This is the 2d part of an extended diary on my trip to Normandy, where I went in 2003.
You can see a lot of this really well on Google Earth.
I'v blogged more about my military experience here and here
I spent the first night in a motel at Port-en-Bessin. The next morning I got up early, before the dawn and drove over to Omaha Beach, about 10 miles, to watch the sun come up. I sat there watching the dawn break over one of the most famous American battlefields ever.
These photos give a good idea of it---it's 6+ miles long.
I'm not sure why the experience seemed so mystical to me---perhaps its all the ghosts. I've been to quite a few battlefields, including to some of my own, and I always get the idea that there is more to it than meets the eye, like there's a whole 'nother reality going on that's not visible. Hard to put into words
It's certainly hard to put into words what I was feeling, but it was huge----very cathartic. I'll try but words alone aren't going to do it.
D-Day was probaby the hugest thing in a war that ranked huge in my mom and Dad's life. They had a wartime marriage and for a time my Mom went down South with my Dad. My Dad was an infantry officer in Europe, coming in in December of '44. My Uncle was a Marine in the Pacific at Tarawa, Tinian and Saipan. My mom and her sister worked in the Richmond Kaiser shipyards, so did both my Grandpa's.
My older brother came in '47 and I came in '48, more came along later. As we were growing up, we heard all the talk about all this important stuff. I remember sitting hearing my Dad and uncle talking and I always knew I'd be a soldier. (Geez I wish I had recordings of those conversations now. My uncle is gone, drank himself to death by age 50. He never got over it)
When I grew up there was an expectation for young men that they'd serve their country in the military. When I saw the movie " The Longest Day," a blockbuster in it's time, I knew then I wanted to be a paratrooper.
And I always had this interest in WWII, especially Airborne and glider operations, and war in general. I went to college driven by a need to study something I'd taken part in that I was mostly ignorant of: Vietnam. And once I understood that---which took me years--- I looked at other wars as well. I guess I could probably teach a class on some of this by now.
So here I was as dawn broke, an old ex-paratrooper sitting on the most famous battlefield of the biggest event of my parent's life, which I'd seen portrayed in movie and video for 6+ decades. And it's a quiet beach, with a couple of dozen houses along the beach road, a couple of little villles---Viervllle and Colville.
I parked midway down the beach and started walking towards the east. The beach is fronted for most of it's length by low bluffs, steep in places, broken up by draws---little valleys extending south off the beach.This is where I parked, facing east. The beach is different now, the seas are higher, it used to go farther out. The invasion was timed to go in at the lowest possible tide, which, with the weather, meant there were only certain days a month when it could happen. Ike gave the order to go after one put off---it couldn't wait forever. Look at the bluffs and imagine trying to attack up those into a super well prepared enemy
I'm an ex combat infantryman (airborne,) I've been on the attack and I've been attacked. I know what it's about and what it looks like---what you become and what it does to you. And I could only walk openmouthed with awe at what those poor fuckers were facing. GeezusGod it was a turkeyshoot and our side was the turkeys.
Imagine trying to assemble and attack while someone in this position sprayed machinegun fire down on you. AND you're in landmines all around you AND pre-sited artillery mortar fire is raining down on you and did I say that the preliminary air bombardment was almost completely ineffective, as was the preliminary naval bombardment? All it did was wake the Germans up and get them ready.
Our side attacked thinking there would be a huge preliminary air and naval bombardment that would knock out most important points and traumatize the Germans. The infantry were told that there would be bomb craters all over they could cover in. On Omaha, almost none of this happened. The Bombing was too far away from the beach and the naval gunfire overshot the beach fortifications. They didn't drop paratroops behind Omaha like they did on all the other beaches either. The ambhibious tanks that were going to provide ground support almost all foundered.
And then they dumped the grunts on the ground. Got your M1 with you? Good fucking luck, guys!
This is looking up the Colvillle Draw towards the cemetery. I went up there later in the day. (next diary) This was the scene of some of the hottest action of the day as guns fired down here from both sides.
Like a lot of other things you don't hear, Omaha Beach was a huge clusterfuck at the beginning that was only saved by the extraordinary courage by some ordinary men, a lot of them. How they won it was by keeping piling on untill they overwhelmed the Germans. In short, it was a meat grinder. Most of the landing craft landed in the wrong place and most of the men were landed mixed with other units. The preliiminary bombardments were ineffective.
I'll be touching on more of this when we come back to Omaha and the Colville cemetery later in the day (apparently next diary) but after walking halway down the beach and back, I decided to go over to Pointe Du Hoc.
Pointe Du Hoc is at the very western most end of Omaha, a prominence between Omaha Beach that looks down on both Omaha and Utah Beach, 12 miles to the west. It's escarpment between these places, and the Carentan Estuary, restricting landing sites. Pointe Du Hoc was known to have huge cannon that covered both Utah and Omaha Beaches so it was imprtant that they be taken out. They planned a huge----wait for it----aerial and naval bombardment and then 2 battalions of Rangers (2d and 5th) would land by sea, scale the cliffs and take the guns. And that's what happened, with some more jugfucks on the way, like the CO of one battalion showing up too drunk to go and their reinforcements landing in the wrong place.
My interest in this is more than just educational: I am what could be described as a retroactive Army Ranger. No fooling! After I'd been in the 101st in Vietnam as a grunt for almost 6 months I volunteered to go into what was then callled the lrrps.(pronounced "lurps") Long Range Recon Patrols or just Long Range Patrol. This was 5 and 6 man teams patrolling mostly along the CAmbodian Border of what was then called II Corps, Vietnam. In June 1969, a year after I left the war and 6 months after I'd left the army (but the war went on!) they waved the military magic wand over the lrrp companies (about a dozen then) and renamed them Ranger and organized them into the 75th Ranger Regiment. Same job same pay new hat! No fooling there either.
I had canceled my subscription to the US Army shortly after my honorable discharge, so I didn't get the memo on this. I didn't find out about the lrrp to Ranger transition untill well into the late '90s. I kept reading about the Rangers in Vietnam and couldn't think who they were. And then I found out I was one. Sorta.
"I wanna be an Airborne Ranger,
I wanna live a life of Danger...."
they still sing as they march in Army Basic Training. Well, been there, done that, got the t-shirt, even tho I didn't know I was dong thhat when I did it. It still counts. I guess.
They grandfathered all us old lrrps into the Ranger Association, which was nice of them, but every old lrrp I know, self included, only wants to be known as a lrrp. That's not out of dislike for the Rangers but out of respect for them---I didn't go through Ranger School but a 2.5 week Recon course called Recondo.
So the company association shows both names but we still think of ourselves as retroactive Rangers.below's my company insignia, you get the idea:
So Retroactive Ranger arrives at Point du Hoc and he was impressed! The naval bombardment worked pretty well here which is one of the reasons the Rangers triumphed here. HUGE chunks of concrete, some as big as houses are just thrown around here like chidren's building blocks.
The French left them pretty much as is and made a park out of it. It is impressive when you consider the forces involved and men attacking through this.
they scaled the cliffs below using climbing gear and ladders borrowed from the London Fire Department. That monument on the end's about 15'tall so you get an idead of the heights. "Will you tell me how we did this?" James Rudder, CO of the Rangers said when he came back to visit it years later and that thought was in my mind also. Think about climbing that under small arms fire
The botttom line to the PDH attack was that the guns were not workable. they had been going to install them but hadn't done it yet.
My Ranger war was a different kind of war. We weren't in large units, we operated in small teams out so far we had to have other teams planted midway to relay radio messages. I went on about 30 patrols as a lrrp and each one of them was a mini D-Day for me. I had to screw up my courage the whole time, every time. Just like all the people in D-Day, I was wishing I was somewhere else the whole time.
But you have to do what's in front of you even if you're landed in some pretty awful stuff.
So from one Old Ranger to the role models a salute acros the generations. Fight with what you have untill relieved! I'm proud to be able to say I was one of you, even if only on a technicality.
Next diary: I go back to Omaha and the Colleville cemetery