On June 7, 1944, the second day of the Allied invasion of Normandy on the Western Front of World War II, the body of a murdered German soldier was left in a ditch near the road leading to the town of Saint-Mère-Eglise in Normandy.

     On D-Day, June 6, 1944, on the Western Front of World War II, Allied forces executed the Normandy landings in northwestern France. On June 7, the second day of the Allied invasion of Normandy, the bodies of murdered German soldiers were left in a ditch near the road leading to the town of Saint-Mère-Eglise in Normandy. The U.S. military conducted an autopsy of the German soldier's body. The rifle was lying in his right hand, the buttons of his jacket pocket were undone, and a military cap and papers were placed on his stomach. At the German soldier's feet were two boxes and an unknown piece of equipment. Attached to the helmet was a wire mesh to which leaves were attached to camouflage it.　

 　 In the early hours of June 6, some 160,000 American, British, Canadian, and French troops landed along 80 km of the southern Normandy coastline. The area of the Normandy landings was divided into five coastal sectors. American troops landed on the Utah coast, American troops on the Omaha coast, British troops on the Gold Coast, Canadian troops on the Juno coast, and British and some French troops on the Sode coast. Omaha Beach and the adjacent Ranger landing site, Point de Hoc, had the highest Allied casualties. The Canadian Army's Juno beach was accompanied by a net of bunkers along the German seawall with almost as many casualties. The U.S. Army's Utah beach suffered the fewest Allied casualties.

　Saint-Mère-Eglise was located on Route N13, which the Germans used to counterattack the Allied landings on the Utah and Omaha beaches of Normandy. early in the morning of June 6, an American paratrooper division occupied Saint-Mère-Eglise, and the paratroopers who dropped in behind the German troops also suffered very high casualties. It became one of the first towns liberated by U.S. paratroopers during the Normandy invasion, and late on June 6 and into June 7, a heavy German counterattack began. Lightly armed German units defended until the afternoon of June 7, when American tank reinforcements arrived from the Utah coast. The residents of Sainte-Mère-Eglise paid a heavy price during the liberation of Normandy, with 43 civilians killed between May and August 1944.