Ce sont les memes chateaux
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
source for the Typhons attack:
http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/hawker_typhoon.htm
and:
Out of the unit history book Presenting the 35th Infantry Division in World War II, 1941 - 1945
"At La Meauffe every house and shop had been converted by the Germans into individual pillboxes. From behind hastily constructed barricades they poured forth streams of hot bullets and flesh-ripping grenades. But the Infantry did not falter. With full confidence in the precision of their artillery fire, they advanced steadily behind each well-placed salvo and wiped out nests of resistance.
Battling against fierce resistance, through entrenched positions, the men moved up the main road to famed "Purple Heart Corner." Here, in a solid stone chateau, behind a seven-foot granite wall, had been the Gestapo Headquarters. The Germans had studded it with machine guns which covered the road with withering fire. More Santa Fe men fell. But the steady advance was not to be stopped. By now the Santa Fe's troops had tasted battle. The initial nervousness and fear that besets each man in combat had lost its newness. The Boche, they had discovered, was not an impregnable superman. He was a good fighter, but the doughboys had taken the best he had to offer and had driven him back.
The 35th Infantry Division objective at the time was to take the north bank of the Vire River west of St. Lo.
6. The attack opened at 0530 11 July 1944 with a thirty-minute preparation by 35th Division Artillery reinforced by the fire of XIX Corps Artillery. At 0600 the 137th and 320th Infantries attacked. After taking the town of La Meauffe, the Division on the right advanced one and one half miles before being held up by a fortified church and chateau at St. Gilles.
Despite the loss of ground and many prepared positions, the enemy continued to fight stubbornly. A few hundred yards down the road, beyond "Purple Heart Corner," was his key defense in the area, the Church and the Chateau at St. Gilles. The Church was one of those pretty monuments that are often seen near the roadside in France. Erected in 1718 by the Corps de Denis, it stood sturdily by its quaint and well-kept cemetery, surrounded by several small buildings used by the church officials. The Church itself was built of sandstone and, like most edifices of that area, had walls eighteen inches in thickness. It was surmounted by a bell tower about fifty feet in height.
The beauty and sanctity of this haven did not prevent the enemy from converting it into a veritable fortress. It bristled with firepower and atop the bell tower was a German machine gun nest that commanded the approaches to the area. Close behind the church was a chateau, another thick-walled building with excellent facilities for fortification. To this building the enemy added embellishments of his own devising."
LaMeauffe:
Salut