Carentan, but they decided it was best not to engage them. When Clancy recounted his Normandy experience to me on one of my visits, he gestured with his hand indicating the road that cut towards the Carentan road cut off to his right. The descriptions he provided of his immediate surroundings, including the connotations of flooded ground by the Germans along the Merderet, along with this gesturing, would seem to indicate that he landed west of Sainte Mère Église in one of the lower wet areas that fingered eastward towards the town from the Merderet -- either between the Chef-du-Pont road and that to La Fiere, or perhaps somewhere along the Ruisseau du Moulinet – either near La Coquerie, or further downstream where there were orchards.
The map of the general pattern of the 506 drops in Normandy from SLA Marshall's Regimental Study of the 506 in this Operation shows that there was some wide scale scattering of the sticks of soldiers on the aircraft. It also presents the possibility that Clancy landed somewhere in the flooded marshy areas behind the beaches and headed toward SME from the east. With the speed of the aircraft often much greater, and some aircraft flying much higher or lower than planned, often in an erratic flight, some of the men were literally dumped out of the aircraft before the green light, or were unable to get out with the rest of their stick due to wounded men or supply bundles blocking the exit, or more evasive action tossing them about inside. Some aircraft even turned around and flew back over the peninsula from east to west, or a variation thereof. Needless to say, it significantly impacted the distribution of a stick of troopers.
According to Marshall's study, the Battalion HQ, of which Clancy was part at that time, was supposed to land on Drop Zone C, northwest of Sainte Marie du Mont. Their objective along with D company, was to set up as the battalion reserve near Hebert (506 PIR in Normandy Drop 3) Hebert stood between exits one and two off Utah beach and was an ideal location to support the push to take and hold the exits, when needed. Clancy landed roughly between 7 and 8 miles by road from the intended DZ, if he landed either East or West of SME in marshy low ground.
They trekked across the countryside for a mile or two before finding friendly forces in Sainte Mère Église, according to Clancy. But this meandering trek of halting progression, which sometimes even came to a standstill, had taken a few hours to complete. They did not want to blunder into an enemy position or enemy hands or find themselves even further from their intended objectives in the maze of hedgerows and sunken roads.
Reproduction D-Day Map of Ste. Mere Eglise.
Once in Sainte Mère Église (SME), Clancy stated they fought along side men from B Co, 508 PIR of the 82nd Airborne. A number troopers from this unit were misdropped in the same widespread area as Clancy, and more directly around SME, according to the maps of the drop patterns available in the United States Army In WWII military history series and the accounts of veterans themselves. While SLA Marshall, in his book about the paratrooper on D-day entitled Night Drop, does not specifically mention the presence of 508PIR strays in his account of Col Krause’s 3/505, taking SME in the hours before daylight, the location of the drop patterns testify to their presence in the area. Troopers from multiple units of the 82nd and 101st had been dropped errantly on or near SME and it became a rally point of sorts as the activity increased. Other members of the 506 PIR had dropped in the area around SME and some had been able to group together and push south to their original objectives.
Clancy did not provide much specific detail of his activities in SME when he spoke of it to me. He spoke in more general terms saying such things as they held the town against the Germans; that he was there for two days; and that the fighting was not intense door-to-door type fighting. He did mention in his interview recorded in Marcus Brotherton's book, We Who Are Alive and Remain, that while fighting in Sainte Mere Eglise, he shot a German soldier in the leg. The German had come out from some buildings across the street, apparently when they were clearing the town (107). Clancy aimed for the soldier's leg, not wanting to kill the man. He was like many of the men who fought. He preferred to get the man out of the fight by wounding him, if he could. He also mentioned seeing the dead troopers hanging from the trees. Nordyke, records that these were men of F/505 who had been dropped directly in the town (An Irresistible Force 63) and were killed before they could get out of their chute harnesses. With the exception of this anecdote and a few others, Clancy did not give a detailed description of his movements or activities. We can, however, get a more detailed description of the actions of those in SME over the next two days from other documented accounts of the 82nd Airborne and where he likely fit in to them.
In the larger context of the operation, during the very early morning hours of the 6th of June, 3rd Battalion of the 505PIR had dropped near SME and moved from their DZ into the town relatively quickly. They were charged with taking and holding Sainte Mere Eglise. This they did. However, by the time 3/505 was landing on their DZ, Clancy had already been dropped in the serials of the 101st, which flew ahead of the 82nd. This staggering of drops was due to the nature and location of each division’s mission objectives and limited airspace. By the time elements the 82nd were hitting the ground, Clancy and Jim were wending their way through the roads and hedgerows. This would explain why they did not travel to the sound of the fighting as soon as they landed, as a number of other troopers had. The fighting at La Fiere and Sainte Mère Église had not begun yet. Within a short time, that changed and they follow the sound of the guns. By the time they approached SME, they had to come through one of the 3/505 road blocks to get in. The third battalion, which had jumped on their DZ or close to the objective, not only had dropped on ground familiar to them from their training, but, once they landed, they also had the added benefit of a local Frenchman to guide them directly in. (Four Stars of Valor 151)
At around 0400 – twilight’s first gleaming, the gliders landed in nearby fields and came in to SME as reinforcements. By 0430 Sainte Mere Eglise was considered to be in American hands -- liberated from Nazi control. SLA Marshall indicates Col Krause sent a message at about 0500 that he was in SME and another message went out at 0600 that it was in US hands (Night Drop 25).
By one account, Clancy arrived at friendly lines just as outlines of people were beginning to be visible (Ooms: 41). This could be as early as 0400 or 430. It was at about this time Col Krause was setting up the road blocks, and, subsequently, according to SLA Marshall, sending squads to clear the town (house-by-house ) of any Germans. Clancy mentioned he was part of the effort to clear the town of Germans. And, his description matches what is stated in Night Drop--that there was overall little resistance. Though not bitter house-to-house fighting, clearing a town which had already seen episodes of conflict, in dim morning light would still have been tense at the least. According to Marshall, there were 30 prisoners taken and 11 Germans killed in clearing the town (25). If Clancy's account of shooting the German took place here, we can add one wounded and at least two others withdrawing. This was during the relatively "quiet" interlude before sunrise and the following counter attacks, but after the earlier havoc and horror of the misdrops of several sticks of 505 troopers on the center of town and church itself while the nearby Manor burned. Renaud noted the full quiet of the morning after sunrise.
Several men of E/506 (the unit Clancy would later be transferred to) landed in or around the town, but had already assembled and quickly moved south with some misdropped men of the 82nd among their numbers. They would have been gone for a few hours by the time Clancy and his friend reached the town. It was another one of these groups that had gathered from their drops north of SME, who were moving towards their original objectives that Clancy hooked up with sometime on the 8th of June. Clancy recalled these were men of Battalion HQ and E Company (Brotherton 106).
According to Nordyke, it was at around 0630, a short time after sunrise, Lt. Col. Krause raised his American flag in the town hall (Hotel de Ville) (154). The US Military history of the account puts this as happening at 0430 (Utah Beach to Cherbourg 33). Sainte Mere Eglise is said to have been the first French town liberated during the Normandy Invasion. A bronze plaque in the town identifies the liberation time as 0430, when the first American’s had cleared the town of organized German occupation. Remarkably, Clancy was among the defenders of the first foot hold of the Liberation in Normandy. However, engagement with the enemy was far from an end. According to Alexandre Renaud’s account, Sainte Mere Eglise D-Day, June 6th 1944, the Church was still held by Germans as it was getting light (42). Daylight photographs of soldiers maneuvering around the church, attempting to root out the enemy occupants, bear testament to this as well.
American Soldiers move in to eliminate enemy presence in the church of Saint Mere Eglise
Several counterattacks from the north along the road to Neuville-au-Plain, each building in momentum and stopping closer to edge of the town, came in successive waves over the next several hours and through the afternoon of the 2nd day. At least three counterattacks from the north and one from the south pressured the town. However, the Americans, instead of standing on the defensive, went on the attack. Renaud speaks of the German artillery fire they came under during this time and of several civilian casualties (61)
By full daylight, what Renaud identified as reserve soldiers were said to be sleeping at in the square and in the Manor garden “without a care in the world” it seemed to him (51). They were probably exhausted, many from their first exposure to combat. Again, this matches Clancy's general description of the time of there not being intense fighting. Renaud also noted that some troopers were still hanging from the trees, which would place this before the arrival of Vandervort’s 2nd battalion, as he ordered their bodies cut down.
Lt. Colonel Ben Vandervoort, 2/505, who had originally been given orders to take and hold Neuville-au-Plain, was redirected to SME to either take or reinforce the town, because little information (and none of it specific) was received on the status of the 3rd battalion there. At around 0615, they moved towards town from their original route. They were stopped started and turned around several times before given the final command to go to SME. It was well after daylight when 2/505 arrived. They found it held by 3rd battalion. The two colonels met, and it was decided to divide the defense of the town into two parts. Vandervoort gave the command that all the misdropped/strays (which included men from both the 82nd and 101st) be attached to E/505 as two of their platoons had been misdropped and remained unaccounted for. These strays became a provisional 2nd platoon of E company. The company was then placed in reserve in the churchyard (Irresistible Force 61). This is also what Renaud recounted about the presence of the reserve troopers –they were sleeping in the yard around the church (51). The yard is now a parking lot to the east of the church. It is quite likely Clancy and his buddy Campbell, were, at this point, made part of this provisional unit.
View of the churchyard where the reserve unit(s) were held during the taking of Saint Mere Eglise
Nordkye provides some more details of the activities of the 101st strays in SME in his book, Four Stars of Valor. On the afternoon of June 7th, under the command of Lieutenant Coyle, about 25 or so men of the 101st were engaged in pushing back another attack on the Sainte Mère Église from the North by German forces consisting of several self-propelled guns and infantry which had been advancing over the last 24 hours (188). This is another detail that Clancy mentioned and that matches the 82nd account of activities there--that they were armored attempts to retake or envelop the town. At around 1715 Coyle led the men to the northern edge of the town where the last house stood, and began to flank an open field there on the left, hoping to avoid direct enemy fire and take the German flank. This advance was supported by two tanks, one of which was actually in the lead with 10 men of the platoon who were from the 82nd. By their advance they were able to flank and subdue the Germans who eventually surrendered after suffering terrible losses and after first feinting a surrender (189-92).
This was the last major engagement against the Germans to keep the town under Allied control. And it was at about this time, or, perhaps the next morning, that Clancy and his compatriot, seeing that the situation was settled—SME was secured in American hands, began to head south to Saint Come Du Mont with other men of the 101st who were also moving south. They linked up with other elements of the 101st, -- men from HQ and later, some men from E/506, a unit which he would soon be attached to. They were all heading south to the new mission-- the attack on Carentan.
View north along Voie De La Liberte (D974) at the North western end of the Church yard. This is the initial route that the reserve elements would have taken out of town to engage the last counter attack of the Germans on June 7th. Photo from author's collection.
Some evidence of the fighting directly opposite the church in SME. Bullet impacts all along an wrought iron fence just to the south of the Church grounds, at 8 Rue Eisenhower (Photos from author's collection)
Evidence of battle on the churchwall itself. Pock marks from bullets hitting the wall. (Photo from author's collection.)