I'm standing outside of St. Mere-Eglise, which was the first French city officially liberated during the D-Day invasion. The 82nd Airborne parachuted and glided in (I'm not sure what the verb is for arriving in a glider, "arrived in a glider" doesn't seem to cut it) to this town located about 10 km behind Utah Beach on the night prior to the D-Day invasion. They were supposed to land farther inland, but some of the troops ended up landing in the city itself. One of the houses in the town had been lit on fire by an incendiary bomb, and the French were allowed to break curfew to put it out while German soldiers supervised. The fire illuminated many of the paratroopers in the vicinity, and many were killed before they touched ground.

Only about 10% of the paratroopers landed in the correct drop zones because of heavy cloud cover and heavy German anti-aircraft fire. Since the 82nd ended up spread out over a very large area, the Germans couldn't use their numerical superiority to defeat them because they couldn't fight them as a unit.

The mission of the 82nd was to secure the area inland of the beachhead and to prevent additional German reserves from crossing the bridges heading towards the Normandy Beach. The success of the landing on Utah Beach was the most critical, as those soldiers would isolate the Cotentin peninsula and the town of Cherbourg (about 30 minutes north) which contained the first real port that the Allies would use to move men and materiel into Europe.

In the picture behind Gabriel and Rachel you can see the church at the center of St. Mere-Eglise. There is a paratrooper hanging from the tower. This paratrooper dummy represents John Steele, whose parachute was hung up on the steeple. He was shot in the leg and pretended to be dead for several hours. When he started moving, he was taken prisoner by the Germans. He later escaped when the 82nd took the city later in the morning, and survived the war.

From MG Ridgeway's report: "The airborne troops continued their ferocious fight as infantrymen for 33 days after landing at Normandy. By the time the 82nd Airborne was relieved to return to England nearly half of the original contingent had either been killed or wounded. They had cost the Germans dearly by inflicting many more casualties and destroying a large amount of needed equipment. But most important, the 82nd Airborne had choked off reinforcements for the Germans defending the French Coast. Instead, the All Americans' presence provoked panic and prevented 35,000 to 40,000 enemy troops from rushing to the sea where they were needed."