Ltc Robert G. Cole, Carentan

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Gennaker
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Ltc Robert G. Cole, Carentan

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Alors que la 101st Airborne doit rembarquer vers le 12 juillet 44 à Utah Beach sur LST pour rejoindre l'Angleterre, ce déplacement est retardé par le Signal Corps qui souhaite interviewer le Ltc Robert Cole et son XO, le major John Stopka à Carentan sur les événements de Purple Heart Lane…

http://youtu.be/3eMe6xNlsk4
J'ai retranscrit l'ITW…. petit exercice d'anglais dans le texte ah ah…
"I'm LTC RG Cole, 3rd Battalion, 502nd Parachute Infantry 101st Airborne Division. We were ordered on June 10th to come up this road, take Carentan, and proceed some mile, mile and a half beyond Carentan to a point called la Billonnerie, the battalion objective. Initially the attack was ordered for 3 o clock in the morning. However, on reaching this bridge here the… engineers had not been able to put a footbridge across for the battalion due to heavy shell fire on the bridge. Again, on the morning of the 10th, the regimental commander, Colonel Michaelis told me that the division commander desired to go ahead with my attack that day. On reconnaissance about noon on the 10th, we came down to the bridge Captain Clements of Company G and myself, and several men, looked around the area in the daylight. We found that the bridge was not under very heavy shell fire and by being cautious and keeping well dispersed we could perhaps stretch a rope across the bridge where it was blown out and by using some of these fences in there, put a passable foot board across. This we did and we set it up around 3 o Clock. About 3.30 the initial element of the battalion, the leading platoon of D Company commanded by Lt Erwin started across , one man at a time, about one minute interval. we had no trouble with enemy fire initially. However as soon as the men got along the bank here in any numbers and if they did not stay down the enemy fired quite heavily on the roadway and on the bridge. Also at times when the men tried to get across the bridge with their machine guns and ammunition, two or three of them would get bunched up there, the enemy would open fire and shooting 88s that would come right across the men in the water.
Wetton, tell us about the time when you went across…

Wetton
My company received orders to move at 2 o clock saturday afternoon. We arrived at first bridge without any trouble and started crossing it in single file. One man would go across it and get on the other side and another one followed about 10 yards apart. We crossed the first bridge and got to the second one which was under rifle fire, sniping fire and 88 fire. The company commander had the first platoon cross the bridge. they take up position on the other side and i was sent across to find out what the situation was andy to cross that bridge you had to cross on a rope and this big fence had been made so I cross two ropes and made the… bridge. We managed to cross that bridge and took top position in a ditch on the other side of that bridge all the time snipers were firing at us.

Ltc R G Cole
The battalion stayed in position along the causeway there the remaining of the afternoon june the 10th and were unable to duo anything… they were under heavy fire from this… in this area. we stayed there during the night and about twelve o clock or one o clock the Nazis bombers with two planes … by our one air force. During the morning early morning at about 4 o clock we were able to infiltrate men across the bridge there one at a time at about one meter interval and we got them scattered along the road and on the field on the other side of the road. At five 15 o clock[/youtube]
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