Join Kim Munson as she delves into the riveting and often unheard stories of America’s veterans. In this episode, Kim speaks with Dennis Bush, a Vietnam veteran and author, about his trilogy on the heroics of Omaha Beach during D-Day. Listen as they unravel the strategic missteps and extraordinary bravery that defined one of history’s pivotal battles.
SPEAKER 03 :
World War II, Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf War, Afghanistan, and our 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 09 :
And welcome to America’s Veteran Stories with Kim Munson. Be sure and check out our website. That is AmericasVeteranStories.com. And the show comes to you because of a trip that I took in 2016 with a group that accompanied four D-Day veterans back to Normandy, France for the 72nd anniversary of the D-Day landings. and came back stateside realizing that we need to know these stories, we need to record them and broadcast them and archive them, so hence America’s Veterans Stories. I’m very pleased to have on the line with me Dennis Bush. He is an author, and we’re going to be talking about his books, but he’s a Vietnam veteran. He is a pilot, both fixed wing and rotor, and was in project management for a long time in the aerospace industry, owned his own business. But he’s written some really amazing books regarding D-Day. Dennis Bush, welcome. You’re welcome. Thank you. Well, and we have recently rebroadcast that first interview that we did with you regarding your first book. So could you give us a brief summary of that book to set the stage for the second one?
SPEAKER 05 :
Sure. As you know, I’ve written and published a trilogy of books about the battle that took place in early June of 1944 on an isolated beach that had been codenamed Omaha. As part of the actual beach landings, codenamed Neptune, as part of the overall invasion operation known as Overlord. Previously, I spoke to this audience regarding the first book in the trilogy. It was about the events and the courageous men who waged the war on the eastern half of the beach. Because of the immense difficulty of the challenge that conquering that five miles of shore posed, two American divisions had been assigned to the task. On the eastern half was the 1st Infantry Division, the primary subject of the first book. But keep in mind that the entire division did not attack the shore as the sun broke the eastern horizon and the low tide had just turned. It was only two battalions, about 3,600 men, that comprised the first wave. And as things turned out, they were enough. The battle for Omaha was actually decided by noon on D-Day, for the most part, by 1,100 hours. By the end of the day, some 35,000 men had landed on Omaha Beach. Yet for me, the most incredible part of this story is that the ultimate victory on the eastern half of the beach can be attributed to about five men. That’s remarkable. Yeah, two sergeants, two lieutenants, and a captain. It was their leadership that inspired and led their units to make three significant breaches in the German wall. Then like a leak in a dike, thousands followed through those breaches as the day progressed, and many more ships landed, more and more men on the beach. Like I said, 35,000. By the morning of the 7th of June, the German front on the eastern half of Omaha was reduced to a few stubborn snipers. Critical villages were captured and a large length of the crucial coastal highway was in American hands and not one inch of taken territory was ever relinquished.
SPEAKER 09 :
Hitler knew, Dennis, that if the Allies got a toehold on that beach, that ultimately Germany would probably be defeated. Yes, you think?
SPEAKER 05 :
No. Hitler actually was asleep when all this happened. He had had a bad night. He was a drug addict by then. And he slept till noon. And when they told him about the attacks, he said, now we got them right where we want them. Oh, really? Yeah. The guy that was smart was Rommel. And that’s the guy we have. That’s the main protagonist in this story. Okay. But Rommel understood that. Rommel understood that. And I’ll even give you the quote he said.
SPEAKER 09 :
Okay. Before we get into some more of the interview, let’s give the titles of these books. The first book is The Real Heroes of Omaha Beach, Soldiers Lost to History. Right. And people can purchase that at Amazon. And the second book is An Old Man Shall Lead Them to Victory, More Real Heroes of Omaha Beach. And the covers of these books are, they’re just amazing. I think you said there’s a little bit of AI in them, but oh my gosh, they’re amazing.
SPEAKER 05 :
Well, it’s the face of a soldier, which that’s what you have to realize, that the generals get the credit, but the… The private with the rifle is the guy who fights the battle.
SPEAKER 09 :
And before we get into the next question, offline, we had talked about your career. And you started reading Civil War, D-Day. And you said something that was riveting is you can’t take the soldier out of you.
SPEAKER 05 :
No. I took the uniform off in 1973. But I soon realized that you can’t take the soldier out of yourself. You’re still, in your heart and soul, you still think like and are in most effects still a soldier. And so it tends to manifest itself in different ways. And in my case, it was research and writing.
SPEAKER 09 :
Well, we are richer for that because the research, I’m not sure that there’s any books that have been done regarding D-Day like you’ve done.
SPEAKER 05 :
Well, there are books, but not trilogies.
SPEAKER 09 :
Okay. Well, let’s go ahead and talk about the subject of the second book, which is titled An Old Man Shall Lead Them to Victory, More Real Heroes of Omaha Beach.
SPEAKER 05 :
In the second book of the trilogy, we’re primarily going to explore the battle on the western half of Omaha Beach, specifically Easy Green, Dog Red, Dog White, and the infamous Dog Green beach sectors. That extremely difficult assignment was given to the 29th Infantry Division. and historic, goes back to the Civil War, but green and as yet unbloodied unit in World War II. Literally amateurs thrown into a maelstrom. Worse, their challenge was arguably more difficult than their more experienced brethren on the eastern half of the beach because the German fortifications and firepower were extensive. At the far right of Omaha was the prize, the Vereville Draw, which contained the best and widest road to the top. Remember, the slope at Omaha is too steep for vehicles to get to the top. So you had to take one of the five stream beds, which were called draws. That’s what we call them in the West, too. And not just a trickle of water, but over centuries and thousands and thousands of years, they created narrow or very slight slope paths. So we had to take those in order to get any wheeled or tracked vehicles off the beach. and we couldn’t win the battle if we couldn’t do that. But Rommel knew that, and so he dedicated four of the 14 Widerstand nests. Now, these are heavy, the armed German positions, to guard it. The draw was, in effect, an enticing trap, and we were sucked right into it like cattle to the slaughter. The cost was appalling. We’ll learn much more about this as we progress through the book.
SPEAKER 09 :
So I have another question for you, and that is the names of the beaches. So Easy Green, Dog Red, Dog White, and Dog Green. What’s the significance of that?
SPEAKER 05 :
Well, they were just military sectors. That’s the east-western half of the beach. Omaha Beach is five miles wide. Basically, and the army or military had divided it up into subsectors. OK, and that’s what these dog green, dog white. OK, and what I listed were the ones on the western half. There were similarly beach sectors on the eastern half, which we covered in the first book.
SPEAKER 09 :
Okay, so as we’re going through this, I think you mentioned something like the eastern half of the beach, the ultimate victory on the western half can be attributed to what exactly?
SPEAKER 05 :
On the western half? Yeah. A lieutenant colonel and two brigadier generals, all of whom are on the shore, not the guys in the ships, but guys on the beach. And we’ll get into that here as we go through this. Okay. They’re very important characters in this second book. Let’s do it. Okay. In telling the rest of the Omaha Beach story that is contained in this book, we will highlight the efforts of several elements all coming together to forge a victory by day’s end. Infantry, rangers, engineers, and Navy destroyers, affectionately referred to as tin cans. These U.S. military arms all worked together to defeat a very determined foe who seemingly had all the advantages. Prepare yourself for a wild ride because this is a series of stories to rival any that I’ve ever been told, and they’re all true. If you don’t feel enormous pride and love for America after reading this book, I don’t think you ever will.
SPEAKER 09 :
Well, these are such important stories, and we’re going to go to break here in just a moment, but we get to have these great discussions because of wonderful sponsors, and one of those is Hooters Restaurants. I’ve known them for many years, and they truly are patriots and patriots. love our country and how i got to know them it’s an important story about when i was on city council and they have locations in loveland westminster and aurora on parker road and great specials monday through friday for lunch and happy hour so be sure and check them out we are going to continue the discussion with author dennis bush
SPEAKER 08 :
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SPEAKER 04 :
Thank you so much for having me. To learn more, reach out to Teresa at 520-631-9243. Teresa would love to talk with you. Again, that number is 520-631-9243.
SPEAKER 09 :
And welcome back to America’s Veterans Stories with Kim Munson. Be sure and check out our website. That is AmericasVeteransStories.com. And did want to mention the USMC Memorial Foundation and the great work that they’re doing taking care of the official Marine Memorial, which is in Golden at 6th and Colfax. and the great plans for the remodel, raising the money for the remodel, so that we can keep these stories in our hearts, in front of our children, because it’s so important that we know these stories. You can help them by contributing at usmcmemorialfoundation.org. That is usmcmemorialfoundation.org. And I’m talking with author Dennis Bush. And we are talking about, he’s written a trilogy regarding the battle of, on D-Day at Omaha Beach and the first book is The Real Heroes of Omaha Beach Soldiers Lost to History the second book is An Old Man Shall Lead Them to Victory More Real Heroes of Omaha Beach and you can get those books at Amazon and other services so Dennis it’s great to have you here so where should we start?
SPEAKER 05 :
Well, I think the best place to start is a virtually untold story about a large group of men who also played a major role in the battle for Omaha Beach, both on the eastern and western halves. These were men who were and are an integral but fairly anonymous part of virtually all battles. Combat engineers. And they were certainly instrumental in the victory of Omaha. I cannot possibly tell their entire story here as part of one book as it was extensive, but at least I can provide some visibility to their highly dangerous and heroic actions. At the very least, I can introduce them so as to shine some light onto their immense sacrifices. They also are way overdue for the accolades they so painfully earned and have never been acknowledged enough for doing what they did on Omaha.
SPEAKER 09 :
Well, and so, Dennis, when we were talking offline, you said that you really had to dig to find some of these stories, yes?
SPEAKER 05 :
Yes, I did. I mean, they’re not covered much in history at all. And it’s because they kind of do stuff in the background, or it seemingly is. But they were out in the front lines during this day. Okay. They put it all on the line and did their crucial jobs in the most horrendous conditions imaginable. Their missions were extremely dangerous and deadly in themselves, but their situation was even further hampered because as even as bad as the planning was for the amphibious landings for the Omaha operation, it was even worse for the guys on the beach who wore castles on their collars. Too many of these brave men died because they were placed in such horrifying peril. Way too many of them perished because they were brought on shore many hours too early due to a blind adherence to a timetable that was in shambles five minutes into the assault. Hopefully I can do right by these courageous men and tell at least a part of their story. God knows they deserve it.
SPEAKER 09 :
So what was their role? Because I’ve interviewed a lot of World War II veterans. And, of course, I was in Normandy. And it may have been that I was the enormity of the story. I didn’t realize it. So just set this up for us.
SPEAKER 05 :
What was their role on that day? Well, General Field Marshal Erwin Rommel. had been assigned the job by Adolf Hitler himself in December of 1943 of repelling any Allied assault across the English Channel. The savvy general understood that in order to successfully thwart a concerted attack on the beaches of Norway or Holland or Belgium or France, he had to stop it at the water’s edge. As a very competent military mind, he knew that if the invasion force got a foothold on the shore, then the battle was surely lost and probably the war as well. He wrote later, ìWe must stop him in the water, not only delaying him, but destroy all enemy equipment while still afloat.î
SPEAKER 09 :
So, Dennis, the monument at Omaha is a monument to many of these formidable defensive fortresses that were on the beach. And I think it’s just powerful to see those. So tell us a little bit about those.
SPEAKER 05 :
Well, to the end, he built the most formidable defensive fortresses the world had ever known, which was collectively called the Atlantic Wall or Festung Europa, Fortress Europe. But he did not know for sure where or when the Allies would attack along the 3,700 miles of coastline he had been assigned to guard. Unlike most of the German command, including Hitler, he did not believe the assault would come at the Pas de Calais, the narrowest point between Britain and France. To him, it was too obvious, and so he looked hard at alternatives. The beaches of Normandy were one that seemed a strong possibility, and so he expended a tremendous amount of assets, resources, and efforts into bolstering the defenses there.
SPEAKER 09 :
So, Dennis, another question. So if he put so many defenses there at Normandy, were there other locations where he did the same thing?
SPEAKER 05 :
Well, he looked at the coast, and the Atlantic Wall went from the tip of Norway all the way down to the border of Spain. So you have a long shore. Wow. But there’s only certain places that you could make a large attack. I mean, you can’t go into – like Holland would not have been satisfactory because they could have simply closed all the dams and flooded it. So it would have been a disaster. So there were certain areas – and the Pas de Calais was the most obvious because on a clear day, which is rare, you can actually see the Cliffs of Dover from France. which is the Pas de Calais. And this was the place where most of the German hierarchy and military thought that the attack would come. And so Rommel, being a good military mind, thought that’s the last place they’re going to attack. And so he looked at the entire coast and did some assessment where would be the most likely places that the Allies would attack. And Normandy was one, not the only one, but the one that seemed to be a particular interest in his mind that would probably be an alternative. But he didn’t know when or where. But he was very smart, wasn’t he? Well, he’s probably one of the most brilliant military minds of history. But, I mean, he is most noted for his actions in Africa, where he led the Africa Corps, which was a very offensive operation. defending the coast is a defensive operation. And, of course, just like in football, an offensive coordinator is different from a defensive coordinator. But Rommel was adept at both. He was, you know, fortunately, the German command kind of was, I think, jealous of him and kind of pushed him to the side. And then he got, I don’t know if you, later in the war, he was actually involved in the attempted assassination of Hitler. Mm-hmm. I did not know that. And so, yeah, a lot of people don’t. But he wasn’t actively involved. He knew about it. And what they did to him was, because he was such a hero, is they gave him an option. Pop a pill or they’d kill his family. Really? Yeah. He actually took cyanide.
SPEAKER 09 :
I did not know that. And is that because of the fact that he knew about the attack upon Hitler?
SPEAKER 05 :
There was a real purge after Hitler was almost assassinated. That’s October, I think, of 1944 that that occurred. That occurred. Okay.
SPEAKER 09 :
Wow. I had no idea. So let’s continue to talk about this stretch of defense that Rommel has created. Okay.
SPEAKER 05 :
Though not finished by early June, his extensive defense on the stretch of Norman Shore, codenamed Omaha, ranged from the channel at low tide all the way to the top of the bluffs that formed the Norman Plateau. It created the deadliest mile ever that an attacking amphibious force would have to cross and defeat, and every inch had to be uphill into the teeth of a determined and heavily armed enemy army. The role of engineers was to a great extent to defang and eliminate many of those defenses. And this all had to be accomplished during the battle and as such amidst devastating enemy fire. So extensive were their efforts that one man out of every four in the first wave were the distinctive patches of engineers.
SPEAKER 09 :
I had thought, I hadn’t really thought about this part of the role of engineers. Where I had thought about it was after we had a toehold and starting to bring in tanks and Jeeps and all that, the engineers had made the bridges or the floating bridges and all that. That’s where I thought the engineers were. This is a whole other ballgame, right? Well, let’s talk about it.
SPEAKER 05 :
They had a variety of tasks to perform on that mile of shore from the low tide to the top of the fortifications. One, they had to remove a myriad of beach obstacles that littered the foreshore, which is from low tide to high tide. The threat of this was not to a force that landed at low tide, but rather after they had been covered up by the incoming tide and as such invisible. They would rip and tear and blow holes in boats as they attempted to land in the follow-on waves and therefore essentially stranding the men who were in the first wave. On the beach, okay. Some of these objects were a forest of telephone-like poles planted in the sand, sticking out six to ten feet above ground, pointed seaward, many with deadly mines poised atop them. Then there were tetrahedrons, hedgehogs, log ramps, and a particularly nasty device called Belgium gates. To give them all lethality, mines were attached to their highest reaches. On the Omaha shore, there were hundreds of all these devices. Sixteen special Navy, UDT, and Army engineer teams called GATS, that stands for Gap Assault Teams, were dispatched at H-hour to open 50-foot wide lanes through these obstacles. So the follow-on waves of boats had paths to the shore that were free of the deadly obstructions. They were to accomplish this horrific task mostly by blowing up each obstacle. So every one of these men carrying on their person to shore a wide array of explosive devices, in effect, making each one of them a walking bomb.
SPEAKER 09 :
Absolutely remarkable. Now, where were they? You said earlier that they were put on the beach first.
SPEAKER 05 :
earlier than they should have been but in order to not these guys not these guys that was other guys because these guys would have to be some of the first guys on the beach yeah see because we landed after the tide had turned it was starting to come in from low tide and so they had to be on the beach to take these things out before the follow-on waves took them out and before the tide came in because once they were covered up by the tide they couldn’t do anything and all this while they are under heavy fire heavy fire
SPEAKER 09 :
Wow. A lot of them died. Wow. OK, we’re going to continue the discussion with Dennis Bush. And these discussions happen because of all of our great sponsors.
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SPEAKER 03 :
God bless you.
SPEAKER 09 :
And welcome back to America’s Veterans Stories with Kim Munson. Be sure and check out our website. That is AmericasVeteransStories.com. We are talking with Vietnam veteran Dennis Bush. He’s an author. He was a pilot in Vietnam. He was on both fixed and rotor wing aircraft. And we’re talking about his books. It’s a trilogy. Two of them have been published. The first is The Real Heroes of Omaha Beach, Soldiers Lost to History. And the second is An Old Man Shall Lead Them to Victory, More Real Heroes of Omaha Beach. And so we’re talking about the engineers, which you’re telling me things that I did not know. Of course, there’s a lot I don’t know about D-Day and Omaha Beach. But these tasks that they had to be successful at were so dangerous. I can’t believe it. Yeah.
SPEAKER 05 :
Well, they had to take them out because the soldiers, you know, you had to get the actual soldiers up. You had to clear the way, and that’s what the engineers do. There were entire companies brought on shore to, one, remove miles and miles of concertina water. Now, what is concertina water? Well, it’s what you see at the top of a prison wall. Oh. It’s circular. With, like, razors on it? Yeah. It’s in a circular kind of form, and that’s called concertina wire. And like I say, miles of it, and they had to get rid of it because you can’t get through it. You see them in the war movies where the guys are getting down on their bellies with pliers and cutting through it. Well, that was the engineers that had to do that. Oh, my gosh. There was other units that had to clear minefields. The Germans laid mines all over the place. And so they had to come in and clear them with mine detectors and or sometimes the Germans had even wooden made mines. So mine detectors, conventional mine detectors wouldn’t work. So these guys had to use bayonets to find them. Honestly. Anyway, there was others that came along with bulldozers to fill in a tank trap. And a tank trap is simply a large, wide ditch that a tank can’t get across. So they had to fill those in. And then there was a wall that had been erected across the Vierville Draw, and that had to be blown up. And then they had to take these roads were just dirt paths and they had to extend, you know, make them wider and more substantial in order to handle a myriad of military vehicles, tanks, trucks, jeeps, half tracks, all of those. So they had to build those roads. And then they had sent ashore way too early two entire brigades whose sole job was to convert Omaha into a functioning port on 6 June. And so these guys were brought in like 6, 7 a.m. in the morning, and they couldn’t do their job because the beach had not been secured yet. And so they had to kind of hang out and try to stay alive until they could do their job. So that’s the work that the engineers did. And because of the strong German resistance, many of the units were sent onshore way too early and had to spend much of the day just trying to survive. Only when the German resistance had been significantly silenced were they able to accomplish those tasks. And those who survived did just that. But many engineers did not survive the day. Anyway, that’s kind of a very brief discussion of their compelling story that I tried to chronicle in book two.
SPEAKER 09 :
Is there any specific names or an individual story regarding any of these engineers that you have in the book?
SPEAKER 05 :
Well, most units have what’s called a unit. And we’re talking normally companies owned or a company is like 200 men. I’m not sure an engineering company is the same size, but an infantry company is 200 men. And they published what’s called a unit history. And that’s where a lot of good information can be found. And these are all available in military archives. But you have to go look for them.
SPEAKER 09 :
Well, and so, first of all, I can’t imagine trying to secure the beach, doing what they were doing, all the while with German machine guns coming at them, right?
SPEAKER 05 :
Well, it wasn’t just machine guns. They had artillery pieces, mortars. Any imaginable form of firepower that the Germans had amassed on the – and they were all up above them, firing down on them. Oh, man. They were like rats in a – whatever they called it, a rain barrel? Yeah.
SPEAKER 09 :
Okay, so what was it like for the two battalions of infantry that hit the shore in that first wave on the western half of Omaha Beach?
SPEAKER 05 :
Well, this is a very sad part of this book. To me, it’s the low point. It was devastating. Let me read a bit from the book about the fate of one company of infantry that landed at H-Hour on the far western end of Omaha Beach in Dog Green Sector, directly in front of the Vierville Draw. Remember, I said that this was a trap, and what follows was the result. It also illustrates just how horrific it was that many in the first wave faced that day. Quote from the book, Six British LCAs hit the beach, carrying most of Able Company of the 116th Infantry Regiment at 0631 hours, which was right on schedule. Unlike most of the other landing craft on Omaha Beach, Able Company boats somehow avoided the strong easterly currents and landed right where the plan directed them. Being in British LCAs, the 36 men in each boat had to egress in a single file through the narrow opening at the front of each boat. They hit the sand. The landing craft pulled off and left the amphibious troops lying on the beach, peering out at the distant bluffs. It was eerily quiet where they were, unlike the combat to their east which they could hear. When signaled by the company commander, Captain Taylor N. Fellers, the men got up and en masse charged across the beach until they got close to the first line of beach obstacles where they went to ground again. There was still no cover, just flat sand. Something was very wrong. It was too quiet. No opposition. Surely the German defenders knew they were there. Just then, as if in a prearranged time, several German machine guns, these are MG42s, opened up on the exposed troops along with heavy and light artillery and mortars. Now, an MG-42’s rate of fire is 1,200 rounds per minute, which makes it a real death dealer. It was called Hitler’s buzzsaw by the American troops because of the distinctive sound it made. Some described it like ripping canvas. The German fire coming from the Bluffs to their front and right flank was intense, the most dreaded of predicaments for infantry. Trapped in a deadly crossfire out in the open with no cover. In the first minute or so of the barrage, 100 of the 210 men of Able Company were brutally killed on that beach. Most of the others were wounded. Only one officer, Lieutenant E. Ray Nance, was still alive after the first half hour on that beach, and he was seriously wounded in the gut and foot. All of the senior company sergeants were either dead or seriously wounded as well, which effectively eliminated all of the company’s critical leadership.
SPEAKER 09 :
So, Dennis, right here, when you talk about these numbers, these were young men.
SPEAKER 05 :
Mostly.
SPEAKER 09 :
Most of them were young men. And they are away from home. They have people at home that love them, that are praying for them. The cost is remarkable, and the cost that Americans would do. This is remarkable. As you say, you can’t read these stories and start to think about the sacrifices without being proud to be an American.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah. Well, that’s what inspired me. I mean, we owe these people. We do owe these people. And every generation that follows us owes them.
SPEAKER 09 :
When I was in Normandy with these four D-Day veterans, our group was, I think it was 24 of us. And we were invited to go to schools. And, in fact, I walked into a gymnasium in Normandy, France. And the people of Normandy love gyms. love americans they and they love these world war ii veterans and i was astonished i walked into this gym in normandy france and on the wall was a big picture of thomas jefferson i was just astounded and these kids are taught these stories that’s why these books are so important that you’re writing is so that we can use them to teach our kids So let’s continue on about Lieutenant Nance.
SPEAKER 05 :
Now, this is still from the book. Lieutenant Nance, who was from Old Virginia, later remembered what he saw after arriving on shore. When I got up there and dropped, and I looked around in front and all around, I mean, not a soul. Nobody in front. Where was everybody? Where was A Company? I didn’t know until I got in above high water what happened to A Company. I looked around and saw the bodies in the water. They were bumping against one another. It was so thick. There was nobody in sight. I turned and looked. Nobody in sight. Nobody behind me. And he was the only officer that survived that company. So what about the estimates in that first hour? Well, Able Company was reduced from what I said, 210 men to eight who were still able to fight. Similarly, half of Baker Company, who landed to the immediate east of Able Company, met a similar fate. That left only Charlie Company, who landed far enough east that they made their charge across the beach beyond the range of most of the German fortifications. They were able to get across the beach still strong enough to act as a military force. The initial attack of infantry to hit the western half of Omaha Beach was an unmitigated disaster. Think of it. Most of these men had trained for three years and they lasted less than a half hour in actual combat. This was why it was called Bloody Omaha. Me telling their story is my tribute to them and the sacrifices they made for each and every one of us today and tomorrow and the next day and the next. We owe them a debt we cannot repay, but we must try.
SPEAKER 09 :
So Dennis Bush, that brings me up to one of the nonprofits that I recognize on a regular basis, and that is the Center for American Values, which is located. in Pueblo on the beautiful Riverwalk. And Pueblo is known as the home of heroes because there’s four Medal of Honor recipients that grew up there. And Drew Dix, who is one of the Medal of Honor recipients from the Vietnam War, is one of the co-founders. And they are focused on keeping these stories alive of our Medal of Honor recipients. These are men who took action to protect those around them. And they have the Portraits of Valor, and then quotes by each of those particular Medal of Honor recipients. And my understanding is the only other place where you can see these portraits like this is the Pentagon, and we can’t get into the Pentagon. So people can go down to the Center for American Values And visit there. You can get their hours and everything by going to their website. That is AmericanValueCenter.org. AmericanValueCenter.org. We are going to continue the discussion regarding Bloody Omaha with Dennis Bush when we come back.
SPEAKER 06 :
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SPEAKER 09 :
And welcome back to America’s Veterans Stories with Kim Munson. We are talking with Dennis Bush, and he is a Vietnam veteran, a pilot, and graduated from the Air Force Academy, right? 1968. 1968. The 10th class. The 10th class. And you said that basically always a soldier, once a soldier, always a soldier. And that one of the ways that you continued on was researching and writing. And so these books, this trilogy that you have written, It is so fascinating. The first is The Real Heroes of Omaha Beach, Soldiers Lost to History. We’re now talking about the second book, An Old Man Shall Lead Them to Victory, More Real Heroes of Omaha Beach. When is the third book going to be published?
SPEAKER 05 :
Well, I’m just waiting for my son to finish the cover. No pressure, huh? Right. It was actually finished in 1923 or 2023. Okay. It just takes that long to publish stuff. And you’ve got marketing concerns and all that garbage.
SPEAKER 09 :
So it’s going to be coming out soon.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yeah, I could publish it next week if I could get him to finish the cover.
SPEAKER 09 :
Okay. Well, the two covers that you have are pretty amazing. And he helped you with those, didn’t he? Oh, yeah. Okay.
SPEAKER 05 :
He and AI.
SPEAKER 09 :
It’s worth waiting for. But before we went to break, you mentioned the Army Rangers. So what role did they play? Okay.
SPEAKER 05 :
Well, because of the virtual decimation of the 1st Battalion of the 116th Infantry Regiment in the first hour of battle, a miracle was needed to salvage the situation. It arrived, but came in the most unexpected fashion. Army Rangers who played a very significant role in that horrendous battle. Ironically, they weren’t even supposed to be there. In the Neptune plan, they played no role on Omaha Beach. Ranger Force C consisted of eight companies of the Army’s newest concept of marauders or special forces called Rangers, and it was led by Lieutenant Colonel Max Schneider. They were originally assigned to be part of two special missions as the reserves for Ranger Forces B and A. Those two groups of rangers were sent ashore on special missions to destroy German spotter positions and heavy artillery batteries on Pointe de la Perse and Pointe du Hoc, respectively. One two miles and the other five miles to the east of Omaha Beach. As such, they posed a major threat to not only Omaha Beach, but the attack on Utah Beach as well. Pointe du Hoc was designated as the number one target in the Omaha operation. Ranger Force C was supposed to come to their aid either by land or sea if and when they needed it. That was their assigned mission on D-Day. Fortunately for Operation Neptune, those plans went astray early in the engagement, such that over 500 of arguably the best trained soldiers in the world played a major role in the battle for the western half of Omaha Beach. And how so? Well, let me just continue here. In fact, they were most likely the crucial difference between victory and defeat on that half of the battlefront. They made that much difference but were only there in the first place because of a series of unusual, complex, and unplanned circumstances. It would seem that Providence had weighed in on the battle’s outcome or at least tipped the scales a bit. For without the Rangers, the outcome of the battle for the western half of Omaha might have been vastly different and not in a good way. And telling their story is my tribute to their efforts and sacrifices. Care to guess how many Americans today even knew they were there?
SPEAKER 09 :
I don’t think I’d like to try to guess, but we were talking off break that I interviewed on several different occasions General John Rahn, who was a captain, I think, in that group of Rangers.
SPEAKER 05 :
He was the head of the headquarters company of this group of Rangers, Ranger Force C. And you have included him in the books as well, yes? Oh, yeah. He plays not only a prominent part in this book, but he plays a prominent part even more so in book three, which is the Pointe du Hoc operation and the rescue that these rangers had to make to save their buddies down on this horrible place that they were sent.
SPEAKER 09 :
Well, you mentioned that there was a series of unusual, complex, and unplanned circumstances. So what are some of those things that happened that put them there?
SPEAKER 05 :
The communications on Omaha Beach in general were terrible. This was before transistors. Right, because didn’t they have to put the wire out? Yeah, and so the guys that came ashore at Pointe du Hoc had, for several things, had no radio communication with anybody. And so nobody even actually knew they successfully landed. But thanks to the Navy and their destroyers, they were able to make themselves known using the old MIR systems from World War I. Really? Yeah. And a very, again, kind of an unsung hero, the communications officer of the Rangers down on Pointe du Hoc made all his guys that were in the communications section learn Morse code. And they were able to communicate with the Navy using this old mirror system using Morse code. But…
SPEAKER 09 :
Well, and how could some of these guys have the foresight to do that? I can’t.
SPEAKER 05 :
I’m astounded. I mean, this guy just did his job, you know, and he took it to an nth degree. I mean, you know, they assumed these radios would work, and they didn’t. So you should always have a plan B. Yeah, and basically his plan B was Morse code. Okay. I mean, we’re talking 1944. We don’t have the communications then, anything like we have today. Right. So basically, Schneider was supposed to hear, there was supposed to be a command given to tell him where to go. Right. The guys going on to Pointe du Hoc were led by a British lieutenant who was a reserve officer with minimal navigation training, and he got lost. He was headed for the wrong place. And Colonel Rudder had to intervene to get them to where they were supposed to go. But as a result, they missed the time. They were 30 minutes late to landing, so they missed the time to contact Schneider to tell him where to go. So Schneider went with his orders that if he didn’t hear, he was to land on Omaha Beach and come to rescue the guys on Pointe du Hoc from the shore. over land. And so that’s while he started heading in, and he’s headed in where the Vierville Draw was, and he sees the beach is littered with American soldiers. He says, I ain’t landing my battalion in there. And so he goes east. down the beach to find a more suitable place and he brings his men ashore which is what we just talked about there and so they decided well we’re here we’re going to fight our way to back to get our buddies and so they attacked up the slope and whipped a wide gap in the german lines as a result were they the only battalion that early in the battle that were able to stay relatively intact As a battalion, yes. I mean, everything else. In book one, like I said, it was sergeants, lieutenants, and captains. Well, that’s company guys. Okay. That’s not a battalion. Okay. In this battle, in the western half, this was an entire battalion of rangers. Okay. And they made the crucial difference on that end of the shore. There’s no doubt about it. Yeah.
SPEAKER 09 :
So, Dennis, I’m going to ask a novice question. I’ve interviewed so many different veterans, and I don’t really know the answer, obviously, with my question. So what’s the hierarchy? A company and then – Okay.
SPEAKER 05 :
You start with an army. Okay. Okay. And an army is broken down into divisions or corps. And a corps is made up of three divisions – A division is made up of three regiments. Now, the reason there are three is the philosophy of the army is two attack, one in reserve. So that’s why they have the triumvirate system. So that’s why you have three divisions. That’s why you have three regiments. Now, a regiment is broken down into three battalions. And a battalion is broken down into four or five companies. A company is broken down into platoons. A platoon is broken down into rifle squads. And a rifle squad is broken down into individuals.
SPEAKER 09 :
Wow.
SPEAKER 05 :
That’s the chain. I mean, it’s that long a chain. Now, a division is 10,000 men. So you can see that that gets broken down as you go down into smaller and smaller groups.
SPEAKER 09 :
So we’ve got a few minutes to ask a few questions. We’re going to then do another interview on the book because there’s so much there. But you mentioned, and maybe there’s not enough time, but mistakes that were made. And what I’ve learned is they can plan, they can plan, they can plan. And then once you get into battle, many times the plans go out the window. But some mistakes were made. Could they have not done those mistakes? I guess that’s my question.
SPEAKER 05 :
Well, a mistake is bad planning, right? And that’s the reason why you have a mistake, is somebody didn’t think through all the ramifications of what they were doing. In the first book, we talk about some of the great blunders that were made in the whole operation. In other words, like the Air Corps dropped – 1.5 million pounds of explosives were sent in on the bomb run prior to the battle. And they were supposed to take out all these German positions. Well, for a series of circumstances, which I go into in the first book, they didn’t do that. They missed. Not one of those bombs hit one German position. So when the ground troops were told by people like Bradley that the Air Corps was going to wipe out the Germans and their fortifications, and they were kind of just there to bop up, well, they found out that’s exactly. And so they’re totally naive about what they actually found. And so the Air Corps’ role was a total failure on Omaha Beach. Now, it wasn’t so much on the other beaches, but it was there. Another thing that’s inexcusable is because you got an incoming tide, you get a cross current. And these guys were all trained. They went into these things called sausages just prior to the invasion. They were there for a few weeks. And they were totally sequestered so that nothing could get out. So they couldn’t write letters. They couldn’t receive letters. And they spent those two weeks studying where they were going to land. Well, because of this current situation, was carrying the boats to the east and so virtually none of the landing craft actually landed where they were supposed to and so the soldiers coming ashore who had spent weeks studying where they were going to land on maps and what they called sand tables Okay, landed in place they were totally unknowing to them. And so that was one of the major blunders of the whole thing was that these guys, so they were just dumped on shore because of basically incompetence, in my opinion. The Navy bombardment, they only gave them a half an hour. And they didn’t have adequate spotting, so they didn’t do any damage either. So basically, the ground troops were sent ashore against the full force. None of that pre-bombardment did any damage to the Germans. They were totally intact.
SPEAKER 09 :
Wow. So, well, Dennis Bush, we are going to continue the discussion regarding your book number two. We’re going to do a whole other interview on it because there is so much information about that. But I thank you. The stories are fascinating. And these men are just amazing. And we have such a debt of gratitude. So thank you. Stay tuned. We’re going to come back and record another interview, which we’ll broadcast the next week. And it is true, as we hear these stories, that indeed we do stand on the shoulders of giants. So my friends, God bless you and God bless America.
SPEAKER 03 :
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 02 :
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.
