CHAPTER 12

The Landing

In the early morning, LCA 668, carrying Len Lomell, Jack Kuhn, and most of the 2nd Platoon, cut through the choppy, green waters of the English Channel. As the men poked their helmets out of the top of the boat, they were looking at what would be center stage of one of the greatest amphibious landings in history. They saw, heard, and felt the intense bombardment on the shore, demonstrating the full might of the American and British battleships, destroyers, and bombers. The sight mesmerized the twenty-two young Rangers. Through the smoke and fire, the men watched as scores of rockets from a naval barge ignited and streaked through the air.

Not far behind Lomell, LCA 858 carried Lieutenant George Kerchner and his 1st Platoon. Massive shells from the battleship passed directly over their heads. “We were close enough to hear and feel some of the muzzle blasts,” Kerchner later remarked. “One of the rocket-firing crafts that was near Omaha Beach fired their rockets. This was also a terrifying thing; I think there were a thousand or more rockets on these landing craft, and they fired in salvos of maybe ten or fifteen at a time. It was just one continuous sheet of fire.”

“How can anybody live through that?” thought Kerchner.

As the small flotilla of British-crewed craft carrying the Rangers of Force A plowed through waves of the channel, something seemed off. In LCA 668, Lomell knew it. Through the mist and spray, the dark, rocky cliffs of what appeared to be Pointe et Raz de la Percée came into view. Len Lomell turned to his close friend Jack Kuhn.

“Hey, Jack! Look at this. That’s not the Pointe. That’s C Company’s target.”

Kuhn nodded.

Lomell moved across the crowded landing craft towards the British coxswain who was piloting the craft and asked him if they were headed in the right direction. The coxswain nodded affirmatively.

Lomell pressed the issue. “Are you sure you are right about this?”

From the photos that Lomell looked at during the training exercise, he was sure the ten landing craft, three DUKWs, and other small boats in Force A were at least two miles off course from Pointe du Hoc and heading in the wrong direction.

In the dense smoke and haze, guiding the flotilla in ML-304 (Motor Launch), Lt. Colin Beever of the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve, was in fact, dangerously off course. In Beever’s defense, the new 970 Radar equipment was at fault. Introduced a month earlier, the equipment tested well in controlled settings but failed on D-Day. Dog and the rest of Force A were mistakenly heading toward Pointe et Raz de la Percée, Force B’s objective. The error in navigation would change the course of history by putting Force A nearly forty minutes behind schedule in reaching their target. About one hundred yards from what was clearly Pointe et Raz de la Percée, Rudder realized the error and ordered Beever to change course and turn west toward Pointe du Hoc.

The operation’s entire timetable was now blown. The follow-on force known as Force C—which included Able and Baker companies and some elements of Headquarters Company of the 2nd Ranger Battalion and Schneider’s Fifth Ranger Battalion—would not be heading to Pointe du Hoc because they never received the appropriate radio signal from Force A. Hence, Force C headed to its second objective, Omaha Beach. Dog Company, along with the rest of Force A, was now on its own and outgunned, heading straight for Pointe du Hoc with no follow-on reinforcements.

Late, but back on course, the DUKWs and assault craft of Ranger Force A raced towards Pointe du Hoc. With the flotilla just a few hundred yards from the Norman coast, the Germans peppered the landing craft with machine gun fire, hitting several men. As bullets flew by, fierce waves pounded the incoming landing craft, and the icy froth of the churning channel waters soaked the men, who frantically bailed water to avoid sinking. Most of the men became seasick. The Army had issued them paper bags, but no one had time to use them. “We were taking on water. Men were throwing up as we were bailing seawater out of the landing craft. I know I did,” Bill Hoffman noted.

The turbulent channel waves relentlessly lashed LCA 860, nearly capsizing the craft carrying Duke Slater, McBride, Ruggiero, Riendeau, and seventeen other men from Dog Company. With his boat a mere twenty yards in front of them, an anxious Lomell stared back at The Duke. The roar of the waves crashing into the boats drowned out the dull hum of the craft’s motor. Inside the British-made boat, Slater and his men feverishly bailed water with their helmets to keep from drowning. Waves from the channel cascaded over the sides of the craft, filling the boat, and drenching everyone inside. They were sinking, and Force A’s supply boat was also taking on water.

Remarkably, despite the swirling seas and incoming German fire, the men were focused on a standing bet they had made about who would reach shore first. One hundred dollars would go to the winners. Spawned at Camp Forrest, the Ranger’s highly competitive ethos and winning spirit permeated their every bone and fiber. Lomell and the men of LCA 668 were determined to win. Focused on being the first boat to land on shore and not realizing the deadly force of the channel’s currents, several men on board Lomell’s boat and Kerchner’s landing craft cheered and applauded when they saw Duke Slater’s craft going down. Lomell remembers some of the men saying, “That’s one less group we have to compete with. We’ve only got Kerchner now.”

Over a half an hour late, Rudder’s flotilla, minus The Duke’s foundering LCA and the Rangers’ supply boat, headed for the eastern side of Pointe du Hoc. The original plan called for Dog Company to land on the western side of the Pointe, but Rudder, in an effort to keep everyone together, ordered all craft to land on the eastern side of the 500-yard rocky peninsula, landing at approximately 7:08 A.M., nearly forty minutes behind schedule.

Shortly after landing, communications officer Lieutenant James Eikner signaled “Tilt,” indicating that Force A was behind schedule and Schneider’s Force C should pursue their secondary objective, Omaha Beach. Mysteriously, the radios were not operating properly. Acknowledgement was “receipted,” according to Eikner, but Schneider’s records show that they never got his message; the only message received by the 5^th was a word that “sounded like Charlie.” Even the guide-crafts’ radios were inoperable, and unable to send the same message.

These two bizarre circumstances—Beever’s navigation error and the inoperable radios—created an auspicious chain of events that resulted in Force C landing on Omaha Beach, instead of their primary objective, Pointe du Hoc. After waiting an extra ten minutes, with still no message from Rudder affirming his landing on Pointe du Hoc, Schneider redirected his boats to their secondary target, Omaha Beach. This alteration in Schneider’s plans changed the outcome of the invasion by putting his men exactly where they were needed, though the initial wave sustained heavy casualties. The first elements of Force C to reach their objective, “Dog Green” beach, were craft bearing A, B, and Headquarters Companies of the 2^nd Ranger Battalion, which landed on a shoulder of the Vierville Draw, where the Germans constructed a deadly Widerstandsnest or “Resistance Nest.” In a bloody scene immortalized in the movie Saving Private Ryan, waves of men from the 2^nd Ranger Battalion were cut down in a kill zone containing numerous bunkers with enfilading machine gun fire. German antitank guns and mortars mercilessly fired upon the incoming Rangers, who later dubbed the area “The Devil’s Garden.”

Seeing Dog Green was shut down, and the enormous losses A, B, and Headquarters Companies were taking and being waved off by landing control on the beach, Schneider, a veteran of Ranger landings in Africa, Sicily and Italy, ordered the 5th to land on a quieter beach known as Dog White, located next to Dog Green beach.⁸ The extra battalion landing in the right place at exactly the right time proved crucial to the American breakout on Omaha. Near the seawall on the beach, men of Schneider’s battalion ran into Brigadier General Norman Cota, assistant division commander of the 29th Division, who uttered the famous command to the men of the 5th: “Rangers, lead the way!” With that, the 5^th broke out of the beachhead and flanked the German defenses.

Force B’s attack on Pointe et Raz de la Percée would also prove critical. Using “bayonets and their bare hands,” the men of Charlie Company scaled the cliffs and took out numerous German mortar positions that were zeroed in on Omaha Beach.

At Pointe du Hoc, the delay of Rudder’s Force A had given the Germans precious time to recover from the initial shore bombardment and contest the landing. The original Allied plan called for the shore bombardment to cease at 6:30 A.M.⁹ only minutes before the Rangers were supposed to begin assaulting the cliffs. But now, the Germans were ready and waiting for Dog Company’s frontal assault, due to the extra thirty minutes afforded by Force A’s late arrival.

Nineteen-year-old German Private Wilhelm Kirchhoff of 2./Werfer-Regiment 84 vividly described the scene: “The American landing craft were coming from the [east] and were fully loaded with men and material. When they arrived, the waves were very high and the little boats were thrown about violently. Once they hit the beach, the ramps dropped and the men charged out. We received no orders to fire, but the enemy was there below us so we fired! At that moment we were nervous but active. We fired from the edge with our machine guns. . . . We targeted the Americans as they exited the landing craft. They were firing up [at us] but were out in the open.”

Kirchhoff and the other members of his regiment were dug in near a bunker on the eastern edge of the Pointe. All told, about 120 of them, including fifteen men from the Werfer Regiment, took full advantage of their superior position and firepower to resist the Rangers’ landing.

“From the Pointe we started throwing grenades until we couldn’t see them anymore. . . For the Americans down on the beach, the effect would have been devastating. They had no protection there at all,” recalled Rudolf Karl, an artillerist NCO atop the Pointe.

Machine gun bullets slapped the water in front of the Rangers’ incoming boats. The Germans also hurled potato masher grenades down on them. According to Kirchhoff, even “radio and telephone operators in the trenches. . . fired with their weapons. I continued firing my machine gun but also witnessed grenades being thrown. There were also mortars ahead of me [that] fired onto the beach below. I stood up from my trench, picked up my weapon, and kept firing, uncertain how many times I fired.”

One Ranger recalled the fury of the German defense: “As we approached these cliffs, all hell broke loose. We could hear the zing of the bullets, and a few artillery shells being lobbed in… [We] heard the splatter of the machine guns and the German riflemen up on the edge of this cliff shooting down at us. There was a Ranger sitting across from me who was shot in the chest. A Stars and Stripes photographer vomited on me.”

Fittingly, Rudder’s craft hit the thirty-yard strip of rocky beach first. Bombs and artillery shells from the Allied ships had blasted away part of the cliff face where it met the narrow beach, creating massive underwater craters near the base of the peninsula. As Jack Kuhn’s landing craft approached Rudder’s boat near the rocky shore, Kuhn looked up at the ominous precipice. Momentarily stunned by what he saw, his Thompson slipped out of his hand and into the several inches of seawater and floating vomit that filled the bottom of the craft.

Inside the cramped boat, Kuhn turned to Sheldon Bare and snapped, “Bare, I lost my Thompson!”

Bare reached down into the filthy, brackish water and fished out Kuhn’s weapon. “Here you go, Jack,” he said as the boat neared the shore.

From his position on LCA 668, Lomell ordered the grapnel rockets fired at the cliff. Ironically, “the grapnels seemed like a lifeline, but were just as likely to lead the men to death as to life. Climbing the ropes would take the men out of the frying pan of German machine gun bullets and potato mashers landing on the beach and into the fire of the battle on top of the cliff.”

Several yards away from Lomell, Fox Company Commander Otto Masny tensely estimated when to fire the grapnels from his boat. He noticed several craft had fired too soon, causing the rockets to fall short and miss the cliff. Masny barked at the British coxswain guiding his craft to the Pointe, “Don’t fire those things until I give the word! We’ve got plenty of time.”

To hammer home Masny’s order, Lieutenant Richard A. Wintz pulled out his .45. “You drop those gates or let those charges go before I give the order, and I’ll put a bullet in your head.”

On board LCA 668, the loud explosion caused by the coxswain’s firing the grapnel rockets jarred Lomell, as he stared at the cliffs of Pointe du Hoc looming in front of him.

SPLASH!

The ramp dropped, and the coxswain barked, “All right, everybody out!”

Lomell’s boat had stopped several yards short of the shoreline. “We had amphibious DUKWs but [there were] so many underwater craters they couldn’t get in too close to the cliff.”

Lomell led the group. As he stepped off the ramp, he completely disappeared from view. A massive underwater bomb crater had swallowed up the first sergeant. The icy water, just forty-two degrees, rushed around him. He quickly submerged eight feet below the surface. Bullets pierced the silence underwater, as he swam out of the crater and joined the other men, who had avoided the hazard.

“Ow!” Lomell felt a sudden sting of pain through his right side. A German machine gun bullet barely missed his ribs and went through the fleshy portion of his torso. Not realizing where it came from, Lomell spun around and came face to face with Private Harry Fate.

“Harry, you son of a bitch. You shot me!”

Fate pleaded his innocence. “I didn’t do it! I didn’t try to kill you!”

“I was about to kill him for doin’ it,” Lomell admitted later.

After all, Lomell had busted Fate from sergeant to private just a few weeks prior. After losing his stripes, Fate had made a veiled threat to Lomell: “That’s all right. You know all first sergeants get their due in combat. I’ll see you in combat.”

Breaking the standoff, Bill Geitz, Lomell’s medic, socked the first sergeant in the jaw and knocked him down, yelling, “Len, he didn’t do it! He didn’t do it!”

The altercation lasted only a few seconds before Lomell snapped out of his rage and focused on assaulting the cliff towering in front of his men.

Minutes later, George Kerchner’s LCA 858 touched down next to Lomell’s boat. Before the craft landed, Kerchner thought about the half-hour delay and felt an overwhelming sense of foreboding. “Holy hell, someone made a hell of big mistake sending us in here. We’ll never get up there.”

Kerchner looked in front of him. Twenty feet of murky water stained with a reddish mixture of Ranger blood and clay from cliffs lay between him and the shore. Kerchner looked back at his men, “OK, let’s go!”

As he turned back around, the green lieutenant slipped and found himself submerged in eight feet of water in the same shell hole Lomell had fallen into minutes earlier.

“Oh, hell, here we go!” he thought angrily as he “doggy paddled” to keep his head above the water. The men of 1st Platoon saw what happened and moved around the crater. “I remember being angry because I was soaked… wringing wet. I turned around and wanted to find someone to help me cuss out the British Navy for dumping me in this eight feet of water,” remembered Kerchner.

But the ripping sound of a German bonesaw machine gun as it zeroed in on 1st Platoon silenced any cussing Kerchner intended to unload on the British coxswain. From the top of the cliff, the German soldiers relentlessly fired on the incoming Americans. As German machine gunner Kirchhoff related, “Until that moment, I had probably fired 10,000 rounds. I had switched barrels several times but the flash hider still sometimes got red hot.”

On the beach, a bullet ripped into Sergeant Francis Pacyga’s arm. The same bullet blew out the kneecap of Private First Class Lester Harris, causing him to drop his weapon. Kerchner, armed with just his .45, grabbed Harris’s discarded M1 and led his men to the side of the cliff. Running about twenty-five yards down the beach, Kerchner found Rudder. Kerchner informed him that Duke Slater’s boat was missing and “presumed capsized,” so Kerchner now commanded Dog Company. Under heavy fire, Rudder turned to Kerchner and yelled, “Get the hell out of here and get up and climb that rope!”