Blog Posts tagged with "paratrooper"

I finally arrived in Northern France to St. Mere Eglise (SME). My hotel is located just to the outskirts of town and was an easy walk into the town square. It is a surreal feeling to walk through such a historic location without the aid of an Xbox game controller while playing the latest Call of Duty video game or through a production that either starred or was directed by Tom Hanks. Here it was in real life and it really feels like history is alive here.

This small town was founded in the 11th century but will forever be known as one of the first towns to be liberated from Nazi Germany by the Allied Forces during the Normandy landings to include the 82nd Airborne and U.S. 101st Airborne Divisions on June 6th, 1944.

The most famous of those first troops was John Steele, whose parachute was stuck on the town chapel in SME during the early morning hours of June 6th. SME was targeted for attack and a stray incendiary bomb had set fire to a house east of the town square. The church bell was rung to alert the town of the emergency and townspeople turned out in large numbers to form a bucket brigade supervised by members of the German garrison.

The mannequin paratrooper hangs below the parachute.

By 0100hrs, the town square was well-lit and filled with German soldiers and villagers when paratroopers from the 1st and 2nd battalions were dropped in error directly over the village. After John Steele's chute caught on the chapel, he played dead for two hours and watched his fellow soldiers fight it out before the Germans cut him down and took him prisoner. The town was finally taken from the Germans by 0500 that morning.

Steele's ordeal lives on today by the mannequin in uniform that hangs from the same spot on the chapel in the center of town. This mannequin now has the best seat in the house as U.S., French, British and German troops descend upon SME and Northern France to commemorate the 66th anniversary of D-Day events throughout this week. Along with the current service members from these countries are the veterans of those allied forces that will always remember and families of the local French communities that will never forget.

Stay tuned for more!
LCDR Taylor Clark