Hardest work is beginning for the alleys. Shore is a monumental effort that requires years of years of compromises and politics and whatever else. Follows from june 7 onward just an absolute bloody slog that leads into nazi germany. Wru it be where it begins. Of dday in the sees thisto six days seized basically situation. Five distinctive. Anding beaches oma beach, the americans carved out an enlodgement for that and west of that, the utah beach. Is my focuss, that today is the American Experience normandy and little bit about what that buzz like. Dday, theath of Main Objective is to link up the distinctive beaches. Youre not going to do much of normandy and utah beaches are linked up as one basenuous entity and a point from which you will advance and take your other in normandy. Of geographynt happens to be the spot where it must happen. It is not a big town. 4,000 people in 1944. It is located near very low ground, much of which is flooded it. Arshy around at one time in napoleons day, almost like an island haduse french engineers manipulated the locks and the nearbynd the sea canals in such a way to isolate it. In 1944 butke that much of the land around it was inundated and many of you know the germany of defenses against the invasion is offlood certain portions normandy to foil operations. Is the focus of what 101th Airborne Division and the landings. The 101st had southward. Red around in about the first three to four dday, their fight is a matter of capturing dday objectives and for the commanderputting together an ent maneuver. Becomes its primary focus in 1944. It. s how he will do he will approach from the north. His 327th glider right. And go to the if you can see it on the map. I know this is something of a map. But these are the better maps youre going to get in terms of accuracy. It comes from the west point at last, which is an online website. I highly encourage you to check it out for, not just world war maps but other maps. Dont. Eally well the regimen along with the regimen will swing around to the right of the city. It. Will be east of the second parachute infantry coming inthe lead in from the north and swinging around and on their heels will famousably the most regimen in the 051st, the band of brothers. One way in from the north. This. Rmans know the causeway is mined and there are obstacles to prevent american movement. There is also there is also in one instance a german plane tracing a long column of infantry, which is an. Nusual experience not to mention the obstacles. Coverty on either side of the embankment. This then extremely difficult sometion, but there are distinctive farms just north of the town, and eventually, some paratroopers get in there. Most notably, italian a battalion led by a 27yearold west pointer, a soldiers soldier. We often associate what shall we put it Army Language with general george patton. He was sort of patents equal in terms of colorful Army Language and a colorful personality. Le had a manner of speaking gruffly but affectionately to his soldiers. He was a largerthanlife commander, the kind of person who likes to give his soldiers a hard time. To kind of tested them in that sense, to give them a hard time and see how they would react to his rather unique sense of humor, but he was also a rather inspirational commander in combat in terms of courage and professionalism. He had one of sorted the key moments of this push into the northern outskirts. He is going to loosely organize what is a rare and modern American Military history, which is a bayonet charge against the group of germans who control a Farm Building and surrounding head rooms more on those in a basically 60 to with coleroopers leading the way with a pistol. Theres an absurdly humorous moment that happens during this incredible assault. This drainagee gully or Drainage Ditch and just falls straight into it, and he is flashed up to here with water and has all these guys around him, going past him, following him, whatever, and he looks back and says, dont follow me, which is sort of the antiinfantry credo. He almost unconsciously goes against that. He does not want everybody falling into the ditch. He works his way out of there. Others are working their way straight up to germans. There are instances where they will bayonet germans in the stomach, believe it or not. They get their foot in the door by overrunning this german position in one of the key spot north of the town. Once they get artillery reinforcement, the germans are not able to counterattack and dislodge them, and this kind of opens the doorway into karen tan for the rest of the 101st Airborne Division, including, most notably the 506. The 506 will swing around from the left, come from the south, and then basically take it street by street. There were concerns you would have an entire german parachute regiment. As it turned out, they left a rearguard of about a company, and this fight is portrayed quite famously in the miniseries band of brothers, and portrayed very well. The key point is to defend it an approaching attack coming from the south. Why did the germans want carentan back . They understand that if it remains under american control, omaha beach and utah beach linked up, and the americans advanced from there, so the germans are quite cognizant of the objective. This fighting in the german counterattack, which takes place mainly june 11 through june 13, takes place outside of the city limits, not really in the town, but outside in the fields and , androws beyond carentan this is one of the few instances that allied leaders are able to receive intelligence what is called ultra intelligence the ability to break many german codes, operational codes, and figure out their intentions. General bradley, the u. S. First Army Commander has this ultra intelligence. He knows what 17 panzer grenadier is going to do, and he has 17 tanks to deal with them. They have landed hastily. They will enter the carentan site along with paratroopers, who are heavily armed to deal with tanks and paratroopers and whatever else, and they are going to stave off that counterattack successfully by june 12 and 13, allowing the heat of american beachheads to link up. This is important. This is significant. From there, where do the allies go . Distinct allied forces now, the americans and their allies from britain and canada, are dealing with different points of resistance, different obstacles. On the british side and canadian side, as you see, closer to there, the most potent adversary you have is the german units converging on you. Some of the most powerful units in the german army are warming to deal with the british and canadians there. , 21steans 12th ss panzer panzer you have pretty good Rolling Ground around cannes. Plateaus, farm fields that are right there in the summertime, you know, getting close to harvest. It is good tank country. There are some good roads. The british wanted for the obvious reason its the biggest city in normandy and the perfect pivot point to advance out of normandy. It is also an inlet port to help you logistics, to land supplies and people and whatever else. British general montgomery, 21st Army Group Commander, had hoped the first day on after dday he wouldnt deny this later in life, quite disingenuously. Instead, it takes about a month because they are facing some of the toughest units in the entire german army. One example the Canadian Third Division will ultimately end up in a blood feud with the affirmation 12th ss panzer division, a hitler youth division. Fanatical 16, 17, 18 youll the lanai of the hitler youth russiane hardline veterans fanatical 16, 17, alumni of the hitler youth. Shoot the they prisoners almost out of hand as they head down on the Eastern Front at times. Eventually, they collect them, and one by one execute them. At least 25 of them are killed in the garden of the abbey, and you can go this day and visited and see the memorial marker to the canadians who were killed there. The Canadian Third Division then will take no prisoners, at least they say, and they soon will basically lock horns throughout much of june in 19 much of june and much of july and 1940 four and basically destroy each other. The 12 ss into basically destroyed, but the Canadian Third Division is severely depleted. One thing about the Canadian Division in world war ii this was kind of a hangover from world war i. In world war i, you could get drafted and sent to go fight on the western front, and they had taken massive casualties. In world war ii, you had to be a volunteer to get sent overseas to fight in a combat unit. You could be drafted to serve and defend canada at home, but you could not necessarily be theted to go served in Canadian Third Division fighting in normandy. It was difficult for them to replenish manpower once they were losing people. The british are having some of the same problems, so i have a draft in which you could serve everywhere. For the americans, their main challenge is the terrain itself. Not that the german opposition should be taken lightly, but the terrain can do some of the turbans some of the defensive work for the germans in normandy. This is honeycombed with hedgerows. Youre looking at an aerial view from 1944. You will notice almost like a area,rboard sense of this this place, these fields. What are the hedgerows . Mostly, they are structured thusly . You have about a 48foot 8footment 4 to embankment. Sometimes stones or reinforcing material, but often reinforced with deep and the roots that date back many hundreds if not thousands of years. Is extensive, especially in summertime. Formidable natural obstacle. The hedgerows have been deliberately cultivated by norman farmers for at least two millennia, dating back to roman times. Used to delineate whose field was whose and to have kind of a border area. You can see you probably have deeply rooted trees, foliage,. Eeply packed earth the soil is very moist, very much the consistency of clay, very adhesive. Is beautiful soil, but obviously, it is very fermentable. For any attacker who is hoping to deal with it. This is kind of a presentday look at how confining this would be. The kind of a claustrophobic effect to this . Your visibility is limited. You are in the middle of this green, and you often sense just how thick some of these hedgerows are until you are right upon them. In that kind of circumstance, you can imagine it would be difficult to manipulate and maneuver units to know what is going on even a quarter of a mile away and to have any kind of sense of what the german opposition might be. You can also sense that any opening in the hedgerows is going to be covered by german weaponry. How are you going to move and take land and maneuver under these circumstances. This is what the u. S. Army comes face to face with a kind of stunning situation by about the second week of june or so of how to deal with this. The germans have learned very quickly how to fortify the various hedgerows, how to make the americans pay dearly. I also do not want to say there are no hedgerows and the british sector there are but the heaviest is on the american part of normandy. The u. S. Army from an operational and command standpoint, is not really prepared to deal with these hedgerows. Most of the training have focused on getting a sure and on maneuver warfare. What the u. S. Army is going to do well maneuver with vehicles, using a lot of firepower, use air power, all these kinds of things. Though there are certainly recognition that the hedgerows thet at high command level, french resistance, of course, has told them all about this. Normandy is not a mystical place. Many americans and britons and canadians have visited. George patton is a good example. He had visited during world war i and thereafter. Its not like this is brandnew, but there is this kind of disconnect between understanding there are hedgerows of normandy, but maybe they are sort of like the hedgerows in britain, which , anduch more like hedges maybe theyll have to deal with that. As a commander, at the small unit level, platoon, company, your people probably are not prepared for this. The u. S. Army is probably going to have to empathize. Initially, the performance for some units is really not good, really problematic. One of the regiments had come ashore on dday at utah beach. After the Fourth Division had taken the beach, or later in the day, i should say, and two other regiments are going to be landed, and they are going to. Ight Senior Leadership was really not up to the task. Is going to be a lot of fightings, a lot of turmoil. To be in thising learning curve throughout the week, and a lot of soldiers lose their lives or get wounded as people figure out how to deal with this. Ultimately, the 90th is going to end up as one of the finest units in the u. S. Army in europe, but as i mentioned, it is a steep learning curve. There are other units that struggle, too. Not quite as much as the 90th, but it is a problem. So how will they deal with them . Improvisation this is a bottomup kind of thing. Senior commanders are kind of noodling with this idea of how to deal with the hedgerows. Its really the sergeants and Junior Officers dealing with it on a daytoday basis. The solution to the whole thing is combined arms. Certainly, the first thing you have to do is create a new opening, right . Going to go through their opening and get killed, so how did you create that new opening . What they are thinking about is they have engineers with tnt and just blowing holes that way, but youre not have enough engineers or enough tnt you do not have enough engineers or enough tnt. Your tanks, what about them . One of the things they are going to start doing is welding prongs onto the front of United States army tanks in order to punch holes through the hedgerows. Of this guyclaims who did it first, that guy, whatever all of those are debatable because this is going on uniformly across the board. Each unit figuring it out on their own kind of thing. It is not as much of a unified kind of approach. I am giving you sort of the general picture of the fact that people are improvising and figuring out they will punch holes with tanks, but the tanks will be vulnerable on their own. If you send a tank through, punch through the hedgerow, theres a very good possibility therell be a german waiting on the other side of that hedgerow, crouching in a ditch with an antitank weapon, basically a fire and forget weapon that can basically punch a hole in your armor and destroy the tanks if close enough. You also have antitank weapons dug in, things like that. This is where you need infantry. Infantry must be right alongside those tanks as they punch through. The tanks will punch through a hedgerow, like you see, and they will figure there must be germans in the ditches or in the next hedgerow line or maybe the field, if they are dumb, but maybe close by. They will saturate the area with White Phosphorus shells. White phosphorus is a nasty weapon, basically designed to burn through all the way to the bone. When you burn by White Phosphorus, you do not put that out with water. That only feeds it with more oxygen and makes it worse. Only way to stop it is basically to cut off the oxygen supply, and that basically means packing it with motor or Something Like that, which can create infection, of course. No german soldier wants to have these little bits of White Phosphorus come down on him, catch his uniform on fire, burn through his skin. You can see that would be quite. Deterrent saturate them, and in the infantry will act as a bodyguard for the tanks, coming along the side, cleaning up the ditches, to use the armys euphemism, basically that means kill people, she people, take them prisoner, whatever would be. Engineers would sometimes be used maybe as Demolition Specialists or to deal with mines. U. S. Army is going to begin to fight this way, hedgerow to hedgerow throughout normandy, and it is still a slow and rather torturous process, but it works, especially because the germans do not have enough manpower or firepower to really hold off this growing u. S. Army. That is kind of the overview of how many of these battles he fought. Once you have the link up at the Main Objective is to move westward. Shouldnt they moved eastward toward germany . True, but they want to take the peninsula first. Inland from utah beach all the way to the opposite coast. The american planners believe they need the largest harbor and normandy, and just consider from a supply point of view, the more people you put ashore, the more people you had to sustain. You need thousands of tons of supplies to sustain the allied armies, and will only grow as you get into france. From the American Point of view, about 2 3 of this whole effort is going to be manpower. You need that to help feed your armies. The germans understand this, too, and they have fortified it through great extent. The first push across the peninsula through hedgerow country is through that town called barney ville, which you. Ee on the western coast the ninth Infantry Division takes it on june 18, 1944. The ninth division is an interesting unit. It had fought in the mediterranean and was more or less a regular army division, had a reputation for being a very strong unit in combat, nicknamed the old reliable. Later on, they will be called the octave foil. The ninth is going to be a key player for the u. S. Army in normandy. , thathey take bonneville means the germans are now sealed. Ff, mainly in their perimeter they may try and attack the other side of that redline you see, but from a german point of view, they are mainly. Reoccupied bradley lines up three u. S. Army divisions up in the peninsula, and sends them toward cherbourg in that second half of june, 1944. You will have the ninth edition on the western coast, as you would expect. In the middle, youll have the 79th Infantry Division. That division had fought in world war i. It is new to combat in world war ii. One of the things interesting about this division is if you