Fifty Facts About D-Day-- Part 5: Medals of Honor

41.  The U.S. Army attacked with six divisions.

42.  500 gliders took to the air.

43.  A separate battle was waged high above the beach at Pointe du Hoc, 100-foot cliffs.

44.  Germany's mighty Atlantic Wall fell in a day.

45. There were  12 Medals of Honor.

46.  Heavy packs encumbered troops.

47.  Boat ramps on the Higgins Boats served as shield.

48.  One black unit participated.  The Army was segregated and black troops not allowed to fight.     The 330th  Barrage Balloon Battalion was there.

49.  That unit's medic is an unsung hero  Waverly B. Woodson.  Despite being injured himself, he saved hundreds of lives and kept four from drowning.  In recent years there is a movement to get him  a Medal of Honor.

50.  Germany surrendered less than a year later on May 7, 1945.

--GreGen

Remembering D-Day-- Part 5: Pointe du Hoc, Through Minefields and Up Steep Bluffs

His outfit earned fame by fighting through minefields and the steep bluffs.  For his actions, John C. Raaen Jr. was awarded the Silver Star, the third-highest honor for heroism in combat in the United States.

A Georgia native, he rose to the rank of two-star general before retiring from the Army in 1979.

Raaen feels extraordinarily lucky to have lived a long and full life. D-Day, he stresses, was not the highlight; the day he married was.  But keeping young Americans alive through the longest of days comes very close.

--GreGen

Remembering D-Day-- Part 4: Pointe du Hoc "Machine Gun Fire Was Absolutely Continuous"

As his battalion approached the breach it suddenly changed direction.  "Lt. Col. Schneider, our battalion commander, was in the second wave.  he saw what was happening and said, 'I'm not going to lose my battalion on that beach.'  We moved approximately a thousand yards.  It made all  the difference."

Even so, Raaen came under fire a "tremendous amount" of small arms fire.  There was "constant noise," a ceaseless "roar."  Bullets cracked in the air, "pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, above you.  The machine gun fire was absolutely continuous."

A Rough Assignement.  --GreGen

Remembering D-Day-- Part 3: Pointe du Hoc

From the June 2019 AARP Bulletin."A Ranger Captain Recalls D-Day Carnage" by Alex Kershaw.

Retired Major General John C. Raaen  Jr. can still hear the sound of bullets cracking over his head, the wall of noise that greeted him as he landed in France on June 6, 1944.

At 97, he is one of the few alive who experienced the full horrors of Bloody Omaha, where more than 1,200 Americans died.  A 1943 West Point graduate in 1943, Raaen was a 22-year-old captain in the 5th Ranger Infantry Battalion.

His unit's target was a battery of guns at Pointe du Hoc, at the top of 100-foot sheer cliffs and heavily defended.

As his battalion closed on the beach, it suddenly changed direction as a result of a call by the battalion's commander.

--GreGen

Remembering D-Day-- Part 2: What They Said

"The first 24 hours of the invasion will be decisive....  For the Allies as well as Germany, it will be the longest day."

--Ervin Rommell, German field marshal

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"Only two kinds of people are going to be on this beach, the dead and those who are going to die."

--Col. George A. Taylor, commanding the 16th Infantry Regiment on Omaha Beach.


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"These are the boys of Pointe du Hoc.  These are the men who took the cliffs.  These are the champions who helped free a continent.  These are the heroes who helped end the war."

--President Ronald Reagan, 40th anniversary of D-Day.

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"They were the fathers we never knew, the uncles we never met, the friends who never returned, the heroes we can never repay.  They gave us our world.  And those simple sounds of freedom we hear today are their voices speaking to us across the years."

--President Bill Clinton, 50th anniversary of D-Day

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--GreGen

Marvin Kornegay of the USS Texas at D-Day

From AR-15.com  "Air and Naval Bombardment of the Normandy beaches."

The USS Texas was at D-Day, the second-oldest dreadnaught  in the fleet and though obsolete by then as major fighting ship, its ten 14-inch guns were still able to pack quite a wallop.  It was stationed just off Point de Hoc that morning.

As the Texas sat offshore  of Omaha Beach, her crew had front row seats to the carnage referenced by Captain Baker.  Seaman Second Class Marvin Kornegay manned a five-inch gun on the Texas and while he maintained his confidence in the result of the coming battle, he cringed as he watched the Allied craft  fall to the sea in the pre-dawn aerial bombardment.

This reaction was repeated as Kornegay watched landing craft explode from well-placed German mortar rounds.

At 0550, the Texas got her first chance that day to demonstrate the power of Allied naval fire.  Targeting Pointe du Hoc with her main 14 inch battery and strongpoints surrounding Omaha Beach Exit D-1 with her secondary armament (Kornegay was on the secondary armament), 260 shells were hurled at the Germans over 40 minutes.

A painting of the Texas and a picture of it today accompanies the blog thread.

--GreGen

Don't Forget D-Day-- Part 3: Incoming Tide Claims Wounded

"Among the books about D-Day is Rick Atkinson's "The Guns At Last Light."  In it he describes the ferocious battle scenes, quotes the participants and honors the dead at Omaha, Utah and other beaches.

" 'By 8:30 a.m., the Omaha assault had stalled.  The rising tide quickly reclaimed the thin strip of liberated beach, drowning those immobilized by wounds or fear.  ...Only where escarpment turned to cliff, four miles west of Omaha, did the early-morning assault show promise.

"Three companies from the 2nd Ranger Battalion scaled the headland at Pointe du Hoc, first climbing freehand despite a rain of grenades, then using grapnels and braided ropes fired  from mortar tubes."

--GreGen