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C Company under Maj Bartlett, was in a most imposing looking mansion with stables (empty) and ample grounds, including a training gallop. The place had been a German training, college for engineers but had been left in such a hurry that it was littered with files and fuses and other gadgets for use in booby traps. There was some anxiety that the place had been booby trapped itself but this was not so. The exhibits were handed over to the right quarter, where they were of considerable interest, while C Company found some beer in the cellar which interested them too.

Battalion HQ was in a very comfortable residential house with the wife of the owner and her two small sons still in residence. Village gossip was that this woman was a collaborator because one of the instructors from the engineer school had been billetted there for the last three years and they were very friendly with each other. She was an attractive women and this may have been true but was more likely to be just plain gossip.

She told many interesting tales of the occupation and said that Rommel himself had been to Herouvillette only a few weeks before the invasion and had held a conference in her house. He had arrived with a fleet of twelve cars and numerous heel-clicking staff officers. Rommel himself was a red-faced, unhealthy looking man who had the complete confidence of his men but whose visits were hated because they were always followed by much extra work on the defences. On this occasion he ordered the work to be hastened on the anti airlanding obstacles on the DZ and said civilian labour would be used as well as military. The obstacles were trunks of trees about as thick as telegraph poles and twenty feet high; they were planted irregularly about the DZ and some of them were connected to mines; Rommel said they were to be thickened up at once and the spaces between them laced with strands of barbed wire. He was no fool but he gave this order much too late and it was not fully completed at the time of the invasion.

The battalion did not have to wait long for the next German attempt. The blow was launched on 14th June at the most uncomfortable hour of 4 a.m.

Almost the first shell struck the side of Battalion HQ, knocking the wall in completely and burying, but not hurting L/C Emery and Pte Strudwick, batmen to the CO and the Second-in-Command. A heavy concentration was then directed onto the village generally, but did comparatively little harm as everyone was in their slit trenches before it even began. The weight of this concentration and the fact that it had begun at a definite clock hour, shortly before dawn, suggested that it would be followed by an infantry attack probably at dawn, or just after.

Soon after dawn B Company reported movement in the wood to their immediate front. No fire was opened though but a close watch was maintained and constant reports sent back to Battalion HQ.

It was fairly obvious that this movement was infantry forming up for an attack and that the attack would come in from the same direction as before but care had to be taken that this wasn't a bluff with the main attack coming in from another direction altogether. The odds were all on the battalion and developments could be awaited with confidence.

If the Germans advanced towards B Company, which seemed likely, they would first have to cross a hundred yards of open ground which had been mined by some of their own countrymen, They were almost certainly unaware of the position of B Company