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Memorial  Day  Tribute   2006

The Honor Guard for the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier

"Someone up there was looking after me."

2nd Battalion Army Ranger Madison Cobb:  WWII survivor, Pointe du Hoc invasion.  Normandy, France.

American Cemetery at Normandy Beach, France.

You can also donate and help the Special Operations Warrior Foundation by clicking this link.

Future Hall of Fame golfer Phil Mickelson and his wife Amy help promote this Foundation
 

Mount Soledad War Memorial

A victory for Faith
and the U.S. Armed Forces

 of the Unknowns

"The Mount Soledad War Memorial Cross Stays Where It Is"

"It's a great victory for our veterans" Rep. Duncan Hunter: Chairman:   House Armed Services Committee

As Reported by the Associated Press

US  Government Gets Giant Cross in San Diego

WASHINGTON (AP) - A giant cross in San Diego that's been contested for 17 years by an atheist became the property of the federal government Monday with President Bush's signature.

Supporters hope the legislation transferring the 29-foot cross and war memorial it's a part of to the federal government will protect it for good. A series of court decisions have deemed the cross unconstitutional because it stands on public property.

"Just because something may have a religious connotation doesn't mean you destroy it and tear it down," said Rep. Brian Bilbray, R-Calif., after an Oval Office signing ceremony attended by other cross supporters and Republican House members from San Diego who sponsored the bill.

"It's a great victory for our veterans," said House Armed Services Committee Chairman Duncan Hunter, R-Calif.

But the legal fight that began in 1989 when atheist Philip Paulson sued San Diego over the cross is not played out yet.

Paulson's attorney, Jim McElroy, said he filed papers in federal court in San Diego last week to void the transfer and declare it unconstitutional.

"I don't think anybody really thinks the cross is going to remain on Mt. Soledad. It's been 17 years of litigation, and every court, every judge who's ever looked at it has ruled it's unconstitutional," McElroy said.

The bill signing "smacks of election-year politics," he said.

Paulson, a Vietnam War veteran, contends that the cross, dedicated in 1954 in honor of Korean War veterans, excludes veterans who are not Christian.

State and federal judges have ordered the cross removed, saying it represents an unconstitutional endorsement of one religion.  In July, the U.S. Supreme Court blocked an order that the city take it down by Aug. 1, giving lower courts time to hear appeals.

City officials have argued that the cross is part of a secular war memorial, and the cross has been embraced by San Diego residents who last year overwhelmingly approved a measure to preserve it by donating it to the federal government.  A judge declared the measure unconstitutional.

The legislation authorizing the transfer passed the House and Senate in recent weeks after California's two senators, Democrats Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, agreed to let it go through.

Federal ownership could help insulate the cross from additional legal challenges, because under federal law, which is more flexible than California law, religious displays may stand on public property if they have a secular meaning.

You can read more about the history of the Soledad Memorial controversy at www.soledadmemorial.com/

Note: January, 2007. The 9th Circuit Court, the ultra-liberal court that has had more pointless cases rejected by the Supreme Court than any other circuit court, finally transferred ownership of the Mount Soledad Memorial Cross to the federal government.

Ranger Madison Cobb*

My  interviews  with  Ranger Cobb (for a local newspaper) were conducted in 1999 with the title "A Profile in Courage: Ranger Madison Cobb."  The interviews were conducted at a meeting hall and in a motel where he and his wife were staying while attending a Camp Gordon Johnston reunion in Carrabelle, Florida.

Over 250,000 men were trained at Camp Gordon Johnston for amphibious assaults during WWII.

"One of the two supply boats bringing in ammunition and other gear also swamped; the other supply boat had to jettison more than half its load to stay afloat."
Ranger Cobb was in that last remaining supply boat.  His job was to deliver ammunition, running back and forth across the 10-foot shelf of beach from the landing craft  to the foot of the 100-foot rock cliff called Pointe du Hoc (see right hand column) while under constant machine fire.  He was hit and wounded as he entered the boat on the way back from his tenth trip. 

Interview

Edited from the original text of my interview with Ranger Madison Cobb.  First published in The Apalachicola Times. 1999.

Times Staff Report
Palmer Hasty

Madison Cobb is 75 years old. He was born in 1924 on a small family farm in upstate New York.  After the war he returned to a dairy farm in Adams, New York, and raised five children.  Cobb has been married to his wife Arlean for 53 years. This year was he and his wife's first visit to the Camp Gordon Johnston Reunion in Carrabelle, Florida.

Cobb was drafted into the Army at age 18 in 1942.  After basic training he went through landing craft training with the 28th Division for four months at Camp Gordon Johnston in 1943.

Later, Cobb volunteered for special training so he could join the 2nd Ranger Battalion.  The 2nd Ranger Battalion was at that time being trained for what was called the "Suicide Mission."
The objective of the Suicide Mission was to break the enemy lines at Pointe du Hoc, about three miles west of the main landings at Omaha Beach.
The series of invasions along the beaches of Normandy, known as D-Day, was one of the greatest examples of courage and ultimate success ever displayed in the history of warfare.

Nazi Germany occupied France.  The Germans had fortified 40 miles of beach front with barbed wire, artillery guns in concrete bunkers and thousands of troops.

The Suicide Mission was to take the Pointe, a 100-foot rock cliff, and knock out the two twelve-inch artillery cannons placed there to fire on the American troops as they were landing along Utah and Omaha beaches.

Earlier, Allied battle ships out in the English channel had bombarded the Pointe and the Germans had moved the guns inland, then manned the Pointe with six machine gunners and countless riflemen.

As Cobb said, "God only knows how many rifles they had up there."

I asked Cobb what the Pointe was like.  He got up from his chair, walked out into the yard of the Community Center and pointed straight up. "They were 100 feet up at the top of the cliff and we had to climb ropes to get up there."
Cobb then turned and pointed to an area about ten, maybe twenty yards from where he was standing, "That's about how much room we had to land the boats and get the ammo placed at the foot of the cliff."  Cobb added, "Oh yea, they knew we were coming alright."

Cobb said he had seen the movie "Saving Private Ryan" and people often asked him if the invasion was really like it was depicted in the movie.  He said he thought it was a good film, and noted that during the landing the Rangers, no matter what rank, all wore the same private's uniform with regular helmets.

Cobb was part of a ten-boat attack force. Two of the landing craft were ammunition and supply boats.  One of the supply boats did not manage the rough seas and sank on the way in.  Cobb, along with three other Rangers were assigned to the ammunition boat that made it to shore. "We approached on 25-foot waves, and we all had to dip water from the boat with our helmets to keep it from sinking while all the boats were under constant machine fire."

When asked about fear and performance under such circumstances, Cobb said: "I guess the fear had been trained out of me. On looking back, it might take a split-second, but if you lost focus of your particular job to realize what you were in the middle of, or if you made a mistake, then fear might strike.  In that regard I was lucky, it never did. I had been through so many dry runs I never thought I could get hit." Cobb paused in thought for a moment; "It wasn't no picnic, it was hell alright."

Cobb said he made about 10 trips from the boat to the cliff, where he would haul about 100 pounds of ammo and supplies each trip and position it behind a rock at the bottom of the cliff. He said he would time the trips with the "tracer bullets."

On one of his return trips to the boat, with about 50 pounds of ammo on his back, Cobb was anxious, waiting for another Ranger to hand him more ammo.  Suddenly, the Sargeant next to Cobb was hit across the stomach with machine fire while the young Ranger in the boat wasn't getting the ammo to him quick enough.

In the next moment Cobb was stunned when three machine bullets from the cliff hit his left arm right under the shoulder, shattering the bone.

"I couldn't fall or I would have drowned." 

Cobb yelled, "Jesus Christ I'm hit!
I looked down at my arm and it wasn't really there. I couldn't feel anything, my arm was just hanging in the sleeve.  If the bullets hadn't hit the bones (he pointed to his heart) they would have destroyed my heart and that would have been that."

He said the young Ranger in the boat yelled to him, "Can you crawl into the boat?" Cobb crawled into the boat while machine gun fire continued to splatter the water all around him.

Meanwhile, the Sargeant next to Cobb still outside the boat who had been hit with a machine gun spray across his belly also made it into the boat and was yelling to the Ranger trying to help him that he should go instead and help Cobb because Cobb was more seriously wounded. Cobb kept yelling, "Get the hell out of here."  He said the Sargeant was dead before the boat could leave the shore.

At that point in the interview Cobb went silent, choked back what must have been a great deal of emotion, looked up at the sky for a long moment, regained his composure and said, referring to his Sargeant; "There was nothing I could do...I believe someone was looking after me."

Cobb figured he was on the Pointe du Hoc beach shelf running ammo for about 30 minutes before he was hit.  When the supply boat finally made it back out to the British hospital ship stationed in the channel, Cobb said he came to his senses just long enough to realize the hell he had just been through and said he couldn't help it, he lost his mind for a little while. "I was hysterical I guess, it hit me all at once, I went crazy."

Two days later, after Pointe du Hoc had been successfully taken, only 99 of the 225 Rangers who landed were still able to resume fighting on the mainland.

The Rangers who took the cliff found that the artillery guns had been moved following an Allied battleship bombardment. The Rangers did find the guns later that day and destroyed them. After the war, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces, said that he "had always attached great importance to the liquidation of the Pointe du Hoc gun battery."

Today, in cooperation with the French Government, Pointe du Hoc remains exactly as the Rangers left it on the afternoon of June 8, 1944.

Ranger Cobb had to subsequently retire from farming early and sell his farm because of his wounds.  He was honored during and after the war with nine medals and badges, including the Purple Heart and the Distinguished Unit Badge.

Cobb did not wear any of his stripes or medals to the Camp Gordon Johnston Reunion. 

When I asked him about the medals, he shrugged his shoulders and said he had a list of them somewhere but he couldn't remember what they all were.  While we were discussing the medals, his wife left the kitchen area of the motel suite where we were conducting the interview.  When she returned, without a word,  she placed a hand written letter in front of me on the table.

The letter was from Ranger Cobb's granddaughter, who wrote the letter in her mid-twenties.  It read: 

"Dear Grandpa, I wanted to mention to you that I recently saw a movie called "Saving Private Ryan." It's about the D-Day invasion at Normandy. It has received a lot of press because its so realistic and accurately depicted the battle. I just wanted to say that I have a new found respect for you. I've heard you talk over the years about the war but I had no clue what it really was all about until I saw this movie. Anyone who went through that hell to save his country deserves much admiration. Just wanted you to know. Hope you have a terrific birthday. I'll be thinking about you.  Love, Stacie."

I still believe that Mrs. Cobb was trying to tell me that Ranger Cobb probably considered this letter his highest medal, the one that he could not wear but that he would always keep with him.

Sites where you can begin reading more about the Poine-du-Hoc invasion.

The Pointe-du-Hoc Invasion

Paraphrases from books and speeches about the invasion of Pointe du Hoc.

The assault on Pointe-du-Hoc was conducted by the elite troops of the 2nd and 5th Battalion Army Rangers lead by Lt. Col. James Rudder. 

The rangers at Pointe-du-Hoc were the first American forces on D-Day to accomplish their job.  The attack was called "The Suicide Mission."

Full Text of President Ronald Reagan's Memorial Speech at Pointe-du- Hoc.

We're here to mark that day in history when the Allied armies joined in battle to reclaim this continent to liberty. For four long years, much of Europe had been under a terrible shadow.

Free nations had fallen, Jews cried out in the camps, millions cried out for liberation. Europe was enslaved, and the world prayed for its rescue. Here in Normandy the rescue began. Here the Allies stood and fought against tyranny in a giant undertaking unparalleled in human history.

We stand on a lonely, windswept point on the northern shore of France. The air is soft, but 40 years ago at this moment, the air was dense with smoke and the cries of men, and the air was filled with the crack of rifle fire and the roar of cannon.  At dawn, on the morning of the 6th of June, 1944, 225 Rangers jumped off the British landing craft and ran to the bottom of these cliffs.

 Their mission was one of the most difficult and daring of the invasion: to climb these sheer and desolate cliffs and take out the enemy guns. The Allies had been told that some of the mightiest of these guns were here and they would be trained on the beaches to stop the Allied advance.

The Rangers looked up and saw the enemy soldiers--on the edge of the cliffs shooting down at them with machine guns and throwing grenades. And the American Rangers began to climb. They shot rope ladders over the face of these cliffs and began to pull themselves up. When one Ranger fell, another would take his place. When one rope was cut, a Ranger would grab another and begin his climb again.

They climbed, shot back, and held their footing.  Soon, one by one, the Rangers pulled themselves over the top, and in seizing the firm land at the top of these cliffs, they began to seize back the continent of Europe. Two hundred and twenty-five came here. After two days of fighting, only 90 could still bear arms.

History

 About the  Invasion.

Lt. Col. James Rudder commanded 225 Rangers who were to land on a 10-foot wide shingled shelf of beach and scale a 100-foot high cliff while under enemy fire and then destroy the six enemy guns.  After blowing up the artillery battery, the Rangers were to move inland and establish a roadblock on the  road that ran along the coast from Omaha Beach.

Pointe du Hoc is a promontory with 100-foot rock cliffs on each side located 4 miles west of Omaha Beach and 7 miles east of Utah Beach.   The Germans had constructed six fortified gun emplacements to house the six 155mm guns intended to directly shell the Allied approaches to both Utah and Omaha beaches.

The Pointe's strategic position posed a significant threat to the American amphibious assault.

The Germans,  anticipating the Allied attack, had also placed machine gunners at the top of the cliff.

The Pointe had been bombarded several times prior to the invasion, but intelligence reports assessed that the fortifications were too strong, so ground forces would be required to neutralize the guns.

The plan called for three companies to be landed by sea at the foot of the cliffs, scale them using ropes, ladders, and grapples under enemy fire, and engage the enemy at the top of the cliff.  This was to be carried out before the main landings and the Rangers had been specially trained for the cliff assault on the Isle of White under the direction of British Commandos.

The Rangers approached the Pointe in a flotilla of ten landing craft.  A strong tidal surge and low visibility set them off course which caused a 35-minute delay in landing, which gave the German defenders time to recover from the bombardment, climb out of their dugouts, and man their positions.

It also caused the flotilla to run a gauntlet of fire from German guns along four kilometers of coastline.  One of the four DUKWs was sunk by a 20mm shell.  Sgt. Frank South, a nineteen-year-old medic, recalled, "We were getting a lot of machine-gun fire from our left flank, alongside the cliff, and we could not, for the life of us, locate the fire." Lieutenant Eikner remembered "bailing water with our helmets, dodging bullets, and vomiting all at the same time."

And the seas were so rough during the approach, one assault craft and one of the two supply crafts carrying ammunition sank.   The other supply boat had to jettison more than half its load to stay afloat.

Lt. George Kerchner, a platoon leader in D Company, recalled that when his LCA made its turn to head into the beach, "My thought was that this whole thing is a big mistake, that none of us were ever going to get up that cliff."

The beach at Pointe-du-Hoc was only ten meters in width as the flotilla approached, and shrinking rapidly as the tide was coming in (at high tide there would be virtually no beach). There was no sand, only shingle.

The bombardment from air and sea had brought huge chunks of the clay soil from the point tumbling down, making the rocks slippery, but also providing an eight-meter buildup at the base of the cliff that gave the rangers something of a head start in climbing the forty-meter cliff.

The rangers had a number of ingenious devices to help them get to the top. One was twenty-five-meter extension ladders mounted in the DUKWs, provided by the London Fire Department.  But one DUKW was already sunk, and the other three could not get a footing on the shingle, which was covered with wet clay and thus rather like greased ball bearings.  Only one ladder was extended.

The basic method of climbing was by rope. Each LCA carried three pairs of rocket guns, firing steel grapnels which pulled up plain three-quarter-inch ropes, toggle ropes, or rope ladders. The rockets were fired just before touchdown.

Using grapnels with attached ropes was a proven, ancient technique for scaling a wall or a cliff.  But in this case, the ropes had been soaked by the spray on the way in and in many cases were too heavy.  Rangers watched with sinking hearts as the grapnels arched in toward the cliff, only to fall short from the weight of the ropes.

Still, at least one grapnel and rope from each LCA made it; the grapnels grabbed the earth, and the dangling ropes provided a way to climb the cliff.

To get to the ropes, the rangers had to disembark and cross the narrow strip of beach to the base of the cliff.  To get there they had two problems to overcome.  The first was a German machine gun on the rangers' left flank, firing across the beach. It killed or wounded fifteen men as it swept bullets back and forth across the beach.

The second problem for the disembarking rangers was craters, caused by bombs or shells that had fallen short of the cliff.  They were underwater and could not be seen.  "Getting off the ramp,"  Sgt. South recalled, "my pack and I went into a bomb crater and the world turned completely to water." He inflated his Mae West and made it to shore.
Lieutenant Kerchner was determined to be first off his boat. He thought he was going into a meter or so of water as he hollered "OK, let's go" and jumped. He went in over his head, losing his rifle.   Kerchner had to  to swim in to shore....

As the tide was reducing the beach to almost nothing, and because the attack from the sea -- although less than two hundred rangers strong -- was proceeding, Colonel Rudder told Lieutenant Eikner to send the code message "Tilt."  That told the floating reserve of A and B Companies, 2nd Rangers, and the 5th Ranger Battalion to land at Omaha Beach instead of Pointe-du-Hoc.

On the beach there were wounded who needed attention.  Sergeant South had barely got ashore when "the first cry of 'Medic!' went out and I shrugged off my pack, grabbed my aid kit, and took off for the wounded man.  He had been shot in the chest.  I was able to drag him in closer to the cliff.  I'd no sooner taken care of him than I had to go to another and another and another."  Captain Block set up an aid station.

"As I got over the top of the cliff," Lieutenant Kerchner recalled, "it didn't look anything at all like what I thought it was going to look like."  The rangers had studied aerial photos and maps and sketches and sand table mock-ups of the area, but the bombardment from air and sea had created a moonscape:  "It was just one large shell crated after the other."

Continued on next page:
Disabling the Guns