Welcome to the America’s Veterans Stories podcast. Kim Monson is your host. Retired Major General John Raaen was a young Army Captain on Omaha Beach, D-Day 1944. As part of the elite 5th Ranger Battalion, their job was to knock out the guns located at the top of the cliffs of Pointe du Hoc and secure the roads around the Pointe to prevent the German’s movement. We are re-broadcasting an interview with General Raaen. You’ll hear stories of D-Day from a soldier who lived it. _________________________________________________ Copyright 2023: America’s Veteran’s Stories Visit us at www.americasveteransstories.com America’s Veteran’s Stories airs
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Thank you.
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world war two korea vietnam the gulf war afghanistan and her other wars and conflicts america’s fighting men and women strapped on their boots and picked up their guns to fight tyranny and stand for liberty we must never forget them welcome to america’s veteran stories with kim munson these stories will touch your heart inspire you and give you courage we stand on the shoulders of giants here’s kim munson
SPEAKER 10 :
And welcome to America’s Veterans Stories. Be sure and check out our website. That is AmericasVeteranStories.com. And this show began because of a trip that I took to Normandy, France in 2016 with a group that accompanied four D-Day veterans to Normandy for the 73rd anniversary of the D-Day landings. and returned back stateside realizing that we need to record these stories, broadcast them, archive them, and hence America’s Veterans Stories. I am so excited to have on the line with me retired Army Major General John Raaen. General Raaen, welcome to the show.
SPEAKER 06 :
Well, thank you very much. It’s nice to be here.
SPEAKER 10 :
And I’ve had the great honor of interviewing you before, but I was with one of our sponsors. We were talking about America’s Veterans Stories, and he said, I just saw something on Facebook about a D-Day veteran who is going to be turning 100. And I said, I bet that’s General Ron. We checked it out, and it is. But General Ron, let’s talk about D-Day, your experience there. Tell us, first of all, how did you get, why did you decide the Army? How did you get into the Army?
SPEAKER 06 :
Well, first, my father was an Army officer, and I was born at Fort Benning, so what is there left? I mean, the only thing that’s left is to get into the Army. And I made my decision at the tender age of around five or six that I would go to West Point. The reason for that is my father was stationed at West Point, so I got a daily dose of cadets marching, of cadets playing football, cadets wrestling. I did the whole schmear around five or six, and I decided at that time I would try to be a cadet and the rest of them. My young life was devoted to becoming more and more qualified and finally making it into West Point for the class of 1943.
SPEAKER 10 :
And so when you graduated, did you graduate from West Point before D-Day? How did that work out? What was the timing on all that?
SPEAKER 06 :
Well, what we had, when the Japanese attacked us, we ended up at war. No ifs, ands, or buts. And they took my class, which was supposed to graduate in June of 1943, and moved it up about five months to January 19th. So we had our June week. We called it June and January, which was a very popular song at that particular point in time. and our graduation ceremonies, at least the graduation parade, was held in about a foot of snow. True, it had been shoveled, but it was that cold, and they didn’t get all the snow up, of course. But it was different. We graduated early and went about our stations. I think our graduation leave was something like two weeks, which meant you had two weeks to get your effects in order to go ahead and be an army officer and uh that was it i was on my way and where where did you go once uh once you were back from the the two weeks leave um i went to fort benning i graduated as an engineer in the corps of engineers and uh That was where they sent us. I’ve forgotten how long it was. I think the first part was six weeks of what they call refresher training. And that’s really what it was for us because we had everything that they tried to teach us at Fort Belvoir we’d already had as cadets. So it was like a six-week vacation. The next thing they did was send us across Route 1, a distance of no more than a mile, and we were made platoon leaders in the Engineer Replacement Training Center. And there I had my own little platoon, and I was one of the lucky ones because half of my platoon, they were raw recruits. Half of my platoon were the… football team of St. Louis University. So I had a bunch of bright, young, eager recruits, smart as whips, anywhere from seniors down to freshmen in college. And the other half were just like ordinary recruits. Their age could be anywhere from about maybe 18 up to even into the 30s. But with the help of those young, bright, eager young men, I had the easiest platoon to teach, and they were the quickest ones to learn. It was a great job. I had that for about six weeks when they sent me to the 10th Armored Division at Fort Benning, completing the cycle of my birth, if you want to call it that. And I had a bridge platoon in the— armored engineer battalion didn’t keep that long i got moved around to various staff jobs and went on tennessee maneuvers and when we came out of tennessee maneuvers i was what they called the reconnaissance platoon leader which was the cream job for an engineer lieutenant in an armored engineer battalion And from there, I saw a sign on the bulletin board during Tennessee maneuvers asking for volunteers for the Rangers, and I volunteered, and that made me a Ranger.
SPEAKER 10 :
Well, and let’s talk just a little bit about the Tennessee maneuvers. I’ve heard a bit about them, but that was really in preparation for, I mean, battle preparation, correct, General Raaen?
SPEAKER 06 :
I think it was more than that. The Tennessee maneuvers were… I suppose they were unique. They were seeking to develop doctrine more than to train troops. Sure, it trained troops, and it was very important to the individual man, but the big thing was that the commanders got to handle large bodies of troops to move them around, see that… When you have a plan to use this road, you suddenly can’t use it because there’s somebody else’s convoy going by. It may be commercial food for the local residents. So the maneuvers were for the development of doctrine on the high level, and it was for the development of infantry and soldier skills at the lower level. It had two purposes.
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So when you came out of the Tennessee maneuvers, you became a ranger. There was additional training for that, correct?
SPEAKER 06 :
Oh, absolutely. We started from scratch as rangers. What we had was just a bunch of draftees who’d been through basic training. And that applied to the officers as well, for the most part. And so we went into another training session. At Camp Forest, Tennessee, which is right outside of or perhaps within the boundaries of Tullahoma, we did a great deal more training, scouting, patrolling, night attack, day attack by platoons, rifle marksmanship, pistol marksmanship, machine gun marksmanship, everything to make an advanced infantry soldier. We did their training. at Camp Forest. After about, let’s see, September, October, I believe we moved into Fort Pierce, Florida after approximately three months training at Camp Forest. And Fort Pierce was actually a Navy station, and it was the home of the Navy and Marine Corps, what do they call them? Scouts and Rangers. Now, beg your pardon, Scouts and something else for the Marines. Raiders, Scouts and Raiders School. So we went to Navy, Scout, and Raiders School where we were trained in small boat handling and a lot more of the usual things of developing an advanced infantry soldier. New tactics, new techniques, new weapons. That was another thing they brought in, new weapons and things like that. So we were becoming more and more elite in that our training was considerably more than the ordinary infantryman would get. And we became right good at it. So good that for Thanksgiving, I think it was, they stole a turkey out of the commanding officer’s oven. So we were pretty sneaky about everything, and we became pretty good. As usual, we found ourselves to be at odds with the local military police, but in this case, the shore patrol. And we had a lot of fun, but we didn’t do any real damage. I mean, the loss of a single turkey didn’t matter to us.
SPEAKER 10 :
That’s pretty impressive, General Ron, that you guys did that. So all of this sounds to me like preparation for D-Day. So Hitler has basically taken over Western Europe, and there is a plan for the Allies, for the Americans, to get a toehold and to start to fight back. It looks to me like this is all preparation for that. Is that correct?
SPEAKER 06 :
That is correct. The Rangers… the 2nd and 5th Ranger Battalions, both of whom trained at Camp Forrest, Fort Pierce, and so on. We were training specifically for the invasion. We didn’t know our part, and I just ran across an author who went back and showed that The time we’re talking about, they didn’t know how they were going to invade. They had four or five totally different plans for the use of Rangers in the invasion. So they hadn’t settled on how they would invade or anything like that. They just knew that they were going to use us as assault troops. And as things developed, it was discovered that the place they had chosen to invade was becoming very heavily fortified. So it was going to be the job of the Rangers to crack that heavy fortification in the American zone. The British and the Canadians had their own problems with their own beaches, and they used commandos as well as regular troops like we did. I don’t want to give anybody the impression that the entire invasion was two little bitty battalions of Rangers. Quite the contrary. We dropped three airborne divisions. The Americans had three assault divisions of the beaches. The British had… one airborne division and several regular infantry divisions, and the Canadians had a couple of infantry divisions. So all in all, this was a major, major force that went in to land in Normandy, and we had that specific little cutting mission of eliminating the fortress that the Germans built at Pointe du Hoc. This was just a tiny little promontory on Omaha Beach consisting of six 155-millimeter guns, not howitzers, and they could reach both Utah and Omaha Beach and devastate the invasion fleet. So our two little battalions were ordered in to get rid of those guns, and we did it, though it was… more or less an accident than we did it.
SPEAKER 10 :
Okay, General Ron, we’re going to go to break. I’m talking with retired Army Major General John Ron, and he was at Normandy, Omaha Beach on D-Day. We’ll be right back.
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And welcome back to America’s Veteran Stories with Kim Munson. Be sure and check out the website, AmericasVeteranStories.com. I am so honored to have on the line with me a retired Army Major General John Raaen. He will turn 100 on April 22nd of 2022. And he was at Omaha Beach the first day of D-Day. And we’re talking about what all happened, his personal experiences there. So, General Ron, you’ve done all of this training, and there’s different plans on how, and it’s interesting, you refer to it as the invasion, which is historically correct. However, I’ve had people challenge me and say it was not an invasion, it was a liberation. What’s your thoughts on that?
SPEAKER 06 :
What they’re talking about is a trivial argument merely to promote conversation. It was a liberation. It was a lot of things, and I can’t think of them all. But that’s just nonsense to waste time.
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Okay, okay. Let’s continue on. We finished, you were still stateside, and you mentioned that there were several different plans on what to do, that the Germans were fortifying up and down that coast there at Normandy and in France. And so how did you… I mean, you then have to end up over in Britain. What did that look like?
SPEAKER 06 :
Well… Actually, Britain is so much like America, but the only thing that’s different is they speak a different form of English, and they have a ghastly monetary system that goes from farthings through halfpennies and all the way on up, and they get their denominations mixed up. A guinea is 21 shillings, but a pound is only 20 shillings, and it’s murder to buy anything at a store. But… The countryside was much as our countryside. The people were lovely and very, very kind to us, even though they were living on half rations, really. And we had the largest of the United States of America giving us food every day. So it was very pleasant. The training was hard. The training was dangerous. And all the time that we were there, and we got there on January 19th, which was the day, the anniversary of the day I graduated from West Point. Anyway, from January 19th on, we were training for specific missions that they were developing. And even at that late date, they had a plan for the use of the Rangers that was, 180 degrees away from the plan that we actually ended up with. So we were rehearsing for the wrong plans, but it was the right job. It was always the same job, knock out those six guns at Point Auk, and a secondary plan of blocking the highways in a certain area that lay between the German reserves and Omaha Beach. So by doing that, we prevented counterattacks, major counterattacks, on the beachhead called Omaha Beach.
SPEAKER 10 :
Well, tell us what it was like as we’re moving towards D-Day. My understanding, the weather was terrible, that General Eisenhower had made a decision not to go on the original day, and then you’d have to look at tides, all kinds of things. So tell us about that, General Ron.
SPEAKER 06 :
Well, it’s very easy. We had not yet completed our doctrine. of how to land on a beach. And there were still diverse opinions and diverse plans. Of course, somebody had to make a decision, and it would be Eisenhower. But it was based on the thoughts of people far junior to him. Do you want to go… At night, in the black of night, no. The troops would lose their way, and you’d probably end up with a pile of bodies on the beach and that type thing. Do you go at night with a moon, using that for your illumination? Well, it was decided that that was not a good idea. It would be difficult to navigate because the Germans had turned off all the lighthouses and all the lighted buoys and things like that. Plus, they had blackout conditions on the shore, so there would be no way to know whether you were right or wrong. So they decided against that. And it was finally decided to go at the crack of dawn, And then they had to decide what phase of the tide they wanted to start the initial landings. Would it be at low tide, mid tide, or high tide? They finally picked mid-low tide. And that was a terrible decision from many, many viewpoints, but so were all the other terrible decisions. You cannot assault a hostile shore without having very dangerous conditions, period. But in any event, they finally decided to start the landings at mid-low tide, and that meant that the troops had to assault over a wet, sandy bottom. It was at least two… in some cases up to 400 yards of ocean bottom that was now empty of tide, and get up on the beach to where we expected the beaches to have all sorts of bomb craters and things like that. None of that worked. Troops were slaughtered. It was daylight, and here they are walking across a beach for 400 yards and didn’t take the Germans long to… make it a very costly landing. When we got to the beaches, we found out that the Air Force had dropped their bombs a mile inland, and there was not a bomb dropped within a mile of the beach that we landed on. Utah Beach was a different story. But for Omaha Beach, The beaches were pristine. You could have gone out with your family for a Sunday sunning or something like that or a picnic. So that made it rather tough. The bluffs at Omaha Beach were about 100 to 135 feet, and they were really quite steep. You had yourself whatever amount of beach you had, and then there was a seawall usually, a road, perhaps buildings starting, and then you’d hit the bluffs. And they were too steep to climb facing upwards. You had to go up sideways like skiers do in cross-country skiing. They just raise one ski, bring the other ski up to it, and then they raise the first ski again and bring the other ski up to it. That was the way you had to go up those hills. There were some paths, and after the assault troops had gone up, you could use the paths, and it made it much, much easier to climb those bluffs. When we got to the top of the bluffs, we hit the famous hedgerow country. The French call it Le Bocage, and it consists of huge farm fields, I mean, it’s not uncommon to see a farm field 400 by 200 yards. I mean, these were big babies. And to cross them was very difficult because the Germans took these hedgerows, and they were not like hedges. A hedgerow is a place where the farmers hundreds of years ago began piling rocks to say, this part is my property, and you’re on the other side of these rocks. And those rocks gradually became fences. Dirt, spoil from plowing, got into them. Birds dropped seeds. The next thing you knew, you had an eight-foot pile of rocks with all kinds of trees and bushes on top of those rocks. And the Germans just dug holes in the back of them and little bitty holes out in front of them and stuck their machine guns there. So when you started crossing these 300, 400-yard fields, you didn’t know where their machine guns were, and you were caught out in the open, and you didn’t know what to do. We, being rangers, figured it out very quickly. Harvest time had not occurred yet. So as a result, there were a lot of high grasses that grew in those fields, some of them four feet, six feet tall. And if you were caught by machine gun fire, you just dropped to the ground, and the German machine gunners had no idea where you were. They had no idea of range. They did know the asthma they had been shooting at. But they didn’t know the range, and all you had to do was to drop down in the crop, take three or four spins to the left, and the Germans had no idea where you were, and neither did you. From there you could crawl to the edge where the hedgerows were, move down the hedgerows, cross over them, come in behind the machine guns. We got very good at that within the first engagement. I don’t know who the smart officer or sergeant or corporal was, but somebody just dropped down and all the bullets went overhead. So they passed the word very rapidly, and that was a tactic that we used, and it spread throughout the invading armies that if you got caught among the crops, just drop down and roll. So we thought quickly, and the enemy did not think as quickly. The German soldier was a fine soldier. He was well-trained. He was obedient. He was well-equipped. But he had no initiative. Without a word from his non-coms, he didn’t know what to do, so he just sat there. Without a word from the officers, the non-coms didn’t know what to tell the enlisted men, so they just sat there. So any time the Germans ran into an unexpected situation, they had to think it through. Whereas we had the attitude that you improvise. I think the Marines still use the term improvise. And you can solve these problems. The tanks couldn’t get through the hedgerows. They were too heavy. They were like seven feet, six feet tall. And at the base, probably 12 feet. Mostly rocks. Tanks trying to go over them, expose their bellies, and were dead ducks. Some engineer sergeant said, hey, we got a lot of this iron and steel down here on the beaches from the obstacles. Let’s just cut them up and make sawtooth hedge cutters. And so they did that. These sawtooth were attached to the front of tanks. They’d get back and perhaps go in 30 miles an hour, hit the hedgerows with those awful teeth. turn right and left and cut their way through, and within a minute or so, a tank could go through one of those hedgerows, whereas before, they never could get through. Go ahead.
SPEAKER 10 :
Well, what you’re mentioning, as I’ve learned this, is the creativity, the innovation of the American soldier, and it really goes back all the way to the Revolutionary War. It’s just something that has been, in a way, almost unique to the American soldier, is thinking on their feet like that, General Ron.
SPEAKER 06 :
Yes, that’s absolutely true. The American soldier was mostly a farmer. they’d grown up shooting all their life. They’d been shooting varmints. They’d been shooting rabbits to eat, deer to eat, things like that. So the American soldier was familiar with many situations that come up on the battlefield, and the Germans simply were not. Particularly, the Germans were not accustomed to being on the defense side. Now, defensive infantry warfare is totally different from offensive infantry warfare. And they were using tactics that were great when they were the invader, but they weren’t so hot when they became the defender.
SPEAKER 10 :
Okay, General Ron, let’s go to break. I’m talking with retired Army Major General John Ron, who was on Omaha Beach the first day of D-Day. Before we go to break, another one of my great sponsors is Hooters Restaurants. They have five locations, Lone Tree, Aurora, Colorado Springs, Westminster, and Loveland. And their wings are really the best out there. They have all kinds of specials. Check out my website, KimMunson.com, and you’ll find all those specials. We’re going to go to break. We’ll be right back. with Gerald Rohn.
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God bless America that I love
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And welcome back to America’s Veteran Stories with Kim Munson. Be sure and check out our website. That is AmericasVeteranStories.com. It’s a great honor to get to do this interview with retired Army Major General John Raaen. He was just a young guy on D-Day, 1944. But he was at Omaha Beach, and we’re talking about that experience. General Raaen, before we went to break, we had just… talked a little bit about the ingenuity and creativity of the American soldier. And I’ve got to say that it’s probably Army Rangers taking Pointe du Hoc. The stories that I’ve heard, it’s almost like Army lore to talk about the Rangers that took Pointe du Hoc. So tell us a little bit about that. The respect for them is amazing.
SPEAKER 06 :
Okay. Pointe du Hoc. As I said earlier, it was a very small area considering the overall war we were fighting. It consisted of cliffs. that were about 115 to 135 feet high. Of course, a lot of that depended upon the sea level and things like that. But you can think of it as 135-foot cliffs, which is over 10 stories, and they were sheer. Many of them were crumbling. The Allies had bombed the Pointe d’Aucre. As much as they dared, they were afraid they would give away the plan if they bombed it too much. So they had to bomb it less than they bombed other far less important roles. So you have this cliff, and in that cliff or on top of that cliff, the Germans had dug mines. six gun emplacements. These are just gun pits where they stick the gun down in there. It and the crew are pretty well protected except from a direct hit. So they dug these gun pits and then they put in six 155mm guns. Now, guns have a long range and a low, flat trajectory, typically. They also had, of course, wire and mines protecting the area. They had machine guns. They had infantry troops there. And it was a real hard nut to crack. They also had air obstacles. They called them Rommel’s asparagus. He’d stick vertical telephone poles and then string wire from the telephone pole to telephone pole so the parachute is coming down. with a 20, 25-foot canopy, was almost certain to hit one of these wires and find himself suspended from the ground about 12 feet while the infantryman was casually shooting him. So they couldn’t use air assault for the plant to hawk. And they knew good naval gunfire. They didn’t have enough ammunition aboard a battleship to handle it. And they thought of a number of other things, and finally they ended up with the fact that Darby’s Rangers in Africa, Sicily, and even Italy had done such a wonderful job that maybe some more Rangers would be able to take the point. So they formed two Ranger battalions, one of which was to take the point, and the other was to come in over. and hit the point from the rear, and that was it. We were the one that was going to hit the point from the rear after a five-mile mile. And the second battalion, half of it, was to assault the cliffs. So that was the story. And I’ll tell you the story of the actual landing. The landing forces had— catapults that fired a thing that looked like a multi-pronged fish hook, a grapple. and they would fire these grapnels up the cliffs the cliffs would go beyond that is the grapnels would go beyond the cliffs uh grab into a barbed wire grab into a bush a tree a building even and a hook there and then the troops could climb up the ropes that were attached to the grapnels the only trouble was that as they came in And fired the grapnels. They all fell short because they were using manila ropes on the grapnels. And it had been so stormy for over a week that the ropes were heavy. And the propellant just didn’t throw the grapnels far enough. Now, there was one lieutenant who was a little bit derelict. He was daydreaming when the order to fire the grapnels came, so he wasn’t even ready. But as he looked in his horror, watching the other grapnels go and hit short, he said, hold up, hold up. And he would not fire his grapnels until his boat touched down. Then he fired his grapnels, and all six of his grapnels got up there and gave us six ropes in his particular area. Made it much easier to climb. Another man, I believe he was a lieutenant. and was reputed to be the best athlete in the battalion, was on top of those 115, 35-foot cliffs. He was on top of them in 55 seconds. Oh, my gosh. How do you do a thing like that? Well, first, he was a great athlete. Second, he was a well-trained cliff climber. But the third thing was a German bomb. I beg your pardon, an American bomb, had hit the edge of the cliff and dug a half crater in the edge of the cliff where his boat landed. Then through the months that followed, the spoil came down from that crater and landed on the beach and made a mound of about 20 to 30 feet. All he did was get off the boat, run across 10 feet of beach, up the top of that mound, and he only had about… 30 or 40 feet of cliffs to climb and it was shattered lots of handholds lots of foothold and he just went up it like a monkey got there and suddenly he was in the bottom of the bomb crater he carried a rope with him so other rangers were joining him by the second and Events like that led to a gradual buildup of force. Whenever a force got large enough, it would go off on its mission of destroying the guns. Of course, when they got to the guns, they found the guns were nothing but fakes. They were telephone poles. They’d been moved on the 25th of April when one of their guns was severely damaged in an air attack. The force gradually built up, found the guns weren’t there, immediately went into their next mission, which was to set up blocking positions on the main road to prevent the Germans from counterattacking the main force. And that was it. That was essentially the story. Now, over the next few days, the Germans actually thought, and a lot of the papers that we have obtained after the war showed it to be the case. The Germans thought the Planta Hawk effort was the main effort, and that the Omaha Beach effort was nothing but a blind, a dummy attack. So they attacked the Planta Hawk viciously. with their reserve forces for three days. And the 225 people that went up the cliffs, and don’t mistaken it, it wasn’t just infantry soldiers that went up the cliffs. Signal Corps photographers went up. Artillery spotters went up the cliffs as well. So there were 225 of them, and by the time they were relieved, there were, I think the number was 91 of them left. The rest no longer could contribute to the battle.
SPEAKER 10 :
Boy, that is astounding. Yeah, go ahead.
SPEAKER 06 :
Even at half strength, they were able to set up blocking positions, and the blocking positions held enough that the Germans never did counterattack from that direction. It was a very successful operation at the expense of a lot of men’s lives.
SPEAKER 10 :
A lot of men’s lives, and also going up those cliffs. The Germans were looking down, shooting at them as the Rangers were going up those cliffs. General Ron, let’s go to break. When we come back, I want to hear what you did on D-Day, because it’s a fascinating story as well. Before we do that, though, another great sponsor of the show is Kirsch Insurance Group. They are specialists in the Medicare arena, and they can help you with any of your questions regarding Medicare insurance. Be sure and check them out. Their website is ikirsch.com. They work with most all of the carriers here in Colorado, so they can help you set yourself up for success there. So we’re going to go to break. When we return, we’ll continue the conversation with General Ron. Before we go to break, there are two organizations that I dearly love and I wanted to highlight. And the first is the Center for American Values, which is located on the Riverwalk in Pueblo, Colorado. And I dearly love Pueblo, and it is the home of heroes because there are four Medal of Honor recipients that call Pueblo their hometown. And one of those recipients is Drew Dix. He is a co-founder of the Center for American Values. He received the Medal of Honor for actions he took during the Tet Offensive in the Vietnam War. The other co-founder is Brad Padula, and he is an Emmy Award-winning documentary filmmaker. And both Brad and Drew realized that we need to preserve, conserve these great American values of our American founding, our American idea. And those values are honor, integrity, and patriotism. And there is a beautiful walls of portraits of valor, which are portraits of 160 of our Medal of Honor recipients with quotes by each of them. And it is a place that is so inspirational. I would highly recommend that you take the family down to the Center for American Values this summer. They’re open seven days a week, 10 to 4 p.m. You can get more information at AmericanValueCenter.org. The other organization that I dearly love, and there’s many, but the other is the USMC Memorial Foundation. And these memorials and statues that we remember our history, remember those people that have given their lives, have been willing to give their lives for our freedom, is so important. And so we need to preserve, conserve, and in this case, help with the remodel of the Marine Memorial out at Sixth and Colfax. And you can do that by going to the USMCMemorialFoundation.org to make a contribution. And again, that is the USMCMemorialFoundation.org. And again, I so love the USMC Memorial Foundation and the Center for American Values.
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SPEAKER 10 :
And welcome back to America’s Veteran Stories with Kim Munson. Be sure and check out our website. That is AmericasVeteranStories.com. And just this fascinating interview with retired Army Major General John Raaen. He was at Omaha Beach on D-Day. And you talked about the 1 Ranger Battalion at Pointe du Hoc. Let’s talk about what you did that day, General Raaen.
SPEAKER 06 :
Okay, I’m going to stop for a moment and lay a background. The plan that we were following, our favorite plan, was that we would follow the 2nd Ranger Battalion up the cliffs. If they were unsuccessful, we would then divert to what they call the Deerville exit at Omaha Dog Green Beach. Well, we got to the plant. And we made circles and we circled and we circled, and the 2nd Battalion never showed up on the cliffs. They were led to the wrong place by a guide boat. So finally, at the appointed time, we moved toward Vierville. We got waved off at Vierville by the landing control people, said land on Dog White Beach. So we went over to Dog White Beach and started to land our first of three flotillas. We had about, well, there were five boats in the first flotilla, and… 11 in the second and third. The casualties of our first flotilla were so high that the colonel, Max Schneider, said we won’t land on that beach. His words were much more colorful than that. And he moved us 800 yards down the beach, half a mile, and we found a very, very quiet beach. Most of the troops landing were running 50% casually. Now, that’s not all killed. Only about 20% of them would be killed. But all of the units landing were running around 50% casualties. We got by with 1% casualty.
SPEAKER 07 :
Wow.
SPEAKER 06 :
And it was that quiet a beach. Well, we were sitting there. We got the orders from the colonel what we would do next, and I had to wait. So I was sitting there with my men, and a couple of them said, Hey, Captain, look down the beach there at that funny guy. And down the beach, about 100 yards away from us, was a rotund gentleman waving a cigar and shouting at the troops, saying, And we sat there, and being curious, we began to develop scenarios as to what that man might be, and he came over towards us and came towards us, and finally he got to my beach, and I was the only officer there, so I jumped up, ran over to him. to save his life if he was a newspaper reporter, or to say, yes, sir. And I looked at him, and he had a nice little silver star on his collar. So I said, plan B, and reported to him, sir, Captain Ron, 5th Ranger Infantry Battalion. The battalion has landed here intact and has received orders to proceed off the beach by platoon infiltration. And he said, Ron, Ron, are you Jack Ron, son? And I said, yes, sir, I am. He said, well, next time you see him, say hello. But then he got down to military stuff. And the two of us were just standing there and talking. We talked a little bit and he said, where’s the colonel? And I pointed the colonel out and I said, I’ll take you to him. And he said, you will not. You’ll stay with your troops where you belong. And he was so right and I was so wrong. But then again, it was my first day in combat. But in any event, he then made his way up to the colonel. And every time he saw a ranger and there were rangers scattered all over the beach, he would say something to me and to the men in my little area. He said, you men are rangers. I know you won’t let me down. At others, he made references to rangers and success and what he should do. But the big message was get off the beach or die. and uh… you’ve got his way over to colonel schneider and uh… we had just started blowing holes in the enemy water barbed wire and uh… when he got the schneider he said the same thing but as the holes were blown and the troops started going across a hundred foot flat area before they got to the boss he said uh… rangers you’ve got to lead the way off this beach and from that rangers lead the way became our model not just for the fifth but for all six ranger battalions and who was this this guy oh the it was i’m sorry i completely skipped it um he was general coda who was the commanding general on the beach where we were. I had known the family when I was in high school. And his son, Dan, was a classmate of mine at West Point, but he went in the Air Corps. So I had known Coda. Coda knew my father. And that was the way the story went.
SPEAKER 10 :
Well, and I remember on one of the other interviews that we had done, you had said that you were going to try to determine whether or not this rotund man was a crazy newspaper person or he was an officer. And that when you got to him and realized you saw the star, you saluted him. And again, in combat, that’s probably not the best idea because that shows the enemy that he is somebody in charge, correct? Correct.
SPEAKER 06 :
You are correct, but the circumstances were a little bit different. The people on our left could not shoot at us because there was a nose to the bluffs, and they couldn’t even see us. The people who should have been shooting down on us were blinded by brush fires, and most of the Germans on the hills above us had already fled those flames. You don’t want to have hand grenades and things like that around when there’s a fire. So they were gone. The people to our right were approximately a mile away, a half mile at the very, very closest, and all shooting from that particular direction. So it would be very hard for them in the smoke from the flames, from the equipment burning on the beach and things like that, they couldn’t see a salute like that. General Cohen returned my salute and one of my sergeants who was with the colonel said that when Koda came up to him. He was sitting on the wall, seawall. He got up, saluted. Koda very carefully returned the salute and attention. So we got away with two salutes in that case.
SPEAKER 10 :
Wow, that is such a fascinating story. We’ve got about seven minutes left. What do you want to cover on this interview, General Ron?
SPEAKER 06 :
Well, I would like to have all your listeners… call their congressman to encourage the congress to award the six ranger battalions actually there were seven uh the seven ranger battalions offer them the congressional gold medal this is an award that was first given to george washington and it has continued all these years It is not a military medal. It is really a civilian medal. It originally was given to individuals, statesmen, soldiers, and they expanded that to include artists, singers, all kinds of people who… whose contribution in the art world would last beyond their lives. And finally, they began giving this gold medal to organizations. So far, there have been five, and they all are military organizations of Chinese Americans who fought in World War II for us, the famed Nisei, of the Hawaiian Islands who fought with us. And we treat it as the equivalent of a distinguished service cross. And if anybody out there knows a congressman, tell him to get off his duff and sign up so that we can get that thing for our people. By the way, there are only 17 former Rangers left from World War II. We lost two more a couple of weeks ago. So we’re disappearing fast. We had 7,000 to 8,000 of us throughout the whole war, and we’re down to 17. And we would greatly appreciate any help we can get in getting that gold medal awarded us. It would mean a lot to the families. It doesn’t mean much to the Rangers. There are not enough of us left.
SPEAKER 10 :
So when we call, we would ask that the Congressional Gold Medal be awarded to the seven Ranger battalions that were at D-Day. Is that what we would say to them?
SPEAKER 06 :
Not at D-Day, from Darby’s Rangers landing in Africa up until V-E Day.
SPEAKER 10 :
Okay. Okay. So all of them. Okay. Great. Listeners, that is on your to-do list then. We’ve got about three minutes left. General Ron, what’s the final things that you would like to leave with our listeners today?
SPEAKER 06 :
Well, unfortunately, most civilians don’t understand it. But the effectiveness of troops in war is how well trained they are. And most people think when there’s a budgetary crunch, the Army should just stop firing on the range. They’re just shooting up a lot of dollars for absolutely no purpose. Not so. It is the accuracy of a man with a rifle on the battlefield that tells the tale of who will occupy that territory when the battle is over. Training is the most important thing you can do for your troops. One perfect example, if I have a couple of seconds more, is the fact that some of our allies have formed infantry battalions and gone down to the nearest prince or the nearest chief or whatever it is, and made him a lieutenant colonel and wondered why his troops aren’t effective in combat. The reason is when we have a battalion commander, it’s taken 15 to 17 years to develop him. And somebody else from these other nations, they think they can develop a battalion that is just as good as ours and do it in two months? No way. You’ve got to understand that throwing money… to form battalion doesn’t do it for 17 years. That’s the one thing. And the other thing, which is the same thing, is training is the thing that allows you to act without thinking. You already have been through it 15 times in training, so you don’t have to think it out, come to a decision, and give the order. What you do when you reach the situation is… You give the order, and that is so much more effective than untrained, inexperienced troops.
SPEAKER 10 :
And I think that’s something for life as well, for sure. General Ron, it is such an honor to do this interview. I thank you. I thank you so much.
SPEAKER 06 :
Well, you’re most welcome, Kim, any time. Would you know?
SPEAKER 10 :
Okay. And, my friends, we indeed stand on the shoulders of giants. So God bless you, and God bless America.
SPEAKER 04 :
Thank you for listening to America’s Veteran Stories with Kim Munson. Be sure to tune in again next Sunday, 3 to 4 p.m., here on KLZ 560 and KLZ 100.7.
SPEAKER 03 :
The views and opinions expressed on KLZ 560 are those of the speaker, commentators, hosts, their guests, and callers. They are not necessarily the views and opinions of Crawford Broadcasting or KLZ management, employees, associates, or advertisers. KLZ 560 is a Crawford Broadcasting God and country station.
