Marthe and Odette Rigault had begun the day before. At the time of the invasion, the two sisters were living on their parents’ farm in Le Port St. Pierre , just three kilometers north of Graignes. Even though Marthe was only twelve years old and Odette was only nineteen, both girls went out into the marsh with their father Gustave to retrieve American equipment on D-Day. While Gustave concentrated on locating equipment bundles, the girls recovered the silken reserve chutes that littered the area. What they recovered, they stored temporarily in a barn on the farm. When Gustave received word that the mayor had called a meeting for the next day, he wasted no time and set out for Graignes. Not long after M. Rigault departed, a paratrooper came back to the family farm to retrieve the ammunition and equipment being stored in their barn. Odette was there and described what happened next. He asked my mother if we could transport the ammunition that was in our barn. So naturally my mother said, "Well yes, we'll do it." And I said, "I want to go." I called for our horse and cart and the American soldiers loaded up the cart, and I left with my parents' horse to transport the ammunition 4½ kilometers to the church with all the ammunition, my cart full of it.

Odette used sacks of feed and fertilizer and mounds of hay to conceal the contraband cargo that she was hauling to town. Frank Naughton described what she did: I remember this young lady bringing in weapons concealed under a load of hay. She left right under the Germans’ eyes, and she drove that into our perimeter.

In the afternoon on Saturday, June 10th, a mechanized patrol approached a defensive position that was manned by some of 1st Lt. Murn’s B Company/501st men. They let the patrol get close, then opened fire killing four of the enemy. That night, outposts reported hearing a great deal of activity in the same vicinity and contact was made with the Germans several times. In one of those firefights, the paratroopers ambushed a convoy, killing one enemy soldier. When the troopers searched the dead German’s pockets, they discovered some documents that revealed him to be assigned to a reconnaissance battalion of an armored division – an ominous sign of what the Americans were up against. Knowing that such a German force was out there in the hedgerows to the west of Graignes sent a wave of nervousness through the Americans. As a consequence, that night was spent on a full alert with officers conducting almost constant inspections of the perimeter. Prior to that night, the paratroopers at Graignes had been confident that American units to the north would get through to them before the enemy could launch any kind of serious attack against their perimeter. However, the crescendo of enemy activity around the village throughout the 8th, 9th and 10th seemed to indicate that they could not expect relief to get there in time. To the American paratroopers and the French civilians in Graignes, it appeared that the moment of truth was drawing near.

There was no sign of the enemy and all was quiet the next morning (June 11th) - the first Sunday since the invasion began. That being the case, Major Johnson gave permission for some of the men to attend Mass. Marthe and Odette went to Mass that morning as well. They arrived just as the parish priest, Father Albert Leblastier, began the liturgy right on time at 10:00. It would be the last service over which he would officiate. At about the same time, Captain Brummitt heard firing south of the village, rushed to the scene and quickly determined that a large German force was approaching Graignes from that direction. He reinforced the southern flank and prepared to receive the weight of a direct attack. He would not have to wait long. Meanwhile back in the church, the firing rudely interrupted Father Leblastier, who was ten minutes into Mass. At first he continued, but then half way through the service, a woman burst into the church yelling, “The Germans are coming! Save yourselves!" A German patrol had indeed managed to penetrate to within two hundred meters of the church, causing a panic among the assembled parishioners and soldiers. Marthe remembered that, “Everybody started to run away but they started shooting, so we had to stay inside the church.” During the gun battle, all of the villagers assembled for Mass had to huddle inside the nave of the church just to stay out of the way of the flying bullets. Marthe and Odette sought shelter by hiding behind the stone altar. “We couldn't get out - if the Germans had gotten into the church, we would have all been shot to death,” Odette remembered.

The assault, which lasted only ten minutes, had been an uncoordinated, piecemeal effort during which the paratroopers inflicted heavy casualties on the attacking force. All of the work that the paratroopers put into preparing fields of fire to cover avenues of approach had paid off, and the Germans had sustained staggering casualties. From the belfry of the church, trucks could be seen moving “from collecting point to collecting point” picking up dead German soldiers. As soon as the fight was over, Major Johnson ordered all available personnel to man the defensive line around the village. He correctly recognized that the morning attack had only been a probing action and that another assault would soon follow. Although firepower had repulsed them in round one, the Germans did not give up and round two was about to begin. At about 2:00 pm, the Germans commenced a punishing mortar bombardment of Graignes. This preparatory fire was swiftly followed by a second infantry assault against the flanks of the defensive line around the village. This time the attackers moved so swiftly that the perimeter was almost breached at one point. However, Capt. Brummitt quickly shifted forces to meet the threat, and the line held. Once again, the paratroopers’ supporting fires were decisive in holding off defeat as mortar fire inflicted heavy losses and scores of enemy infantry were caught in the crossfire of the multiple machine guns defending the village center. During this second attack though, the paratroopers and the citizens of Graignes began to suffer their first casualties. The church sanctuary was then transformed into an aid station as the wounded were rushed there to receive medical attention from Capt. Sophian. Father Leblastier and Father Louis Lebarbanchon, a Franciscan priest temporarily assigned to Graignes, provided comfort to the wounded as well as several villagers. Alongside the two priests, the rectory’s two housekeepers, eighty-year-old Eugenie DuJardin and Madeleine Pezeril, also did what they could for the wounded.

An uneasy quiet fell over Graignes following the second attack. During this lull, Major Johnson pulled his outposts back to the defensive line in the village and assessed his situation. He found that, after the morning’s two major assaults, ammunition was beginning to run low. The remaining small arms ammunition and mortar rounds were then redistributed among the defenders to provide each position with an even supply. Then, an unnerving sound was heard rising from the maze of hedgerows surrounding Graignes. What was clearly the sound of heavy vehicular movement announced that the Germans were bringing in reinforcements. Since the observed evidence indicated that Graignes was about to be the target of a major attack, Major Johnson sent all of the civilians away. After almost nine hours of confinement in the church during the day’s fighting, Marthe and Odette were both “ready to leave.” Marthe remembered that, “At 7 o’clock pm Major Johnson told us that we should go home because they did not have enough ammunition for the night and the night was coming.” According to Odette, “He told us that we had to try to get out if we could.” Marthe and Odette then slipped out of the village and returned safely to Le Port St. Pierre.

In Graignes, the signs were getting more and more ominous with each passing hour. Through his binoculars, 1st Lt. “Pip” Reed could see two German 88mm guns being set-up on a farm located just a few kilometers away on the heights of nearby Thieuville. At about 7:00 pm, the 88s opened fire on Graignes and incoming rounds quickly swept across the boys’ school and the town square. As shells landed all around the church, “Pip” Reed looked up at the belfry just in time to see it take a direct hit. At the moment of impact, Lt. Naughton was on the field phone with Lt. Farnham in the belfry and the line just went dead. The enemy shell ripped through the observation post, killing Farnham and his assistant observer. But Farnham was not the only officer to lose his life to the 88s. When the bombardment began, Maj. Johnson was at the bedside of Lt. Maxwell, who had become violently ill since arriving in Normandy. While the two men were talking, an 88mm round tore into the command post and exploded, killing both men instantly.

The artillery barrage proved to be the beginning of the final assault against the Americans at Graignes. After a thorough “softening up” of the target by the mortars and the 88s, German infantry moved in for the coup de grace. It was immediately obvious that this assault force was at least twice as large as the assault force from the afternoon battle. With the observation post in the belfry destroyed, it was no longer possible for the troopers to employ their mortars against the approaching enemy with any degree of effective accuracy. The mortar crewmen then cranked the elevation of their tubes to the maximum and made a last desperate attempt to stop the German infantrymen that were already closing ranks with the defensive perimeter in the village itself. As darkness settled over Graignes, the Germans continued their relentless drive and, before long, it was clear that the paratroopers would not be able to hold on much longer.

By the time the Germans made the final thrust into Graignes that night, the defenders had been reduced to a few isolated pockets of resistance spread out around the village. In many cases, men were beginning to run out of ammunition. As that happened, the enemy was quick to exploit the situation by overrunning the outer perimeter and moving into the streets of the center of the village. Those points of the line that were not overrun were cut off from communication with the command post and the aid station. With the Germans swarming over the center of the village, the American tactical situation in Graignes fell apart at the seams once and for all. The defenders had done everything in their power to hold out, but they were simply too disadvantaged by the overwhelming numerical superiority of the enemy. With Major Johnson dead, command of the force at Graignes devolved to Capt. Brummitt – who ordered the men to pair off and try to make it to either Carentan or Ste.-Mère-Église. With that, paratroopers began slipping away from the village and into the night.

After the Americans evacuated and the Germans captured the village, something terrible happened. Elements of the 17th SS Panzergrenadier Division had conducted the final assault on Graignes. When the 17th attacked, it was with a regimental sized force of approximately 2,000. The odds were literally ten to one in the Germans’ favor. Despite those odds though, the 182 paratroopers defending Graignes inflicted an estimated five hundred killed and seven hundred wounded on the Germans during the course of the fighting on the 10th and 11th. The stubborn and determined American defense that gave the 17th such high losses brought on a vicious and brutal reprisal.

At the end of the June 11th battle, the 17th SS stormed the church and found Capt. Sophian’s aid station. They promptly forced the Captain and all of the wounded outside where they were made to line-up against a wall. The men were then divided into two groups and marched away from the church. One group (nine troopers) was marched off to the south and the other group (five troopers) was marched down to the edge of a shallow pond behind Madame Boursier’s café. At the edge of the pond, the SS bayoneted the wounded men and threw them into the water one on top of the other. The other group of 507th paratroopers was forced to march four kilometers to the south to a field near the village of Le Mesnil Angot. There, the nine wounded men were forced to dig a pit. As soon as the pit was complete, the SS shot each one of them in the back of the head and dumped their bodies in the pit one on top of the other.