Warriors In Their Own Words | First Person War Stories · Evergreen Podcasts | The Honor Project

U.S. Rangers On D-Day: From the Archive

·1 hr 3 min·2 clips

Four Rangers convinced a German fortress commander they were surrounded by 50,000 Rangers, when only 3,000 served in all of World War II.

1. Warriors In Their Own Words presents archive first-person accounts from U.S. Army Rangers on D-Day, June 6, 1944, centered on the assault at Pointe du Hoc and the cliffs beside it. 2. Leonard Lamelle, a first sergeant of D Company, 2nd Ranger Battalion, and Sidney Solomon, a former Wisconsin newspaper worker turned C Company lieutenant, tell the stories in their own voices. 3. The episode sets Ranger selection and training against combat, showing that the 2nd Ranger Battalion, activated April 1, 1943 at Camp Forrest, Tullahoma, Tennessee, faced cliffs, fire and confusion on D-Day. 4. Lamelle says about 2,000 volunteers were tested on the same exams as West Point and Annapolis, and only 500 were accepted under Lieutenant Colonel James Earl Rudder, whom he calls "our big brother." 5. He recounts the rough Channel crossing aboard British craft, where a coxswain headed for the wrong cliff and cost 30 minutes, leaving Rangers bailing water and exposed to fire for three miles along the coast. 6. Lamelle and Jack Kuhn leapfrog through 15-foot hedgerows, find five guns in an apple orchard, and disable them with thermite grenades and a field jacket wrapped around a submachine gun, while a German patrol of about 50 men passes within 20 feet. 7. Lamelle later describes Lieutenant Bob Edlin's patrol asking a German fortress commander to "take me to your leader" and Rudder pressing a grenade against the German colonel's stomach to secure the surrender. 8. Solomon recounts boarding landing craft from HMS Prince Charles at 4:30 a.m., carrying five days of ammunition and rations, and pulling wounded Sergeant Reed from beneath the ramp before a mortar shell killed his mortar section. 9. He cites the official battalion medical report of 81 Rangers killed on June 6th, including 21 from C Company, 20 of them on the 100-yard beach in the first ten minutes, and says "we were the dumb soldiers. We were the smart ones." 10. Suited to listeners of World War II oral history and military history.

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from Warriors In Their Own Words | First Person War Stories