The German 6th Parachute Regiment in the Battle of Normandy was the strongest combat force encountered by the 101st Airborne Division of the US Army at that time, and the German troops in the Carenton area at the southern tip of the Tantan Peninsula in France should be some secondary garrison guard units, except for some old, weak, sick and disabled security forces, and there was no regular army guarding the Carenton area, based on this information, the 101st Airborne Division of the US Army did not take into account that the German army had an elite paratroop regiment in the Carentão area when the D Airborne Operation was launched, So what kind of unit is the 6th Parachute Regiment, and why did it appear in Carentan at the southern tip of the Dontan Peninsula in France?

The 6th Parachute Regiment of the German Army, because it is a regiment-level unit, you may be relatively unfamiliar, but when it comes to the 2nd Parachute Division of the German Army, everyone has a little impression, the 2nd Parachute Division of the German Army originally belonged to part of the North African Corps on Rommel, and created many legendary achievements in the North African Campaign, when the predecessor of the 2nd Parachute Division was the Ramk Paratroop Brigade of the Afrika Korps, the Ramk Paratroop Brigade was not completely annihilated at the end of the North African Campaign, and most of the troops left the African battlefield as early as January 1943, On February 13, 1943, the German 2nd Parachute Division was formally established in the Brittany Peninsula of France, 50% of the division was composed of veterans, and the division commander was Lieutenant General Ramk, who participated in the Battle of Crete and the North African campaign before its formation, and the Afrika Korps Lamb Parachute Brigade was named after him.

At the end of May 1944, in Paris, France, some German divisional officers were still drunk in a bar, including the commander of the 21st Panzer Division stationed in Caen, General Furchdinger. In the command of the French Army Group B at that time, Rommel was frowning all day long, he and the 84th Army, the commander General Marquez, were worried about the defense of Normandy, France, Rommel and the 84th Army, the commander General Marquez both believed that the Allied landing site was definitely not the Calais area, because Rommel's intuition told him that everything was possible before everything was settled, and it was absolutely impossible for the Allied intelligence department to reveal the news of the Allied landing in Calais, and the German deployment must have been known to the Allied intelligence agencies. The Allies were a million-strong army, and the Normandy Line was a handful of old, weak, sick and disabled, who were replaced. No one can sleep soundly. Just as Rommel left Normandy, he made a deployment that did not affect the overall situation, and after transferring the 6th Parachute Regiment to the Carentan area near the Normandy front, he was relieved to prepare to celebrate his wife's birthday. Because Rommel knew the strength of Army Group B, he had done his best to complete the deployment in all aspects, and it was useless to worry about it.

Cotentin Peninsula The Normandy Peninsula in northwestern France is prominent, located on the front line of the battle, when the troops stationed in this key area were only the French puppet army troops composed of the Eastern Infantry Regiment and a 795 Georgian Infantry Regiment, at the end of May, the wind and sun were beautiful in the Carentan area, a train entered the station, and the resident Madame Marie was looking at this military train from the window, unlike the German troops he had seen before, they got off the train station Everyone was in good spirits and young wearing camouflage uniforms, Morale was high and he walked out of the railway station with neat steps, and the sound of military boots resounded through the streets, and the commander of the 6th Parachute Regiment at that time was Von Brown. Colonel Heidt, who became the highest front-line commander of the German army in the region as soon as he arrived in Carentham, and the 6th Paratrooper Regiment had three paratrooper battalions under its command. Colonel Heidet was deployed on a 20-kilometer front in a radius, echoing the 795th Georgian Infantry Regiment of the Eastern Volunteer Regiment in the area, forming a well-organized divisional defensive force.

On the evening of June 5, the Normandy front sounded the siren, the officers and men of the 6th Parachute Regiment did not feel frightened but indifferently from the time they arrived in Carentan every day the siren sounded, but then the 6th Parachute Regiment found that something was wrong, under the illumination of the searchlights of the surrounding anti-aircraft artillery units, it seemed that the sky was full of American airborne troops, and the officers and men of the first battalion of the 6th Parachute Regiment immediately took a clean-up action, and captured many American prisoners in the sortie that night. Colonel Hydet immediately rushed to the headquarters in person for interrogation, during the interrogation, Colonel Hydet was not only shocked into a cold sweat, the Allies would land on June 6, he immediately called the nearby 91st Air Force Field Division, so that the 91st Air Force Field Division was ready to deploy in advance, and then immediately gathered the main force of the 6th Parachute Regiment to move closer to the Utah beachhead in Normandy, when the 6th Parachute Regiment had 4,500 troops, but there was a serious lack of vehicles and a large number of heavy equipment had to run to the beach by shoulder-bearing, By the way, the US paratroopers along the road are clear, the fierce fighting between the two sides was very fierce and even delayed for a night, one night after annihilating more than 300 US troops airborne blocking troops, the 1st Battalion of the paratroopers found that it was surrounded by the US paratroopers troops, and the first battalion was almost completely wiped out on the first day of the fierce battle. Colonel Headert inspected the situation on the battlefield and quickly adjusted his deployment, allowing the 2nd and 3rd Battalions to retreat to the preset positions in Carentham, holding all key towns and highway intersections, and establishing a new defensive line. On June 6, the 6th Parachute Regiment annihilated more than 400 American troops and destroyed 8 Allied tanks, which came from the fact that the 1st Paratrooper Battalion and the American paratrooper unit died together, and on 7 June, only 35 soldiers of the 1st Battalion successfully broke through to the Carentan assembly point.

On June 7, the 101st Airborne Corps of the United States Army suffered serious losses and reported the encounter with the elite units of the German army, and the German 6th Infantry Regiment was listed as the object of special attention by the Allies, and the Allies listed the German 6th Parachute Regiment as a German unit with strong combat effectiveness, and the intelligence of the 101st Airborne Division by the Allied command only said that the German unit was better equipped than other German troops and must act vigilantly. After the 101st Airborne Division learned some erroneous information about the 6th Parachute Division, the recruits of the 101st Airborne Division of the US Army marched forward bravely towards Carentan, as if they had been injected with a stimulant, and the result was that the 101st Airborne Division of the US Army did not expect that they could not even capture a small town junction in their offensive battle, and called in tank troops to support, but they were ambushed by the iron fist bazooka of the German 6th Parachute Regiment.

The U.S. Army fought in Carentan until mid-July, when 3,000 soldiers from the 2nd Battalion and 3rd Battalion of the 6th German Parachute Regiment blocked nearly 5,000 troops of the 101st Airborne Division of the U.S. Army, plus the main support of the U.S. Army, a total of more than 80,000 people, and then the 6th Parachute Regiment was supported by the 17th SS Panzergrenadier Division and fought fiercely on the Normandy front until about August. Only this battle was written into the archives of the German 6th Parachute Regiment by the US Army: "The 6th Parachute Regiment is one of the most well-equipped German units in the entire Normandy region of the German army. "The 6th paratrooper regiment is well armed? At that time, if the 6th Parachute Regiment had vehicles and artillery, it was doubtful that the Allies would be able to successfully land on Utah Beach, and each paratrooper company of the regiment had 18 MG42 machine guns, 3 80mm mortars, 12 MG42, 4 80mm mortars, and the only heavy weapon of the 6th Parachute Regiment was 9 120mm heavy mortars, 24 75mm infantry guns, and 36 75mm anti-tank guns. It seems to be well-equipped, but it is actually the regular equipment of an ordinary corps of the German army, and the firepower of these firepower is relatively weak in the Eastern Front battlefield, the problem is that the 6th Parachute Regiment arrives at Carentão by train, and these heavy equipment can only be set up in advance in the defensive position due to the lack of vehicle movement, and the main individual anti-armor firepower of the 6th Parachute Regiment comes from 34 German iron fist bazookas.

In the Carentan region at the southern tip of the Cotentin Peninsula in German-occupied France, residents are seeing the constant arrival of German reinforcements. Even more troubling was the fact that the new arrivals were not the old veterans, the disciplined garrisons or the lazy cooks, who lined up in neat lines as soon as they got off the train, and looked very demoralized, although their faces were a little tired. Beneath the coal hopper-shaped helmets wrapped in camouflage nets are young faces, dressed in distinctive camouflage uniforms and low-top combat boots – elite German paratroopers.

These paratroopers belonged to the German 6th Parachute Regiment and was commanded by Air Force Major Friedrich August Freihel von der Heidet. The transfer of the 6th Parachute Regiment to the Carantan area was a measure taken by the German forces on the Western Front in response to a possible Allied offensive. After the Normandy landings, the 6th Parachute Regiment was in the center of the first round of fierce fighting, which also created a rare paratrooper duel in World War II.

On the night of June 5, Major Heidet left the city in a command car and went to Rennes, a city in northern France, to participate in a sand table exercise. He set up a regimental headquarters at Perrier, south of Carentham, and placed three paratrooper battalions in turn in an area about 20 kilometers long and 15 kilometers deep on the southern outskirts of Carentham. As for the Allied attack, there were almost daily alerts, but then they were lifted every day.

Major Heidet's car turned halfway down the road to a French mansion on the outskirts of the city, where General Marcus of the German army lived. The two had planned to travel together. As a result, an alarm suddenly came in, saying that there was an emergency and asking the officers to "stay in the command headquarters". When Heidt returned to Perrier the next morning, there was already chaos. Staff officers rushed up and reported multiple incidents of sabotage during the night, but no further details were available. The Germans were paralyzed by a surge in radio communications in the region, unable to provide them with more information.

Men reported that a number of prisoners, all of them Americans, had been captured on the outskirts of Carentham. Heidt's personal interrogation revealed that in the hours after midnight on June 6, American paratroopers had jumped from the sky into his zone. The 1st Parachute Battalion reported "100~150 people fell", the 3rd Parachute Battalion reported "500 people fell", and as for the number of the enemy, it should be the 101st Regiment and the 506th Regiment of the 506th Airborne Division.

Headert immediately alerted the 91st Air Force Field Division, which was deployed close to the shoreline. Born in March 1907 into an aristocratic family in Munich, Heidt commanded a paratrooper battalion in Crete and was awarded a Knight's Cross for the first assault on the island's capital, Chania. Probably no one in the German army knew better than him what a paratroop drop of this magnitude meant.

Heidet urgently drew up a battle plan to advance his headquarters from Perrier to the small town of Saint-Como Dumont, north of Carentin, and ordered the battalions to move north at once to attack.

Saint-Como Dumont is a small transport hub that connects the interior of France with the seaside at the northern tip of the Cotentin peninsula by road. Hydet ordered the paratroopers to hold the junction and the flooded fields on the side of the road, "so that the Americans could not make any breakthrough." ”

In the new headquarters, Hydet officially sent a report to the headquarters of the 2nd Parachute Division: "This regiment is engaged in an exchange of fire. ”

In accordance with an urgent order issued by Heidt on the 6th, the 1st Battalion of the regiment marched north of San Como Dumont, intending to reach the position of the bunker group directly opposite the beach (Utah beachhead); The 2nd Battalion also moved north, preparing to join the 795th Georgian Infantry Battalion, which was then part of the French "Eastern Division"; The 3rd Battalion remained in the rear as a reserve.

The greatest capital of the 6th Regiment was the command level with rich combat experience. After the Battle of Crete, Heidt moved to Russia and North Africa, and was once part of the legendary Ramch Paratrooper Brigade. After the Battle of El Alamein, even Rommel was amazed that Heidet's paratrooper training battalion made the long journey back to Tunisia on foot without any vehicles.

The 3 battalion commanders of the 6th Regiment were all paratrooper veterans. 2 Battalion Commander Rolf. Major Megale came from the 1st Parachute Regiment and received numerous medals, but the gold Close Quarters Medal pinned to the left pocket of his uniform was a rarity. Throughout World War II, 633 German officers and soldiers received such medals, and only 2 paratroopers were killed.

One-third of the regiment's officers and one-fifth of its non-commissioned officers had fought on the Eastern Front or in Italy, forming the backbone of this unit that had not been rebuilt for a long time. Most of the soldiers in the regiment came from the paratrooper school and the air force field division, and the average age was less than 18 years old, as young and fanatical as the 12th SS Panzer Division "Hitler Youth".