Easy Company's Assault on Brécourt Manor | Dick Winters & the Guns at Dawn (Animated)

Brécourt Manor, D-Day 1944. How Lieutenant Dick Winters and about a dozen men of Easy Co Brécourt Manor, D-Day 1944. How Lieutenant Dick Winters and about a dozen men of Easy Company, 506th Parachute Infantry, attacked four German 105mm guns firing toward Utah Beach. This animated documentary from Last Hundred Yards follows Easy Company of the 101st Airborne from the chaotic night drop over Normandy to a hedgerow at Le Grand Chemin, where one order began one of the most famous small-unit actions of the Second World War: "There's fire along that hedgerow there. Take care of it." It is the story made famous by Band of Brothers, told here from the sources: Winters' own memoir, Stephen Ambrose, the U.S. Army's official history, the accounts of the men who were there, and new archaeological finds from the battlefield itself. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ A NOTE ON THE RECORD Accounts of Brécourt Manor disagree, and this video says so where they do. The number of attackers ranges from about a dozen to more than twenty, depending on who is counted. Winters' 1944 award citation calls the guns 88s, but the excavation found 105mm shell cases. The man killed charging the third gun appears in most books as "Hall," while war-grave records identify him as Private First Class John D. Halls. Every quotation in this video comes from the participants' own accounts. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ MAJOR RESEARCH SOURCES ▸ Dick Winters with Cole C. Kingseed, Beyond Band of Brothers: The War Memoirs of Major Dick Winters (2006) ▸ Stephen E. Ambrose, Band of Brothers: E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne from Normandy to Hitler's Eagle's Nest (1992) ▸ Roland G. Ruppenthal, Utah Beach to Cherbourg, U.S. Army, American Forces in Action series (1947) ▸ Carwood Lipton, notarized personal account of D-Day (2000) ▸ George Koskimaki, D-Day with the Screaming Eagles ▸ Kevin Hymel, Warfare History Network articles on Brécourt Manor and Easy Company ▸ Utah Beach Museum, The Battle of Brécourt Manor: A Buried Memory, exhibition and excavation findings (2026) ▸ Grand Format magazine (2022), the de Vallavieille family's account of 6 June 1944 ▸ The Connexion (2022), on the Bordeaux Montaigne University excavation at Brécourt ▸ Mark Bando, research on the 101st Airborne in Normandy ▸ Distinguished Service Cross citation, First U.S. Army General Orders No. 31 (1944) TOPICS COVERED ▸ Easy Company's D-Day mission: Exit 2, the causeway behind Utah Beach ▸ The loss of plane 66 and company commander Lieutenant Thomas Meehan ▸ How Dick Winters landed with only a knife and took command of Easy Company ▸ Le Grand Chemin and Captain Clarence Hester's order ▸ The four German 105mm howitzers at Brécourt, and the debate over who manned them ▸ Winters' plan: two machine-gun teams, a flank attack, and a rush down the trench ▸ Buck Compton, Bill Guarnere, Don Malarkey, Carwood Lipton, Joe Toye and Popeye Wynn in the assault ▸ The captured map of German gun positions ▸ John Halls, the man most accounts remember as "Hall" ▸ Lieutenant Ronald Speirs and the charge on the last gun ▸ The shooting of Michel de Vallavieille, son of the family who own Brécourt Manor ▸ Casualties, awards, and the Medal of Honor Winters never received ▸ What the attack achieved, and what historians say it did not ▸ The excavations since 2022, and what archaeologists found along the hedgerow ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ A NOTE ON THE RECORD Accounts of Brécourt Manor disagree, and this video says so where they do. The number of attackers ranges from about a dozen to more than twenty, depending on who is counted. Winters' 1944 award citation calls the guns 88s, but the excavation found 105mm shell cases. The man killed charging the third gun appears in most books as "Hall," while war-grave records identify him as Private First Class John D. Halls. Every quotation in this video comes from the participants' own accounts. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ MAJOR RESEARCH SOURCES ▸ Dick Winters with Cole C. Kingseed, Beyond Band of Brothers: The War Memoirs of Major Dick Winters (2006) ▸ Stephen E. Ambrose, Band of Brothers: E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne from Normandy to Hitler's Eagle's Nest (1992) ▸ Roland G. Ruppenthal, Utah Beach to Cherbourg, U.S. Army, American Forces in Action series (1947) ▸ Carwood Lipton, notarized personal account of D-Day (2000) ▸ George Koskimaki, D-Day with the Screaming Eagles ▸ Kevin Hymel, Warfare History Network articles on Brécourt Manor and Easy Company ▸ Utah Beach Museum, The Battle of Brécourt Manor: A Buried Memory, exhibition and excavation findings (2026) ▸ Grand Format magazine (2022), the de Vallavieille family's account of 6 June 1944 ▸ The Connexion (2022), on the Bordeaux Montaigne University excavation at Brécourt ▸ Mark Bando, research on the 101st Airborne in Normandy ▸ Distinguished Service Cross citation, First U.S. Army General Orders No. 31 (1944) ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ #BrecourtManor #DDay #BandOfBrothers #EasyCompany #WW2History