Noel Mehlo - D-Day General: How Dutch Cota Saved Omaha Beach on June 6, 1944

General Cotas party sought cover behind the nearest tank as the group moved across the beach under the cover of the tank that had engaged German antitank weapons to its near right front. The Duplex Drive amphibious tanks of Company C, 743d Tank Battalion, were the first real cover available. The tanks landed at H6, and there were an estimated eighteen tanks standing just above and advancing along with the rising tide. They all faced the bluffs and were spaced at intervals of approximately seventy to one hundred yards. This position placed them about twenty-five feet from the seawall, from which position each of them fired at enemy positions immediately in front of each tank. Lieutenant Shea noticed that two tanks were burning to the west near the Vierville exit. One, identified as Tank C-5, was noticeably damaged from several rounds of direct 88-mm fire from the German WN 72 casemate. 1st Lieutenant Alfred H. Williams Jr., Company C, 743d Tank Battalion, and his crew managed to escape that destruction. General Cota and his men screened themselves behind a tank that was firing to its right front instead of its previously assigned target to the west: the enemy artillery positions at Pointe et Raz de la Perce (WN 74). These German strong-points were armed with two 75-mm artillery pieces situated high on the bluffs and were able to fire down the beach well beyond Dog Red. The overall situation at this time is detailed in the War Department map shown in .

The 5th Ranger Infantry Battalion (RIB), under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Max Schneider, had the primary mission of landing at Pointe du Hoc as a follow-up force to Lieutenant Colonel James Earl Rudder and his three companies of 2d Ranger Infantry Battalion engaged there. After not receiving communications to land there, Schneider made his way to their secondary landing objective at Dog Green. As the battalion approached, the men witnessed the carnage that befell Companies A and B and the remnants of the 29th Infantry. Remaining calm and drawing on his experience as a former Darbys Ranger who fought in the Mediterranean, Schneider swung his flotilla of two waves of LCAs (Landing Craft, Assault) to the east and headed in at the breakwaters where Cota and his men were. The first wave of Rangers touched down just ahead of LCI(L) 91 and consisted of Companies B, A, E, and half of HQ, with Company B ordered to the right and the others to the left. Captain John C. Raaen Jr., CO, HQ Company, landed in the second wave along with Companies D, F, and C. Major Richard P. Sullivan, executive officer (XO), was aboard the LCA with Raaen. Private First Class Randall Ching was a member of 2d Platoon, Company B, 5th Ranger Infantry Battalion, and was in one of the westernmost bays formed by the breakwaters. He was the only Chinese American Ranger during World War II. He was born in the States, but during the Great Depression, his family emigrated back to China. As a result, he was conscripted into the Chinese army and fought the Japanese in the late 1930s before returning to the States at the outset of U.S. involvement in the war, and he volunteered as a Ranger.

I got there by that tank, and I had to go around it because the tide had come in by that time, and I got right behind the tank. One enemy artillery round hit out in the water. I thought to myself: Arden, get out of here, they are after this tank. I couldnt move, I was loaded so heavy, I couldnt move very fast. The next round came in right close to the tank. It didnt hurt the tank. But I got my first Purple Heart right there. I still got part of that artillery shell in my right wrist and hand. I wasnt hurt too bad. I had seen an American panic, before, on the way in. And I started, I began to feel, and I thought, For Gods sakes Arden, youre not hurt bad. Keep Going. So I did. Our Aid-man was a hero that day. Thats all we had. We didnt have any first aid, uh, hospital, or anything like that. Now, I think there was hospital ships out there, but they couldnt get in to get us off the beach, and so, a lot of the guys just laid there. I was bleeding a little bit, but I could still walk, I could still go, I carried my load. I kept going.... We moved to the west down the beach to the sector General Cota landed in and was working. By the time I saw General Cota, a lot of us were hunkered down. We were waiting to see what was; we knew something was wrong, but we waited for somebody to