CHAPTER 7

The Mission

Lieutenant Colonel James Earl Rudder and his executive officer, Major Max F. Schneider, passed windows draped with black-out curtains in the long hallway as they made their way towards General Omar Bradley’s office. The duo had recently come off the train at London’s Paddington Station and walked about a mile to Bryanston Square. A fashionable apartment building there had become headquarters for the First Army, which would eventually lead the American portion of the Allied invasion into France. Accompanied by an armed escort, Rudder and Schneider entered an office on the second floor occupied by Colonel Truman Thorson, General Bradley’s operations officer. They noticed numerous maps marked “TOP SECRET” lining the walls of the office. Black-and-white aerial reconnaissance photographs and additional maps covered several tables.

For a little over two weeks, the Rangers had been in England, scaling cliffs every day, training for an unknown mission. In the office that day in London, Rudder learned what it was all about.

Thorson called the men’s attention to a rocky peninsula labeled “Pointe Du Hoe.”³ Considered the most dangerous German coastal battery, the D-Day planners singled out the Pointe as the number one priority on the invasion target list.

Bradley’s operations officer pointed towards the photographs, which revealed a massive German fortress atop the rocky peninsula. The Germans considered the position largely impregnable from a seaborne attack thanks to the ninety-foot cliffs. Nevertheless, they had placed artillery shells suspended by a wire—precursors to today’s IEDs (improvised explosive devices)—along the cliff faces as an added defense against a seaport assault. German machine guns and anti-aircraft guns could also hit the beach at the base of the cliffs, where any attacking craft would be forced to land. German fortifications had made land-borne and parachute attacks similarly difficult: heavy minefields, machine gun nests, bunkers, and barbed wire made an overland attack without armor practically impossible.

The German defenses guarded six 155 mm, long-range artillery pieces. With a potential range of 25,000 yards (14 miles),⁴ the guns could reach both Omaha and Utah Beaches and even a portion of the landing beaches in the British zone. The German battery also threatened the Allied naval armada carrying the invasion forces. Of the twenty-two guns the Germans had at their disposal within the First Army’s landing zone at Normandy, those at Pointe du Hoc were “the most formidable.” Destroying them would be “the most dangerous mission of D-Day.” Learning of the German defenses, Rudder thought to himself, “You’ve got to be kidding. This is just to scare me.” But the presentation was not a joke; taking out the guns at Pointe du Hoc was critical to the success of D-Day.

During Thorson’s dramatic presentation, Rudder observed his executive officer nervously whistling through his teeth. A veteran of Darby’s Rangers, Schneider had previously made three assault landings with the legendary unit. A metal plate protected a portion of his skull—a souvenir from a traumatic air accident in the 1930s. While in combat with Darby’s unit in Italy, a detonated grenade may have ag-gravated the metal plate in his head. He also experienced painful, recurring “festering sores as the internal shell fragments worked their way through the skin.”

Unfortunately, Schneider also suffered from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). In WWII, doctors often misdiagnosed PTSD as “shellshock” and did not widely understand symptoms or treatment. Three days after the presentation, Schneider experienced an “episode,” and Doctor Block concluded that he “suffered from a neurasthenic condition brought on by overwork and mental fatigue.” He added, “Unless a radical measure is resorted to, he may suffer a mental crackup.”

Alarmed by the doctor’s diagnosis, Rudder hastily requested Schneider’s transfer out of his battalion. However, General Eisenhower personally “interceded in order to utilize [Schneider’s] services in the initial invasion of the continent.” Schneider later brilliantly commanded the 5th Ranger Battalion, which would serve as part of Rudder’s Provisional Ranger Force.

The Allied plans called for Dog and most of the Provisional Ranger Force to land on a small beach, scale a cliff ten stories high under a torrent of enemy fire, and destroy the most lethal gun battery of the invasion—a suicide mission. Headquarters projected casualties would top seventy percent. One intelligence officer remarked, “It can’t be done. Three old women with brooms could keep the Rangers from climbing that cliff.”

Although Bradley and Thorson had described the mission to Rudder and Schneider, he hadn’t told them how to accomplish it. The final planning rested entirely on their shoulders. Later, General Bradley met with Rudder about the mission. Rudder looked at Bradley and said confidently, “Sir, my Rangers can do the job for you.” Bradley would later recount in his memoir, “No soldier in my command has ever been wished a more difficult task than that which befell the thirty-four-year-old commander of this Provisional Ranger Force.”

At the strategic level, the Allies planned to hit five beaches in Normandy. The Americans would storm Omaha and Utah Beaches while the British and Canadians would assault Sword, Juno, and Gold Beaches. Together, these forces would land more than 160,000 troops along approximately fifty miles of the northern French coastline. In addition to the ground troops, more than 5,000 ships would support invasion, and over 20,000 British and American airborne troops would parachute or glide behind German lines.

British and American commanders worked together to plan the landing operations of the Allied invasion of Normandy, code named Operation Neptune, which would be the largest amphibious invasion in history. America’s General Dwight D. Eisenhower served as supreme commander of the Allied expeditionary forces, with Britain’s General Bernard Montgomery commanding the ground forces.

Facing the Allied attack were four divisions of German infantry plus three more divisions in the surrounding area. For the last three years, the Germans had been building the Atlantic Wall, a series of defensive fortifications that stretched along the coasts of France, Belgium, Denmark and Norway. But the German commanders disagreed about the appropriate strategy for defending against the inevitable invasion.

Field Marshal Erwin Rommel believed Germany would inevitably lose the war unless they could halt the Allied forces on the beaches, and he argued that German armor should be moved closer to the coast. However, Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt believed the Germans could successfully counterattack even if the Allies gained a beachhead, and he argued for keeping the German tanks closer to Paris and Rouen. Hitler made a fateful decision to split the difference between the two, sending fewer tanks than Rommel requested to the coast, while keeping the majority clustered near the cities.

Attached to the 29th Infantry Division that would hit Omaha Beach, Rudder initially considered landing on Omaha and assaulting Pointe du Hoc overland. But that approach seemed nearly impossible. The Germans had prepared for land-borne attack by flooding low areas with water and creating a kill zone with minefields, machine guns, and bunkers. It would take too much time for the Rangers to breach the defenses and destroy the guns of Pointe du Hoc before the rest of the invasion forces could cross the beaches.

It became obvious the only feasible approach would be a frontal assault. But how do you get two hundred men up sheer cliffs lined with IEDs, Hitler’s MG-42 bone saws, and anti-aircraft guns firing at the assault group? Rudder had just been handed a nearly impossible mission, sure to cost the lives of many of his men and decimate Dog Company.

To accomplish the mission, Rudder formed the Provisional Ranger Force and took command. It included not only the 2nd Ranger Battalion, but also its sister unit, the 5th Ranger Battalion. Big Jim and his planners went to work, first by dividing the Provisional Ranger Force into three groups. The companies of assault Force A—Dog, Easy and Fox—would breach Pointe du Hoc’s initial defenses. Force A would form the first wave. After initial shore bombardment, Easy and Fox would land on the eastern side of Pointe du Hoc, while Dog Company would land on the west. If the men made it up the cliffs, they would send the message, “Praise the Lord.” If they failed, they would signal “Tilt,” the vernacular used for a failed play on a pinball machine.

If Force A accomplished their objective, Force C—which included Able and Baker and Headquarters Companies of the 2nd Ranger Battalion and the entire 5th Ranger Battalion—would follow up the initial assault force and help take out the guns. If Force A failed and the guns were not eliminated by thirty minutes after landing (H+30 minutes), Force C would land on their secondary objective: Omaha’s Dog Green Beach. The force would then fight through the German defenses overland and try to destroy the guns.

Force B—Charlie Company—would undertake Rudder’s secondary objective: taking out mortar and machine gun positions at Pointe et Raz de la Percée, which overlooked Omaha Beach. Rudder and his staff spent the next several months developing and fine-tuning the plan, while Dog Company trained relentlessly.