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CHAPTER 4 The British crafts held thirty-two men, plus their British crews. A British naval ensign was the boat commander. A coxswain piloted the craft, and there were sailors who handled the rear anchor, the main engine, and the extracting winch engine. The winch was used to pull the landing craft assault off of the beach after it had unloaded. Inside were three benches that ran the length of the craft, one on the port side, one on the starboard side, and one down the middle. Men seated on the side benches sat facing inboard while the men seated on the middle bench sat straddling the bench and facing forward. When unloading, the first man was from the left bench, then from the right bench, and then from the center. Unloading went very fast. When the landing craft grounded, the coxswain released the ramp, which dropped. Simultaneously a pair of steel doors swung open. There were two firing/observation slits in the steel doors. The plan for the assault was an excellent one, but it started to come apart almost as soon as the assault got under way. There were many factors that contributed to this. There was a lot of smoke over the beach from burning grass and brush and from both our naval and German gunfire. There was also a heavy mist that obscured vision. There was a strong tidal current that forced many landing crafts away from their assigned landing zones. Another factor that contributed to the higher casualty rate was the failure of the American Army Air Force to lay a carpet of bombs on the beaches and beach defenses. This was designed to knock out some of the German defenses but also to provide foxholes for the American assaulting troops. The Air Force claimed, and rightly so, that the smoke over the target area made them concerned that they would be dropping bombs on their own troops. The bombers delayed their drop by two seconds, with the result that the bombs landed well inland and probably killed a lot of cows and horses. Lieutenant Colonel Rudder was appointed Commanding Officer of the Provisional Ranger Group, comprising the 2nd Ranger Infantry Battalion, the 5th Ranger Infantry Battalion, two twelve-man naval shore fire control parties (NSFCP), one air support party, a forward observer from the 58th Armored Field Artillery Battalion, the 293rd Assault Signal Company, and the 165th Photo Company. The British naval officer in command of the flotilla assigned for the assault on Pointe du Hoc caused a delay of more than thirty minutes, arriving at the Pointe, over thirty minutes late. He had been headed for the wrong promontory when Lieutenant Colonel Rudder, the Commanding Officer of the Provisional Ranger Group, noticed the error and directed the flotilla commander to make a ninety-degree turn to the right and follow the cliffs toward Pointe du Hoc. Lieutenant Colonel Rudder was in the lead landing craft assaulting Pointe de Hoc. The waves were high and broke over the sides of the landing crafts. The British had claimed that their assault landing crafts were unsinkable. How wrong they were. Several swamped on the run in; one of them was a supply craft with much of the extra equipment. The assault on the Pointe was much more dangerous in this regard than the assault on Omaha, because there was a much more difficult distance to travel over an exposed sea, to get to the Pointe. Many of the tragic losses occurred in the crafts assaulting the Pointe. Quite a few men drowned, and their bodies were never recovered. As a result of the delay, the Fifth Ranger Battalion and A and B Companies of the Second Ranger Battalion had to postpone their scheduled landing as a follow-up force at Pointe du Hoc. Instead, they commenced their assault on Omaha Beach, Dog Green. C Company was already assaulting Pointe et Raz de la Percee. Lieutenant Colonel Max Schneider was delaying his assault on Omaha Beach in the hopes that he would receive the radio message "PRAISE THE LORD" which was his signal to make the follow-up assault on Pointe du Hoc. What he finally received was the radio message "TILT." That message had little meaning, for Schneider had already headed for Omaha. But it did confirm that D, E, and F Companies of the Second Rangers had failed to secure their area in time. Lieutenant Colonel Schneider, as he headed for Omaha Beach, Dog Green, could see that Dog Green was a bloody shambles and that there was no way that he could stop A and B Companies of the Second Rangers from what they were running into. Our flotilla was in a frontal assault line parallel to Omaha Beach, Dog Green, when Schneider observed that a catastrophe was taking place on Omaha Beach, Dog Green. He directed the flotilla commander to turn the entire Fifth Ranger Battalion ninety degrees to port and run parallel to the beach until we approached an area where the fighting was much less severe. He then ordered the naval flotilla commander to execute another ninety-degree turn, this time to starboard, and assault Omaha Beach, Dog White. My platoon of Rangers was in the second assault landing craft from the left together with the A Company Headquarters. The first landing craft assault, on our left, contained Lieutenant Colonel Schneider and part of the Fifth Ranger Battalion Headquarters and members of the Headquarters Detachment with Captain John C. Raaen, Father, Captain Joseph Lacy, our chaplain. On the way in we began receiving German machine-gun fire. It struck the steel sides of our landing craft, but it couldn't penetrate it. I got up, crouched by the steel doors, and looked out of one of the firing/observation slits, trying to locate the machine gun. The British ensign, holding a Lewis gun, said, "If you spot the bloody bastard, point him out and I'll give him a blast of this." I never did spot that gun and when we were on the beach, it continued to give us problems. As I studied the beach, I could see dead and wounded everywhere I looked. There were Twenty-ninth Division men crawling through the water and attempting to hide behind the beach obstacles. There were men lying on the shingle. No one seemed to be trying to exit the beach area. I blame some of this on the strict safety rules laid down on the Braunton Assault Training Site. One of the most important rules of an invasion is get off of the beach. I couldn't help but think that I'd never make it alive through that mess. In front of us were five lines of telephone poles with Teller mines attached to the top and canted so that they would blow into a boat if they were set off. These poles were planted so that a landing craft could not go through them in a straight line, and with four-foot waves, our coxswain had a difficult time maneuvering our landing craft through them. With his head above the protecting side of the landing craft, he did an outstanding job of piloting us. You could tell that he was very well trained and had experience in this type of problem. Suddenly, we ground down on a hidden sand bar. The ramp went down, the steel doors flew open, and we started exiting the landing craft. I made a running jump to my left, over the heads of Lieutenant Parker and Suchier, and landed in water up to my arm pits. I noticed that we had about one hundred yards of water and one hundred yards of beach to cross in order to reach the shingle. It is impossible to run through water as deep as it was, and my gas mask and life belt made it even more difficult. I was having difficulty forcing my foot down onto the sand. I took out my fighting knife, cut the straps to my gas mask and my life belt, and let them float away. I thought that I would stop in the shelter of the tank and gather my men who were spread out behind me and together we would rush the beach wall. I found that as I neared the sand bar, that I was able to run, so I started running for the tank. Beyond the sand bar and the beach proper was a rivulet of water. Just as I reached the tank, that German machine gun opened up and fired a burst that hit the rivulet beyond the sand bar. I reacted instantly and continued running until I reached the shingle. The Germans fire a machine gun much the same as we do. They fire in evenly spaced bursts. There is a short span of time between the bursts and sometimes you can run through it without getting hit. I did and I got through. I lay down on the shingle and looked back to see what my men were doing. They had seen what I had done, and they did the same, with the result that all of my men, except the last Ranger, made it through the German machine-gun fire. The last man took a round through his right hand and the upper part of his right leg. Father Lacy, our chaplain, went back for him and dragged him up to the shingle. Father Lacy received the Distinguished Service Cross for this and many other actions that he took that day. He ended up surviving the war and became the chancellor of the Archdiocese of Hartford, Connecticut, and Rector of St. Luke's Roman Catholic Church of Hartford, and a Monsi-gnor. The men of the Second and Fifth Ranger Battalions will always remember our chaplain with eternal gratitude for his valorous deeds under fire on the beaches of Normandy on 6,7, and 8 June 1944 and the battlefields of France and Germany. He brought succor to the dying and wounded, and his inspiring spiritual guidance and moral support contributed immeasurably to the morale and well-being of the Second and Fifth Ranger Battalions during World War II. After the battle for Brest, France, the two battalions split up. The Second Ranger Battalion was assigned to the First United States Army and the Fifth Ranger Battalion was assigned to the Third United States Army. Even after the battalions were split. Father Lacy continued to serve both battalions. He did this by commuting between them in his jeep with his assistant as his driver. At times he would spread his altar cloth on the hood of his jeep, which he would use as his altar. I will never forget a service that he held during the first week of December 1944. The Fifth Ranger Battalion was fighting for the villages of Lauterback and Carling when Father Lacy visited us. Father Lacy held a non-sectarian service in a house in part of Lauterback that we held. About thirty Rangers attended. We were in full combat gear and sat on the floor in one of the rooms. While Father Lacy was conducting the service, German artillery and mortar shelling started to land in the forward section of the village that we controlled and began to creep into our area. Father Lacy, speeding up his presentation, said a sudden, "Amen!" and then said, "Let's get out of here." We were all worried and took no time in evacuating the building. No sooner had we done so than a German shell hit and destroyed the house. We were very lucky, no one was injured. Back on Omaha, I was lying on the shingle, attempting to gather my men in order to breach the concertina barbed wire on top of the beach wall when a voice behind me asked, "What outfit is this?" At the very same moment, that German machine gun, which had given us so much trouble on the way in, opened up. I answered the voice and said, "We're the Rangers." I got a response of, "Well, let's get off this beach!" In a rather excited voice, I said, "We will, as soon as I blow this f—ing wire." I then tuned and noticed where the voice came from. It was from a short stocky man with the stub of a cigar in his mouth, wearing a field jacket with a silver star on his shoulder, the rank of a brigadier general. It was Brigadier General Norman Cota, the Assistant Division Commander of the Twenty-ninth Infantry Division. I couldn't help but wonder what in hell was he doing on this beach. I turned back, still looking for that German machine gun when I heard my bangalore man yell, "Fire in the hole!" The bangalore exploded, and with Lieutenant Parker leading, we took off through the gap in the wire. I was sixth in line as we started up the bluff. I noticed one of our men, PFC Bernard Berkowitz, trying to pull himself up the bluff using his hands. His rifle was strapped over his shoulder. He had been hit and the bullet had creased his tailbone, paralyzing him from the waist down. I told him to get back down to the beach. He did and was evacuated to England and finally to the United States. Another man. Lieutenant Suchier, who was twenty-ninth in the column, received a slight wound to his ankle on the way up the bluff. He dropped out of the column and returned to the beach. This broke the column, and the rest of the men never caught up to us. In an open field at the top of the bluff was a donkey hitched to a small wagon. There was nobody nearb pose that when the shelling and bombing commer farmer just took off for a shelter. We were moving in eriy direction on the southern edge of Vierville sur Mer, and we crossed the north-south black top highway, which ran from St. Laurent sur Mer to Grandcamp les Bains point where we crossed the highway was an old-fa single pump gasoline station. The glass dome on tih read "MOBIL." On my last trip to Normandy in 15 traced my steps looking for that location in Vierville it and there is a very large and modern repair gar several modern gasoline pumps. Would you believe it, it was a MOBIL station. We moved diagonally across the highway and an opening in the hedgerow into a field surrour hedgerows about one hundred yards square and filled what were called Rommell's Asparagus. These W( phone poles implanted in the ground with four wire diagonally from each pole to the ground designed to foil glider landings. We turned right and followed the row. Lieutenant Parker had reorganized the column so that he would be more toward the center of the column better able to control it. I was now fifth in line. In fro was Technician Fifth Class William J. Fox and right behind me was First Lieutenant Woodford 0. Moore from E. Company. He had become separated from his company on the beach and had joined our column as we moved through the barbed wire. A shot rang out from a hedgerow in fro and it hit Lieutenant Moore in the front of his helmet. I dove into the hedgerow as did most everyone around me. This was a double type of hedgerow. That is one with a trail in the middle. Fox, in front of me, didn't and as he started to go down to a prone position, a second shot rang out and he took a bullet in the soft spot at the top of his shoulder. I pulled him into the hedgerow beside me, then I helped one of my men pull Lieutenant Moore in. His helmet and liner fell off and the bullet had torn a good size piece out of the left side of his skull, revealing the gray mass of his brains and exiting the rear of his helmet. He was alive but unconscious. I thought that he would die. I asked Fox how he felt and he said he felt OK. I couldn't find any exit hole from the bullet, and there was no bleeding that I could see. I told him that we would have to leave him there and continue on our mission. To which he responded, "Yeah, I know." Amazingly, we heard later that Lieutenant Moore, with his massive head wound, survived while Fox died from what we thought was a minor wound. From my vantage point inside the hedgerow, I took a quick peek out of the other side of the hedgerow and saw a small section of barbed wire slightly in front of another hedgerow that was perpendicular to the one that I was in and on the opposite side from which the shots had come. I told the men nearest me that I was going to run out to body-bridge the wire and they were to follow me and take that position. I started to do just that on a run, but I had only taken two steps when a shot rang out and a bullet kicked up dirt between my feet. I spun around and dove back into the hedgerow just in time to dodge another shot, which flew over my head. Shaking and damned mad, I put my grenade launcher on my rifle, emptied the live rounds and put a grenade launcher cartridge in my rifle, and mounted an anti-tank grenade on the launcher. Lying on the top of the hedgerow, I noticed a downed tree limb from under which the German had fired. Quickly leaning out, I fired at that limb. The grenade ricocheted off the front of the log and flew over it. It wasn't a good shot, but it worked. I now believe that the Germans had vacated the position. I took the launcher off of my rifle and attached my bayonet. I got rid of my pack, took the chocolate bar and my spoon, and decided to work my way into a position where I could throw a grenade into the German position. I started to crawl forward and ran into some briars. I managed to push through some of them and finally got to within throwing distance of the German position. My men were following me, and immediately behind me was Technician Fifth Class Dana Wallace, who was a sniper. I threw a concussion grenade into the position and when it exploded, I dashed out of the right side of the hedgerow and into the position. I was inside of the barbed-wire obstacle. The Germans had done their job very well and had held us up for over an hour and a half. While they fell back to warn their commander of our approach, it was from a two-man out-guard position. There was some live eight-millimeter rifle ammunition and a box of about one hundred rounds of eight-millimeter rifle ammunition with a very thin soft wooden bullet, which was dyed purple. I had never seen anything like it before. I later found out that they were blank cartridges and needed the wooden projectiles in order to be able to feed the rounds into the rifles. There was a well-marked trail leading eastward. We now started, cautiously, along the trail. After moving about a hundred yards, I suddenly stopped, as did Dana. I was in a crouched position and turning to Dana, I put my finger to my lips to indicate silence. I motioned for him to join me. He did and then turned, motioned to the men in the rear to halt, and signaled them to get down. He then turned to me and whispered, "I can smell them, too." I don't know what it was, but there was a very distinct odor to any position where German troops had lived. I crept forward a couple of feet and then noticed a well-camouflaged opening to a dug-out. I motioned to Dana that he and I would rush separate sides of the opening, I would toss in a concussion grenade, and after it exploded, we would rush in. There was no one inside, but we found that six German soldiers must have occupied the place since there were six bunks and much equipment and clothing lying around. We went outside and motioned the men forward. Lieutenant Parker came up and looked the place over. He then said to move out. We again followed the trail, which led us opposite of a chateau. I stopped at a junction where a wagon trail veered off to the chateau. Dana and I were kneeling, when Parker came up and knelt beside me. "I don't see anyone," I said, "and we haven't received any shots." On the left side of the wagon trail, there were two brush piles. Since we had good cover up to the end of the first brush pile, we moved up to it. I pointed to a door in the wall of the chateau, which was slightly open. Lieutenant Parker took out his map, I looked at it, and said something like, "That is the Chateau de Vaumicel and we've got to go in that direction to get to the assembly area." The distance to the door from where we were at the first brush pile was about eighty feet. The second brush pile was about twenty feet closer, and to the east of the brush pile was a cleared field. I volunteered to make a run for the door to see what was inside. Lieutenant Parker approved my offer. Dana was next to me, and I suggested that he wait with Parker until I was inside and I motioned back to them. This suggestion was also agreed upon. I made a dash for the second pile of brush and moved to the far end in a crouched position. About five feet from the far end, I took a deep breath and started running as fast as I could. I hit the door with my shoulder and went inside. As I hit the door, a shot rang out and the bullet hit the door jam over my head. I then heard the snick of a rifle bolt as the sniper fed another round into the chamber of his rifle. Inside I found a first lieutenant and ten men from the 116th Infantry Regiment of the Twenty-ninth Division. I told him that I was a Ranger and that there were twenty-six more outside who would be coming into the chateau and that we were on our way to Pointe du Hoc. I asked him if his men would give us covering fire. He said that he had been ordered to return to Vierville, but he would hold up until we got inside. I informed him that Lieutenant Parker was in command and that he would want to talk to him. I then said that I would return to my unit and send the men in. He then told me that there was a strong enemy force east of the chateau. My next task was to return to my unit, brief Parker, and then send the men past the sniper and into the chateau. I went back to the door and opening it wide, jammed a piece of wood under it in order to keep it open. Standing about ten feet from the door, I got a running start and dashed for the brush pile. No shots were fired. I moved to the other brush pile where Lieutenant Parker and Dana were and briefed them on the situation. I told them that I suspected that the sniper was using a bolt-action Mauser rifle with a telescope on it, that he didn't have much of a field of vision, and therefore had very little room to pick up a running person and that he couldn't chamber another round fast enough to squeeze off another shot at a second runner if the runner started at the time he heard the first shot. I told Parker that I would stay at the second pile and start the men off. I suggested that if Lieutenant Parker agreed, he should go back to brief Lieutenant Zeiepsky and then have him send the men up to me two at a time. I also suggested that he return to me and I would start Dana off first and he should follow as soon as the sniper fired at Dana. Parker agreed and said that it was a good idea. He went back and briefed Zeiepsky. I told Dana that when he started, run like hell. Lieutenant Parker returned and said that everything was all set up. I asked him if he was ready, and he said that he was. I told Dana to go. He did, the sniper took a shot at Dana and missed, and Parker went. No shots were fired at Parker. As soon as Parker started, Zeiepsky sent me two more. We continued this way until all of our men were in the chateau. Not a man got hit. I was the last man to go. In the chateau I found that all of the men of the Twenty-ninth Division were gone and Parker and Zeiepsky were in a conference over a map. I went up to them and asked if all of our men were accounted for. Parker said that he didn't know. I told him that I'd better check. I did and three men were missing. They were Staff Sergeant William Scott, Private First Class Henry Santos, and Private First Class George F. Chiatello. I told Parker that they were supposed to be out-guards on our flank and that I'd better go out to see if I could locate them. Parker approved and I went back out and tried to find them. They were not where they were supposed to be. I found out later that they had moved forward and had run into the German position. Chiatello was killed. Santos was wounded and captured, and Scott was also captured. I returned to the chateau and reported them missing. Lieutenant Parker showed me his map and pointed out the direction we were to take to get to the battalion assembly area. He assigned me as commander of the point. I put Technician Fifth Class Dana as my number one scout and Sergeant William R. Kalar as my number two scout. I took the next position with our Browning Automatic Rifleman alongside of me. Following me I had three other Rangers, then a connecting file, after which came the main body. Parker was with the main body and following the main body was the rear point under the control of Lieutenant Zeiepsky. We organized inside the chateau and then moved out. We took a dirt road that angled off to the southeast toward a blacktop highway that went through the village of Englesqueville and then in the direction of the village of Au Guay and Pointe du Hoc. A distance of about ten miles. We were about one and a half miles inland from Omaha Beach. |
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