Interview with Frank South, 2nd Ranger Battalion

The trip in to Pointe-du-Hoc was pretty rough; some men were seasick. This was pretty well documented. The LCIs were manned by British crews. Each landing craft had a Lewis gun mounted on the stern and three rocket-type grappling hooks on each side. As I recall two were fitted with regular, everyday hemp string lines; two were fitted with knotted hemp lines, and two were fitted with rope ladders. The idea being that the grappling hooks would dig in at the top of the cliff and we would use the rope or rope ladder to climb up. Most of us preferred the string lines, especially when you had to reppel back down the cliff. The knotted lines were OK. We found the rope ladders to be a pain-in-the-neck to climb.

I remember when I was going over I was excited and amazed that this was actually happening. As we moved closer to the beach, we realized that the British navy people had gone astray and we had gone too far. That meant that we had to change course and go parallel to the beach and the cliffs and we were late because of this. As we got near the cliff, the British Coxswain started firing the Lewis gun mounted on the LCI at German positions at the top of the cliff. He’d been firing it so heavily that he burned his hand on the barrel. I kept in touch with him after the war and he died a few years before the 50^th anniversary.

We were crammed into the landing craft. I had a large pack on that had everything from sulfa to plasma. We were issued 45’s but I don’t remember where mine was. All we had for food were ration bars. The guys I landed with happened to be F Company. I wasn’t the F company medic but this is where I happened to be assigned. We scattered our headquarter medics among all the companies.

F company landed in the left flank of the landing area below the cliffs. My boat got our grapnel rockets off in pretty good order. The LCI to our left came too close and could fire off their rockets. Sgt. Cripps, who I think was a tech sergeant but I’m not sure; took the rockets off the boat and we had a way to hand fire them so they could be individually fired through a hot box. This took a great deal of self-control and concentration and Cripps was able to successfully put the grapnel hooks on the cliff.

High up on our left flank was a machine gun nest.We could not quite see where it was. We were caught in its crossfire. I am going back in time for a second . . . as my LCI hit the beach I had this huge pack on my back, I was in the back of the landing craft – for good reason because you had to get the assault guys off, rockets fired, and lines up. We were under constant fire at this time. As I jumped off my pack was so large it got in the way. So I threw the bloody pack off. After I got rid of the pack. I scrambled into the beach. I then reached out and had I had to drag my pack in after me. The next thing I know someone screamed "medic!" and a guy off to my left had been hit in the chest. At this time, a lot a people were getting hit.

This is about the same time Cripps fired the rocket. It was a complicated procedure and it took a lot of self-control. Cripps came over towards me and the wounded man. He looked like he had a bad case of blackheads all over his face. These were pieces of carbon from the explosion of the rocket. I remarked something like "what the hell happened to you?"

Men started climbing up the cliffs. But several of the lines got wet and it was very slippery going up. A machine gun from the cliff continued racking the beach below. Once on top the men were able to neutralize German resistance. Shortly there after the medics made their way to the top.

Not long after we secured the top of the cliff, we starting taking very heavy counter-attacks and causalities. I remember that we set up an aid station in a German bunker.

The happiest times were when the guys from the 5^th (Ranger Battalion) started coming in. I remember one of my buddies appearing in front of me with a large grin who had fought his way from Omaha beach.

Source: Oral history interview by Patrick O'Donnell with Frank South 6/98