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CAUQUIGNY
Manche
- 4 km west of Sainte-Mère-Eglise
A little chapel in the heart of the Hell
In the night of 5 to 6 June 1944, the 2nd battalion 507th Infantry
Regiment of the 82nd Airborne Division landed in Normandy; Colonel
Timmes, its Commander, nearly drowned in the flooded area of the Merderet.
With a bunch of parachutists, he moved toward the main objective of
D-day. Cauquigny must be conquered, allowing the Allied Forces to
progress inland out of the bridgehead of Utah Beach. At 11: 30 am
a company, under Lieutenant Levy, established an outpost in the cemetery
of Cauquigny chapel. The junction was made with the paras entrenched
in the manor of La Fière. In the mid afternoon, the Germans
carried out an assault with tanks, they took back Cauquigny but they
were stopped dead at La Fière. On 9 June, General Gavin launched
a counter-attack with support of artillery. The paras of the 507th
Regiment and the 325th Gliders Regiment underwent heavy losses but
they seized again Cauquigny, where General Ridgway settled down his
headquarter. The German resistance was broken with the reinforcement
of the tanks of the 746th Tank Battalion.
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507th PIR plaque
