When you volunteer for rangers, what changed from your training as a regular army soldier . They specialize in many things bigger troops do not have to submit to. Different, aer specialized field, a specialized cope. N and you have to when did you Enter Service . Of 42. As in june was that in normandy . My first combat action. Yes. Why dont you tell me about from your training, tell me about your trip over to england and the preparation you made. I have to tell you that from my point of view, because i had anyink the troops advanced knowledge that dday would be our first combat. Then,e ready for combat but they were going to give specialized training, so the training we got after i entered generalizedwas ranger tactics and ranger training. Referring to any particular place we may have trained while we were there, i will explain a few. Tell me where the rangers. Rained dont go too fast. We were at camp forrest tennessee. We came from different parts of the bases, different parts of the United States army, those that volunteered. We gathered in tennessee there and organized. Thes invited to become First Sergeant and received a ,all from, i forget his name asked me if i would be interested in becoming a First Sergeant of the army Ranger Company. I became a First Sergeant on the very first day of the rangers in tennessee. Re that was 1943. I do remember the exact date. Explained to me the concept of ranger tactics. We have to be trained and know how to participate in all kinds of warfare. We were given all kinds of training. Any troop or any soldiers when you become part of the United States army. That covers many thousands of. Ifferent concepts i dont know which one you would be interested in discussing. Any and all would be very interesting. As far as preparation for , when did you learn what your mission was going to be . And what sort of training did you receive for that . I will answer that by telling you when i found out about it. ,t was my mothers birthday 1944. We climbed so many clips, so. Any mountains and what we might be confronted is with. It would be pure speculation. When you climbed as many cliffs as we have, 400, 500 feet in height, the day was only 100 feet, you start to think i dont know what they are training us for. I didnt begin to know where those cliffs were. How did you find out . We were in england. We have been training with commandos. There would be a conference, and we didnt know what it was going to be about. Even then, they didnt give us ourcomplete details of mission on june 6, 1944. Met we met and they didnt give us the date. Said we imagine theres going to be in your future. There were generalized statements because we were sworn to secrecy. Careful and bee careful when none of it leaks out. What i would say in fairness to ,nswer your original question the necessities are what they told us, nothing more. Yes a big invasion is going to take place. We left that meeting sworn to secrecy, and then kept in the training areas. No one can link the information, what little we had. To keep usgh interested and excited about it. Lets move on. Going from england to normandy. Talk about the last preparations you made on base. Me personally, what did i do . I was a busy fellow. I did what all fours all my concerndo was the man. All their needs met. We traveled across the English Channel on steamers. What else did you want to know about that . We loaded them precisely at that time. We were aboard the channel steamers the day before. Or maybe more than a day or two before. Waiting for what inevitably would become dday. Dday,y the day before the fifth of june, we started out that night, and in the course of the night we crossed ready in thehannel morning of june 6. We landed on the west side of point talk, the west of omaha beach where point talk was. It was just a tremendous cliff. Only about one third of that presumably and hopefully so they can run through it. Thatangers further west of , there are several miles of clips. Ours were around 100 behind, maybehas a narrow beach, 50 feet wide. We were on British Channel steamers. Unloaded at about two or 3 00 in the morning onto our lca, which were british lca, not american. Transported in dday operation by the british navy. Unfortunately they made a us aboutwhich delayed 40 minutes landing time, which is important when you have game plans such as we had that required accuracy in our planning. Landed at about 710. N that little ledge it was our mission to climb and destroy six 155 at pointr coastal guns talk, which was the heaviest firepower on the atlantic wall that hitlers had to rely on. This was the most dangerous mission. Been repeated by general omar bradley. General eisenhower and all the upper level of our leaders were becauseusly concerned there were very important, most necessary to get out of action as soon as possible. Repeat to you what historians say in the books. As our landing crafts were approaching the coast for the. Nitial invasion can i take a break here, because im forgetful. What was i talking about . As he approached the coast. Yes. We can load upon the lca to transport steamers at 4 00 in the morning. It took a few hours to get from that point to wherever you are going to land. In our case, we are about 40 minutes late because our british lost which heng was to land at, but that was corrected. And we did land. And we did climb the cliffs. We did that as our lca landed. The pushbuttons on our switchboard that set off these rockets. Those rockets would settle up their 150 feet. We would pulled on them down in the beach. The germans, had everything gone right, the germans would have been dead when we did this. Because we were late, they didnt know and invasion was coming. Getave them enough time to out there to welcome us, such as , as they dropped grenades on top of us, or shot at us. It became almost impossible to climb those ropes and get up there and find the guns. We got up there and fought our way through the germans to the gun positions. We were the only ones assigned to missions on the west flank. Companies of the second battalion landed on the others. Positions,ot to the they were supposed to be these howitzers. They werent there. Poleswere telephone sticking out of these placements. Missioned for this. Hrough aerial photographs information had been given to us , so we only knew what we saw to that point. We did not know what we later found out, that those guns had. Een removed before dday we could not find any guns on that point. T a. M. ,ay morning, by 8 30 ,y acting platoon sergeant ,econd platoon of d company after we had been through we had our sections and demandadblock that roadblock to keep the germans from getting up the road or down the road to help each other for whatever they would do. When they did that the sergeant and i went looking for the guns. We just happen to have that road that left the coast road. It looked like marks or something on the dirt road. The hedgerows in normandy are not like here in america where there are three or four of them at a time. These were giant, tanks couldnt get through them. The sergeant and i leapfrogged that is to say 50 feet overhead of, i could find evidence any guns, i would hold that position. I ran the other 50 feet, and we kept doing this, never knowing if we were going to run into a machine gun nest or something. As luck would have it, within the first couple hundred feet, and there this row were the guns. Morning, we had destroyed those guns so they and got backused to our roadblock. We fought for two days. We had heavy casualties, i think out of 65 men i had 15 men left. For those of us that did survive were just plain lucky, and we knew what we were doing, and we accomplished the mission by 8 30 in the morning of dday. As i said, was so important was the heaviest firepower along the atlantic that could have killed tens wholeusands of our invasion fleet, thousands of all their off the coast from where we were going to attack from. They were visible targets. Say our leaders tried to use battleships that were off and all the guns and all the planes and ships that had the same target get those guns, depended on getting those guns out, so this invasion better be successful. They missed their targets by three miles. There was no evidence on the ground when we came out and found those guns. No one had discovered them. Our side, anyway. We were fortunate, lucky, at the right place at the right time. We watched over each other. Position and destroyed the gun sites. We saw there were about 100 men. This is 8 00 in the morning. They are surprised, they never knew there was going to be an invasion to begin with, and certainly they never believed they would be foolish enough to climb hand over hand 100 foot of a 12leges 12 story like story skyscraper and get in there and destroy those guns. We took them by surprise and they still didnt know that we were so deeply in of them, we were two defense lines in, and they couldnt dream there were any american soldiers anywhere. That helped us a great deal. Believed we had done our job, found the guns, destroyed them. Thewe made our way back to roadblock and fought there for two days until we were relieved. We were down 15 men, the rest were casualties. Where did the bulk of the casualties occur . I would say for me and our , it started at the shore road. We didnt have any casualties to my recollection. I was the first one wounded when we landed . Over my right side or my right hip. They did not hit the joint or any important organ. I was the first one wounded, but it didnt disable me that i couldnt go on and do my duty. And doing what we did, being in the right place at the right out ofe put those position, saving thousands of lives. Tens of thousands of soldiers lives, american lives should, civilian lives lives, civilian lives. Thats why they were so , so the invasion could be a success. How did you destroy the gun sites . Climb the cliffs, we had to be as light as possible. We didnt carry a lot of armaments or bullets or hand grenades, that sort of thing. We carried one, which is a thermite reneged. It could just pour out of a can. Gears ofd go over the the mechanism or the yellow mechanism to raise the gun barrel. As it flowed out on top of the flat where the itjectiles go in, deep down cools off like a well a weld. You couldnt move it. And if i could get the bridge block firmed up you couldnt do that either. I never thought about it until this moment. How many fused the bridge block opening where they load the shells. All i know is the guns became a. M. Able by 8 30 were there germans resisting . There were about 180 of them. I only had 22 men to begin with. 10the end i only had about that could still fight on. Out, my guys were in the right place at the right time. Relieved to days with otheray american troops coming off the beaches of omaha. On dday we were the first to penetrate that far into german territory. After the guns were destroyed ,nd you say you went destroyed tell me about some of those actions, after your initial mission had been accomplished. Leonard after the destruction had been accomplished . Well, it made the germans very angry. Dday night, so far , we haduld see or tell. Een successful we either killed them or ran them off. There were three attacks on us. Were unsuccessful. We successfully held out. So, ever after, we did not have. Oo much attacks on us i was surprised they did not attack us more. Men that were the there or later learned that were there we left a lot of them dead. So, we depleted their numbers, 170 downward, so i dont know that they had too many left. About 5000 men there. We were very fortunate. We chased them out of their positions. We had a lot of prisoners. We needed a lot of advanced had al attention, so we high number killed. On, from burgundy leonard oh, yes. The battle leonard the battle of normandy lasted two and a half months. It was not something that lasted two half days or weeks. It lasted a couple months, the battle of normandy. They landed the days after dday, and our forces moved inland. General patton, as you will , to where he broke down in minsk. I should not have used the words broke down. He got ahead of his gas lines. So, he was bogged down. So we got the gas to him so we could get over in doubt to get to burn over and out to get to berlin. After you went back, tell me between afterod you went home to england and the next time you saw action. Leonard i may have misunderstood you. Tommy about the time between going back to england and the next time you saw action tell me about the time between going back to england and the next time you saw action. Leonard if i understood you correctly, on the fourth day after dday, i was evacuated to england. That was my first back to. Ngland after dday i had some operations i had to take care of for wounds. Then i was sent back to normandy and became a Sergeant Major of battalion. Italian the whole battalion. Then i remained in that position , and in the movement, of course, france, until we got up elgin him, and i received a Battlefield Commission to secondly tended second lieutenant. And i led the first platoon the rest of the way until i was wounded finally and sent home. Did i cover everything . Than telling specifically where you injure Company Fought after the way they fought all across france, belgium, into germany and czechoslovakia all the way to the end of the war. They were on the elbow river elbe river. The layman will not think very far past with the ranger. Tell me a little bit more about what the rangers did. A heckuva lot after landing on dday. We had a lot of land to be cleared. We were busy, busy, busy for a whole year of combat. Begin to remember all the names. They were having trouble. They needed someone to rated fit. Outfit raid this out all of these were signs from the rest of the allied forces. Wherever they could raid supply lines or use you for special missions, they did so. They were very active. In combat all the time. Give me an example of a hadation in which the army to call on rangers specifically to accomplish a mission. Leonard my god. I know there are so many to choose from. Leonard the point is up in belgium and germany in december, were talking dday, june, july, august, right on every month we are in combat all the way to hill 400. Now, the race becomes important because four days later was it four days . Whatever. There a tremendous battle at hill 400. Do you remember patton . Metz, his armies which we were part of came across where all the way to metz he got more gasoline. Sure thehad to make line for the gasoline got to tton needed, but the army needed the rangers to rohrrward to clear up the valley. Targetection was on the board. 7, 1944,e, on december we had frozen weather, ice and snow, covered with evergreen trees, which became known forestsly as the her can hirken forest. The rohr to clear valley. We did that job. There were thousands of men. Others tried to do that and failed. We didnt, 5000 guys from the eighth division and a couple other units tried valley it up, the rohr so patton could get through, but failed and they lost a lot of people, wounded and killed, and equipment all over the area in front of the 400. It was the hellish section that was blocking it. We were called men on short notice by the eighth division, december 6. The day before the seventh. Nd we rode on trucks house, last in two klein a village. December 7. Milesn launched a couple through the area we were going to attack from an two patrols were chosen. One of them was my patrol to wreck annoyed or hill 400 recon film 400. They controlled every intersection. Well, we reported in, 3 00, 4 00 and reported what we saw. And there was a battle plan for 7 30 a. M. The morning of sunken roadrom the in front of the church in the village. It was at the base of the 400. We did. We were successful. We took hill 400. We took the tower. E captured the gunners we put them all out of business. 7, eighth, ander ninth, i guess. We were successful. Guess what . We knew nothing. We nor anyone else in the American Force knew it, but on december 16th, i think it was, the germans came in the dark ardenes, the battle of the bulge, the worst battle of all and started rather fight. Whoever was around came to stop the germans. Started the battle of the bulge. Well, in their rush, they took where several days before it was captured for us. , theyre 68 men in a Ranger Company there i think we had more hundred 39 that took 7. L 400 on december a week or so after the battle of the bulge started in the , the German Forces were turned around and forced back. And our American Forces had to rohr valley, hill 400. The paratroopers i think there were 15,000 of them, and there were only 500 abbas of us 15 15,000 infantry and paratroopers. It took them three days to recapture hill 400 that we had done just a couple weeks earlier with 130 men. To give you some idea of the of course, thet rest of the story is, the war may,ver by the following may 1945. Something you probably do not ,et asked much in interviews tell me about when you went home. What life was like, how things changed, how the war changed you and the country and just the general feeling of when you came back to the states. Leonard if youre asking me if there is any change in me when i came home, i dont believe there was. I dont think i changed much at all. Life to my my wife. We were married, but we have been going together part of the war and we got married and have been married ever since and we are still married. Some 67 years later. Change i didnt see any change in myself for my family or my friends. We went right back to work, getting our education. The greatest thing that happened to me was we had bgi bill because my family had no money to send me to college with. I dont think there was much change. Everybody is happy when the war is over. So we came back with these same enthusiasm we had in the outfit, and we all took advantage of the g. I. Bill in one way or another to advance our education and put all that behind us, the war. A lot of veterans, it was 20 before they shared some of the stories. When did you come back and start . Leonard the next day. We remained a family of brothers from day one. After discharge to the present day. My own children, they were teenagers before they came to realize that uncle joe and uncle steve and all these others were not their real long goals. Family a close relationship among the rangers, even to this day. We are very active, very active together. Day andy, even in this ae, i am the president of chapter of our organization. What about the young guys today . Leonard what about the young guys today . Tommy how they affiliate with the world war ii rangers. Tell me how they affiliate with the world war ii rangers. Leonard wonderfully well. We socialize with them. We go to parties with them. We have a great relationship with them. We have the respect that they are too. They are very fine. We believe that they are the finest. There are all kinds of letters and things from generals and. Ighranking people that sounds like i am post full and there probably will be people who are me say that. But maybe you know it because i say that, but im only repeating what i have heard. We have a Good Relationship with the present day rangers. I dont know of any other outfit that ever had a better relationship with their successors. Do they still after the war 60 oddow it has been years, have you had the opportunity to share what you . Earned from fighting that war leonard well, im 86 years old. I do not run around as much as i used to. , i have flown to the west coast. Are to givever they. Nspirational talks i just think the rangers are as good as they ever were, maybe. Etter if there is new techniques i dont know about we measured up in our time and they measure up in their time to be the best of the best. In that subjective. Questions to of the Young Rangers ask you . Getard the rangers together and they are talking about ranger talk. Whats the best way to do this . How did you do this . We exchange ideas. To give an example, the powers that be at the top level did not give adequate consideration to of normandy. When they found out that the tanks could not get through them, it was horrible. But someone found if you put blades on the front of the tank, it tore up and could get through. . Hy do i use that as an Example Solutions do not always come from the top. And you least expect it cant think of a solution from the top, someone from below will come up with a solution. And thats the way it is with the rangers. , theyyve got a problem dont like to get in without solving it. Sooner or later, it gets solved. We did all right. I think that sums up what the rangers are all about. Are true to the American British commando is to their forces. We have a couple minutes. Tommy about your relationship during the war with the british commandos. About your relationship during the war with the british commandos. Excellent. They are intelligent, serious. They are great guys. Great sense of humor. We lived with them. We lived with the families. We did not live in the barracks. We paid rent to the english we justsometimes wonderful, brotherly relationship with the commandos. We regard them what they stand for. They stand for the best of the best of the british forces. We stand for the best of the best of the American Forces. That it angers people to hear us talk like that. But lets take a look of the record. Who is the best . I challenge them all. I think that about wraps it, doesnt it . Very good. If you like American History facebook,p with us on twitter and youtube. cspanhistory. Go to the cspan store to see what is new for history tv and check out all of the cspan products. Americaneekend on history tv, the author of the league of wives the untold story of the women who took on the u. S. Government to bring their husbands home. Heres a preview. We were married for years before he left on the cruise. My daughter is in the audience now. The north vietnamese took a picture and published it. I knew he was alive at that point. E did not write any letters i found out after the guys came back why. Just the four years and i did not find out until 1973 that he died in captivity. Debbie, do remember the day out your husband was unaccounted for and what do you remember . Dinner about a block away with a friend of mine. It was 8 00 at night. She got a phone call. She said, someone needs someone wants to buy your used car. I thought, who wants to buy a car in the dark . We went in the house. I did not see a car. There was a knock on the door, and as soon as i saw the shoulder bars, i knew, and that 4, 1968. Er watch the entire conversation 5 pm eastern. Youre watching American History tv, only on cspan3. Next, we speak with earl lewis, presi o