Word: carentan
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Dates: during 1944-1944
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Omar Bradley, Walton with the paratroopers, Ragsdale on an American warship, British-born Dennis Scanlan on a British destroyer; White was attached to Montgomery's headquarters; Jack Belden was assigned to the American landing forces near Carentan; and Mary Welsh was flying around the airfields in Britain talking to returning flyers...
...problem was to take Cherbourg, and to take it fast. To this task a U.S. army under Lieut. General Omar N. Bradley was assigned. It was known in advance that the Americans' job would be tough: the Nazis had flooded 500,000 acres around Carentan to depths up to seven feet. Four days after landing, the Americans captured some of the sluice gates at Trevieres, started to drain the drowned land. But there was no assurance that the land would dry out enough to permit maneuver by heavy armor...
...plus-six, despite the intervening hell of fire, high winds and high water, the Allies sped up their advance. U.S. troops took Carentan, drove farther south-west toward sealing off the peninsula. Said Montgomery: "American troops did absolutely magnificently," recovering from a situation in which they had been "hanging on by their eyelids. ... I am very pleased with the progress so far. Our soldiers . . . are in tremendous form . . . full of beans. And they have already got the measure of the enemy...