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CHAPTER 2 On 1 March 1944, the Fifth Ranger Battalion departed Leominster by train for the Scottish port of Androssan, located on the southern entrance to the Firth of Clyde. We loaded a coastal steamer for a short trip, in a snowstorm, to a village called Tighnabruaich, located on an inlet off of the Firth of Clyde, called the Kyles of Bute. We pulled up to a wharf on which there was a warehouse. Our vehicles had to come by highway, a very rough and long ride. In the warehouse we were introduced to a Scottish colonel of the Scottish Cameronian Regiment who briefed us on our training mission, advising us that we would be firing a lot of live ammunition and would likely kill some of the sheep that lived on the hills where we would be maneuvering. He requested that we report any damage to the herds, so that the Scottish people could come up and butcher the sheep. One of our men asked why they didn't move the herds off of the hills where we would be training. The colonel told us that the herds could not be moved from where they are born or they would die. They were what is called "tied to the hill." They would not reproduce if moved. He then told us that we would be billeted in private homes in the villages of Kanes and Tighnabruaich. My section was billeted on the extreme end of the village of Tighnabruaich, equally distant from the other Rangers contingent billeted in Kanes. Every evening we were told where we were to meet for the next day's training and what sort of training it was to be. A sandwich lunch with hot coffee was brought to us to be eaten in the field, often in rain or snow. The area received one hundred fourteen inches of precipitation a year. We went on one exercise that involved landing from British assault landing crafts. We did not know it yet, but these were the very same landing crafts that we would use in the assault on the beaches of Normandy. Can you imagine what it was like to be dropped in water, up to your knees in the middle of March, a couple of hundred miles south of the Arctic Circle? It was darned cold. As soon as we hit the beach, everyone who could built small fires from driftwood and tried to warm up and dry out a bit. Never was I so cold. One Saturday afternoon Captain Eichner called all of the company officers and non-commissioned officers together and asked for a commissioned officer to volunteer for a mission. The mission was secret, so he couldn't tell us what the officer would be volunteering for. First Lieutenant Oscar A. Suchier, Jr. volunteered. He then asked for two non-commissioned officers. I suspected that it was to be a raid with the British Commandos, similar to what the First Ranger Battalion did at Dieppe. I volunteered, and said to James B. Rooney, "Come on." He also volunteered, and we were both selected. We packed all of our equipment and clothing into our packs, one duffel bag each, and we left by truck for a rough ride to Glasgow. At Glasgow we boarded a blacked-out train and headed south. We traveled to Bude, a small village in southern England where we were met by members of the Second Ranger Battalion. After an excellent dinner in the Second Ranger Battalion mess hall, we were billeted in private homes. The Fifth Ranger Detachment was comprised of seven officers and twelve non-commissioned officers. Captain Richard P. Sullivan was in command of the Fifth Ranger Detachment. The next morning, after an excellent breakfast with the Second Rangers, we were loaded into two and a half ton trucks for a trip to the Braunton Training Site. Joining us were six Second Ranger Battalion officers and twelve non-commissioned officers. Captain Sullivan was in command of this joint team. Altogether we amounted to what could be called a platoon. On arrival at the Braunton Assault Training Site, we were assigned one of their officers as an umpire. His name was Major Bock. The Ranger officers were billeted in one Quonset hut and the Ranger non-commissioned officers in another. Both huts were heated by Sibley soft-coal-fired stoves. In between was another Quonset hut, which contained ammunition, explosives, and napalm with compressed gas for our flame throwers. The training was good, but the Rangers didn't like the restrictions placed on the trainees as safety measures. We were restricted as to when we could fire our weapons, in what direction, and for how long. This was done in order to avoid accidents and injury. We violated the orders and decided that we should use all of our fire power, explosives, and flame throwers as we would do in actual combat. There were mock-ups of landing crafts from which the assaults were made. We carried out our first assault as specified in the Braunton Sands Training Directive, but we found that the safety measures were very restrictive. On the next try, our platoon leader said, "Let's do it our way, the way we would if we were in actual combat." When our umpire said, "The ramp is down," we came out of the simulated landing craft firing all of our weapons, rifles, Thompson sub-machine guns. Browning automatic rifles, and machine guns. Mortar men set up the mortar and fired two rounds at the area around the enemy pillbox. Then our bangalore man advanced to the barbed wire and blew a path through it. Rooney with the flame thrower, rushed up toward the pillbox, gave it a two-second blast across the face of the aperture, and then a four-second blast into the aperture. Another Ranger put a two-pound pole charge in the aperture, instead of a half-pound charge of Nitro Starch called for in the original training instructions, and pulled the igniter, exploding the charge. Then another Ranger pulled the igniter on his two-pound satchel charge and threw it into the aperture where it exploded. Finally, all of the Rangers advanced, throwing concussion grenades at the trenches surrounding the pillbox and launched an assault with bayonets. Major Bock was standing on a sand dune, jumping up and down, clapping his hands, and yelling, "You can't do that. You can't do that!" To which our platoon leader yelled back, "We're doing it, aren't we?" We then returned to the area around the mock-up for an after-action critique. Everyone agreed that what we had done was a much more realistic version of what would happen on a real invasion. Major Bock complained that we had violated all of the Braunton Sand's Training Site safety rules, but all of us told him that there would be no safety rules in an actual invasion. The next day we were given a green brassard to put on our left arm that reached from the shoulder to the elbow to distinguish us from the other soldiers taking the same training. The unit next to us was a battalion of 116th Infantry Regiment of the 29th Infantry Division. We did not know it at that time, but we would be attached to this regiment for the invasion of Normandy, France. Our quarters were not neat. Ashes from the stove littered the sand box on which the stove sat, and our gear was hung from nails driven into the building's two-by-fours. Our uniforms were on coat hangers, but not in any orderly arrangement. One Saturday morning a battalion commander, a lieutenant colonel of a battalion of the 116th Infantry Regiment of the 29th Infantry Division, paid us a visit. Some of us were sitting or lying on our bunks. Someone yelled, "Attention!" Most of us started to get up but a non-commissioned officer from the Second Rangers whom I knew only as "Red," yelled, "As you were." We all went back to our original positions. The lieutenant colonel was not impressed. "Oh! Rangers, huh? This place is a mess. Clean it up. I'll be back," he said, and he left. He stayed outside the door, though, looking in through a knot hole. Red grabbed a fragmentation grenade from which the powder charge had been removed and, holding it, suggested that we booby-trap the place. All of us started getting our trip wires out and some got out grenades, from which the charges had been removed, and we started tying the trip wires to the grenade safety pins. That lieutenant colonel never came back, nor did anyone from any other outfit ever pay us a visit. One day while returning from an exercise, we were in rout column on a highway, passing through an intersection when this same lieutenant colonel with his battalion approached the intersection, halted his battalion, and called out to our platoon leader. Our leader promptly held up his hand and yelled, "Hold it up." He then turned, saluted the lieutenant colonel, and reported that we were Rangers. The lieutenant colonel asked him, "Do you allow smoking in your rout column?" "It's probably some second lieutenant," he replied. I was an acting squad leader that day and looked back down the length of our platoon, and in my squad, sure enough, was the only second lieutenant in the outfit. He had a cigarette dangling out of his mouth, and with his arms over his rifle, was carrying it on the top of his shoulders. Our platoon leader yelled and motioned, "Forward." We took off for our cantonment area. One of our field exercises was to knock out a machine-gun position that guarded the approach to a simulated pillbox built into the side of a cliff on "Croyde Point" and carry out an assault on the pillbox itself, which faced both Morie Bay and the village of Woolacombe. There was a schoolhouse in Woolacombe, which on the day of our assault was hosting a meeting of high staff officers. It was impossible to knock out the pillbox without first knocking out the machine-gun position. Also, it was impossible to approach the machine-gun position from the land side and it was considered unapproachable from the cliff side because the cliff was shale, extremely steep, and unstable. If anyone slid off the shale, there was a hundred-foot drop to the rocks below. After much consideration it was decided that we would assault the machine-gun position from the shale cliff using our rifles, Thompson sub-machine guns, and Browning automatic rifles. Rooney would carry the flame thrower. One other Ranger would carry a twenty-four pound pole charge and another Ranger would carry a forty-eight pound satchel charge. These items would be strapped to their backs. They would not carry any weapons or other equipment. I was to be in command of the group making the assault on the simulated pillbox built into the other side of the cliff face. On this side of the cliff, the stone was granite, and shale, making it easier to get to the pillbox. When the plan was discussed, everyone agreed that we thought we could work our way laterally along the cliff, just under the crest, using our bayonets and fighting knives. In that way we would be out of sight of anyone in the machine-gun position. Moreover since all of the other units that had tried to assault the machine gun position had done so from the land side had failed we believed that they would never expect a unit to attempt an assault from the shale cliff. We had a distance of about fifty feet to travel, which took us a little over an hour. This, also, allowed time for the Rangers who would lead the assault on the machine gun to get into position to do their job. They succeeded and I with my team moved at the double across the hill top and climbed halfway down the cliff. I sent two of my men farther down and way to the right of the simulated pillbox. I then sent Rooney in to give the pillbox two blasts with the flame thrower. First a two-second blast across the face of the aperture and then a four-second blast into the aperture. My pole charge man was right behind him, and as soon as Rooney finished, the Ranger with the twenty-four pound pole charge placed it into the aperture, and yelled, "Fire in the hole!" and got back away from the pillbox. There was a hell of a roar and some parts of the aperture flew out into the bay. The ground shook from the blast. The umpires evaluating our assault did not know how much of a charge we were using. Nor did they know that we would assault the machine-gun position from the shale cliff. They were actually on the inland side of the position. Immediately after the pole charge went off, the Ranger with the forty-eight pound satchel charge went up to the pillbox, pulled the igniter, and heaved it into the enlarged aperture. "Fire in the hole!" he yelled and quickly moved to some cover in the rocks. When it went off, the face of the cliff and the simulated pillbox flew out into Morie Bay. It was so powerful that it broke windows in the schoolhouse and many windows in the homes and stores in Woolacombe. On 3 April the remainder of the Fifth Battalion joined us at Braunton Sands for training at the Braunton Sands Training Site. The training was very much the same as that which the team had tested, with one exception. The exercise on Croyde Point was eliminated, much to everyone's pleasure. Many of the techniques practiced here were used during the invasion of Normandy, France. Lieutenant Colonel Owen E. Carter, who had been promoted, was relieved of command of the Fifth Ranger Battalion while the battalion was still in Scotland and Major Max F. Schneider assumed command in Braunton. Captain John T. Eichner was also relieved of command of A Company and First Lieutenant Charles H. (Ace) Parker assumed command. There was also a change of attachment from VIII Corps to V Corps. We received additional training in conducting assaults on strong points, in understanding mines, both land and naval, and in street fighting. |
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