D-Day — Texas Rudder’s Rangers at Pointe du Hoc
By: Texas Vlb
Tags: Veterans, Normandy Landings, Wwii, Operation Neptune, D Day

The Texas Veterans Land Board recalls D-Day, June 6th, and the special mission that Texas native James Earl Rudder and his Rangers received to scale the large cliffs rising over the beaches. It was a mission many knew they would never return from, and yet Rudder asked them and they climbed. They climbed not only because he asked, but because they knew that if those machine gun nests at the top of the cliffs were allowed to fire on the incoming boats, there would be no invasion. There would be no rescue of Vichy France, there would be no crossing of the Rhine. There would be no rescue from the Nazis. There would just be wholesale slaughter of American, British and Canadian soldier boys, pinned down on a beach with no aid.

As General Omar Bradley pointed out in his 1951 book, A Soldier’s Story, “No soldier in my command has ever been wished a more difficult task than that which befell the 34-year-old commander of this Provisional Ranger Force.”

Pointe du Hoc is a clifftop located between the beaches nicknamed Utah and Omaha, and its cliffs tower up to 100 feet in height. Allied planners had named it one of the most dangerous German fortifications on the southern French coast.

Rudder, originally from the area around the geographical center of Texas, had graduated from Texas A&M in 1932, and by the time of the D-Day landing, was a Lt. Colonel leading the 2nd Ranger Battalion. Rudder was put in charge of the 2nd and 5th Ranger battalions, which together comprised the Provisional Ranger Force. This group of Rangers was tasked with climbing Pointe du Hoc early in the morning of June 6, 1944, before the sun rose, in order to disable the machine guns that overlooked the beaches. The Nazis thought this position impregnable.

The Rangers tackled this quest head-on, and more than 50% of their force was decimated during the attack. Rudder himself was wounded twice. Despite the ferocity of the fighting, the Rangers achieved the climb, disabled the defensive weapons and dug in to protect the clifftop from German reinforcement forces. They remained there for two days until relieved by new Allied troops.

After the war, Rudder would go on to serve as the mayor of Brady, Texas Land Commissioner, the president of Texas A&M University, and president of the entire A&M system. In 1967, President Lyndon B. Johnson awarded him the Distinguished Service Medal, the highest peacetime service award. When Rudder passed away in 1970, an annual memorial service was begun in Normandy, France, which continues to this day. In the spring of 2019, a statue of James Earl Rudder, in full battle dress, was installed on the grounds of the Brady courthouse, the seat of McCullough County, where he grew up.

Even Rudder, on a trip back to Normandy, when he was looking at the cliffs from the beach, remarked, “How did we do this? It was crazy then, and it’s crazy now.”

The Texas Veterans Land Board salutes the men of the 2nd and 5th Ranger Battalions, who accomplished the crazy miracle which allowed the D-Day invasion to succeed. It was certainly a huge moment in world history and made a difference to millions.

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