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CHAPTER 5 As we approached the intersection with the blacktop highway my scout, Dana, raised his rifle over his head, signaling, "enemy in sight in small numbers." He took off, running around the junction to his right. I signaled the rest of the point to deploy as skirmishers and took off running to join Dana. He stepped into a field and was raising his rifle as I joined him and raised my rifle. There was a German non-commissioned officer with his back to us. We both shot and the German fell forward into the hedgerow. Dana then ran up the road toward the hedgerow with me right behind him. As he approached the hedgerow, he aimed his rifle toward the ground and fired. There was a scream and as I passed Dana, I saw that he had shot a German soldier in the upper part of his back. I pointed my rifle down the length of the hedgerow and sixteen Germans stood up with their hands in the air yelling, "Kamarad." They came out and while we were collecting them on the road. Lieutenant Parker came up with the rest of the men. We kept our men spread out and I sent several of them down the hedgerow to disarm the rifles and throw the bolts out into the fields. None of our men could speak German, but one of our men could speak a little Polish. We discovered that some of the Germans were of Polish extraction, and while my men were destroying the equipment, this Ranger managed to gather some intelligence, which Parker and Zeiepsky monitored. It turned out that the Germans were from the 716th Fortress Division and were second-class troops. We lined them up in single file on the left side of the highway and just in front of the main body. We left the wounded German in the ditch and a German aid man with him. We then moved out. As soon as we were out of sight, the German aid man probably left the wounded soldier and took off to warn his unit of our location and direction. In about three miles, we came to the village of Englesqueville. There was a bend in the highway with a slight downward grade. Suddenly, around the bend came two German soldiers riding bicycles. We stopped. Both they and we were surprised. They were not armed. Both Germans jumped off of their bicycles. One of them dashed into a house to his left and the other pulled himself over a five-foot stone wall that had cut glass embedded in concrete on the top. He must have cut himself. None of the Rangers got a shot off. I dashed up an alley in an attempt to cut off the German who had jumped over the stone wall. No luck so I ran back down, tossed a grenade into the house, and as it exploded, I rushed in. The German had dashed through the house and out the back door. He had taken off running in the direction that we were going. I did not see either one of them. I returned to my position in the column. Lieutenant Parker had come up, I informed him about the two Germans and the direction that they had taken and that I suspected that the Germans were going back to their unit and that somewhere in front of us was a German unit. Parker agreed and said, "Move out but keep your eyes peeled." I moved Sergeant Kalar into the position of first scout and put Dana in the position of second scout. Kalar was armed with a Thompson submachine gun, and I wanted more fire power in the front of the column in case we ran into trouble. This turned out to be a good move. I then signaled forward with a wave of my arm. About a half mile outside of the village, the highway became a sunken road with banks about six feet high. We soon came opposite a farm complex. On my right was a cart path going into the farmyard. Sergeant Kalar was near a bend in the road when a shot rang out and one of the German prisoners of war dropped dead from a bullet wound to his forehead. Kalar took off running and as he neared the bend, he spun completely around and kept running out of sight. Suddenly, I heard the firing of Kalar's tommy gun. I had dashed across the highway to see if I could see anything but I saw nothing. I looked behind me to see what had happened to the rest of the outfit and the prisoners, but the only people I saw were my own men hugging the bank on the right-hand side of the highway. The rest of the outfit, with the prisoners, had moved into the farm area. I noticed Kalar coming back, and he was walking as though he had done something in his pants. I walked up to him and said, "What's the matter with you?" He had a couple of German Schmeissers (German submachine guns) slung over his shoulder and two handoliers across his chest. He said, "Ddai dot throt in da droat." He had been shot in the throat and the bullet was lodged in the left side of his throat. I scrambled up the bank and looked over the hedgerow. I saw several German soldiers running behind another hedgerow about two hundred yards away. It appeared to me that they were trying to get behind us. I'm sure that they didn't know the size of our organization. I slid down to the road, ran into the farm area where Lieutenant Parker was, and told him that the Germans were trying to flank us. "There's a trail in back of us that seems to go to Pointe du Hoc," he said. "We're going to take it. You bring up the rear. We're going out at a run." As we left the farm area, Parker left the German prisoners of war behind us, in one of the barns. Running as we were, we couldn't take them with us. He could have ordered them shot, but he didn't. I admired him for that. I expect that they were rearmed and fought against us during the next days. The men were starting out at a run, and Lieutenant Zeiepsky's rear point now became the point. I ran out to my men, and we reversed ourselves and became the rear point. We ran about one hundred yards and the outfit had turned to their left up a trail that angled off to the southeast with the village of Au Guay west and slightly behind us. We soon connected with the forward defensive position of the Second Ranger Infantry Battalion, which was about one thousand yards in front of Pointe du Hoc. Our arrival at this point, had completed our mission for D-Day. We were the only part of the Fifth Ranger Infantry Battalion to complete its D-Day mission. The time was 2100 hours (9:00 P.M.), and it was still daylight. We were on double daylight savings time. With our twenty-four enlisted men and two officers, we brought the strength of the forward defensive Ranger force to ninety men. The Second Rangers had suffered two counterattacks prior to our arrival. Their defensive position was in the form of a right angle. My men were spread out in a hedgerow on the left forming an open-ended box. (I was not informed where the rest of the A Company men of the Fifth Rangers were.) There was what was called a "Command Post" in the left-hand corner of the field. Lieutenant Parker was in this position with First Lieutenant Armon, F Company, Second Rangers; First Lieutenant Lapres, E Company, Second Rangers; and First Lieutenant Zeiepsky, Fifth Rangers. One of the serious problems with this defensive position was that it included men and officers from four different companies of two different Ranger Battalions with no officer in overall command. There were two other officers in the defensive position with some of their men. There was First Lieutenant Kerchner on the right flank with some Rangers from D Company of the Second Rangers. And First Lieutenant Leagans was in the center with some Rangers of E Company of the Second Rangers. Prior to the arrival of the Fifth Ranger detachment, the Second Rangers had thrown back two counterattacks. The position was a good defensive position, and we were ready for any other German counterattacks. The next one came at 2200 hours (10:00 P.M.) and was repulsed. The next one came at 0030 hours (0:30 A.M.) 7 June 1944 and was also repulsed. All four counterattacks had been launched by a battalion of, initially, about five hundred German soldiers. This battalion was from one of Germany's top front-line units, the 352nd German Infantry Division. They were very well trained and devoted to their duty. At 0300 hours (3:00 A.M.) the fifth and final counterattack came. There was a lot of high machine gun fire with tracers that were designed to draw our fire and thereby reveal our position. It didn't work, but some of the enemy had crawled to within fifty feet of First Lieutenant Kerchner's position and with a lot of whistle blowing, yelling, and calling the names of their men, launched a counterattack, which overran the D Company position. This caused most of the rest of the position to crumble and the men started falling back across the blacktop highway or to the Pointe. First Lieutenant Leagans was killed, and many of his men were captured. Sergeant Petty held his position, but eventually he and his men had to fall back. No order was given for a retrograde movement. I received no order from Lieutenant Parker to fall back to the point. The first indication I had of what was happening was when I heard men running by my position. I stuck my head out of the hedgerow and said, "Hey! What's up? Where are you going?" The nearest man stopped running, stuck his riof the gun emplacement. I stood up and said that I was in command of the Rangers who held that position and that I had a paratrooper with me, but he was a very skinny little fellow. He said that he had put on some weight in the last forty years. After more discussion on what had transpired during the time he spent with the Rangers, I was convinced that he was the paratrooper who had fought with me. Our lead Ranger of the patrol didn't like what he saw ahead, so we moved into the ditch and the rest of us followed. We started to crawl forward until we came to the end of the ditch. Slightly to our right and a little forward of where I was, was a mound of earth. Sergeant Densil Johnson made a dash across a short open space and disappeared. Private Pavey jumped up and tried to join Johnson. I hadn't expected him to do this. I tried to reach out to grab his foot in order to stop him, I missed. He was jumping through the some spot that Johnson had gone out of. An important lesson in training is never, never, dash out of the same opening that another man has gone before you. An enemy marksman will be waiting for just such a stupid move. As Pavey landed in the open area, he took a burst from a German Schmeisser (a German submachine gun), which hit him in the chest. He died in seconds. The German gunner then fired a burst across the top of the ditch that we were in. He put a round through the butt of Private James W. Gabaree. I called out for Sergeant Johnson, but I got no answer. Parker gave him up as lost. There was a strong German defensive position in front of us, and we couldn't get through, so Parker decided to return to the Pointe. Gabaree couldn't crawl or walk, so we got him into a well-covered briar patch and told him that he would be picked up when the reinforcements pushed through. We started crawling back up the ditch toward a thicket. I was leading. I made no attempt to get out and walk, as we had done on the way down. This meant that we were headed through this part of the ditch for the first time. As I crawled toward the thicket, I noticed three prongs sticking out of the ground. They were the prongs of an S-mine (a Bouncing Betty) anti-personnel mine. I made no attempt to disarm it because sometimes the Germans booby-trapped their mines. I warned the man in back of me and told him to pass the word on back that there was a mine there. Slinging my rifle over my back and using my elbows and knees against the sides of the ditch, I crawled over the mine. Everyone behind me did the same, and no one tripped the mine. We reached the thicket, which was quite large, and Lieutenant Parker and I discussed possible actions. From where we were, we could see Omaha Beach and Pointe du Hoc. I was using Parker's field glasses, and it looked as though the forces on Omaha were evacuating the beach. They weren't. Instead they were evacuating wounded and bringing in supplies. There were landing craft moving back and forth at Pointe du Hoc, also, evacuating wounded and bringing in food and water. They also landed a small reinforcing group from the Fifth Ranger Battalion. Two of our communications men had unreeled a spool of communications wire from the Fifth Ranger Battalion Headquarters to Lieutenant Colonel Rudder. I suggested that we could try to descend the cliff and walk up the beach to the Pointe. Parker was willing to try it. I said I would go first and that we could use our fighting knives and our bayonets to work our way down. The Germans had hung artillery shells on the cliff and attached trip wires to them so that they would explode if we tripped one of them. I slung my rifle over my back and, using my fighting knife and bayonet, started down the cliff. The trip wires didn't give me any serious trouble. Lieutenant Parker was very near the top, and none of the other men had started down. I reached an overhang and there were rocks below, which prevented me from jumping down, so I started to work my way laterally along the cliff. I couldn't see Parker. He had returned to the top and started to move the men back to the Pointe. I came to a spot about fifteen feet above a sandy area, jumped down to it, walked back to the Pointe, and climbed a ladder to Rudder's Command Post. I had some canned soup. Navy bread, and jam that the Navy had landed. The canned soup had a heater built into it so I had hot soup. Lieutenant Parker had already returned and reported to Lieutenant Colonel Rudder. I returned to the gun casement, lay down, and went to sleep. There was some fighting taking place over in the vicinity of the German anti-aircraft position but nothing near us. While I was at the Command Post, I heard that the 116th Infantry Regiment, the Rangers, and the 743rd Tank Battalion were on their way to relieve us and were expected to break through to us the next day, 8 June 1944. At about 0900 hours (9:00 A.M.), the next morning, we began receiving artillery fire from the tanks of the 743rd Tank Battalion. Their fire killed two Rangers and wounded three. The paratrooper fighting with us got the American Flag that was hanging on the face of the cliff and, attaching it to a piece of two-by-four, stuck it in the sod on the top of our casement in an effort to let the tankers know that we were Americans. One of the tanks promptly put a round through the American Flag. I had pulled all of my men inside of the gun casement and into the empty powder and projectile rooms. I was standing in the doorway of one of the rooms when one of the tanks put a round through the open doorway of the casement and out over the gun pit. When the round went by my face, it felt like a blowtorch. A Ranger lieutenant went up to the sergeant commanding one of the tanks and told him to stop firing. The sergeant refused, saying that he could hear German weapons. This was true as some of us were using German weapons. The lieutenant placed his .45-caliber pistol to the sergeant's head and said, "Stop that firing or I'll blow your f—ing head off." The sergeant did and radioed all of the other tanks to stop firing, which they did. When the firing stopped, I stepped out into the open and looked toward Pointe et Raz de la Percee. I saw men of the Fifth Ranger Battalion coming toward us. I started walking to meet them. The first Ranger I saw was Private First Class John L. Davis, from my company. He saw me and came running toward me stumbling, falling, and scrambling up the chewed-up terrain. He grabbed me and, hugging me, said, "Oh, my God! They told me that you were dead." At about the same time, our Adjutant, Captain Edmund J. Butler, came up to me and said, "You're not dead," and taking a pencil from his pocket, he scratched my name off his list. I said, "No, I sure as hell am not and there are a few others on the Pointe who are still alive." We reorganized, and at 1600 hours (4:00 P.M.) moved into a bivouac area east of Grandecamp les Bains. Bed rolls, water, and C rations were brought up and issued. Company areas were assigned. We were spread out in defensive areas and instructed to dig in. Sentry assignments were made and we tried to get some sleep. During the night a single German bomber came over and dropped several bombs, which caused a couple of casualties in one of the companies. We were in France to stay. It was the beginning of the end of the war against the totalitarian regime of Adolf Hitler. |
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