81 years ago today, the man who would change A&M the most led an assault for the ages

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Understanding the perils and vital importance of the landing beaches along the coast of Normandy, Supreme Allied Commander General Dwight D. Eisenhower and his staff planning Operation OVERLORD assigned the Rangers of the 2d and 5th Ranger Battalions, under the direction of Lieutenant Colonel James E. Rudder and organized into the Provisional Ranger Group, the mission of destroying the enemy positions on the cliff top.

Unbeknownst to Allied planners, the Germans failed to believe that U.S. military command would consider the cliff top accessible by sea. The Americans, however, considered it an accessible assault point and reasoned that with a well-trained force, soldiers could land on the narrow beaches below at low tide and ascend the cliffs with the assistance of ropes and ladders. When Lieutenant General Omar N. Bradley told Rudder of the assignment, the Ranger officer could not believe what he had heard, but he understood the importance of the mission at hand.

In his memoir, A Soldier’s Story, Bradley wrote, “No soldier in my command has ever been wished a more difficult task than that which befell the thirty-four-year-old Commander of this Provisional Ranger Force.” An intelligence officer on the staff of Rear Admiral John L. Hall, the commander of naval forces supporting the landings at Omaha, claimed that the mission could not be accomplished by the Rangers, adding that, “Three old women with brooms could keep the Rangers from climbing that cliff.”

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