This batterie was based around four Czech-built 10.5cm cannons located in field emplacements around a farm at Le Petit Fontaine, just over 1km inland of Arromanches.
Four concrete emplacements were planned for the guns, although none of these are visible today, and it’s thought that only one of two were ever actually constructed. The remaining two guns operating from dug depressions in the fields.
On the track which runs behind the first position there are three small concrete ammo niches still visible, although these are heavily overgrown in a hedgerow.
Speaking to the farmer who owns the land where the gun positions were located, he told us his father removed one of the circular concrete open emplacements after some of his cattle fell into them!
Following Allied aerial reconnaissance flights over the area, the German’s built a dummy batterie in a hedgerow a few hundred metres to the west of the real batterie in an attempt to divert any Allied attacks.
Two of the real site’s guns were also reported to have been camouflaged a huts or haystacks.
In December 1943, the guns from the batterie are believed to have been moved east to a site near Crepon, but Wn41 remained occupied and on D-Day was able to fire upon troops making their way inland from the beaches.
The Wn41 site was one of the objectives of the 1st Dorset Regiment who landed on Gold Beach to the east of Asnelles on D-Day. From the beach at Asnelles they made their way up the eastern flank of Wn40- capturing the three sectors of the complex, and then west to Wn41.
Expecting to find four 10.5cm guns and German troops, the Dorsets found the site abandoned and just one French 7.5cm field gun which had been destroyed by a demolition charge inside the breech.