D-Day, June 6, 1944: The Climactic Battle of World War II (64 page)

Salomon made the base of the cliff. He looked back. "Bodies lay still, where they had fallen, trickles of blood reddening the sand. Some of the wounded were crawling as best they could, some with a look of despair and bewilderment on their tortured and painracked faces. Others tried to get back on their feet, only to be hit again by enemy fire. Bodies rolled back and forth at the water's edge, the English Channel almost laughing as it showed its might over man and played with the bodies as a cat would with a mouse."

Of the sixty-eight rangers in Company C, nineteen were dead, eighteen wounded. Only thirty-one men made it to the base of the cliff. The company had yet to fire a shot.
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Its experience in the first few minutes on French soil had been nearly as disastrous as that of A Company, 116th.

But the rangers had some advantages. Despite the grenades and mortar fire, they were more secure at the base of the cliff than the survivors of A Company were at the seawall on the other side of the Vierville draw. Their company commander, Capt. Ralph

Goranson, along with two platoon leaders, Lts. William Moody and Sidney Salomon, were with them to provide leadership. And they were elite troops, brought to a fever pitch for this moment. For example, Sergeant Scribner recalled Sgt. "Duke" Golas: "He had about half his head blown away by a grenade and he was still standing at the bottom of the cliff firing his weapon, hollering at the Krauts up above to come out and fight."
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The officers, meanwhile, realized the company was alone, that the Vierville draw was not only not opened but was bristling with German defenders, and that their only alternative—other than cowering at the base of the cliff and getting killed—was to climb the cliff. Fortunately, they had been through cliff-climbing training and had some special equipment for the task.

Lieutenants Moody and Salomon and Sgts. Julius Belcher and Richard Garrett moved to their right until they found a crevice in the cliff. Using their bayonets for successive handholds, pulling each other along, they made it to the top of the crest. There Moody attached some toggle ropes to stakes in a minefield and dropped them to the base of the cliff, enabling the remainder of the company to monkey-walk them to the top. By 0730 Company C of the 2nd Ranger Battalion, or what was left of it, was on the crest. According to the official Army history, it "was probably the first assault unit to reach the high ground."
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On the cliff, the rangers saw what they always called thereafter a fortified house. Actually, it was not fortified, although it might as well have been, as it was a typical Norman stone farmhouse. It overlooked the draw and was surrounded by a maze of communications trenches. Behind the house the Germans had numerous Tobruks and other types of pillboxes, plus an extensive trench system. From the house, the Germans were firing on the rangers.

C Company's mission was to move west along the high ground, but Captain Goranson decided to first of all attack the house and clean out the trenches behind it. Lieutenant Moody led a patrol against the house. He kicked in the door and killed the officer in charge, then began a search through the trenches. Moody was killed by a bullet through his forehead. Lieutenant Salomon took command of the patrol. It moved down the trenches using white phosphorus grenades to clear out pillboxes.

Sgts. George Morrow and Julius Belcher spotted a machine gun that was enfilading the western end of Omaha Beach, one of those guns that had killed so many rangers an hour earlier. It was

firing continuously down at the beach again, as the follow-up waves attempted to get across the sand. In a pitiless rage, Belcher ran toward the position, oblivious of his own safety. He kicked in the door of the pillbox and threw in a white phosphorus grenade. As the phosphorus began to burn on their skins, the Germans abandoned their gun and ran out the door, screaming in agony. Belcher shot them down as they emerged.

Not everyone was brave. Lieutenant Heaney recalled "an officer whose name I will not use. He had been one of the most physically active officers all during training. We all felt that he would be an outstanding combat soldier. But I found this officer in the bottom of a slit trench crying like a baby and totally unable to continue. Sergeant White assigned one of his men to bring him back to the beach for evacuation and this was the last I ever heard of him."

Captain Goranson meanwhile had seen a section of men from the 116th Regiment landing just below the cliff (it was a kilometer off course). He sent a ranger down to guide them to the top, providing C Company with its first reinforcements. The Germans were constantly reinforcing, bringing men in from the draw and the village via their communications trenches. There were far more German than American reinforcements. At Utah, the paratroopers prevented the Germans from sending reinforcements forward to the beach; at Omaha there were no paratroopers, and the Germans had freedom of movement behind the beach.

An all-day firefight ensued on the cliff to the west of the Vierville draw. Goranson was not strong enough to dislodge the Germans; his men would clear out a trench, move on, only to have fresh German troops reoccupy the position. Lieutenant Salomon was leading a "platoon" of three men. He described a typical action: "We proceeded further down the trench, around a curve. We came upon a German mortar crew in a fixed gun position. Some more grenades, more rifle and tommy-gun fire, as we continued through the trenches."
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To Sergeant Scribner, it seemed that the day would never end.

Lieutenant Salomon despaired. Looking down on the beach below, he saw chaos. "Up until noon D-Day," he later commented, "I thought the invasion was a failure and I wondered if we could make a successful withdrawal and try the invasion some time again in the near future."
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For most of the rangers this was the first combat experience. It was a mark of how well they had been trained, and a textbook example of what training can accomplish, that they completely

outfought the Germans in their fortified positions. They did so not by fighting regardless of loss but by using basic tactics carried out with enthusiasm balanced by proper caution. The next day a U.S. Army Quartermaster burial party reported the result: there were sixty-nine German dead in and around the fortified house and trench system, two American.

For C Company of the rangers and the section from the 116th, this was an isolated action. They were the only Americans on the west side of the Vierville draw. They were completely out of touch because all of the radios had been lost. They did get some help from the Navy, not always welcome. Unaware that the rangers were on the cliff, destroyers fired some 20mm and 5-inch guns on the position. Sergeant Scribner saw a 5-inch shell score a direct hit on a pillbox; he was amazed that it only "put in a dent about six inches deep. Those Germans really knew how to build their emplacements."

Sgt. William Lindsay was in a concrete pillbox when it received two direct hits from 5-inch shells. He lost a tooth and was knocked silly by the concussion. Three times during the day he had to be stopped by fellow rangers from walking off the cliff. That evening, he confronted Colonel Taylor of the 116th. Red-faced, cursing, he accused Taylor of stealing his rifle. All the while he had the rifle slung over his shoulder.
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The incident gave the rangers who saw it a laugh (after Lindsay recovered his senses, as he did in a few hours) and a certain sympathy for the Germans caught inside their casemates when 14-inch shells from the battleships exploded against them.

"I was worried as all hell on top of the cliff," Sgt. Charles Semchuck later said about the day, "just waiting for the Jerries to push us back into the Channel. They had the chance to do it. D-Day night, when we made contact with our A and B companies, my spirits and morale rose a hundred percent. ... I felt like doing handsprings for I was so happy. I knew then that the Jerries had muffed their one chance for victory. I never again want to be in another D-Day." Sergeant Lutz echoed that last sentiment: "Brother, I say this, no more D-Days for me if I can help it!"
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C Company had not completed its mission. Indeed, it could be said it never even got started on its mission. Its action was minor in scale, a small-unit engagement of inconsequential size when measured by the number of men involved. Yet it was critical. By occupying the Germans on the west side of the Vierville draw and on the cliff, the rangers diverted some of the machine-gun fire that

otherwise would have added to the carnage on the beach. By no means did the rangers do it alone, but without them the passage up the Vierville draw would have been, at best, even more costly; at worst, no Americans would have gotten up that draw on D-Day.

Companies A and B of the 2nd Rangers came in at 0740 on Dog Green; the 5th Ranger Battalion came in at 0750 on Dog White, to the east of the mouth of the Vierville draw. There they became, in effect, a part of the 116th Infantry, to the point that many of the ad hoc fighting units formed on the beach were composed of a mix of rangers and infantry from the 116th. Thus the experience of the rangers on the east side of the draw is best understood when told together with that of the 116th drive to the top of the bluff, as related in the following chapter.

The Allied bombardment of Pointe-du-Hoc had begun weeks before D-Day. Heavy bombers from the U.S. Eighth Air Force and British Bomber Command had repeatedly plastered the area, with a climax coming before dawn on June 6. Then the battleship
Texas
took up the action, sending dozens of 14-inch shells into the position. Altogether, Pointe-du-Hoc got hit by more than ten kilotons of high explosives, the equivalent of the explosive power of the atomic bomb used at Hiroshima.
Texas
lifted her fire at 0630, the moment the rangers were scheduled to touch down.

Colonel Rudder was in the lead boat. He was not supposed to be there. Lt. Gen. Clarence Huebner, CO of the 1st Division and in overall command at Omaha Beach, had forbidden Rudder to lead companies D, E, and F of the 2nd Rangers into Pointe-du-Hoc, saying, "We're not going to risk getting you knocked out in the first round."

"I'm sorry to have to disobey you, sir," Rudder had replied, "but if I don't take it, it may not go."
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The rangers were in landing craft assault (LCA) boats manned by British seamen (the rangers had trained with British commandos and were therefore accustomed to working with British sailors). The LCA was built in England on the basic design of

James W. Eikner, a lieutenant with Rudder on D-Day, comments in a letter of March 29, 1993, to the author: "The assault on the Pointe was supposed to be led by a recently promoted executive officer who unfortunately managed to get himself thoroughly drunk and unruly while still aboard his transport in Weymouth harbor. This was the situation that decided Col. Rudder to personally lead the Pointe-du-Hoc assault. The ex. ofc. was sent ashore and hospitalized—we never saw him again."

Andrew Higgins's boat, but the British added some light armor to the sides and gunwales. That made the LCA slower and heavier— the British were sacrificing mobility to increase security—which meant that the LCA rode lower in the water than the LCVP.

On D-Day morning, all the LCAs carrying the rangers took on water as spray washed over the sides. One of the ten boats swamped shortly after leaving the transport area, taking the CO of D Company and twenty men with it (they were picked up by an LCT a few hours later. "Give us some dry clothes, weapons and ammunition, and get us back in to the Pointe. We gotta get back!" Capt. "Duke" Slater said as he came out of the water. But his men were so numb from the cold water that the ship's physician ordered them back to England.
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) One of the two supply boats bringing in ammunition and other gear also swamped; the other supply boat had to jettison more than half its load to stay afloat.

That was but the beginning of the foul-ups. At 0630, as Rudder's lead LCA approached the beach, he saw with dismay that the coxswain was headed toward Pointe-de-la-Percee, about halfway between the Vierville draw and Pointe-du-Hoc. After some argument, Rudder persuaded the coxswain to turn right to the objective. The flotilla had to fight the tidal current (the cause of the drift to the left) and proceeded only slowly parallel to the coast.

The error was costly. It caused the rangers to be thirty-five minutes late in touching down, which gave the German defenders time to recover from the bombardment, climb out of their dugouts, and man their positions. It also caused the flotilla to run a gauntlet of fire from German guns along four kilometers of coastline. One of the four DUKWs was sunk by a 20mm shell. Sgt. Frank South, a nineteen-year-old medic, recalled, "We were getting a lot of machine-gun fire from our left flank, alongside the cliff, and we could not, for the life of us, locate the fire."
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Lt. James Eikner, Rudder's communications officer, remembered "bailing water with our helmets, dodging bullets, and vomiting all at the same time."
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USS
Satterlee
and HMS
Talybont,
destroyers, saw what was happening and came in close to fire with all guns at the Germans. That helped to drive some of the Germans back from the edge of the cliff. D Company had been scheduled to land on the west side of the point, but because of the error in navigation Rudder signaled by hand that the two LCAs carrying the remaining D Company troops join the other seven and land side by side along the east side.

Lt. George Kerchner, a platoon leader in D Company, recalled that when his LCA made its turn to head into the beach, "My thought was that this whole thing is a big mistake, that none of us were ever going to get up that cliff." But then the destroyers started firing and drove some of the Germans back from the edge of the cliff. Forty-eight years later, then retired Colonel Kerchner commented, "Some day I would love to meet up with somebody from
Satterlee
so I can shake his hand and thank him."
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