Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Remembering the men of D-Day

Early in the morning of June 6th the largest invasion fleet ever assembled loomed off the beaches of Normandy. Thousands of men prepared to go ashore, directly into the teeth of the German defenses. They knew this would be a pivotal battle in their efforts to root the Nazis from France, and take the battle to the Reich's homeland.

My dad was a member of that invading force. His mission was to make shore, and take an airfield up on the high ground above the beaches. As was not uncommon, things didn't go exactly as planned. He was put ashore some 10 miles from where he was supposed to go in. Two German tanks were dug in on the back side of a rail bed that ran across the beach. Once naval fire took them out, they made their way off the beach and up onto the bluffs. They eventually found the airfield-a British unit had taken it and they saw British planes landing in the distance, and that's how they found the field.

Dad went on to fight his way through France, Italy, and finally into Germany. Wounded twice in combat, he went back to the front both times. The second injury got him out of combat for a while. He became a driver for a combat photographer. We have a big box full of pictures taken during that time. Prisoners of war, cities being bombed, knocked out German armor, and a "picture of a picture" of one of the big German rail guns. In the picture, there's two G.I.'s mugging for the camera, laying on top of each other in the muzzle of the huge gun.

He survived bombing runs by Stukas, tank attacks at Kasserine Pass, and saw one of the first Me-262 fighters when it roared overhead. He saw deposed Facist leader Benito Mussolini after he had been executed-hanging from the derrick at an Eso gas station as the partisans riddled his body with gunfire.

Here's to the hope that we never lose sight of the sacrifices made by our forefathers so we can be free today. My never ending thanks to all those who chose to serve.

Thank you for sharing your dads story. I can not imagine what all those young men were thinking before going ashore today so many years ago or what all they witnessed in the days and months following the invasion.

Lest we EVER forget.

AMEN!

Thanks for posting this. I remember this every year, as my dad was there also. Along with many other men I knew growing up. My dad didn't go ashore that day as he was a 19 (almost 20) year old kid aboard a light cruiser in the English Channel. They were shelling German gun positions and successfully took some of them out. I'll never forget his story of from where his ship was, as far as they could see, all the way to the horizon, were the countless landing craft and small craft of the largest invasion force in history. One of the kids he grew up with,(who I knew when I was a kid), was in one of those craft, although my dad didn't know it at the time. Another buddy of his was on another ship not that far away, and they didn't know it until after the war when they got together. So I'd like to second the motion that we never lose sight of their sacrifices and thank them for our freedom today.

My father-in-law went in on Utah beach. He went in on D-day plus 1.

Our morning paper had NOTHING about it, except for the USA insert section.

Father-in-law was sixth wave Omaha Beach. He celebrated his birthday that day.

Thanks for posting Jeff.....

Seems it something not overly important for the liberal left.

Don't want to start another thread on this topic. Here is an excerpt from Breitbart.

The Rangers of Dog Company Who Accomplished D-Day’s Toughest Mission:

It was the toughest mission of D-Day. Allied plans called for 225 Rangers, including Dog Company, to land on a tiny beach, scale the ten-story-high cliffs of Pointe du Hoc, France, under a torrent of enemy fire, and destroy the most dangerous gun battery threatening the American portion of the invasion.
It was a suicide mission.

Allied headquarters projected Ranger 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.”

Atop Pointe du Hoc, the Germans had constructed a massive fortress. They considered the position largely impregnable from a seaborne attack, thanks to the ninety-foot cliffs. Nevertheless, they had placed artillery shells suspended by wires—precursors to today’s IEDs (improvised explosive devices)—along the cliff faces as an added defense against a seaborne 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. The fortifications made land-borne and parachute attacks similarly difficult: heavy minefields, machine gun nests, bunkers, and barbed wire rendered an overland attack without armor practically impossible. The only possible Allied route of attack was a frontal assault.

Pointe du Hoc’s formidable defenses guarded six 155 mm artillery pieces. With a potential range of 25,000 yards (14 miles), 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,” and it was critical to the success of the invasion.

On June 6, 1944, around 7:15 a.m., the Rangers disgorged from their landing craft, which had come as close as possible to Pointe du Hoc. Many Rangers went into water over their heads as they made their way to the rocky beach at the base of the cliffs. As the men of Dog Company dashed toward the cliff, they heard the ripping sound of a German “bonesaw” M-42 machine gun. Capable of firing between 1200 and 1500 rounds per minute, the MG-42s struck the gravel around Rangers. “I thought I was kicking up pebbles and dirt. But they were actually bullets that were hitting the sand and kicking up the dirt around me,” one Ranger explained.

From the top of the cliff, the German soldiers relentlessly fired on the incoming Americans. “Until that moment, I had probably fired 10,000 rounds. I had switched barrels [on the MG42] several times but the flash hider still sometimes got red hot,” one German machine gunner remembered.

Some of the men, like Sigurd Sundby from Dog Company, struggled with the ascent. “The rope was wet and kind of muddy; my hands just couldn’t hold. They were like grease, and I came sliding back down. I wrapped my foot around the rope and slowed myself up as much as I could, but my hands still burned.”

Another Ranger, Bill Hoffman, described the confusion, “I was assigned a specific rope [and] to a specific gun. I was supposed to do some specific damage. I had a big stick of C-2 in my pocket. I just grabbed a rope, and somebody yelled ‘Hey, Hey, that’s mine.’ They were firing down at us and throwing down potato masher grenades, and they also cut some ropes. I don’t really know how we got up the cliff.”

First Sergeant Leonard Lomell, Dog Company’s senior enlisted man, concentrated all of his energies on climbing. He took a machine gun bullet in his side, but continued to ascend. Adrenaline coursed through his body, allowing him to ignore the searing pain. Exhausted, Lomell’s muscles strained to carry him upward.

Climbing next to the first sergeant was 2nd Platoon’s radio operator, Sergeant Robert Fruhling. Interspersed with the din of battle, Lomell could hear the ominous sound of crumbling rock as the face of the cliff gave way with each foothold. Running out of strength from making the treacherous hand-over-hand ascent while avoiding enemy fire, the wounded Lomell clung to the wet rope. Straining to lift his body the last few feet, he finally crested Pointe du Hoc.

The incessant fire from the MG-42s rained down on the men. From the top of the cliff, Lomell looked down and spotted Fruhling, who was now near the summit, but barely hanging on. Fruhling cried out for help.

Unable to reach the radioman, Lomell provided covering fire from his Thompson and shouted, “Hold on. I can’t help you!” Lomell then spotted Sergeant Leonard Rubin, an “excellent athlete with a powerful build,” and called out, asking him to help the struggling Ranger. Just as Fruhling was slipping down the rope, Rubin grabbed him by the nape of his neck and, with a mighty swing, hoisted him over the top of the Pointe.

After surviving the climb, Lomell and his men fought through a maze of bunkers atop the Pointe but found that the guns they had come to destroy were not in their casements. Acting on their own initiative, Lomell and Sgt. Jack Kuhn found tire tracks made by the German guns and followed them. After fighting through several German strongpoints, they located five of the guns in an apple orchard hidden by the Germans under camouflage netting. Using their thermite grenades, they disabled the deadly weapons, two men accomplishing a mission that hundreds of Allied bombers and scores of heavy naval guns of Allied warships failed to achieve.

The surviving Rangers then tackled their secondary mission. They set up a roadblock across the road atop the Pointe that connected Omaha and Utah Beaches. On the night of June 6-7, hundreds of Germans counterattacked in force, overrunning portions of the Ranger position and nearly retaking the Pointe in an epic assault. But the Rangers held. Eventually, they linked up with troops who had fought their way off Omaha beach. Through personal initiative and courage, a small group of men proved that they could shape history.

Only a few heroes of Dog Company remain. Unlike the counterfeit heroes of Hollywood and current pop culture who incessantly crave attention for faux achievements and insignificant acts, this WWII generation of American rock stars is quietly fading before our eyes.

Listen to the discussion of this article on Breitbart News Daily on SiriusXM.

Sadly it seems too many in our once great nation are not even aware of what those brave lads endured to secure our freedoms

How can they remember what they've never known?


But for you that do remember and appreciate what those men did for all of us my gratitude for you is only eclipsed by my gratitude for them

Dads unit were bombed heavily today, they set up an Allied air base in Russia to draw German bombers to that front and away from France. It worked but not many survived. Their orders came down after the bombing attack from Germany and they were to salvage all the planes they could and bring them out. Dad said they barely got one (1) put together and all the survivors flew out on it, somewhere around twenty of them. They got the Distinguished Service Cross for that.

My Dad was there and was fortunate enough to survive it.

Thank God for those guys - every one of them............

Interesting. Thanks for posting Jeff. Those pics would be cool to see!

It kinda makes you wonder if maybe going ashore 10 miles from the airfield saved your Dad's life. I would think the Germans would have had those bluffs below the field covered pretty well with machine gun nests etc.

That was back when men were men for sure.

Some currency Dad brought back in a C ration tin...