Dog Company

Gordon Lunning and Harry Fate fought their way across the battered landscape of Pointe du Hoc and stumbled upon George Kerchner. The two men relayed Rudder’s command.

THUD! THUD! THUD!

The 37 mm antiaircraft gun peppered the small group as the words of Rudder’s order trailed out of Fate’s lips. Kerchner determined to do something about it. Forming up, they moved through the trenches and fired at the cannon. It was useless. The men couldn’t get close enough to the German AA gun that had stymied a large part of the assault group. Kerchner’s M1 even failed to fire because it was clogged with dirt. Pinned down, he broke off the attack, and they linked up with Lomell and what remained of Dog Company. They counted twenty heads.

In preparation for the inevitable German counterattack, the men dug in near the blacktop road. The Rangers consolidated their roadblock position, forming a position that resembled the letter L. Each company held a line extending about three hundred yards. Dog Company was on the west; they linked up with Easy Company, forming a right angle, which then met up with Fox Company. All told, the Rangers had approximately eighty-five men among the three companies. “The twenty men [of Dog Company] were drawn in to form the knight position on a hedgerow from the highway up to E Company. Lieutenant Kerchner was at the hedgerow intersection [a right angle] where E and D joined: Sergeant Lomell was near the center of the line. One BAR-man [T/5 Harry Stecki] was in an angle with Kerchner; another was about one hundred yards to the north. The two men were out west of Kerchner’s post about halfway to the lane on that flank. Another outpost of two men (one with a BAR) was on the angle made by that lane with the highway. The rest were strung out along three hundred yards of hedgerow in a ditch at the foot of the embankment.”

As the Rangers were attempting to consolidate their position near the blacktop road, the Germans were planning a counterattack. The moment the Rangers landed on the beach below, the watchful eyes in the observation bunker atop Pointe du Hoc immediately alerted German command. After about an hour passed with “no messages from Pointe du Hoc,” the Germans began assembling a platoon from Saint-Pierre-du-Mont to attack what they believed was a weak Allied commando force. Hours passed before the Germans realized this was not a small-scale raid.

A German first lieutenant ordered a grenadier regiment to send as many troops as possible to Pointe du Hoc. The Germans had their hands full with Omaha Beach; nevertheless, one of the German regiment’s battalions was able to muster several hundred men from its 9th and 12th heavy weapons companies. The first major German attack fell on the line held by F Company, commanded by Lieutenant Richard Wintz and Sergeant L-Rod Petty.

That afternoon, two listening outposts along the line received the brunt of the action, particularly the one manned by Petty and several other Rangers. Ensconced beside a stone wall at the foot of a wheat field, the Fox Company sergeant and his squad hid behind a piece of farm machinery. “From this area, during that day, Petty’s group delivered effective surprise fire on many German parties across the stream valley. The ground sloped steeply to the stream just in front of his position, and observation had been excellent.” Petty’s position was about three hundred yards in front of E Company’s hedgerow.

Petty peered out across the stream valley, and he noticed a group of Germans riding bicycles close together. Petty depressed the trigger on his BAR. Several bursts sent the Germans tumbling. A French farmer then attempted to move a wagon across Petty’s field of fire. Seeing the way the animals were lashed together, Petty thought, “[They look] just like the chariot race from Ben Hur.”

“Hold your fire!” Petty barked.

Petty’s assistant BAR gunner, Private First Class Carl Winsch, blurted out, “Hold your fire, hell! That wagon’s loaded with Germans lying down.”

At that, Winsch and Petty, along with the other Rangers in the outpost, opened up with their BARs, blasting the wagon. The Germans concealed under the hay bailed out of the wagon, but Winsch and Petty cut them down with their BARs. Petty later mused, “During this day, me and my BAR became familiar and inseparable friends.”

The Germans began to assemble and hit the Ranger lines. Len Lomell peeked over a wall near the blacktop highway. “Looking over the five-foot wall edging the highway, he saw a German force of about fifty to sixty men coming from the Pointe toward the road through the orchard. The enemy was moving in an organized fashion with scouts ahead. Lomell could see two machine gun sections and a mortar. There was no time to make preparations or even pass word down the line. Lomell could only hope the enemy would pass by and that his own men would have the sense to hold their fire.”

An attack of this strength with the German’s fire superiority could easily have wiped out the twenty men. But the Germans did not attack as they slowed their course, and they did not detect the men’s position. About thirty feet from the wall where the Rangers waited, poised to defend themselves, the enemy turned westward. They paralleled the highway, stealthily moving through the farm fields westward of Lomell’s outpost, and then marched south across the blacktop. To a man, the Rangers, demonstrating their finely honed combat skills learned from months of intense training, made no move to betray their position.

While many men of Dog, Easy, and Fox manned the L-shaped position, Rudder worked to secure Pointe du Hoc, which still crawled with enemy troops. German artillery fire and, on occasion, American friendly fire continued to rain down on the Rangers.

Rudder tasked Big Stoop of F Company with establishing a defensive perimeter around the command post and cleaning out the Pointe. The antiaircraft gun represented the most serious danger to the perimeter. As Masny was organizing his defense, he barely avoided being hit by several shells from the AA gun. Furious, Masny quickly gathered a small band of men—as many as he could round up—to attack and destroy the gun. The group included several stragglers from Dog Company—Sigurd Sundby, Robert Fruhling, and George Schneller.¹⁵

British Commando Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Trevor, with a bandage covering his head wound, joined the F Company commander and his band. Trevor—the towering, six-foot-four officer who helped plan the mission—had participated in the assault as an observer. At Bude, he had famously taught the men his bizarre way of avoiding bullets: telling the men that if they used a stutter step first, then a long step, then a short step, followed by a sidestep, they could throw off the Germans who had them in their sights. Earlier that morning, with a swagger stick tucked under his arm, he had calmly walked the beach at Pointe du Hoc using his special technique. The tactic had worked beautifully for Trevor in North Africa, but that fateful morning in France, as he did his little dance, a German sniper drilled a bullet into his helmet, grazing the top of his skull. When the bullet knocked him off his feet, Trevor rose and waved his fist in the direction of the Germans, yelling, “Is that the best you can do?”

Moving around the deep craters, Big Stoop and the men advanced the length of a football field across the top of Pointe du Hoc. Heavy shelling from the antiaircraft and machine gun fire challenged their advance. As the group crept across the Pointe, they came to a farm road with a hedgerow alongside. Sundby recalled, “They started shelling us with mortars in that position. When I was laying there up on that hedgerow, a mortar landed just between my legs, and it never went off. I looked over my shoulder, and I could see those fins sticking up between my legs. So I crawled away from there.” Then Sundby looked over and saw George Schneller. “He got hit with shrapnel right in his back, so I went up there, and I dressed his wound and gave him some morphine,” he recounted. After that, he went back along the hedgerow, “looking for that sniper.”

Machine gun and rifle fire and rounds from the antiaircraft gun lit up the group. Diving into shell holes, Big Stoop and his men fired back. A barrage of German mortar and artillery blanketed the men. The first rounds went over their heads. Succeeding rounds then crept down the road towards them.

Death moved closer as the projectiles landed right next to Masny, who bizarrely commented, “It was the prettiest firing I ever saw.” Suddenly, deadly shrapnel tore through Big Stoop’s muscular right arm. The devastating fusillade killed several men and wounded nearly the entire group.

Unexpectedly, the German fire died down, and a white flag appeared near the antiaircraft gun. Two of the Rangers rose to accept the surrender. Big Stoop sensed something was wrong. “Stay down! You guys get down!” he barked.

It was too late. German bullets ripped right through their bodies. The two men were killed.

“Withdraw! Every man for himself!” shouted Masny.

What was left of the group stumbled back towards the command post. German snipers killed two more of Masny’s men. Making the journey ever more difficult, the Rangers had to navigate a minefield. Under fire, the remaining men carefully retraced their steps for fear of losing a limb.

The group made its way back to gun position number six. There, what was left of the group dove into a shell crater to avoid a German sniper who had a bead on some of them. In the shell hole, Big Stoop bumped into Fruhling, who had a large radio strapped to his back. German shells continued to fall. The entire area was hot with small arms fire. Masny looked at the men and suggested they make a run for the next shell crater. Nodding their heads, the men agreed.

Bullets whizzed and cracked by their ears as Masny dove headfirst into the crater. With the bulky radio on his back, Fruhling was a giant target. The sniper drilled a bullet through his helmet. As blood ran down his face, he ripped his helmet off and realized the round had just grazed his skull. Masny ordered him to take the radio off and destroy it. Still several hundred yards away from the command post, the bloodied private pulled out his .45 and blasted the radio with two bullets.

Still in the hole, Sigurd Sundby went up to George Schneller and grabbed him, saying, “Come on, George, I’m going to carry you back.”

“You know what Captain Slater said—nobody helps anybody,” responded Schneller. “You fend for yourself. You don’t stop to help somebody.”

“Come on, I can carry you,” insisted Sundby.

But Schneller, with an enormous, gaping wound in his back, refused to let Sundby move him. “I’ll be all right,” he repeated. Eventually, the rest of the men had left, leaving Sundby alone with Schneller. Reluctantly, Sundby also pulled back, leaving his friend alone. Unfortunately, the time spent pleading with Schneller meant Sundby could no longer see where his fellow Rangers had gone. He took off towards the road. “There, I saw one of our BAR men. We used to call him Kelley. He was dead.”

Separated from Masny and Trevor, Sundby thought, “Well, I’ll go back towards the cliffs.” Dodging from crater to crater to avoid any potential snipers, Sundby worked his way back towards the Pointe. “I’d run from one shell hole, then zigzag up and down and come up,” he later explained, because, “well, if anybody was watching me or shooting, you didn’t want to come up straight ahead. You’d shoot up one side and down the other one.”

Seeking cover, Masny’s battered group (minus Sunby) dove into a shell hole occupied by a Ranger with his legs casually crossed and hands behind his head. Mystified and glaring at the relaxing Ranger, Masny asked Fox Company Staff Sergeant James E. Fulton, “Are you hit?”

“Hell, no, Cap’n! Am just restin’. This is the third load of ammo I’ve hauled around this mornin’. I’m tired.”

Pissed off, Masny looked at the man, “Well, get that damn BAR workin’. Get that kraut sniper that’s chasin’ us, will ya?”

To draw the sniper’s fire, Big Stoop pulled the helmet off his head, placed it on his tommy gun, and raised it over the top of the crater. The sniper fired upon the helmet, exposing his position. Fulton emptied his entire BAR on the sniper. Twenty rounds ripped through his body, killing him instantly. With the sniper gone, Big Stoop, Trevor, and the rest of the group limped their way back to the command post.