Hi Pat, I had not remembered seeing that photo before, but looking at it now I think it is miss marked much like the General Pratt crash location is miss marked in another photo. I have learned a lot from Niels off forum, and what I learned is that there was a battery just west of the number 4 in your photo at the hedgerow area. The battery belonged to the 13th Company of the 919th Grenadier Regiment (13/919) and they consisted of 6 Russian 7,62cm howitzers that were likely type I K H 290(r). The batteries size at the time was only 4 guns, because a 2 gun platoon was also located near Cauvin to cover the plains north of Carentan. Here is where the battery was located... John
Hi John, Ah, OK, so that's the position marked as '110' on the German Map extract on page 10 of the same book? Regards, Pat
Hi Pat, yes that is correct. Now to make things even more complicated, in the book I got in Normandy this June called "Atlantikwall Utah Beach" by Alain Chazette, on page 28 he mentions that, and it is also mentioned to me by Simon Trew, that "a battery comprising four 7.62 cm field pieces (Russian l.K.H.290 (r)) under the command of Oberleutnant Schon, forming part of 13th Company, 919th Grenadier Regiment" was located "on hill 41 north-east of the hamlet of Grand Chemin"(itself a short distance from Hebert/Hameau Hubert). So I wonder if the 4 gun battery was again split into to smaller 2 gun batteries, with one at Hebert and one in the long narrow fields directly northeast of le Grand Chemin, but we may never know. We do know for sure that 2 of the original 6 guns were at Cauvin as stated earlier. This photo in the Chazette book is identified as one of those guns. The same photo appears in Mark Bando's (green cover) book "101st Airborne" on page 67.