Paratroopers of the U.S. Army’s 82nd Airborne in Normandy. For days after the June 6, 1944 Allied invasion of France, a group of lost and cut-off members of the 82nd’s were taken in and sheltered by residents of a small town near Carentan. (Image source: U.S. National Archives)“It began when 12-year-old Marthe encountered a ‘tall’ paratrooper without a helmet or weapons who asked for shelter. Marthe went to the nearby home of her grandfather, seeking advice. The old man cautioned the girl. ‘We will all be shot,’ he warned her.”
By Stephen G. Rabe
WHAT HAPPENED between June 6 and June 16, 1944 in Graignes, Normandy, a village of 900 people situated about six miles south of the port town of Carentan, is one of the more amazing (yet forgotten) chapters of Operation Overlord.
Graignes curious part of the story began at 2:38 a.m. on D-Day. That’s when a formation of Allied C-47 transport planes dropped nine “sticks” of paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne and one stick from the 101st Airborne into the marshes or marais near Graignes. It was not the intended drop zone; the paratroopers, many from the 507th Parachute Infantry Regiment, were more than 20 miles off-target.
Despite being far from where they were supposed to be, the ranking officer on the ground gathered what men he could find and opted to defend the unoccupied village and wait for the infantry soon to be pushing inland from Omaha Beach. The villagers in Graignes were overjoyed by the decision. Many waded into the marais to retrieve the paratroopers’ equipment, while gathering intelligence and carrying out their own impromptu reconnaissance of the surrounding area.
Graignes. (Image source: Google Maps)The women of the village launched a round-the-clock cooking campaign to feed their liberators, who now numbered about 165 uniformed personnel. Since food was scarce, many slipped into nearby towns to forage – a risky undertaking considering the battle for Normandy was now underway and enemy soldiers might very well have mistaken them for spies or the French underground.
To be sure, the people of Graignes despised the Nazis. Middle-aged men, including the parish priest, were proud veterans of the First World War, while the young men from the village who had been in the French army were still being held as POWs inside Germany itself. Worse, the occupiers were seizing other young men to work as forced labourers. Children went hungry under the Nazi-imposed food rationing system. And if that wasn’t enough, German troops were also stealing the region’s renowned Normande cows.
Soldiers of the 17thWaffen-SS Panzergrenadier Division. (Image source: WikiMedia Commons)The American paratroopers held the town for five days until the enemy launched a series of counter-attacks. Over the course of Sunday, June 11, the airborne fended off three German assaults. The defenders of Graignes, armed with rifles, five light machine-guns and two 81mm mortars, easily repulsed the morning attack launched by German forces in the area. The afternoon and evening saw much fiercer onslaughts carried out by a battalion of troops from the 17thWaffen-SS Panzergrenadier Division. This time, the enemy brought heavier weapons with them, including artillery. Realizing his troops were outnumbered, outgunned and now out of ammunition, the American commander ordered the paratroopers to withdraw from the village., leaving many of their casualties behind.
Graignes fell back into German hands. Once in the town, the SS troops carried out ruthless reprisals against the civilians. In addition to murdering four villagers, including the parish priest, for the crime of ministering to wounded GIs, they tortured and executed 19 injured paratroopers, including the medics left to care for them. The Germans further threatened to slaughter prominent citizens for collaborating. Despite this, the villagers refused to cooperate. Other German forces arrived and evacuated Graignes before burning much of the town to the ground.
The citizens of Graignes have never forgotten the valiant efforts of paratroopers of the 507th Regiment to defend their village. Memorial plaques abound throughout the village.(Image source: The author)But the resistance of the residents didn’t end there; some villagers would lend a hand to other American paratroopers in the area.
When a column of 90 airborne troops, led by a captain named David Brummitt, made their way through 10 miles of marais to reach Carentan, which was in the process of being liberated by the 101st Airborne, Graignes villagers provided food and vital intelligence. Brummitt and his men reached U.S. forces there on Tuesday, June 13. The captain earned the Silver Star for his leadership. The people of Graignes helped other bands of lost airborne as well.
One large group of paratroopers hid in the barn of Gustave and Marthe Rigault near Graignes for several days after the chaotic June 6 drops into France. The Rigault children, Odette and Marthe, saved the lives of 21 paratroopers in all.
It began when 12-year-old Marthe encountered a “tall” paratrooper without a helmet or weapons who asked for shelter. Marthe went to the nearby home of her grandfather, seeking advice. The old man cautioned the girl. “We will all be shot,” he warned her. Marthe disobeyed however and brought the American to the family’s barn. Upon entering, he found four other paratroopers already hiding there. It turned out Marthe’s older sister, Odette, had herself been busy rounding up the scattered defenders of Graignes. When the number of paratroops in the barn reached 10, the sisters had to tell their parents what they were doing.
The girls need not have worried about their parents refusing to help. Their father Gustave had seen two paratroopers emerging from the marais and brought them to the barn himself. The family patriarch, who carried German shrapnel in his knee from the First World War, had also aided British soldiers fleeing the Germans in 1940.
This is the Rigault family barn as it appeared in 2019. The barn was approximately 14 feet wide and 36 feet in length. The loft had a clearance of 5 to 6 feet.(Image source: The author)As the days wore on, the family did their best to feed their growing number of guests with what little they had. Fearing any Germans watching the farm from the surrounding countryside might suspect the barn was full of fugitive paratroopers, one of the girls would pretend to be doing chores in the yard while sneaking food into the barn. She would cough to signal her approach and one of the famished Americans would sneak down from the loft and retrieve the food.
One of the paratroopers, S/Sgt. Rene Rabe, would forever proclaim that his portion of boiled cabbage with melting butter was the best meal of his life.
As the paratroopers ran out of cigarettes, Sgt. Frank Costa, a non-smoker in the group, recalled the men sharing the last butt they had between them.
“It was sad and at the same time funny to see 11 men taking a deep drag, holding the smoke in their mouths, reluctant to let it out,” he remembered. “It was like taking their last breath, hanging on for dear life.”
At one point, the paratroops were very nearly discovered when two enemy infantrymen, searching for lost U.S. soldiers, walked into the barn. The paratroopers, hiding in the hayloft, trained their rifles on the intruders and one of them, T/4 Eddie Page, pulled the pin on a hand grenade. After a cursory search, the two Germans left.
“It’s a good thing that the Krauts goldbrick sometimes; just like we do,” Page later recalled.
One of Page’s buddies had to help him put the pin back into the spoon of the grenade.
Had the Americans been discovered, it would have meant summary execution for the Rigault family.
That was not the only close brush the Rigaults and the Americans had with the enemy. The shrewd family matriarch, Madame Marthe, averted another potential disaster as a patrol of 30 German soldiers moved toward the barn. Posing as a friendly civilian, she gave the enemy directions that sent them off in another direction.
“We were all so afraid once more,” recalled the young Marthe.
And the anxiety and pressure continued to mount.
“We were living, but we no longer had any notion of the passage of time,” Odette remembered. “We lived only to save these people and wondered what would become of them.”
Members of the Mortar Platoon of Headquarters Company of the Third Battalion of the 507th Regiment of the 82nd Airborne Division (Image source: S/Sgt. Rene E. Rabe)But a point came when the family decided the risks were growing too great; the Americans would have to go.
Unfortunately, the paratrooper’s first escape went awry. On June 14, Madame Rigault drew up a map for them to find the canals that would lead them to Carentan. The family provided the soldiers with some small flat boats to get through the marshes. After bracing themselves with a final shot of calvados, a local apple brandy, the Americans set out. The gambit ended in failure however when troopers became lost and their tiny craft filled with water.
The Rigaults were shocked to find that the paratroopers had returned to the barn.
A better plan was soon hatched. A single large, flat boat, of seven to eight meters in length, known as a gabare, was anchored on the water nearby. It was normally used to transport heavy loads, like bags of sand.
The family recruited neighbour Joseph Folliot to punt the gabare. Marthe placed a white flower in the lapels of each of the paratroopers and before they departed, the Americans all signed a letter commending the Rigault family to U.S. military authorities. The GIs clambered into the vessel, with some of them lying in the bottom. Gustave and his two girls formed a human chain to push the gabare through the marais until it reached the current of a river.
The perilous voyage proved to be remarkably unremarkable. The men left at dusk and arrived before midnight on Thursday, June 15. Folliot guided the gabare through the canals, arriving at St. Hilaire, a hamlet just 300 meters south of Carentan. The fugitives encountered no hostile forces. Once on shore, the paratroopers were challenged by sentries and were soon transported by truck back to the command post of the 82nd Airborne. On Saturday, June 16, the men were safe and enjoying a meal of pork and beans.
Sadly, Joseph Folliot paid the ultimate price for his heroism. The French patriot returned safely, but the Germans discovered that the gabare had been moved. They arrested him and reportedly executed him.
Marthe Rigault at her home with the author’s wife. Her Distinguished Service Medal is proudly displayed on her mantel. Also visible is a commendation to her father, Gustave, from General Dwight D. Eisenhower and commendations to the family from Presidents Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama. The redoubtable heroine of Graignes celebrated her 90th birthday in October 2022. (Image source: the author) (Image source: The author)The villagers of Graignes contributed to Allied victory. The 507th Parachute Infantry Regiment continued the fight in Normandy and would go on to participate in the Battle of the Bulge. Later they’d be part of Operation Varsity, the Allied jump over the Rhine River on March 24, 1945. While fighting in the Rhineland region, the paratroopers liberated thousands of Eastern European slave laborers. Fortunately, almost all of the paratroopers who escaped Graignes, survived the war.
Through the efforts of Col. Frank Naughton and Lt. Col. Earcle Reed, both of whom served at Graignes and became career military officers, the people of Graignes eventually received high honours. In a grand ceremony in Graignes in 1986, Secretary of the Army John O. Marsh awarded eleven Distinguished Service Medals. Honourees included the Rigault sisters, Joseph Folliot, and the murdered parish priest, Father Albert Le Blastier.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Dr. Stephen G. Rabe is the author of The Lost Paratroopers of Normandy. The Ashbel Smith Chair in History (emeritus) at the University of Texas at Dallas, he taught for 40 years after serving in the U.S. Marine Corps from 1970 to 1976. His paratrooper father, S/Sgt. Rene E. Rabe, made the epic journey from Normandy to Berlin from 1944 to 1945. S/Sgt. Rabe was awarded multiple Purple Hearts and Bronze Stars. The Lost Paratroopers is Dr. Rabe’s 13th book and is published by Cambridge University Press.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who founded the United States military?
In the United States, the Revolutionary War began in 1775 when colonists rebelled against British rule. Even though there had been conflicts between Britain’s colonies and Britain in the past, the American Revolution marked a new war for independence.
The Americans fought for freedom and liberty from tyranny. Their cause was led by George Washington, a former general under the British crown. He rallied his troops at New York City, won the Battle of Long Island and effectively ended the fighting in North America.
The British, however, continued fighting in Europe and defeated the Continental Army at Siege of Boston 1776. The United States was established as a nation in the year that followed.
The Treaty of Paris, signed in 1783, officially recognized the United States' independence as a country. This treaty also formally ended the Revolutionary War.
Though the Revolutionary War ended, tensions between the two countries remained high. Despite not being officially at war, both countries were constantly under threat of invasion.
After the Revolutionary War, the United States emerged as one of the largest economies in the world. But the new government had no strong central authority. Instead, states competed to control land and other resources.
This was solved by the U.S. Constitution. This document granted federal powers to the executive and gave certain rights to the state governments. It established the Supreme Court as the final arbiter in constitutional disputes.
Despite these important reforms the U.S.'s first major war broke out less than ten years following the ratification. President James Madison signed the War of 1812 into law in 1812.
The United States was in economic trouble at the time of War of 1812. Many believed the Federalist Party lacked control over the Senate and presidency. They feared that the administration might try to ignore them.
The War of 1812 was started by the United States to defend itself against further attacks from Napoleon Bonaparte who ruled France. The French emperor invaded Spain.
The United States declared war on April 19, 1812. The goal was to defend the nation's territory. The war lasted until February 1815. Peace negotiations took place in Ghent.
Despite having more troops than its enemies, the U.S. won the War of 1812. Still, the war helped establish the U.S. Navy and strengthened ties between the Northern and Southern states.
What amount of money did the U.S. invest in the Vietnam War?
We spent 6 trillion dollars fighting the war. And we lost. There were many lives lost.
I'm sure there were other costs involved, but those were the big ones.
It is difficult to calculate war costs because you must look beyond military spending. It's also important to take into account the costs of providing for our veterans.
There is also the draft cost. This ended when the average American man reached the age of 21. An estimated 1,000,000 young men were involved in the draft.
Many of them didn't get drafted. They were not required to serve but many had to go college.
It also meant that tuition fees for students went up dramatically. The total cost of tuition fees is close to $1 trillion if you add the cost for the GI bill.
It is also increasing in cost.
In fact, according to the National Priorities Project the lifetime cost for caring for disabled vets could rise to $4.3 trillion.
Add to this the cost for health care for survivors of the war.
At any rate, the bottom line is that the United States spent more money fighting the Vietnam War than we've spent on wars since.
What are the 3 types wars?
War can be a very emotional experience for both the aggressor and the victim. There is excitement and anticipation for the aggressor. He wants to make the enemy suffer. To him, it is a game of strategy and tactics.
Fear, uncertainty, confusion, are the three main emotions of the victim. He knows he is outnumbered and outgunned. He doesn't know where the fight will come from or how much damage he'll sustain.
He is victorious in the end. He feels strong. He looks forward to his next battle. His mind is sharp and clear.
He is aware he might lose but he is willing to accept it. He is ready to lose. He accepts the fact that his adversary is stronger and more experienced.
The winner regards himself as the master of all his domains. He believes that he is invincible. He believes victory is certain.
War is more than just physical. It's mental too.
It's psychological war.
It's about winning hearts and minds.
It's all about convincing people to follow your example and not your opponent.
What is the significance of military history?
Over the past few decades, there has been an unprecedented rise of conflict around the globe. It seems that there are many countries engaged in armed conflicts, from Syria to Ukraine and Libyan to Iraq. But why do these wars continue to break out? Why do we continue to experience war after wars? Is it possible for humans to live peacefully together in such close quarters?
The answer lies in our collective memory. Although we may not be aware of it, when we reflect on the events in the 20th century, violence between nations is all too common. We live in an era of great change.
World War II ended 70 year ago this year. But it was during a time of rapid technological advances, which included the development the atomic-bomb. These advancements led to the creation and expansion of a global economy. This economic system, in turn, created the conditions for a worldwide political movement known as "globalization."
Globalization is a constant process. It's easy for us to forget how far we have come since 1945. The world is interconnected today; nearly 40% of global GDP is now international trade. Most Americans rely on foreign goods in their daily lives.
Despite the huge changes caused by globalization however, humanity continues to struggle with a fundamental problem: Conflict cannot be avoided. While it is understandable to desire peace and prosperity in all countries, it can also be unrealistic. As long as people exist, they will strive for power and wealth.
This is precisely why we have to learn from our past mistakes. We must identify the root causes of our conflicts if we want to avoid them in the future.
Understanding the history of warfare is essential to develop strategies for preventing future conflicts. So let's begin with World War II. What was the reason for this war? How did it begin? What were the main causes of war?
What did the Vietnam War look like at the beginning?
As the war began, the North Vietnamese Army was equipped with better equipment and had more soldiers. American soldiers however had greater firepower, including air and artillery support.
Also, the NVA enjoyed a huge advantage in manpower. There were almost twice as many Communist troops fighting them than there were U.S soldiers.
After two years of constant combat, the United States' military force became stronger and its enemy weaker. By 1969, the number of Americans killed in action exceeded those lost during World War II.
This shift in momentum was caused by the introduction of new weapons systems, and tactical innovations. The introduction of helicopter gunships, and aircraft carriers enabled commanders from the United States to strike deep into enemy territory.
This made the conflict less popular among the general population, especially young people. A survey found that less then half of college students supported this war effort. During this time, the U.S. and South Vietnam were using chemical warfare against the Viet Cong. Students for a Democratic Society was one of the many groups that protested this tactic.
Statistics
- Of military historians, 0% are Socialist, 8% are Other, 35% are Liberal, and 18% are (en.wikipedia.org)
- According to Peter Fraser Purton, the best evidence of the earliest gun in Europe is the Loshult gun, dated to the fourteenth century. (en.wikipedia.org)
External Links
usacac.army.mil
thegriffon108.com
history.army.mil
How To
What did the U.S. do during WWII?
The United States, Russia, and China had been allies since 1941, when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. Hitler turned his eyes to the Soviet Union after Germany invaded Russia on June 1941. Operation Barbarossa was his invasion of the Soviet Union. It was launched in December 1941.
Hitler wanted Stalin forced to accept peace in order to give him more time for preparations for his next operations against Britain. He also hoped that the Red Army would be destroyed so that German troops could concentrate their efforts on destroying the British Royal Air Force.
Stalin continued fighting even though the war was over. He believed that the USSR should be able to persist in its industrialization efforts for a long time.
However, the Soviets made the biggest mistake of all. Hitler sent Field Marshal Erich von Manstein, General Heinz Guderian, to Moscow in July 1944 to persuade Stalin into surrendering. Stalin refused to listen, believing that the Germans had already lost too much blood and wealth to defeat the Russians.
The Red Army launched counterattacks in August 1944 against the Wehrmacht, a German military force, in East Prussia. On September 2, 1944, Hitler ordered the encirclement and destruction of the Red Army.
The German army captured Stalingrad in February 1943 and Leningrad in January 1944. Hitler began a massive offensive against Soviet Union during the summer of 1944. Hitler made plans to invade Finland and the Baltic states in July 1944.
The Allies made land in France on August 21, 1944. Two days later, Germany was invaded by the Soviet Union. This resulted in the Battle of Kursk where the Germans defeated Red Army.
Hitler launched an enormous attack on the Western Front after the battle. His goal was Paris capture. However, Allied forces stopped the German advance at the River Seine.
At the same time, the Americans dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan. Emperor Hirohito accepted unconditional surrender. World War II came to an abrupt halt on August 14, 1945.
