The Football Coach Who Led 225 Men Up A Suic*de Cliff On D-Day

Welcome to History USA, where we uncover the forgotten heroes who shaped America’s greatest victories. June 6, 1944. 6.15 a.m. 225 American Rangers stood in ten landing craft, staring up at a 100-foot cliff rising from the English Channel like a stone fortress. At the top, German machine guns. Behind them, six massive coastal artillery pieces capable of obliterating the Allied invasion fleet, gathering just miles away.
The mission was simple. Impossible, but simple. Scale those cliffs under enemy fire. Destroy those guns, hold the position against counter-attack. Military planners gave them a 30% chance of survival. A British Admiral called it suicide, but leading these men was a 34 year old former Texas high school football coach named James Earl Rudder, and he was about to orchestrate one of the most daring small unit actions in military history.
This is the story of how 225 men climbed into hell, found their objective had vanished, hunted down the real threat through enemy territory, and then held their ground through two days of relentless German counter-attacks with casualty rates that would have broken most units in the first hour. This is the story of leadership under impossible circumstances, of tactical brilliance when the mission falls apart, and of ordinary Americans doing extraordinary things when everything goes catastrophically wrong.
This is the story of Rudder’s Rangers at Pointe du Hoc. To understand what made this mission so critical and so dangerous, we need to understand the strategic nightmare facing Allied planners in early 1944. The invasion of France, Operation Overlord, required landing 150,000 men on five beaches along the Normandy coast.
But between Utah Beach and Omaha Beach sat a dagger pointed directly at the Allied fleet, Pointe du Hoc, a triangular promontory jutting into the English Channel like the prow of a battleship, 100 feet of sheer cliff on three sides. And intelligence photographs showed six concrete gun emplacements, each housing a 155mm artillery piece with a range of 25,000 yards.
Do the math. Those guns could reach every ship in the invasion fleet. They could turn Utah Beach into a killing ground. They could fire on Omaha Beach from the flank. Six guns, strategically positioned, properly defended, could potentially derail the largest amphibious operation in human history. The guns had to be destroyed.
But how do you destroy artillery pieces positioned on top of a cliff face that makes the north wall of Everest look friendly? The British commandos took one look at Pointe du Hoc and said it couldn’t be done. Too steep. Too heavily defended. Too exposed. The initial plan called for aerial bombardment and naval bombardment to destroy the guns before D-Day.
354 tons of bombs were dropped on Pointe du Hoc in the weeks before the invasion. The cliff face looked like the surface of the moon. Craters everywhere. The problem? The guns were in reinforced concrete casemates. Bombing from altitude couldn’t guarantee their destruction. The Navy would bombard the position on D-Day morning, but again, no guarantees.
Someone had to go up there, find those guns, and blow them to pieces with thermite grenades and plastic explosives. Someone had to do it fast, before the German defenders recovered from the bombardment, and someone had to hold the position, because behind Pointe du Hoc sat the coastal highway connecting German reinforcements from the west to the invasion beaches. Control Pointe du Hoc and you block that highway.
Lose Pointe du Hoc and German tanks roll straight to Omaha Beach. General Omar Bradley turned to the Rangers, the elite assault troops of the United States Army, men who had trained for cliff assaults, men who specialized in impossible missions, and leading the 2nd Ranger Battalion was Lieutenant Colonel James Earl Rudder, a man who seemed like the least likely candidate to become one of D-Day’s greatest tactical commanders.
Rudder wasn’t a West Point graduate. He wasn’t a career military officer. He was a football coach and teacher from Brady, Texas. Married. Two children. He’d been working as an assistant football coach at John Tarleton Agricultural College when the war broke out.
He joined the Army Reserve before Pearl Harbor, got called up in 1941, and found himself, almost by accident, commanding a ranger battalion. He was older than most of his men. At 34, he seemed ancient compared to the 20-year-olds under his command. He didn’t look like a warrior. Medium height, receding hairline, wire-rimmed glasses.
He looked like what he was, a high school football coach who happened to be wearing an army uniform. But Rudder possessed something that mattered more than military pedigree. He understood people. He understood motivation. He understood how to take a group of individuals and forge them into a team that would run through walls for each other.
More importantly, he understood the fundamental principle of leadership that separates adequate officers from great ones. You lead from the front. You never ask your men to do anything you won’t do yourself. When the mission brief came down and Rudder learned what his rangers were being asked to do, he didn’t hesitate. He didn’t try to delegate. He didn’t search for a way out. He said Wilco.
Understood. Will comply. And then he started training his men for a mission that would probably kill most of them. The training was insane. The rangers practiced cliff climbing on the Isle of Wight, off the southern coast of England. They experimented with different methods. Rope ladders, grappling hooks, rocket propelled ropes.
They trained with British commandos who specialised in coastal assaults. They studied the reconnaissance photographs until they could navigate Pointe du Hoc in their sleep. Every gun position, every bunker, every crater. They ran assault drills until the movements became muscle memory. Climb, move, destroy, hold. They practiced under fire, with live ammunition cracking over their heads.
They practiced in darkness, in rain, in conditions that simulated the chaos of combat. The men Rudder commanded came from all over America. Farm boys from Iowa who had never seen the ocean before joining the army. Factory workers from Detroit who understood machines and how to break them.
College students who had enlisted rather than wait for the draft. Each brought different skills, different backgrounds, different reasons for being there. But Rudder welded them into a cohesive unit through relentless training and shared hardship. The Rangers trained harder than any other infantry unit in the European theatre. They ran obstacle courses until they collapsed.
They practiced hand-to-hand combat until they moved on instinct. They learned to shoot, move and communicate as a team, where every man knew his job and trusted his buddy to do his. The equipment they tested for the cliff assault tells its own story of innovation and improvisation. The rocket-propelled grappling hooks were essentially British anti-tank projectiles modified to carry ropes instead of warheads.
The ropes themselves were specially treated to resist water damage, though as it turned out, the treatment wasn’t quite good enough for the rough seas on D-Day. The DUKWs with their fire brigade ladders were a brilliant solution to a seemingly impossible problem. How do you get men up a hundred foot cliff quickly? You borrow extension ladders from the London Fire Brigade, mount them on amphibious trucks and pray they work under combat conditions.
and pray they work under combat conditions. The entire operation was held together with ingenuity, determination and a willingness to try things that seemed crazy on paper. Rudder personally tested every piece of equipment. He climbed the practice cliffs using the grappling hooks. He rode the extension ladders as they swayed in simulated rough seas. He wanted to know exactly what his men would experience.
What could go wrong? What needed improvement? This hands-on approach built trust. The rangers knew that when Rudder told them something would work, he had tested it himself. When he said the ladders would hold, it was because he had climbed them. When he said the ropes would reach the top, it was because he had measured them. Leadership, by example, doesn’t start on the battlefield.
It starts in training, in preparation, in sweating the details that keep men alive. Rudder knew the statistics. Military planners estimated 90% casualties in the first wave. 90%. That meant out of every 10 men who started up those cliffs, 9 wouldn’t make it to the top. Or if they made it to the top, 9 wouldn’t survive the day. Those are suicide mission numbers.
And yet, when Rudder briefed his men on the mission, when he laid out exactly what they were being asked to do, not one ranger requested a transfer. Not one man backed out. They trusted Rudder. More than that, they believed in him. If Coach Rudder said they could do this, then they could do this. The plan itself was elegant in its simplicity and terrifying in its risk.
Three ranger companies, Dog Company, Easy Company and Fox Company. 225 men total. They would land in specialised landing craft equipped with extension ladders borrowed from the London Fire Brigade. The ladders, mounted on DUKW amphibious trucks, could extend 100 feet pair those with rocket-propelled grappling hooks to get lines to the top of the cliff and the Rangers would have multiple routes up the rock face.
The assault was scheduled for 6.30 a.m., H hour for the main invasion. The Navy would pound Pointe du Hoc with shells from the battleship Texas and other warships. The Air Force would plaster the position with bombs. Under cover of that bombardment, the Rangers would race across 600 yards of open water,hit the cliff base and start climbing.
Speed was everything. Get up the cliff before the Germans recovered from the bombardment. Get to the guns before the enemy could organize a defense. Destroy the artillery pieces, hold the road. A 4th Ranger Company, Charlie Company, would follow 30 minutes behind and scale the cliffs at a different point to reinforce Rudder’s men.
Behind them, the entire 5th Ranger Battalion and elements of the 116th Infantry Regiment stood ready to exploit Rudder’s success. If the Rangers could take and hold Point Duhok, follow-on forces would pour through the gap and push inland. But there was a timing problem. The mission only worked if everything went according to schedule. Land at H hour. climb in 30 minutes, destroy guns by H plus 45.
If the rangers were delayed, if they arrived late, the Germans would be waiting at the top of those cliffs with machine guns and grenades and the whole operation would turn into a massacre. Rudder knew this, his officers knew this, the Navy knew this, so they built in a contingency. If the Rangers were more than 30 minutes late, the follow-on forces would divert to Omaha Beach instead.
Rudder and his 225 men would be on their own. June 5th, 1944. The Rangers loaded onto transport ships in the port of Weymouth, England. The water was rough. The weather was terrible. Rain, wind, low clouds. General Eisenhower postponed the invasion by twenty-four hours, hoping for better conditions.
The Rangers sat in their ships, seasick, tense, waiting. They wrote letters home. They checked their equipment for the hundredth time. They tried to sleep, but mostly just stared at the ceiling and thought about one-hundred-foot cliffs and German machine guns. Rudder moved among his men, calm, confident, reassuring. He didn’t give speeches about glory or patriotism.
He kept it simple. We’ve trained for this. We know what to do. We’re rangers. We’ll get it done. Years later, survivors would remember how Rudder’s presence steadied them, how his quiet confidence made them believe they might actually survive the next 24 hours. Leadership isn’t about rousing oratory.
It’s about being the calm eye in the center of the storm. June 6th, 0 dark 30. The Rangers transferred from transport ships to landing craft. The sea was still rough. Six foot swells. The landing craft pitched and rolled. Men vomited. Water sloshed around their boots. The fire brigade ladders, mounted on the DUKWs, looked impossibly fragile.
Everything about the operation screamed, this won’t work. But they were committed now. The invasion was underway. On the horizon, the sky lit up with naval gunfire. The battleship Texas and cruisers Satterley and Barfleur pounded Pointe du Hoc with shells. Overhead, Allied bombers made their final runs. The cliff was disappearing in smoke and explosions.
At 5.50 a.m., the landing craft started their run to the beach. This was the critical moment. 6.30 a.m. was H-hour. The Rangers had to hit that cliff exactly on schedule. But almost immediately, things started going wrong. The British lieutenant commanding the landing craft flotilla got confused in the smoke and darkness.
Instead of heading straight for Pointe du Hoc, he angled east toward Pointe de la Perse, three miles down the coast. For nearly forty minutes, the landing craft headed in the wrong direction. By the time someone noticed the error, they were miles off course. Rudder was in the lead landing craft. He could see the coastline through his binoculars.
This wasn’t right. The cliff profile was wrong. Those weren’t the craters from reconnaissance photos. They were heading toward the wrong objective. In a scene that would become legendary, Rudder physically grabbed the British lieutenant and pointed west. That’s Pointe du Hoc. Turn around.
The landing craft wheeled hard, engines straining against the current. But now they were behind schedule. Way behind schedule. It was already 6.30 a.m. and they were still three miles from the target. By the time they reached Pointe du Hoc, it would be after 7 a.m. Thirty minutes late, the follow-on forces would divert to Omaha Beach.
The Rangers would be alone. As the landing craft raced along the coast, trying to make up time, German defenders on the cliffs opened fire, machine guns, rifle fire. The water around the boats erupted in splashes. Tenders on the cliffs opened fire, machine guns, rifle fire. The water around the boats erupted in splashes.
Rangers crouched low, but there was nowhere to hide. One Dukw took a direct hit. The fire brigade ladder collapsed. Another Dukw swamped in the rough seas and sank, taking its ladder with it. Men were hit before they even reached the cliff, but rudder kept them moving. Get to the cliff. Get to the cliff.
Everything else was secondary. At 6.48 a.m., 48 minutes behind schedule, the first landing craftgrounded at the base of Pointe du Hoc. The naval bombardment had just lifted. The cliff face loomed above them, shrouded in smoke and dust. Craters pocked the ground. The entire landscape looked alien, lifeless, like something from another planet.
And from the top of the cliff, Germans appeared, looking down at the rangers like spectators watching an execution. The Rangers fired their rocket-propelled grappling hooks. Whoosh! Lines shot up toward the clifftop, trailing rope behind them. Most of them fell short. The ropes had gotten wet during the landing, absorbing water, adding weight.
The rockets couldn’t get enough altitude. The rangers fired again. And again. Some hooks caught on the lip of the cliff. Others snagged in shell craters partway up. The Germans appeared at the cliff edge, cutting ropes, dropping grenades, firing machine guns straight down. And the rangers started to climb, hand over hand, boots scrabbling for purchase on wet rock, equipment weighing them down, enemy fire from above.
It was chaos, pure chaos. Men climbing ropes while bullets snapped past their heads. Rangers falling, hit by gunfire or losing their grip. Others pressed on, climbing through the smoke, using shell craters in the cliff face as handholds when the ropes gave out. The Duc de Baluse that had survived the landing run extended their fire brigade ladders against the cliff.
Rangers swarmed up them while Germans fired down from above. The destroyers Satterley and Barfleur steamed in close, dangerously close, firing point blank at the German positions on the cliff top, suppressing enemy fire, buying the ranger’s precious seconds. The individual stories of courage during the climb are almost beyond belief.
Sergeant William Petty was halfway up a rope when a German machine gunner got a bead on him. Bullets stitched up the cliff face. Petty couldn’t dodge, couldn’t take cover. He just kept climbing, hand over hand, while rock fragments from bullet impacts peppered his face.
He made it to the top with a shrapnel wound in his shoulder and immediately got into a firefight with a machine gunner who had been trying to kill him 30 seconds earlier. Technical Sergeant Richard Hathaway climbed one of the extension ladders while German grenades bounced off the rungs around him. One grenade exploded close enough to knock him sideways, but he held on, regained his footing and kept climbing.
When he reached the top, he had shrapnel wounds in both legs, but refused medical treatment until the gun positions were secured. Private First Class Harry Roberts had his rope cut by German defenders when he was about 60 feet up the cliff. Instead of falling or panicking, Roberts grabbed onto the cliff face with his hands, finding finger holds in the chalky rock and the bomb craters.
He essentially free climbed the remaining forty feet to the top. When asked about it later, he said, I was more scared of drowning than falling. If I went down, I was going into the water with all that equipment. At least climbing up, I had a chance. That’s the mentality Rudder had instilled in his Rangers. Always toward the objective. Always forward. Never back.
The role of the Navy destroyers in suppressing German fire cannot be overstated. The USS Satterley, under the command of Lieutenant Commander Robert Byer, brought his ship to within 700 yards of the cliff. That’s point-blank range for a destroyer. He could see the German defenders.
His gun crews could see individual Germans moving on the cliff top. They fired 5-inch shells directly at enemy positions, basically using a naval destroyer as mobile artillery support for infantry. The risk was enormous. German shore batteries could have destroyed Satterley at that range, but Beyer made the calculation that saving Rudder’s Rangers was worth the risk.
His accurate naval gunfire kept the German defenders’ heads down during the critical minutes when the Rangers were most vulnerable climbing the cliff. The British destroyer Taliban provided similar support from the Western approach. Her crew watched through binoculars as the Rangers climbed, identifying German positions and engaging them with precision fire.

The naval gunfire support at Pointe du Hoc demonstrates something important about combined operations. The Navy and the Rangers had trained together. They understood each other’s capabilities and limitations. The destroyer captains knew they could fire danger close to friendly troops, because they had practiced with the rangers during training. That trust, built through shared preparation, saved lives during the actual assault.
Rudder went up in the first wave. Of course he did. He led from the front, always. One of his officers, Captain Duke Slater, tried to make him wait. Of course he did. He led from the front, always. One of his officers, Captain Duke Slater, tried to make him wait.Sir, you should coordinate from the base until we secure the top.
Rudder ignored him and started climbing. If you’re asking a man to scale a cliff under fire, you climb that cliff with them. Leadership 101. Learned on football fields in Texas. The climb took nearly 40 minutes, 40 minutes of hell, but the rangers kept moving. They reached shell craters and paused to catch their breath, then pushed on.
They helped each other. When one man faltered, another grabbed his equipment and pulled him up. This is what the training had been for, not just the physical skills, but the mental toughness, the refusal to quit, the absolute conviction that they would reach that cliff top or die trying. At 7.08am, the first rangers pulled themselves over the lip of the cliff.
Immediately, they were in fighting positions, providing covering fire for the men still climbing. Within minutes, more rangers reached the top. They spread out, moving through the crated landscape, hunting for Germans. The defenders fell back, firing from bunkers and trenches. The Rangers used the bomb craters for cover, leapfrogging forward, clearing each position with grenades and rifle fire.
And then came the moment that changed everything. The moment when the entire mission pivoted from a straightforward assault to something far more complex and dangerous, the Rangers reached the gun emplacements. The massive concrete casemates that were supposed to house the 155mm artillery pieces. They stared into the reinforced bunkers, weapons ready, thermite grenades in hand, prepared to destroy the guns that threatened the invasion fleet.
The guns weren’t there. The casemates were empty. No artillery pieces, no ammunition. Nothing but bare concrete and some telephone poles positioned to look like gun barrels from aerial reconnaissance photographs. The rangers stood there stunned. They had just climbed a hundred feet of cliff under fire.
They had suffered casualties. They had fought their way across the top of the promontory. And the guns they came to destroy didn’t exist. Not here anyway. For a lesser commander, this would have been a crisis. The mission was based on destroying those guns.
Without the guns, what was the point of holding Pointe du Hoc? Rudder could have consolidated his position, called for extraction, admitted that the intelligence had been wrong. But Rudder understood something crucial about leadership and tactical flexibility. The mission wasn’t about following a plan. The mission was about achieving an objective. And the objective was stopping those guns from firing on the invasion beaches.
If the guns weren’t in their prepared positions, they were somewhere else. Find them. Destroy them. Adapt and overcome. Rudder made a decision that would define the entire operation. He split his forces. Some rangers would secure the cliff top and establish defensive positions.
Others would push inland, search for the missing guns, and cut the coastal highway. It was a calculated risk, dividing a force that was already outnumbered, already isolated, already running on borrowed time. But it was the right call, and Rudder knew it. First Sergeant Leonard Lommel and Staff Sergeant Jack Kuhn from Dog Company volunteered to search for the guns. Two men.
That’s all Rudder could spare. Two rangers pushing inland through enemy territory, hunting for six missing artillery pieces. Lommel and Kuhn grabbed their weapons, stuffed their pockets with thermite grenades, and moved south toward the coastal highway. They navigated through hedgerows and farm fields, alert for German patrols. The landscape was quiet. Too quiet.
The enemy had pulled back from the immediate area around Pointe du Hoc, but they were out there, regrouping, preparing counter-attacks. About 800 yards inland, Lomel and Kuhn found a sunken farm road. Wagon tracks, fresh wagon tracks, heavy wheels, like something capable of towing artillery pieces. They followed the tracks, weapons ready, expecting ambush at any moment.
The road led through a hedgerow into an orchard, and there, under camouflage netting, pointed toward Utah Beach, sat all six guns, 155mm artillery pieces, ready to fire, ammunition stacked nearby, but completely unguarded.
The Germans had moved the guns inland weeks earlier, probably anticipating that their positions on the cliff would be bombed. They had prepared these alternate firing positions, camouflaged them, and then apparently gotten complacent. Or maybe the defenders had been pulled back to respond to the invasion. Whatever the reason, Lommel and Kuhn had found the deadliest artillery battery in Normandy, sitting unattended in an orchard like someone’s abandoned farm equipment.
The two rangers didn’t hesitate. They had thermite grenades, they had training, and they had the element of surprise. Lommel ran from gun to gun, smashing the traversing and elevating mechanisms with thermite grenades.The thermite burned at thousands of degrees, melting the precision gears that allowed the guns to aim and fire. Within minutes, all six artillery pieces were destroyed.
Useless hunks of metal. The mission that had been designed for 225 men, the objective that justified climbing a hundred-foot cliff under fire, had been accomplished by two rangers with a handful of grenades in an unguarded orchard. Lamel and Kuhn didn’t celebrate. They grabbed as much German ammunition as they could carry and made it unstable, then slipped back to Rudder’s position at Pointe du Hoc. They reported their success.
Six guns destroyed. Utah Beach was safe. The artillery that could have devastated the invasion fleet would never fire a shot. Rudder’s gamble on tactical flexibility, on adapting to change circumstances, on trusting his men to accomplish the mission, regardless of how different it looked from the plan, had paid off completely.
But destroying the guns was only half the battle. Now came the hard part, holding Pointe du Hoc against inevitable German counter-attacks. And this is where the mission transformed from a daring raid into an epic defensive stand that would test every man’s courage and endurance.
Rudder had roughly 200 Rangers at the top of the cliff. Some were wounded, all were exhausted from the climb and the fight to secure the position. He organized them into a defensive perimeter, using shell craters and German bunkers as fighting positions. The Rangers dug in as best they could in the cratered earth. They set up machine guns, covering the approaches from inland.
They established observation posts. They waited for the German reaction, knowing it would come soon and it would come hard. The Germans were initially confused. Reports flooded in about American troops on the cliffs, but the scale and location kept changing. Were these the main invasion forces? A diversion? How many Americans were there? The confusion bought Rudder some time, but not much.
By mid-morning on June 6th, German commanders had identified Pointe du Hoc as a penetration point that needed to be eliminated. They started gathering forces for counter-attack. Infantry from the 916th Grenadier Regiment. Elements of the 726th Grenadier Regiment. Machine gun companies. Mortar teams.
The Germans had numbers and they had position. The Rangers were a small force. Isolated. Low on ammunition. And cut off from reinforcement. Remember the contingency plan? If the Rangers were more than 30 minutes late, follow-on forces would divert to Omaha Beach. That happened. Charlie Company, the reinforcing Ranger Company, hit the cliffs at Omaha instead of Pointe du Hoc.
The 5th Ranger Battalion went to Omaha. The infantry companies went to Omaha. Rudder and his men were alone. The radio was damaged during the landing. Communications with the fleet were spotty at best. For all practical purposes, the rangers at Pointe du Hoc had disappeared into a communications black hole.
The command structure didn’t know if they had succeeded, failed, or been wiped out. Around noon on D-Day, the first German counterattack hit Rudder’s perimeter. Infantry supported by machine guns and mortars. The Germans came from the south, moving through the fields and hedgerows that Lommel and Kuhn had navigated hours earlier.

The Rangers let them get close, then opened up with everything they had . The Germans took casualties and fell back. They regrouped and came again. Again, the Rangers stopped them. But each attack depleted the Rangers’ ammunition. Each fight wounded more men. Each hour that passed without reinforcement or resupply made their situation more desperate. The German forces attacking Pointe du Hoc came primarily from the 916th Grenadier Regiment, part of the 752nd Infantry Division. These weren’t elite troops.
Many were conscripts, older men or soldiers recovering from wounds on the Eastern Front, but they had numbers and they had motivation. Their officers told them that American paratroopers and rangers had penetrated the coastal defenses and needed to be eliminated immediately. The German commanders understood that Pointe du Hoc represented a gap in their defensive line.
If the Americans held it, if they were reinforced, the entire western sector of the Normandy defenses could collapse. The first counterattack involved approximately 150 German infantry. They moved in squad-sized elements through the hedgerows, using the terrain for cover, working their way toward the ranger perimeter.
The Germans had fought in Russia. They knew how to conduct infantry assaults. They used fire and maneuver, with some squads providing suppressing fire while others advanced. But they ran into a problem. The rangers weren’t regular infantry. These were men trained in assault tactics, which meant they understood defensive tactics just as well.Every German squad that tried to advance ran into pre-sighted fields of fire.
The Rangers had positioned their machine guns to create interlocking zones, where no German could move without being exposed to fire from multiple positions. Sergeant Leonard Lamel, the same Ranger who had destroyed the guns in the orchard, was now commanding a section of the defensive perimeter. He had positioned his men in shell craters with excellent sight lines toward the likely German approach routes.
When the first German squad tried to work through a hedgerow about 100 yards from the perimeter, Lommel waited until they were committed, exposed in a gap, then signaled his men to open fire. The German squad was decimated in seconds. The survivors fell back, dragging their wounded. Lommel’s men didn’t waste ammunition celebrating.
They reloaded, redistributed their remaining ammunition, and waited for the next attack. The second German assault came about two hours later, this time from a different direction. The Germans had learned from their first attempt. They brought up mortars and began shelling the ranger positions before the infantry advanced.
The mortar fire was effective. Shell craters that had provided protection suddenly became death traps as German mortar rounds landed inside them. Rangers scrambled out of the craters and found new positions. Some were hit by shrapnel, others were buried by near-misses. But the defensive line held.
When the German infantry advanced behind the mortar barrage, they again ran into precisely aimed rifle and machine gun fire from Rangers who refused to be suppressed. Captain Otto Skutches, the German company commander leading these attacks, later reported that he had never encountered such stubborn resistance from such a small force.
His men would advance, take casualties, fall back, regroup, and attack again. Each time, the American fire seemed just as intense, just as accurate. He couldn’t understand how so few soldiers could generate so much firepower. What Scutches didn’t realize was that the Rangers were using every trick they knew to make their force seem larger.
They moved positions between attacks, making it appear that they had more machine guns than they actually did. They coordinated their fire, with all weapons in a sector firing simultaneously for maximum effect, then going silent to preserve ammunition. They had rangers calling out firing commands in loud voices, creating the impression of larger units maneuvering.
It was psychological warfare combined with tactical excellence. The German assault tactics evolved throughout the day. By the third attack, they were using squad infiltration techniques, trying to work small groups of soldiers into the ranger perimeter without triggering the concentrated defensive fire that had stopped previous attacks.
This nearly worked. A German squad managed to get within 20 yards of a ranger position before being detected. The close-range firefight was vicious. Grenades, rifle fire at distances measured in feet, hand-to-hand combat with knives and entrenching tools. The Germans were tough fighters, but the rangers had trained for this specific scenario.
They cleared the infiltrators in brutal close combat, then reinforced the threatened sector before the next German squad could exploit the gap. Rudder was everywhere, moving from position to position, encouraging his men, directing fire, treating wounded, leading, always leading. He was wounded twice during the first day, minor injuries that he ignored.
When a ranger fell, Rudder would grab the man’s weapon and ammunition and redistribute them to whoever needed them most. When a position was threatened, Rudder was there, fighting alongside his men. This wasn’t distant command from a bunker. This was leadership in the most direct, visceral sense. The men could see Rudder. They could hear him. They knew he was sharing every risk, every hardship, every moment of terror.
His steel helmet had a distinctive dent from a near miss, his uniform was torn and covered in dirt and blood, but his presence never wavered. When things looked darkest, when ammunition was running critically low, when the wounded were crying out for help that wasn’t coming.
Rudder was there, calm and confident, making his men believe they could hold out just a little longer. As night fell on June 6th, the situation became critical. The rangers had been fighting for nearly 18 hours. They were running out of ammunition. Medical supplies were almost gone. The wounded were being treated in shell craters with whatever supplies could be scrounged.
Food was non-existent. Water was scarce. And the Germans were tightening the noose, infiltrating closer to the perimeter under cover of darkness. The Rangers adapted. They scavenged German weapons and ammunition from the dead. They set up trip wires with grenades as early warning systems.They established passwords and counter signs to identify each other in the dark.
They fought off probing attacks throughout the night. Small groups of Germans testing the perimeter, looking for weak points. The rangers didn’t sleep. They couldn’t afford to sleep. One moment of inattention and the Germans would overrun the position. June 7th. The second day. The sun rose on a scene of devastation.
The top of Pointe du Hoc looked like the surface of the moon. Craters everywhere, bodies, debris, smoke. The rangers were filthy, exhausted, running on fumes. But they were still there, still fighting. And the Germans came at them again, harder this time. Multiple attacks from different directions, trying to overwhelm the perimeter through sheer numbers.
The Rangers fought with a desperation born of the knowledge that there was no retreat. The cliff behind them meant they couldn’t fall back. This was their ground. They would hold it or die on it. Around mid-morning on the 7th, the Rangers heard the most beautiful sound in the world. American voices.
English. A relief column from Omaha Beach had finally fought its way through the German defenses and reached Pointe du Hoc. Tanks. Infantry. Am ammunition, medical supplies. The siege was broken. Rudder’s rangers had held. The final count was devastating. Of the 225 rangers who climbed the cliffs on June 6th, only 90 were still capable of fighting by the time relief arrived.
77 Rangers killed, dozens more wounded. A casualty rate of over 60%, but they had accomplished their mission. The guns were destroyed, the coastal highway was cut, the position was held, and because of that, thousands of Allied soldiers made it off Utah Beach alive. The invasion succeeded.
What makes Rudder’s leadership at Pointe du Hoc so remarkable isn’t just the daring nature of the assault. Daring missions happen all the time in war. What makes it remarkable is how Rudder adapted when everything went wrong. The landing was late. The guns weren’t where they were supposed to be. The follow-on forces didn’t arrive. Communications failed. Every element of the plan fell apart. And Rudder simply adjusted. He trusted his training. He trusted his men.
He trusted his own judgment. When Lamel and Kuhn found those guns in the orchard, they didn’t need detailed orders from Rudder. They knew what to do because Rudder had trained them to think, to adapt, to accomplish the mission regardless of circumstances. to adapt, to accomplish the mission regardless of circumstances.
This is the difference between leadership and command. Command is telling people what to do. Leadership is creating conditions where people know what to do even when you’re not there to tell them. Rudder created those conditions through training, through trust, and through example. His rangers watched him climb that cliff in the first wave.
They saw him fight alongside them. They saw him wounded and refusing treatment. They saw him, hour after hour, moving through the defensive perimeter, calm under fire, making decisions, solving problems, leading. And they responded by fighting beyond the limits of what most people thought possible. There’s a mathematical reality to small unit combat that Rudder understood intuitively.
In a defensive position, the advantage goes to the defenders, but only up to a point. If the attackers have overwhelming numbers and unlimited time, they will eventually break through. The Rangers didn’t have overwhelming numbers. They had roughly 200 men against German forces that numbered in the thousands once reinforcements arrived. But they had three critical advantages. First, the terrain.
The cratered surface of Pointe du Hoc created natural defensive positions. Shell holes became fortified bunkers. Second, the training. The Rangers were the best assault troops in the American Army, and assault skills translate directly to defensive fighting. Third, and most importantly, they had leadership that maximized every advantage and minimized every disadvantage.
Rudder’s tactical decisions during the defense show the mind of a natural commander. He didn’t try to hold everywhere equally. He identified the most likely avenues of German attack and concentrated his strength there. He used his limited ammunition wisely, training his men to hold fire until targets were close. He created a flexible defence where Rangers could shift positions to reinforce threatened sectors.
He established clear command and control, with officers and NCOs who knew their responsibilities and could make decisions independently, and he maintained morale through personal example and through the knowledge that help was coming. Even when the situation looked hopeless, Rudder never let his men believe they were abandoned.
Let’s talk about the psychological aspect of what Rudder’s rangers endured. Imagine you’re a 20-year-old kid from Ohio.You’ve just climbed a 100-foot cliff while people shot at you. You’ve fought your way across the top of that cliff. You’ve discovered that the primary objective doesn’t exist where it’s supposed to.
You’re isolated, surrounded, running out of ammunition. The wounded are screaming. Friends are dead. You haven’t eaten in 24 hours. You haven’t slept. Every instinct in your body is screaming at you to find a way out, to surrender, to give up. And you look around and you see your commander, this football coach from Texas, calmly walking through enemy fire like he’s strolling across a practice field.
And you think, if Coach Rudder says we’re holding this position, then we’re holding this position. That’s the power of leadership. That’s what separates a collection of scared individuals from a cohesive unit, capable of incredible things. The aftermath of Pointe du Hoc cemented Rudder’s reputation.
He was promoted to full colonel, then to brigadier general. He went on to command the 109th Infantry Regiment in the Hürgen Forest, one of the bloodiest campaigns of the European theatre. After the war, he returned to Texas and became president of Texas A&M University, transforming it from a small military college into a major research institution. He served as Texas Land Commissioner.
He lived until 1970, long enough to see Pointe du Hoc become a symbol of American courage and sacrifice. But he never talked much about the war. When people asked him about the cliff assault, about the defense, about the leadership that saved his men, he would deflect. The Rangers did it. I just tried to stay out of their way. Classic Rudder. Humble to the end.
But the Rangers knew better. Every survivor of Pointe du Hoc would tell you the same thing. Without rudder, they don’t make it up that cliff. Without rudder, they don’t adapt when the guns are missing. Without rudder, they don’t hold the position for two days against overwhelming force. Leadership matters. In sports, it’s the difference between winning and losing seasons.
In war, it’s the difference between life and death. Rudder had it. That indefinable quality that makes men follow you into situations where death is not just possible but probable. The military studied Pointe du Hoc for decades afterward. What lessons could be drawn? What tactical principles could be extracted? The cliff assault became a case study in special operations.
The adaptation, when the mission parameters changed, became a template for flexible planning. The defensive stand became an example of how to maximize force effectiveness against superior numbers. But the most important lesson, the one that can’t really be taught in a classroom, is the lesson about leadership.
You can plan the perfect mission, train the perfect soldiers, provide the perfect equipment, and it all means nothing if the person leading those soldiers doesn’t have the moral courage and tactical flexibility to make the right decisions under extreme pressure. Rudder made those decisions. When the landing was late, he didn’t turn back.
When the guns were missing, he didn’t freeze. When the reinforcements didn’t arrive, he didn’t surrender. At every decision point, Rudder chose the harder path, the path that required more courage, more sacrifice, more risk. And his men followed him because they knew, deep in their bones, that Rudder would never ask them to do something he wouldn’t do himself.
Think about what June 6th, 1944 looked like from Rudder’s perspective. He’s in a landing craft, racing toward a cliff he’s been told is probably a death sentence. He knows the statistics. 90% casualties. He knows his wife and children might grow up without him. He knows that if this mission fails, if those guns aren’t destroyed, thousands of American soldiers will die on the beaches. The weight of that responsibility would crush most people.
And Rudder just focused on the next thing. Get to the cliff. Climb the cliff. Find the guns. Destroy the guns. Hold the position. Break the mission down into achievable objectives and accomplish them one at a time. Don’t think about the big picture. Don’t think about the odds. Think about the next handhold, the next crater, the next German position to clear.
There’s a photograph of Rudder taken shortly after the relief column arrived at Pointe du Hoc. He’s sitting on the ground, back against a bunker wall, steel helmet pushed back on his head, looking at the camera with an expression of utter exhaustion. You can see it in his eyes. The cost of 48 hours of constant combat. The burden of command.
The weight of knowing that every decision he made meant life or death for the men under his command. But there’s something else in that photograph too. Pride. Satisfaction. The knowledge that they did it. Against impossible odds. Against military logic. Against common sense.They climbed that cliff, found those guns, destroyed them, and held the position.
They accomplished the mission. And Rudder brought as many of them home as humanly possible. The German perspective on Pointe du Hoc is instructive. After the war, when Allied intelligence officers interviewed German commanders who had been responsible for the Normandy defences, they asked about Pointe du Hoc.
What happened? Why couldn’t they dislodge such a small force? The German officers were candid. They had the numbers. They had the position. They had the ammunition. What they didn’t have was the will to keep attacking into that meat grinder. The Rangers fought with a ferocity that shocked them. Every attack was met with precise, devastating fire.
Every German soldier who got close to the ranger perimeter died or was wounded. The Germans realized quickly that taking Pointe du Hoc would cost more casualties than they could afford, especially with the larger battle for Normandy raging all around them. So they contained the Rangers, tried to starve them out, and waited for the inevitable American relief column.
They didn’t know they were facing a force running on empty. They just knew that trying to overrun Rudder’s position was suicide. This is another aspect of leadership that doesn’t get enough attention. Force multiplication. Rudder’s rangers were outnumbered probably 10 to 1 by the time German reinforcements arrived, but through superior tactics, superior positioning and superior motivation, they fought like a force three times their actual size.
The Germans didn’t know there were only 90 Rangers still capable of fighting on June 7th. They thought they were facing a much larger force based on the volume and accuracy of fire coming from the perimeter. That’s what training and leadership can do. Make every soldier count for three or four enemy soldiers.
The long-term impact of Pointe du Hoc extends far beyond D-Day. The Rangers who survived went on to fight through France, into Germany, to the end of the war. Many of them became officers, carrying Rudder’s leadership lessons to other units. The esprit de corps that Rudder built in the 2nd Ranger Battalion became legendary in the army.
When the Rangers were reactivated as a permanent special operations force in the 1970s and 80s, Pointe du Hoc was held up as the standard. This is what Rangers do. This is the tradition. Climb the impossible cliff. Accomplish the impossible mission. Never quit. Never surrender. Rangers lead the way. That motto comes directly from the legacy of Rudder and his men at Pointe du Hoc.
Modern military theorists look at Pointe du Hoc and see a perfect case study in mission-type tactics. The German term is Auftragstaktik, the idea that you give subordinates a mission objective and let them figure out how to accomplish it, rather than micromanaging every detail. Rudder practiced Auftragstaktik without knowing the German term for it.
He told Lommel and Kuhn, find those guns and destroy them, and then trusted them to do it. He didn’t give them detailed instructions on route selection, on tactical approach, on exactly which thermite grenades to use. He trusted their training and their judgment.
And they rewarded that trust by accomplishing one of the most important small unit actions of D-Day. Compare that to military operations where commanders try to control every detail from headquarters, where subordinates are afraid to make decisions without explicit approval. Where the chain of command becomes a bottleneck that slows everything down. Those operations succeed or fail based on whether the plan survives contact with the enemy.
Spoiler alert. The plan never survives contact with the enemy. Rudder understood this. He trained his men to think, to adapt, to take initiative. And when the plan fell apart, when the mission parameters changed, his rangers kept fighting because they didn’t need Rudder standing over them giving orders for every decision.
need rudder standing over them giving orders for every decision. The defense of Pointe du Hoc also illustrates the importance of combined arms coordination, even at the small unit level. The Rangers weren’t just infantry, they had demolitions experts, medics, communications specialists, machine gunners.
Each Ranger had a specialty, but each Ranger was also cross-trained in other skills. When the demolitions experts found the guns, they knew how to destroy them. When the medics were overwhelmed with casualties, infantry Rangers helped treat the wounded. When the machine guns ran low on ammunition, everyone scrounged German weapons and figured out how to use them.
This flexibility, this ability to perform outside your primary specialty, is what keeps small units effective when casualties mount and the situation deteriorates. Rudder fostered this flexibility during training. He didn’t want specialists who could only do one job.He wanted soldiers who could do any job that needed doing. So the Rangers trained on every weapon system.
They learned basic first aid. They practiced demolitions. They studied tactics. By the time they hit Pointe du Hoc, every Ranger was a multi-tool, capable of stepping into whatever role the mission required. This is why the unit remained cohesive and effective even as casualties mounted. There were no irreplaceable specialists. Everyone could do everyone else’s job if necessary.
Let’s examine the specific tactical decisions Rudder made during the defence that exemplifies smart small unit leadership. First, the decision to send out patrols even while under siege. Rudder didn’t just hunker down and wait for attacks. He sent small teams outside the perimeter to gather intelligence, to identify German positions, to capture prisoners for interrogation.
This gave him advance warning of attacks and allowed him to position his limited forces more effectively. Second, the decision to concentrate forces at night, when the Germans were most likely to infiltrate. Rudder pulled in the perimeter after dark, creating a tighter defensive line that was easier to monitor and defend.
Third, the decision to use captured German ammunition and weapons. Many commanders would have been hesitant to use enemy equipment, worried about friendly fire incidents or mechanical failures. Rudder recognized that ammunition was ammunition and told his Rangers to use whatever worked. Fourth, the decision to maintain an offensive mindset even while defending.

The Rangers conducted counter-attacks when German forces got too close, throwing them off balance and disrupting their assault preparations. Each of these decisions required judgment and courage. Each carried risk. But each also multiplied the effectiveness of Rudder’s small force. This is tactical brilliance.
effectiveness of Rudder’s small force. This is tactical brilliance. Not the brilliance of Napoleonic battlefield maneuvers with thousands of troops, but the brilliance of making the right call with limited information, limited resources, and unlimited pressure. The human cost of Pointe du Hoc deserves emphasis. 77 rangers killed, many more wounded.
These weren’t statistics. These were men with names, with families, with futures that were cut short or forever altered. 1st Lieutenant Robert Arman, killed on the cliff. Technical Sergeant William Courtney, killed defending the perimeter. Sergeant Oliver Reed, mortally wounded on D-Day. The list goes on.
Every name represents a father, brother, son who didn’t come home. Rudder carried those names with him for the rest of his life. He attended memorial services. He wrote letters to families. He never forgot the price his rangers paid for accomplishing the mission. But here’s what makes the story of Pointe du Hoc truly remarkable.
Given the choice, knowing the outcome, knowing the casualties, every surviving ranger said they would do it again. They didn’t regret the mission. They didn’t blame Rudder for the losses. They were proud. Proud of what they accomplished. Proud of standing together when it mattered most. Proud of being Rangers. That’s the legacy of good leadership.
Not that men follow you blindly into danger, but that they understand why the mission matters and they choose to accept the risk because the cause is worth it. Pointe du Hoc today is a memorial. The French government gave the land to the United States in perpetuity, a gift from the French people to honor the Americans who fought there. The craters are still visible. The concrete bunkers still stand. The cliff face looks exactly as it did on June 6th, 1944.
Visitors walk the ground where Rudder’s Rangers fought, and they try to imagine what it must have been like. To climb that cliff. To fight for 48 hours without sleep, without food, without hope of reinforcement. To watch your friends die and keep fighting anyway. Most people can’t imagine it.
The gap between modern comfortable life and the reality of combat is too vast. But the lesson of Pointe du Hoc isn’t just about combat. It’s about leadership under pressure. It’s about adapting when plans fail. It’s about trusting the people around you to do their jobs. It’s about leading from the front. It’s about making hard decisions quickly with incomplete information.
These lessons apply anywhere, in business, in education, in any field where people need to work together to accomplish difficult objectives. Rudder never claimed to be a brilliant tactician. He never wrote books about military theory. He never developed grand strategies. He was a football coach, who found himself commanding Rangers in the biggest operation of World War II.
And he succeeded because he understood people. He understood motivation. He understood that leadership isn’t about having all the answers. It’s about creating an environment where the people around you can betheir best selves, can perform at levels they didn’t know they were capable of. The climb up Pointe du Hoc took 40 minutes. The defense lasted 48 hours.
But the impact of what Rudder and his rangers accomplished echoes through military history to this day. Every special operations force in the world studies Pointe du Hoc. Every leadership course uses it as an example. The US Army Ranger School, which trains thousands of soldiers every year in small unit leadership, begins with the legacy of Rudder’s Rangers.
Rangers lead the way isn’t just a motto. It’s a direct connection to June 6th 1944 and 225 men who climbed into hell because their commander asked them to and they trusted him enough to follow. James Earl Rudder died in 1970 at the age of 59. Heart attack. He was still working, still serving, still leading.
His funeral was attended by hundreds of former rangers, men who had climbed the cliff with him, men who had fought beside him, men whose lives he had saved through his leadership. They came to say goodbye to Coach Rudder. The man who taught them that impossible is just a word, that leadership means sharing every risk, that you never ask your men to do something you won’t do yourself.
There’s a quote attributed to Rudder, though the exact source is disputed. Someone asked him how he felt about being called a hero. He supposedly said, I’m not a hero, I just had the privilege of serving with heroes. That’s leadership, deflecting credit to the people who did the work. Recognizing that your job as a leader isn’t to be the star, but to make stars of everyone around you.
Think about what Rudder accomplished with essentially no formal military training before the war. He wasn’t a West Point graduate. He hadn’t served in World War I. He was a civilian who happened to be in the army reserve when the war started. Everything he knew about leadership he learned coaching football and teaching high school students.
And yet, he out-commanded career military officers. He out-fought German defenders who had been preparing Normandy’s defences for years. He succeeded where military planners had given him a 30% chance of survival. This should give us all hope. Leadership isn’t something you’re born with. It’s something you develop. It’s skills you learn. It’s principles you internalize.
Rudder learned those skills on football fields. He learned those principles teaching kids. And when he needed them, when the stakes were life and death, those skills and principles worked. They worked because leadership is universal. The specifics change. Football versus combat. Classroom versus battlefield. But the fundamentals remain constant.
Care about your people, lead by example, make hard decisions, trust your subordinates, adapt to changing circumstances, accomplish the mission. The final word on Pointe du Hoc comes from General Omar Bradley, the overall American ground commander for the Normandy invasion. Years after the war, he was asked about the most important actions of D-Day.
He mentioned the landings at Omaha Beach, he mentioned the airborne operations, and then he mentioned Rudder’s Rangers at Pointe du Hoc. What those men accomplished, with the resources they had, against the odds they faced, represents the finest small unit action of the entire war. That’s the verdict of the commanding general, not hyperbole, not exaggeration, professional military judgement from the man who had the best overview of all D-Day operations.
Bradley went on to say that if Pointe du Hoc had failed, if the Germans had kept those guns operational, the casualties on Utah Beach might have been catastrophic. The entire right flank of the invasion could have collapsed. The Rangers didn’t just accomplish their mission, they made the invasion possible.
Two hundred and twenty-five men, one hundred feet of cliff, forty-eight hours of hell, and they changed history. This is what History USA is all about, finding those moments where ordinary Americans did extraordinary things, where leadership mattered, where courage made the difference, where tactical brilliance and personal sacrifice combined to achieve objectives that seemed impossible.
James Earl Rudder and his rangers at Pointe du Hoc represent the best of American military tradition, not because they were superhuman, but because they were very human, scared, exhausted, facing impossible odds, and they kept climbing anyway. If you found this story compelling, if you want to learn more about the forgotten heroes who shaped America’s greatest victories, make sure to subscribe to History USA.
Hit that notification bell so you never miss a new story. And let us know in the comments what other battles or commanders you’d like us to cover. American history is full of moments like Pointe du Hoc. Moments where individual leadership and collective courage change the course of events. We’re here to tell those stories.To honor those sacrifices.
To remember that freedom isn’t free and that every generation has its rudders, its rangers, its heroes who step up when called. The cliffs of Pointe du Hoc still stand, scarred by bombs and bullets, a permanent memorial to what happened there. The ropes are long gone. The rangers have mostly passed away.
But the story endures. The lesson endures. When you’re facing your own impossible cliff, whatever that cliff might be, remember Rudder’s Rangers. Remember that impossible is just a word. Remember that leadership means going first. Remember that the mission doesn’t end when the plan fails. It ends when you accomplish the objective or die trying.
James Earl Rudder. The football coach who became a general. The man who led from the front. The commander who trusted his men and earned their trust in return. The Ranger who showed us all what American leadership looks like when everything is on the line. This has been HistoryUSA. Thanks for watching.