D-Day. The Battle for Normandy

to deal with the breakthrough near Colleville, but according to its divisional headquarters, it could not be expected to arrive ‘within one and a half hours’. In fact Allied air attacks prevented it from arriving until late afternoon.
    Generalmajor Kraiss, however, soon saw that he could not divert any more forces to Omaha. As the American official history pointed out, the British 50th Division, which was landing on Gold beach some miles to the east, provided ‘the gravest immediate threat for the Germans’. Even though their H-Hour had been fixed an hour later than the American assault, ‘the British assault cracked through the coast defenses in some places during the first few hours’. The left flank of the 352nd Division was completely exposed and the bulk of Meyer’s Kampfgruppe was redirected towards Crépon to face the British. Meyer himself was killed later that day fighting the British at Bazenville. Only ninety of his men out of nearly 3,000 rejoined the division.
     
    While one company of the 2nd Rangers had landed with disastrous losses alongside Company A of the 116th at the western end of Omaha, the rest of the battalion had as its main objective the battery on the Pointe du Hoc, much further round the headland. But these Rangers too were to be plagued by bad luck.
    Lieutenant Colonel James E. Rudder, the commanding officer of the 2nd Rangers, when heading for the Pointe du Hoc, realized that the Royal Navy coxswain was taking them in much too far to the east, almost on to Omaha beach. Half an hour was then lost beating against the current round to the Pointe du Hoc. Once the boats were in position under the cliff, rocket-fired grappling irons invented by British commando forces were used. Many fell short, partly because the ropes were heavy from sea water, but several took hold and the first men began to scale the cliff. Some London fire brigade ladders were also used. The Germans could not believe that the grappling irons were coming up from the landing craft under the cliff. The 352nd Infanterie-Division headquarters were informed that ‘from warships on the high sea the enemy is firing special shells at the cliffs from which a rope ladder is falling out’.
    The German garrison on the cliff top tried to fire down at their attackers and drop grenades on them, but close support from the destroyers USS Satterlee and HMS Talybont forced them to keep their heads down in the early stage. The Satterlee remained with the Rangers all day, ready to support them. The bravery and skill of the first Rangers climbing the cliff enabled them to seize a foothold at the top. They were soon reinforced by others. To their surprise, they found that there were no large guns mounted in the battery. The guns were lying a little way inland and were soon dealt with.
    Rudder’s radio operator tried to send off the success signal ‘Praise the Lord’, but the radios were not working due to sea water. In any case it was too late. The delay in getting to their objective meant that the 5th Battalion of the Rangers, which had been waiting offshore ready to come in to reinforce them, assumed that the attack had failed. As a result they resorted to their alternative plan and landed on Omaha in support of the 116th Infantry, where Brigadier General Cota soon sent them forward to attack the bluffs.
    The battalion of the German 916th Grenadier-Regiment on the Pointe du Hoc took even longer to communicate. The 352nd Infanterie-Division heard only at 08.19 hours that the Rangers had succeeded in scaling the cliffs. The fighting was to continue all that day and most of the next, as the 916th counter-attacked Rudder’s force again and again. The Rangers ran out of ammunition and armed themselves with German weapons taken from those they had killed. This was to prove a dangerous measure when a relief force eventually arrived.
     
    Not far from the first large landing craft, which was still ablaze, Cota chose a section of the sea wall with a mound five yards beyond. He told a soldier with a Browning automatic rifle to keep German heads down on the bluff above. He then supervised the placing of Bangalore torpedoes under the barbed-wire entanglement. Cota had also told Lieutenant Colonel Max Snyder of the 5th Rangers to blow similar gaps, advance inland and then swing round westwards to attack the German fortifications at Pointe et Raz de la Percée.
    With the wire blown and smoke from the seagrass set on fire by naval shells, Cota