Thoughts About D-Day

We recently commemorated Memorial Day, and then another day of note occurred, the 80th

anniversary of D-Day. I was all of two years old at the time, but a record of it exists in print and film for history buffs like myself to study and gain a bit of understanding. As for the reality of battle, I can only imagine. Thoughts about the day came to me while wandering about the cemetery on Memorial Day. One weathering gravestone drew my attention, that of Russ Ray Ranney 1892-1947.

    Mr. Ranney was the publisher of the Sheldon Progress during those years of World War II and wrote a gripping editorial in the August 20, 1942 issue about his son Myron. He wrote, “A letter came this morning from my son, Myron, saying he had volunteered for the paratroop division of the army. Myron is nineteen and a former student of the University of N. D. The letter brought a lump in my throat and made it hard for me to work. He was not forced to go. But he loves his own country greater than his own security.”

    The unit Myron joined, Company E, 2nd Battalion, 596th Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne, was made famous by the Stephen Ambrose story of it in his book Band of Brothers.

A film account of it by the same name is the ten-part series that ran in 2001 which I just

watched on Netflix. While reading the book we see Myron’s name mentioned frequently.

He took basic training in Georgia and quickly earned the rank of staff sergeant. The leader of their company was disliked, and Myron and a fellow soldier started a mutiny protesting his leadership which got him arrested and busted to private. But he soon saw action when he jumped into Normandy on D-Day, June 6, 1944 and regained his sergeant stripes as well as a bronze star for bravery.

    Company E jumped in the dark of night and landed in various stages of disarray. Strong

slipstreams encountered on exiting the plane caused some of their equipment and weapons to tear away from the paratroops and scatter about the drop zone. They found themselves separated singly or in twos or threes and now faced the need to reassemble into fighting units as soon as possible, a difficult task in the dark.

    There was an immediate task for E Company to follow and accomplish, but their respected new commander Dick Winters could find only thirteen men to accomplish it. They were ordered to attack and destroy German artillery pieces that were firing on men wading ashore on Utah Beach. Short-handed as he was, he ordered them to assault and destroy these guns which they accomplished so well that West Point still studies the way they accomplished their assignment.

    Without trying to explain the situation, it can be simply said that Ranney and one other man successfully attacked the German’s right flank. Winters said that Ranney was one of “Easy Company’s killers who instinctively understood the intricacies of battle.” Winters sent a few men to crawl through an open field on the left, get as close to the artillery gun as they could and throw grenades. As for Winters he led a charge up the middle. Their training and discipline paid off when these thirteen men successfully knocked out four German guns, thereby saving many U. S. soldiers’ lives.

    As the war progressed, E Company stayed in the middle of the fight. In December of 1944 a major German push caught the U. S. military off guard. Our army wasn’t prepared to stop their advances. Cold winter weather found the men without adequate warm clothing. They were forced to fight without reserves of ammunition or medical supplies. While the battle raged on the sky remained overcast and prevented accurate airplane drops of supplies.

Centered on the town of Bastogne, it sat on an important crossroads where all traffic had to flow through. It was a prize the Germans had to take. The 101st Airborne found themselves encircled here by enemy forces whose success depended on taking the town. They failed because of the determined defense the U. S. forces made. Their division commander, General McAuliffe, wrote a Merry Christmas letter to the troops on December 24, 1944. His opening line, “What’s merry about all this you ask? We’re fighting — it’s cold, we aren’t home.” But he went on to tell them of the letter demanding their surrender he’d received from the German commander. McAulliffe then told his men, “The German commander received the following reply: NUTS.” His reply probably served as a morale booster since the defenders continued to hold the city until help    arrived.

    E Company went on to witness the horrendous conditions of prison camps and gained the

distinction of being the first to enter Hitler’s lavish Eagle’s Nest after it had been vacated. In later years Major Winters frequently repeated a quote from a letter dated January 25, 1982 that Ranney wrote to him, “In thinking back on the days of Easy Company, I am treasuring my remark to a grandson who asked, ‘Grandpa, were you a hero in the war? No, I answered, but I served with a company of heroes.’”

    Stephen Ambrose made the observation that most of these young men would rather have stayed at home and shoot a .22 rifle instead of an M-1 and throw baseballs instead of grenades. My recent article here mentioned the war hero Woody Keeble. He gave up a promising major league career as a baseball pitcher and found himself throwing grenades in battles with distance and

accuracy.

    A mark of paratrooper pride showed when they were permitted to tuck their pant legs into their boots and blouse them out. In grade school it became the fad of hero worship for boys to wear a pair of combat boots like the big guys wore. I wore a pair.

    Ambrose reached deeply into a Shakespeare play when he titled his book The Band of Brothers. In the play “Henry V,” the king on the eve of battle with the French in 1415 said to his army, “From this day to the ending of the world, we in it shall be remembered, we few, we happy few, we band of brothers.”