Telling the stories of D-Day veterans
BY DOUGLAS BRINKLEY AND RON DREZ

Essentially, Voices of Valor was born in 1983, when the then director of the Eisenhower Center at the University of New Orleans, historian Stephen E. Ambrose, started interviewing D-Day veterans for an oral history project. Realizing how extraordinary it would have been to have had the technology to tape-record the soldiers of Gettysburg or Vicksburg during the U.S. Civil War, Ambrose and his associate, Captain Ron Drez, USMC—a decorated rifle company commander in Vietnam in 1968—embarked on a mission. For over a decade they canvassed America, attending veterans' reunions and tracking down forgotten men. The Eisenhower Center collection grew to more than 2,000 accounts of D-Day experiences. "This is the most extensive first-person, I-was-there collection of memoirs of a single battle in existence," Ambrose wrote in the acknowledgments to his best-selling book D-Day: June 6, 1944: The Climactic Battle of World War II.

D-Day was the turning point of World War II. British prime minister Winston Churchill summed it up best when he deemed it "the most difficult and most complicated operation ever to take place." That is saying a lot, for it was a rare day during the war when something crucial didn't transpire somewhere in the Pacific, Burma-India-China, the Middle East, North Africa, the Soviet Union, the North Atlantic or Europe. On June 4, 1944, for example, the Americans marched triumphantly into Rome, headquarters of Fascist Italy and the first major capital to be liberated by the Allies. But the D-Day invasion in northern France two days later was a turning point of a different sort: land conquered by the Nazis was taken back for freedom. It was only a narrow strip of sea-sprayed beach, but it was land, hard-fought for, and it was the beginning of the end for Adolf Hitler.

Everything about D-Day was large—the overarching strategy, the vast mobilization, the sheer number of troops. But it is the daring boldness and intrepid courage of the men—America's 1st, 4th, and 29th Infantry Divisions, and its 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions, along with the British 3rd and 50th Infantry Divisions, the Canadian 3rd Infantry Division, and the British 6th Airborne Division—plus the incredible job of the U.S. Navy and Air Corps, that stand out. One can read biographies of Dwight Eisenhower or watch footage of John Ford, but the only way to understand D-Day fully is as a battle at its smallest: that is, one soldier and one reminiscence at a time. Collectively, these fighting men were the Voices of Valor—the title of this book.

Infantryman Al Littke of the 16th Regiment Combat Team, for example, watched the naval bombardment of Omaha Beach as he waited in a boat to join the landing. "With all this fire power, it should be a cinch," he recalled saying to himself, "I thought I was untouchable." Leonard Griffing was a paratrooper with the 101st Airborne Division, preparing to drop onto French soil from a low-flying airplane. "As I stood there with my hands on the edge of the doorway ready to push out," he recalled, "it seemed that we took some kind of a burst under the left wing because the plane went in a sharp roll and I couldn't push myself out because it was uphill, so I just hung on."

D-Day was not one day, but a composite of many days, experienced by each of those individuals who played a part on the Allied side—from the 120,000 men who landed during the initial action to the millions of personnel who supported them. In this volume, the story of D-Day is told through the impressions of those who were there. None of the people who lend their voices here saw the grand sweep of the battle, but rather only one small snapshot of it. Assembled in this book, Voices of Valor, are those memories—some tragic, some humorous, and all of them imbued with human drama. They comprise the big picture of the largest invasion force ever assembled.

Chapter 8
THE RANGERS AT THE POINTE

The American soldiers stationed in southwest England in the spring of 1944 didn't know what mission they were training for, but they knew they had to be ready for anything. Because they knew their mission would be an important one— and a dangerous one.

"These units accepted only volunteers," recalls Lieutenant James Eikner, who, as part of the 2nd Battalion, would be in the attacking force. "Men were selected for their mental and physical stamina and their motivation to get the job done. Sometimes we were called suicide groups, but not at all.... We were simply spirited young people who took the view that if you were going to be a combat soldier you may as well be the very best."

They trained for many months, stationed first in Bude, Cornwall, and then near the chalky cliffs of the Isle of Wight.

"We did lots of training on the cliffs in Bude," remembers Salva Maimone, a 2nd Battalion Ranger from Memphis, Tennessee. "All types of cliffs to climb. We didn't know what kind of cliff would be over there on the French coastline."

"The training was long and hard," remembers Ralph Goranson of Company C, "Each day we would run seven miles out to the cliffs on the ocean, climb all day, and run back home." They practiced reconnaissance, night operations, capturing prisoners, and running in ankle-deep sand. Toward the end of their training they began taking weekly plunges into the icy waters of the English Channel. Finally, after roughly half a year of intense and careful training, the Rangers were ready. For them it was only a question of when and where.

On the other side of the Channel, a site had been selected. In the eighteen-mile gap between Omaha Beach and Utah Beach there was an ominous prominence called Pointe du Hoc. Both Generals Eisenhower and Bradley were very worried about this particular piece of terrain since intelligence had identified six large guns placed on the prominence.

"Pointe du Hoc was equidistant between Omaha and Utah Beaches," said Lieutenant Eikner. "The six 155-millimeter guns had a 25,000-yard range and they could rain much destruction down on either of the beaches and reach far out into the sea and cause tremendous damage to naval craft out there. So this installation was to be the most dangerous within the invasion area. Its early neutralization on D-Day morning was considered the primary objective for that day."

"Towards the sea," Eikner continued, "the cliffs dropped off about a hundred feet on the average from vertical to near vertical to actually overhang."

The importance of Pointe du Hoc to the Allied planners is clearly shown by the neutralizing fire they focused on this position. The heavy naval warships had eighteen targets on their bombardment list for D-Day morning. Pointe du Hoc was number one. The air support plan for the medium and heavy bombers also had it as the top priority. Failure of the invasion at other places along the sixty-mile front might be overcome, but failure at the point could spell disaster. General Bradley called the task of knocking out the Pointe du Hoc defenses the toughest of any task assigned on D-Day.

To neutralize these guns, Eisenhower had conceived of a daring cliff-climbing attack using grappling hooks fired from special mortars installed on each of the landing craft that would take the attacking force to the Pointe. This attack relied heavily upon surprise. It was reasonable to presume that the German defenders would not expect a force to attempt to scale the hundred-foot sheer cliffs, so that's exactly what Eisenhower planned.

The commander chosen to lead the attacking force was Lt. Col. James Earl Rudder, the commander of the Ranger Force that consisted of the 2nd and 5th Ranger Battalions. The plan sounded simple but was anything but.

Company C of the 2nd Battalion would make an initial, separate attack on a small prominence just to the east of the Pointe called Pointe et Raz de la Perc?e. This would be an attack that would mostly support the effort at Omaha Beach to help eliminate German flanking fire on the western end. But the main attack, the attack to eliminate the devastating fires from the big 155mm guns, would come at the Pointe itself.

To attack the Pointe, Companies D, E, and F of the 2nd Battalion would assault the cliffs while Companies A and B, and the entire 5th Ranger Battalion marked time off shore awaiting the signal that the Pointe had been taken. If that signal came, then they would follow in trace and land to climb the cliffs.

If the signal did not come from Pointe du Hoc that the position had been secured, then the offshore force would head east to Omaha Beach, land there, and move inland to take the Pointe from the rear, advancing along the coastal road.

As the great armada sailed toward Normandy on the night of June 5 and into the early hours of June 6, there was much talk and speculation taking place below decks by the men of the Ranger landing force. Some of it was cocky, some whispered concerns, but most talk exuded confidence borne of discipline and training.

Donald Scribner from Company C was below deck on the British ship, HMS Prince Charles. Company C's attack on Pointe et Raz de la Percee would be isolated from the rest of the force.

"I remember quite well going across the English Channel," he said. "It was very rough. The waves were very high. We were about ten miles from shore when Col. Rudder came down and talked to us prior to loading up the LCAs [Landing Craft— Assault]. He had this comment to make to us. 'Boys, you are going on the beach as the first Rangers in this combat in this battalion to set foot on French soil, but don't worry about being alone. When D, E, and F take care of Pointe du Hoc, we will come down and give you a hand with your objective. Good luck and may God be with you.