“They could have swept us off with a broom,” one ranger declared,³ but instead the Wehrmacht soldiers stayed in their fixed defenses, from which they could still kill Americans but not win the battle. They paid the price for Hitler’s obsession with defending every square inch of his conquered empire, and for Rommel’s obsession with stopping the invasion cold on the beach.

On the high ground, too, the Germans fought a strictly defensive action. Partly this was because the hedgerows were such marvelous defensive positions, but mainly it was because they were receiving few reinforcements even as the Americans sent wave after wave of combat infantry onto the beach and into the battle. The Germans were supposed to counterattack immediately, in battalion strength, but because they were confused with their senior commanders absent, because they had their troops scattered in platoon strength in the small villages of Normandy and it took time to assemble them, because they were still a horse-drawn army for the most part, and mainly because the Allied air forces, which had done so little to help the infantry on the beach, did an outstanding job of strafing and bombing bridges, crossroads, and assembly points inland all through D-Day, thus hampering German movement to the sound of the guns, the Germans were unable to launch even one company-strength counterattack at Omaha Beach on D-Day.

They fought effectively, inflicting casualties and for the most part holding their hedgerows, thus preventing the Americans from getting inland more than a couple of kilometers—far short of their intended D-Day objectives—but they fought isolated, confused, small-unit actions designed to delay and harass and hold rather than to drive the Americans off the high ground.

AS RAAEN WAS establishing contact with K Company, 116th, Colonel Schneider pushed the remainder of the 5th Rangers across the coastal road, intending to go around Vierville to the south and head out for Pointe-du-Hoc. But the leading companies were held up by machine guns firing from hedgerows south of the road. Three times Schneider tried to outflank the German positions, only to run into new ones.

“We ran into the doggonest bunch of Germans you ever did see,” Pvt. Donald Nelson recalled. “We got pinned down and we really couldn’t move.” Colonel Schneider came up and wanted to know what the trouble was.

“Snipers,” Nelson replied.

“Can’t you get them?” Schneider asked.