The Drop Zone Virtual Museum........What's New
Pointe-de-la-Percée
An Interview wth Sid Salomon,
Platoon Leader, Company C, 2nd Ranger Battalion
Much has been written about the various landings at Omaha Beach. The stiff resistance, the heavy casualties and, in particular, the heroism of U.S. Army Rangers during the assault on the cliffs west of Omaha Beach. In addition to the action at the cliffs at Pointe-du-Hoc, just west of the village of Vierville, lies a cliff-face called the "Pointe-de-la-Percée."

solomon.JPG (38387 bytes)
"The Boys from Jersey" Left to Right: Sid Salomon 2nd Bat, Bill Reed 5th,
T.E. Lapres 2nd Bat. Taken in June 1944.
 

"I was in C Company, 2nd Ranger Battalion, and we had our own separate mission. C Company went in alone at Pointe de la Percee. We had two platoons, each in it's own landing craft. I was in charge of one and the other platoon leader in the other. Our goal was to cross the beach, climb the cliff and neutralize the mortars and machine guns that were positioned on top of a beach that intelligence had indicated could threaten the landing at Omaha Beach in front of the town of Vierville. I had 37 men in my landing craft. After we crossed the beach and climbed the cliff I only had nine men left - nine out of the 37.

"It was dawn when we went in. At about 4:00 am in the morning we left the H.M.S. Prince Charles and boarded the landing craft. We were a good 10 miles out in the channel and it took us over an hour to reach the beach. It was still dark at the time. We were aiming for H minus 5 which was 25 after 6.

"The trip was tough coming in. Keep in mind, it was postponed due to rough seas. The men started getting sick. We were issued paper bags, like you get in airplanes. The men filled them up and threw them over the side. Some men started using their helmets.

"We could hear the ping of the machine gun bullets hit the side of the landing craft and mortar shells were landing near the landing craft. I could see the concentric circles formed by the shells hitting the water. It was quite something of course. One of the men joked, "hey, they're firing at us." It added a little humor to the situation.

"In the dry runs that we had prior to the invasion, we had never had all the equipment that we had that day. We never had the rations or ammunition. We were issued three squares of something that looked like a Hershey bar. You could not finish one square since they were so packed with calories. What I'm getting at is that during the dry runs we never had the extra ammunition or rations, so when we boarded the landing craft, everybody was squeezed together. It was very cramped with 37 men. There was a wooden bench on either side of the craft. The men sat on either side facing in to the center. Then, in the center of the boat, there was also a bench that went from bow to the stern. The men straddled it facing forward. When everyone got into the landing craft there wasn't any room for me. That didn't bother me, so I stood near the bow next to the steel door and started talking to the British sub-lieutenant who was in charge of the landing craft. I stood up for most of the trip but when we got close to the beach and started receiving machine gun fire the sub-lieutenant and I crouched down behind the steel ramp. He had the rope in his hand that released the door on the landing craft.

"[As] we rehearsed the landing, basically I would be the first man out and alternately each man would jump from right to left. Bear in mind, the tide was coming in, as each man jumped off the boat was getting lighter and the boat moved ahead. So when I jumped off, I held my Tommy gun over my head. I jumped into not quite chest-high water and it took a few seconds to get my feet on the ground. In the meantime, the second man, sergeant Reed jumped off to the left. I always figured that the first man out would be hit. Fortunately, the Germans didn't know when the ramp would lower. But they had us zeroed in with their machine guns and the second man, Reed, was hit. He had fallen down, wounded, and had slid underneath the ramp. So I pulled him from under the ramp and dragged him to the water's edge. I said to him, "Sergeant this is as far as I can take you, I have to get along." I pulled him up onto the shore and then started to run across. A mortar shell landed right behind me and killed or wounded all of my mortar section. I got some of the shrapnel - it hit my back and I landed right on my face. I fell down in the sand and thought I was dead. So I reached into the pocket of my field jacket looking for my maps. At that instant, I asked one of my men who was next to me if I was hit and he said yes. So I said you got to take my maps.

"In that instant, the sand was being kicked in my face by a machine gun. Right then and there, I said to myself that I wasn't going to die and said to myself, "this no place to be lying," so I took my maps, I got up, and ran toward the overhang of the cliff. An aid man came over to me and took my field jacket and shirt off and started digging shrapnel out of my back. These were the days before Penicillin and each man carried a sulfa pack and he put it on my back. He said, "that that's all I can do for you now." I said, "take care of the rest of the guys." So I started to climb up the cliff.

"The cliff was approximately 90 to 100 feet high. I've been back several times since the war. We didn't have grappling hooks like they did up at Pointe-du-Hoc. Each man had a 6-foot piece of rope that had a noose at the end of it and, ideally, we were to link the ropes together and scale the cliff. We didn't bother with that since, of course, so many men had gotten killed and wounded. We had two men that in our practice runs were excellent climbers and always made it to the top first. As usual, they made it to the top. We went up on tow holds and by digging our fingernails into the cliff.

"When we got up on top we had only nine men left in my platoon. That wasn't an effective fighting force by any means. The other platoon leader, Bill Moody, joined me up top. We were laying up there in a shell hole. We decided to take a look at things to get a lay of the land. So, we were lying in this shell hole and peering ahead. The two of us were looking at a well-dug in trench. We were there only a minute or two and all of a sudden Bill Moody, the first platoon commander, fell over on me shoulder to shoulder. He had been killed by a bullet hole through his eyes. So I grabbed a man next to me and I said, "let's go!"

"We ran ahead and jumped into the trench. The trench was perpendicular to the top of the cliff. We went along there and we came to a dugout. I carried two white phosphorus grenades and I held my hand and I said, "stop." I approached the dugout. Bear in mind, the Germans had years to build the trench and dugout part of their defenses. So I threw a white phosphorous grenade through the entrance and waited a minute. We then sprayed the entrance. We saw an old wooden table and a steel locker that they used for their uniforms. So we started moving down the trench. As we went down the trench, we saw another trench that went down to my right. I figured that this was going to be a little more difficult, since we could be surprised from behind. So we went a little further around a curve and we were face to face with a German soldier. We were both equally stunned but I grabbed him and I figured this might be a good time to have a prisoner instead of killing him right then and there. So I said, "let's send him down to the Company Commander," who was down at the beach with dead and wound wounded men maintaining order.

"So we sent the prisoner down the cliff. I don't know if he got down on his own or if they pushed him down - that was immaterial to me. We figured it was silly to go any further inland since with so few men we wouldn't be an effective fighting force.

"We figured the best thing to do would be to hold that ground and that's what we did. We proceeded to knock out a machine gun section and a mortar section.

"Painted on the walls of the mortar area were targets for stakes that were in the ground for positions up around the beach at Veirville. Each position was numbered, so it was easy for the German 81 mm mortar crew to zero in on positions on the beach. We knocked out the German position and figured that we were doing our best in that way by still holding our ground.


Source: Interview by Pat O'Donnell

Send Personal Accounts and Feedback to: historian@thedropzone.org
Europe | Pacific | Training | Axis | | Scrapbooks | What's New |
© 1999 Patrick O'Donnell, All Rights Reserved