Hess, Bill. "Ranger got sneak peek of what Allies faced on D-Day" Huachuca Herald, June 10 2001
Ranger got sneak peek of what Allies faced on D-Day
THIS IS the third story in the Herald/Review's "Stories of Freedom's Fight" series. Look for a story every Sunday through Veterans Day.
BY BILL HESS
HERALD/REVIEW
Ranger.
Normandy.
D-Day.
Put the three together and you have a one-day personal history of Harry Wilder.
The landing on Omaha Beach on June 6, 1941, was the culmination of months of intense training for what German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel would call "the longest day." But Wilder had landed in France before. He "visited" a few times before D-Day to find ways to eliminate Hitler's Festung Europa - Fortress Europe.
Because of his good night vision, Wilder and some other Americans went on reconnaissance missions with British commandos to gather information about German defenses in Normandy, along what was called the Atlantic Wall. Amid the combination of gun emplacements, trenches for infantry and mine fields, they sought chinks in the German defense. The reconnaissance missions found those weak links, along with the Nazi's strong points.The missions "were very hush, hush," he said.
During one mission, Wilder decided he wanted a souvenir, so he took the name plate off of one of the German coastal guns.
The missions were short up - to four hours - and dangerous. There was a constant concern about being seen during the late night and early morning reconnaissance.
One time a group Wilder was with found themselves under the noses of German sentries. "I was right underneath them, all they had to do was look down."
The information gathered by the different reconnaissance missions helped the Normandy invasion planners.
[Continuing the story:] RANGER: Wilder scaled cliffs on Omaha Beach, where American forces faced battle-ready Nazis
The planners, especially the British, knew the difficulties involved in defending a beachhead from the Germans after having suffered at Dunkirk in France in 1940. Then in the early days of the war, an overpowering German attack force had pushed soldiers from England, France and Belgium into a small corner in France. Nearly 340,000 of the Allied soldiers eventually were taken off the Dunkirk beaches at the [loss] of 200 ships. They left behind 2,000 guns, untold thousands of vehicles and nearly 700,000 tons of fuel, ammunition and other supplies when the rescue was ended on June 4, 1940 - the same day originally chosen for forces to return to France four years later.
While Wilder was a person who helped gather information, he said he was just one of the grunts - a technical sergeant in the 2nd Ranger Battalion.
He [re]calls his recruitment to become a Ranger was a little strange. "A big captain with a basketball" looked for some soldiers to become Rangers, Wilder remembered of a day in the states in 1942.
He and the other potential Rangers were in full combat gear when the captain threw the basketball at them individually and told them to dribble the ball down to a tree, go around it and come back.
Those who satisfied the dribble requirement were chosen to display more soldierly skills, such as firing a rifle.
"I shot very well for him," Wilder said.
Then began real Ranger training, which eventually led Wilder to England with the 2nd Ranger Battalion.
It was a big step for Wilder, who enlisted in the National Guard in 1939 and transferred to the regular Army before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
There was a lot of hard training in England, even more difficult than what he and others experienced in the United States, to prepare the battalion for D-Day.
With the build up of material to support the Allied invasion of the European mainland, the island nation of Great Britain became a floating arsenal.
More than 2 million tons of war items, 50,000 vehicles ranging from tanks to trucks, and more than 160 newly-constructed airfields were scattered throughout Great Britain for that fateful day - June 6, 1944.
Wilder was just one of the estimated 1.7 million American military men and women on the island - from those flying combat missions to those training for the invasion.
Members of the 2nd Ranger Battalion had a couple of cliff areas they were to take on D-Day. Wilder was assigned to Pointe de la Percée, which was to be secured to protect the right flank of the American landings on Omaha Beach.
"We were to take the high ground."
Easier said then done, it turned out.
The initial invasion set for June 4 was canceled by weather and the landing forces, already at [sic] in the English Channel, "did a 180." Less than a day later the forces were in the English Channel heading once again for Normandy.
Wilder said the Germans were not as unprepared as people today think. While it is true most of the German high command thought the main invasion would come at Calais area, where the channel was the narrowest.
German defenses at Omaha Beach responded quickly once the landings began, he said.
"They were ready for us."
He was on one of the more than 2,700 ships - from battleships to transports - along with more than 2,500 landing craft that brought American, British, Canadian, Free French and other Allied forces across the channel as planes filled the sky over the invasion force. One of the ships was the USS Nevada, battered when the Japanese at-tacked Pearl Harbor in Hawaii on Dec. 7, 1941. Repaired, the modernized battleship lobbed shells at the German defenses in Normandy as part of the largest armada the world has ever known.
More than 20,000 American and British paratroopers, as well as glider troops, were dropped into Normandy the night before the D-Day invasion to cut off routes Germans could use to rush to the beaches.
During Operation Overlord, as the Allied invasion was called, the Americans landed at Omaha and Utah beaches, while British and other forces went ashore at Sword, Juno and Gold beaches east of the U.S. positions.
There were periods of confusion, especially since some of the landings were off mark, Wilder said. Looking back, he said it wasn't that unusual because of the large force coming ashore in Normandy.
By time the day ended 155,000 Allied troops were ashore at the various beachheads in Normandy.
The landing at Omaha Beach was the bloodiest, with more than 2,500 of the 34,000 who came ashore there listed as casualties.
The situation was so bad that Gen. Omar Bradley briefly considered evacuating the Americans on Omaha Beach.
On the other hand, the landings at Utah suffered less than 200 causalities out of the 34,000 who landed there.
The Allied casualties for D-Day on the beaches, behind the lines where the paratroopers and glider forces landed and on some ships that were hit in the English Channel totaled more than 9,000.
Wilder's group landed about a mile from where they were suppose[d] to be, which meant going a longer distance to scale the cliffs at their objective.
Some of the invading force's casualties came from the friendly fire of ships off shore.
One of those instances happened near the cliff of his group's objective.
His best buddy - Walter Glendon - was killed, and as Wilder talked about picking up his friend's Browning Automatic Rifle, his eyes reddened as tears began to form.
As he began to climb the cliff, a short round from one of the ships hit near him, knocking his helmet off, Wilder said. Already slightly wounded from some shrapnel that had penetrated the landing craft he came ashore on, the dazed soldier continue[d] with climbing the cliff. It was later determined he had suffered a concussion.
"There was a lot of hell going on around us," he said.
But the objective was taken.
His wounds led to him being returned to England for medical treatment - it would be the first of three evacuations from France to England for medical treatment. He was to receive seven Purple Heart Medals during the European campaign.
His combat experience also led to his being awarded a Silver Star, a Bronze Star Medal with "V" device for valor, a "regular" Bronze Star Medal, the Combat Infrantryman's Badge and a French Croix de Guerre. When he received the French medal, he said " a little general pinned it on and kissed both of my cheeks."
He received a battlefield commission in March 1945. By the [sic] then the Germans were on the ropes and surrendered a couple of months later.
He had hoped he would fly back, but he and a number of other soldiers were given flu shots that caused many of them to become extremely ill.
That meant he missed out on the plane ride and had to spen[d] a longer time on a ship crossing the Atlantic once he became well.
One other thing he missed was the parade down Fifth Avenue in New York City, Wilder said, who smiled and said "I'm glad."
Looking back on those days of World War II, Wilder said all he and other Americans did was serve not only the United States, but others in fighting one of the most tyrannical governments the world has ever seen.
"Defeating Nazi Germany had to be done, and we did it."
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Harry Wilder is my maternal grandfather - Papa Harry, to us. I remember the house he and my Grandma Peg made their home in Sierra Vista, Arizona. I remember taking decorative rocks from their yard with my cousin, Jenna, and painting on them and then trying to sell them back to Papa. He pointed out how ridiculous that was to us, and I learned a little lesson in business sense. I used to love pulling myself onto the bar stool at the bar he built himself, and admiring how he crafted virgin Shirley Temples for me. And when I was around 18, he stopped making them virgin.
Reading this article for the first time in 2025 has been an astonishing and profoundly proud time for me. I am so honored to be able to share this story which I thought was lost with his passing on Feb 20, 2010.
One point left out of his profile that is very important to our family is that Papa Harry and Grandma Peg had three children: my Mom, Sandra, my Aunt Joy and my Uncle Dave. Aunt Joy was the mother of my cousin Jenna, who was born just a couple months before me. Thus, the sisters (my Mom and Aunt Joy), and a friend of my Mom's, were all pregnant at the same time. Aunt Joy passed away when Jenna and I were very young, around 5 years old. She is buried at the church my Grandma and Papa attended in Sierra Vista.
After World War II, Papa Harry went on to serve our nation in two more wars: the Korean War, during
which my Mom was born, in Yukusuka, Japan, and then onto the Vietnam
War. He was honored with a 21 gun salute at his funeral. Papa Harry and Grandma Peg are buried at the Southern Arizona Veterans' Memorial Cemetery. They were married for 63 years.
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