This little town was top strategic for both sides. For the Allies, the bridges, the main road and the railway, had to be seized at any cost. Here was the only way to get in or out of the Cherbourg peninsula as everything else was flooded.

But the Germans realized that keeping control of Carentan would allow them to keep the two American sectors divided and to stop the U.S advance to the south. The American paratroopers had to fight against the elite of the enemy in Normandy : German paratroopers !

The battle, which raged until June 12, as shown in “Band of Brothers” #3, was a succession of heroic actions of the Screaming Eagles : the “Purple Heart Lane”, “Cole’s Bayonet Charge”, the “Cabbage Patch Attack”, the “Bloody Gulch”.