Military Mission
Frederick trained with the rest of the 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment, part of the 101st Airborne Division, at Camp Toccoa on Mount Currahae, a three mile mountain in Georgia. It was here that he trained under Colonel Howard R. Johnson. Johnson was one of the best motivators in all of World War Two. The training did not stop here. The long grueling training continued in North Carolina at Camp Mackall and Fort Bragg. The 1943 war games, a series of exercises staged throughout the Carolinas, provided the 501st with the training that would make them some of the best soldiers in the world.
On January of 1944, the men were shipped overseas to England aboard the U.S Army Transport George W Goethals. When they first arrived there, they were stationed in horse stables near Redding, England. While in England, they made four practice jumps. On one training jump in Bristol, England, they realized how close to the war they were. They saw the ruins of buildings, craters from where bombs had fallen, and the tension on British faces. When it came time for leave, many men went to London. They found London weary from war. As a result, the soldiers weren't allowed to do much. They could not eat any of the London citizen's food due to wartime rationing, and many of the tourist attractions the soldiers had heard about were closed due to the war. However, this didn't hinder the soldiers' drinking. Before the invasion, the men did last minute training at Slapton Sands. This beachhead was very similar to the terrain they would drop into in France. About a week before the invasion, the men were marshaled at an airport in Lamborne, England called the Wellford Park Airdrome. There they would be given leg bags - an item they had not used during training. Leg bags were used to hold extra gear strapped onto a paratrooper's leg. Many of the men considered these bags to be deathtraps because of the extra weight it added to each soldier. Overall, they proved to be very ineffective because most were lost in the jump. The men considered the pre-invasion food to be wonderful, but not all were in good spirits. Men wrote letters home to their wives and loved ones. Some of the men were unsure if they would ever make it back. After the week was up, the men were finally briefed on their mission. The initial goal of the 501st Airborne Regiment was to capture St. Come du Mont, seize and hold the Douve River Bridges on the Carentan Causeway and also secure the La Barquette Lock. Achieving success was crucial. Blowing the bridge would hold off the German advance and the lock permitted control over the tide up the river channel. Even though this was the goal, most of the 501st landed far apart from each other and far from their drop zone. Pvt. Lenz's F Company was one of the very few units that landed where they were supposed to and in a group. They landed in the large wet fields outside of Angoville. The company was supposed to secure St. Come du Mont on D-day morning, but they became heavily engaged some distance short of their goal at the approach to Les Droueries and at Gillis’ Corner. The group suffered heavy casualties. But during the afternoon, they circled back to the same crossroads where they had fought that morning, but from a different angle. Still far from St.Come Du Mont, the men received a radio call from Colonel Howard Johnson telling them to move the battalion to La Barquette, but they were too heavily engaged in combat and could not comply. Battered casualties wended their way back to the Angoville Church all afternoon. Fighting even broke out in the town itself. U.S. medics could be seen treating Germans as well as their own. Two German soldiers who had been hiding in the church steeple all day, came down to surrender to medics. Sometime during all the fighting, our man Pvt. Frederick J. Lenz, was killed by concussion when a mortar round impacted a few feet away from him. Although he passed, his sacrifice wasn't for nothing. With the liberation of Angoville, Carentan was liberated soon after on June 13th. These victories linked Omaha and Utah beach and prevented the Germans from isolating the American beaches and destroying them separately. Pvt's Lenz's sacrifice helped secure the landing and eventually the liberation of France. |