Freyja Manor Assault

The Freyja Manor Assault was a confrontation between Echo Company of the UNSC Army's Parachute Regiment and soldiers of the Covenant Empire during the Second Battle of Harvest in March 2526.Ready for Anything: The Official History of the Parachute Regiment
==Objective==
After securing the space around Harvest, Vice Admiral Preston J. Cole's Task Force deployed large numbers of Marine and Army Orbital Drop Shock Troopers to secure or destroy priority targets and clear the way for the Expeditionary Force. Among them was Echo Company of 2nd Battalion, The Parachute Regiment, 16 Air Assault Brigade. Dodging Covenant AA fire during the drop meant that the company was separated, leaving the O.C, Captain John Churchill, with only a platoon's worth of men from various units. Despite their numbers being slashed, Churchill reasoned that he had enough men to complete his objective, and left the stragglers to regroup at the Reassembly Zone.
Echo Company had been ordered to destroy a battery of four Covenant heavy plasma artillery pieces, which were covering the southern approach to the occupied city of Dellingr, in order to clear the way for the Expeditionary Force's advance on the city in preparation for the assault on Utgard. After a reconnaissance mission by Churchill at about 8:30 AM, he collected his platoon. Beyond knowledge of the general location of the emplacements south of Utgard, the team advanced on Freyja Manor.
==The Battle==
On the way to the battery, Churchill's platoon ambushed a Covenant patrol near the ruins of Utgard. Churchill gave the signal to attack by cutting down a Sangheili Major with his barbed arrows, becoming the only known UNSC soldier to have felled an enemy with a longbow in the course of the war. Upon arrival at the battery location, they discovered a Covenant artillery battery consisting of four heavy plasma artillery pieces connected by trenches and defended by a platoon of soldiers. The artillery pieces were connected by trenches in a rough "L" shape, with three plasma cannons guarding the southern approach. Knowing this, Churchill and his men approached from the north. He positioned a pair of general purpose machine guns for covering fire and sent three soldiers to the left flank to destroy a plasma cannon defending the trenches with grenades. Churchill and his team then sprinted into the first artillery position and destroyed it. Meanwhile, two Designated Marksmen provided cover from the roof a burnt-out storage shed.
While the trenches connecting the artillery positions provided the Covenant with an easy way to supply and reinforce the artillery pieces, they also proved to be their biggest weakness. After destroying the first gun position, Churchill and the rest of his team used the trenches as covered approaches to attack the remaining guns in turn, protecting them from the three plasma cannons. The platoon's timed charges had been lost in the drop, so the team improvised; each gun was destroyed by dropping captured Covenant plasma grenades or UNSC fragmentation grenades down the barrel.
Reinforcements from Delta Company, led by First Lieutenant Nicolas Strauss arrived to complete the assault on the fourth and last gun. Strauss had a reputation as an excellent and extremely aggressive officer and he led his men against the last gun position by running outside the trenches and exposing themselves to enemy fire.
After the four guns were disabled, Churchill's team came under heavy fire from Freyja Manor and withdrew. At the time, all UNSCDF personnel had standing orders to recover as much information on the Covenant as possible, but with little idea of what to search for, Churchill had seized every Covenant data storage device from one gun position. One of these contained a map that was marked with the locations of all Covenant artillery and plasma cannon positions throughout that area of the Edda Supercontinent. This was an invaluable piece of intelligence and was passed up the chain of command.
Churchill also directed the fire of two Scorpion tanks which arrived later to eliminate remaining Covenant resistance.
Churchill lost one man, Private Jonathan F. Davies from an 81mm mortar platoon, and Private Robert Williams was wounded during the attack. Another casualty was Sergeant Andrew Knight, who was killed when he came upon the battle while searching for the headquarters of the Battalion. Two soldiers from Delta Company under Lieutenant Strauss' command were also killed as well as one wounded from Delta Company.
==Aftermath==
The Expeditionary Force had a relatively easy landing, due in part to this successful assault. Churchill, Strauss, and two other men were awarded the Silver Star, and as a British citizen, Churchill also recieved the Distinguished Service Order. Six Purple Hearts and Elizabeth Crosses were awarded to the wounded and dead, and six men also recieved the Bronze Star.
==Behind the Scenes==
*This battle is heavily inspired by the Brécourt Manor Assault, a confrontation between Easy Company of 2nd Battalion, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment and units of the German Army on D-Day, dramatised in the second episode of Band of Brothers.
==References==
Category:Human-Covenant War
Category:Labyrinth