War Stories III (32 page)

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Authors: Oliver L. North

BOOK: War Stories III
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As Jerry Markham's Navy Combat Demolition Unit struggled to clear the mines and obstacles on Omaha beach, the 2nd Ranger Battalion was struggling to scale the sheer 130-foot cliffs three miles to the west at Pointe du Hoc. Their task was one of the most difficult at Normandy: after attaining
the heights, they had to cross the mined and obstacle-ridden crest under fire to destroy six 155 mm cannon mounted in reinforced concrete casements—all before the guns could bring fire to bear on the beaches below and the fleet offshore. Twenty-four-year-old New Jersey native Leonard Lomell was one of the handpicked volunteers chosen for the mission.
FIRST SERGEANT LEONARD LOMELL, US ARMY
Company D, 2nd Ranger Battalion
Normandy, France
6 June 1944
I was the first sergeant of D Company of the 2nd Ranger Battalion, formed in Fort Mead, Maryland, out of the 76th Infantry Division. We were always told that we were supposed to be the best of the best, but that we'd have the toughest missions. We went through 2,000 volunteers to make our team of 500.
We started preparing for in England in late April, for Pointe du Hoc. Lieutenant Colonel James Rudder, our battalion commander, pushed us hard—telling us that we were going up against the best-defended shoreline in the world. General Omar Bradley, commanding officer of the American ground forces, told us that this would be the most dangerous mission he ever assigned anybody. So, 225 specially chosen Rangers—and I was one of them—were picked to make that raid.
That day was terrible—stormy, cold, rainy, and windy. Our company had a three-pronged mission: First, climb the cliffs and destroy the six big guns on top so they wouldn't kill thousands of men on Omaha beach and Utah beach. Second, get to the coast road between Omaha beach and Utah beach and establish a roadblock so that the Germans couldn't reinforce their troops at the beaches. And third, destroy any German communications equipment we found so they couldn't communicate.
Though we didn't know it, several days before D-Day, the Germans relocated the guns inland to an alternate position. No aerial photos or
intelligence showed that they were gone. The Germans had disguised the move by sticking telephone poles out of the casements to fool our reconnaissance.
On D-Day we had breakfast at about 0300, loaded British LCAs—about twenty-five men per boat—and we were lowered into the water at about 0400. We headed into the beach but our British guide boat led us to the wrong point—about three or four miles west of where we were supposed to be. When we got close to shore, our team leaders realized we were in the wrong place and told the coxswains—and then the LCAs had to run whole distance back to where we belonged—while about 200 yards off the coast—as the Germans fired mortars and small arms at us from atop the cliffs.
As we landed, we lost one of the LCAs—a lot of our officers and one-third of our company were gone in a few seconds. As our ramp went down and I jumped into the water, I was the first one shot—through the right side.
By the time we got to the cliffs we had lost the element of surprise and the Germans were waiting for us. We were very lightly armed and equipped because climbing hand-over-hand up a 100-foot rope is exhausting. All I carried was what I was wearing—a pair of trousers, shirt, and a light jacket—and a harness for grenades and ammunition, a first aid kit, my sub-machine gun, and a side arm.
The British LCAs that brought us in were equipped with six rocket launchers—three on each side—and the rockets were connected to grappling hooks and coils of climbing line. As soon as the ramps opened, the rockets fired—and soon the face of the cliff had all these ropes hanging down it—and Rangers climbing up—while the Germans fired down on us and dropped grenades on our heads.
The face of the cliff was clay—which is slippery when wet. Soon it was like the climbing line had been coated with grease. We finally got to the top of the cliff by sheer willpower—and with the help of a U.S. Navy destroyer that came in close to fire over our heads to pin down the Germans.
When we got to the top, we discovered that the big guns were gone so a dozen of us headed to the coast road. We let group of about 180 Germans pass by us while we hid behind a rock wall—and then followed them at a distance. That's how we found the guns at about 0830 in the morning.
Sergeant Jack Cume from Altoona, Pennsylvania, and I went down this road and came upon a group of about seventy-five Germans getting briefed by their officers. They were in various states of undress and putting themselves together.
Jack covered me while I took two Thermite grenades and put 'em into the gears of the big guns. Thermite is a magnesium—and it burns hot enough to melt metal. In an artillery piece it will weld a breech block closed or lock the elevating and traversing mechanism, rendering the gun inoperable. To me it was a chemical wonder. And it didn't make any noise—it didn't draw any attention from the Germans—so we got the job done.
To destroy the gun sights, I took my jacket off and wrapped it around my stock of my sub-machine gun so it wouldn't make any sound. Without that padding, it would sound like a hammer hitting it. And it worked out well.
These guns had a range of twelve miles, and that's where the invasion fleet was anchored. That's why it was imperative that these guns be destroyed. When we were done we ran like scared rabbits back to our roadblock.
We held the roadblock for three days and nights against all the German units that tried to get through to Omaha beach on that road. And though we took a lot of casualties, no German unit got past us. We started out with 295 men and by the time we were relieved we only had ninety men still standing that could fight on.
When the Rangers were finally relieved, Len Lomell's wounded side was severely infected and gangrenous. He was evacuated to England where he was operated on. After a two-month recuperation, he rejoined his fellow Rangers.
While 1st Sergeant Lomell and his Rangers were struggling to scale the cliffs at Pointe du Hoc, the soldiers of the 1st and 29th Infantry Divisions below them on Omaha beach were being cut to pieces. The German fire was so lethal that in some cases entire units disappeared before ever getting to the beach. Lt. Art Van Cook from the Bronx was an “old man” of twenty-six on D-Day. He trained as an artillery officer near his base at Plymouth, England, and landed on Omaha beach under a hail of small arms and mortar fire.
FIRST LIEUTENANT ARTHUR “ART” VAN COOK
111th Field Artillery Battalion, 116th Infantry,
29th Infantry Division
Omaha Beach, Normandy, France
6 June 1944
 
They sent me over to Europe in early 1943. I joined the 29th Infantry Division in England and I was assigned to the 111th Field Artillery Battalion—a 105 mm howitzer unit assigned to provide artillery support to the 116th Infantry Regiment.
When we put out to sea on the way to Normandy we could see thousands of ships of every kind, size, and shape. We were embarked on an LST—for Landing Ship Tank. Inside the well deck of the LST were our twelve 105 mm howitzers, loaded into DUKW amphibious trucks—we called them “Ducks.”
Each one of the DUKWs also carried fourteen or fifteen men, and ammunition. The “Ducks” were supposed to “swim” ashore and then drive forward on their wheels to put our artillery tubes into position to support the 116th Regiment—the assault wave for the 29th Division.
We were meant to “splash” the DUKWs about a mile or so offshore. But instead, the LST dropped us off about nine miles out and the sea state was terrible. As we headed in just after dawn, the battleships, cruisers, and destroyers were blazing away but I was somewhat skeptical that we were going to make it into the beach.
My DUKW started to take on water faster than the pumps could handle it and we couldn't bail fast enough. Some of the DUKWs rolled down the LST ramp and went straight to the bottom. We had practiced this before—but never in heavy seas. As it turned out, we lost eleven of our twelve howitzers before we ever got to the beach.
I transferred over to what they call an LCVP—Landing Craft Vehicle Personnel. It didn't make it either. So I wound up on something called a Rhino Ferry—a flat barge powered by two diesel engines with a ramp. Once ashore the Rhino Ferries could be linked together as causeway sections. This one was loaded with trucks, half-tracks, a single howitzer, ammunition, supplies, and equipment and we slowly rumbled toward the beach.
About 100 yards off the beach one of the engines was knocked out by an exploding German shell. It seemed like it was raining lead and steel all around us—and we're all just standing on this flat barge!
As the Rhino Ferry beached, one of the soldiers was hit by machine-gun fire as he jumped off into the water. Several others were killed and wounded by machine-gun and small arms fire as they tried to get up the beach.
I was supposed to get to Omaha beach at 0700 but I didn't land until around 0845. And even then we were taken to the wrong place. We were 1,000 yards from where we were supposed to land—but with all the wreckage from the assault wave of the 116th, it was the only place we could get ashore.
There were medics working on the beach, but they couldn't cope with all the casualties. There were bodies, parts of bodies, and guys moaning and bleeding everywhere—it was a terrible sight and you felt so helpless that you couldn't do anything for these guys.
On D-Day I was supposed to be artillery liaison for the 116th Infantry. But we only had one howitzer that had made it to the beach. Since one gun can't do much, we turned it over to the 7th Field Artillery Battalion of the 1st Division and joined the infantry.
A Company, 1st of the 116th—the lead assault unit—was almost wiped out completely by direct hits from the German 88s firing from the
flanks—part of the direct fire across Omaha beach. I went to check in with the battalion commander, Lt. Col. Mullins.
That morning he was everywhere—running up and down the beach, moving people along, trying to get things organized. He'd shout, “Get up and go—if you stay here you're gonna die! So you might as well get off this beach.” It was that kind of leadership that gave us the incentive to keep moving. By D-Day afternoon he was dead—killed by a German machine gun.
When a captain was killed, a lieutenant took over. If a lieutenant was killed, the sergeant jumped in. We were well trained to get the job done, which was also another incentive to keep moving. Besides, if you didn't get off that beach, you'd be run over by your own stuff. Despite the German fire, wave after wave was still coming in—heavy artillery, tanks, and jeeps were coming ashore—the landing craft wending their way through the obstacles that were still in place.
Some very brave small unit leaders got the men up and the infantry and engineers blew pathways through the barbed wire entanglements, mines, and obstacles. By mid-afternoon they were crawling—a foot at a time—up the draws and ravines that led up to the high ground where the German trench lines and fortifications were. By nightfall on D-Day we had pushed to the top of the cliff, probably half a mile from Omaha beach.
 
American soldiers reach the shore after their landing craft are attacked.
Though the 29th Infantry Division, landing on the right side of Omaha beach, had the toughest time and the highest casualties on D-Day, things were only marginally better on the left side, where the 1st Infantry Division landed. Staff Sergeant Walter Ehlers of Manhattan, Kansas, had to get his parents' permission to join the Army with his older brother Roland. They had both seen action with the 1st Infantry Division in North Africa and Sicily in the same rifle company. Roland had been wounded in Sicily, so on 6 June 1944 when they both landed at Normandy, they did so in different companies.
STAFF SERGEANT WALTER D. EHLERS, US ARMY
Company L, 3rd Battalion,
18th Infantry Regiment, 1st Infantry Division
Omaha Beach, Normandy, France
10 July 1944
Two days before D-Day my platoon was assigned a special mission. As soon as we landed in the second wave we were to punch through a ravine to the high ground about 500 yards off the beach. As it turned out we came in right after the
first
wave, about two hours ahead of the second wave. When we got to where we were supposed to punch through, the beach hadn't yet been cleared and everyone in front of us was pinned down.
It was something because all the way into the beach in our Higgins boat we had been watching all these waves of planes passing over us—and the firing of all those big naval guns from the battleships and cruisers—and then closer in, the rocket ships firing. But when we got to the beach,
there were all these guys getting hit from these German emplacements. Some of the rockets struck the German pillboxes and hit them, but they didn't do anything to them because they were so fortified.
We hit a sand bar. And I asked the coxswain driving the Higgins boat, “Is this as far as we're going?” And he said, “We can't go any farther, we're on a sand bar.” So he let the ramp down and we got out—and naturally, on the other side of the sand bar, we went down into the water almost over our heads. My second in command, a sergeant, was so short he was pulled under the water. But we all managed to get to the beach.
When we got to the high water mark there was this incredibly brave beach master—standing there under fire—and directing traffic! I ran up to him and asked, “What direction do you want us to go from here?” He said, “Go straight ahead, and follow that path—otherwise you'll be in a minefield.” So we did, despite the many bodies on our right and left. They were the guys from the first wave who were killed trying to get through the mines.
We raced inland some distance, and came to a row of barbed wire and two men from an engineer unit were lying there. One of them said, “We're pinned down! As soon as we move, they fire on us.”
I told him, “We'll cover you. We'll fire up into the trenches while you guys blow the barbed wire with your Bangalore torpedo.” They did it—although one guy was killed in the process. We rushed into the German trenches and I was feeling pretty good because I had gotten my squad of twelve soldiers across the beach without being killed even though the first wave had 50 percent casualties, and the second wave suffered 30 percent casualties. Some of the companies and individual squads or platoons even lost
100 percent
to casualties.
None of these guys had ever been in combat before and some of 'em wanted to hold up and dig in. But I told them, “We can't stay here, you'll get killed.” So I just kept them moving. As we ran up into the trenches, the Germans started running from us. We took a pillbox from behind and captured four Germans. I sent them back down to the CP with one man from the squad.
From the high ground where we were, we could look back and see the beach and the wave with K Company—my brother's company and the one we had served in together in North Africa and Sicily—as they landed. That night I heard that the K Company commander got killed on the beach. And so did a lot of other guys in the company—the guys I knew and some close friends. I asked if my brother had made it, but nobody knew.
On D plus two—the night of June 8—we had just dug in when a German patrol bumped into our lines. They opened fire right in front of us. Our company commander told me to take a patrol and go after the Germans, so I set out with four of my men to follow these guys. I was the only person in this squad that had seen action before, but after two days of pretty bad combat, they had learned quickly.
It was pitch dark and we couldn't see but we could
hear
the Germans—up ahead of us, and moving faster than we were. We were cautious but they must have felt threatened, and took off fast. Then we ran across a briefcase that one of them had dropped. I picked it up and brought it back to the CP. Our officers opened the briefcase; it had maps and documents inside, showing the enemy's second and third line of defenses.
The next day, the ninth of June, we were in the attack again and I was leading my squad from hedgerow to hedgerow across the fields when we were fired upon. I told the guys, “We don't want to get caught out here in this field, hurry to that next hedgerow.”
When we got to the hedgerow where the firing was coming from we could hear voices and I warned my squad, “Here comes some Germans!”
They saw me and fired first but missed and I got all four of them. I crept further up the hedgerow and saw more Germans in a machine-gun nest. I told my guys to reload and fix bayonets, and we charged the machine gun. I shot the gunner and killed him, and the others ran away.
A little while later we practically bumped into another machine gun, right at the corner of the hedgerow. We knocked out that machine gun with rifle fire and grenades and then charged up the ridge on the other side of the hedgerow.
Just over the crest we came upon two big German mortar positions with about ten men in them. They were more surprised than we were and we killed them all and captured their mortar tubes. We captured one more machine gun before dark and some of the guys in the squad said that I had killed eighteen Germans that day.
On the morning of the tenth the Germans launched a counter-attack and we were told to pull back because we were about to be surrounded. We were told to cover the withdrawal of the rest of the company but before we could pull back we started taking fire from the hedgerows in front and both sides of us.
I saw some Germans setting up a machine-gun nest in the corner of the hedgerow so I shot them but I got hit in the side by a bullet that turned me around, and as I'm falling, I saw a German up in the hedgerow and I shot him, and he fell to the ground.
As I rolled over I saw my BAR automatic rifleman go down so I crawled over to him, put his arms around my neck, and dragged him back to the protection of our hedgerow. Then I ran back and got the BAR so it wouldn't fall into enemy hands.
By the time I got back to our lines with the BAR the medics were there, treating my wounded rifleman. As they started to load him into the ambulance I asked my company commander, “Captain, can you have the medics look at my back before they leave because I've been hit.” He turned me around, and he said, “Oh my God, you should be dead! You've been shot clear through.” When they raised my shirt they saw a bullet hit a rib, went in and out and into my pack where it hit a bar of soap, passed through my mother's picture and out the back of my pack.
I didn't want to leave my men so I had them dress the wound. It was okay as long as I didn't wear my pack because it rubbed up against the two holes where the bullet went in and out. So I carried a bandolier of ammunition across my shoulder instead, and it didn't bother my wound.
A month later, on the fourteenth of July, Captain Russell, the new K Company commander, came and told me that my brother Roland had been killed on D-Day.
Later on, in Belgium, I was promoted to second lieutenant and the company commander and first sergeant came to me and said, “Lieutenant Ehlers, we have to get you out of here.” I asked, “What's the hurry?” I still had my battle fatigues on, and was planning to go back up to the line. But the CO said, “We've got to get you back to Paris to get your Medal of Honor before you get killed!”
I was put on a jeep and sent back to Paris, where General John C. H. Lee awarded me the Medal of Honor. It was first time I'd ever been in an officer's dress uniform. Afterwards I rejoined my outfit, and after we had crossed into Germany, I got wounded again.
On that occasion, the New Testament that my mother had given me must have fallen out of my pack. Years after the war, a German woman mailed it to my mother, because her address was in it. She was pleased to see that I had read from it a lot before it fell out of my pack. She told me that she prayed every day. Where would we be without mothers who pray for us?

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