Take That Hill
THE OVERLOOK
By Tom Clavin
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On November 1, St. Martin’s Press will publish the next Bob Drury and Tom Clavin collaboration, The Last Hill: The Epic Story of a Ranger Battalion and the Battle That Defined WW II. Our last book, Blood and Treasure, was a New York Times and national best seller, and we have hopes Last Hill will be too. That week of its publication, I will be on a cross-country book tour and won’t be able to do an “Overlook” column, so I am devoting this week’s to an excerpt from the new book.
The title refers to Hill 400, which is just inside Germany. The day is December 7, 1944, and to penetrate any deeper into the Fatherland the hill must to be taken from the elite German forces who occupy it. Thus far, entire regiments have tried and failed. General Eisenhower and his commanders have called in the battle-scarred 2nd Ranger Battalion. As the wintry sun rises that morning, the men of Dog and Fox Companies are poised at the edge of the field leading to the base of the hill, waiting out dueling artillery bombardments until they can attack.
The shelling of the heights began at nearly the same time the two Ranger companies had fanned out along the road. With Lt. Howard Kettelhut relaying coordinates, the eighteen American artillery batteries unleashed a rolling barrage, starting at the base of the hill and marching the detonations up the slope by quadrants. At the same time, German mortarmen began dropping shells several hundred yards to Dog and Fox Companies’ rear. The assault force was caught in the middle, and every Ranger recognized that it was only a matter of time before the enemy guns would re-establish their range projections and “walk their arty” straight into their midst.
With nowhere to go but forward, word was passed down the line to fix bayonets. Big Stoop Masny, on the left flank, dispatched runners to remind his Fox Company Rangers that the moment the American artillery ceased, every trooper was to empty one full clip from his weapon into the base and slope of the hill before the mass charge – a marching fire assault, in military terminology. Morton McBride on the right did the same with Dog. If the horizontal hail of bullets could keep the Germans buried in their hidden bunkers, it might buy a few extra seconds to cross the icy clearing.
American shellfire was still erupting on Hill 400 when Fox Company’s Lieutenant Thomas Rowland tapped the shoulder of the platoon sergeant L-Rod Petty. Like Lt. McClure, Rowland was new to the outfit, a replacement only arrived in the last few weeks. The Germans in the bunkers at the base and on the facing slope of the hill had yet to show their hand. Not knowing the enemy positions made Rowland uncomfortable. “Send out a scout,” he told L-Rod Petty.
The platoon sergeant looked at Rowland as if he had two heads. And waste a man? He shook his head, no.
Rowland repeated the order. Petty growled. “Fuck you, no way.”
Angry and flustered, Rowland turned to the company staff sergeant Bill McHugh. Before the officer could speak, McHugh shook his head. “No, sir.” McHugh had hugged L-Rod Petty’s ass since the two had captured the enemy machine gun back atop Pointe du Hoc. He trusted the toothless BAR man’s instincts a hell of a lot more than he did this newbie second lieutenant.
Rowland finally found a Ranger to obey his command. PFC Gerald Bouchard humped over the road’s embankment and made it two or three steps before a single bullet pierced his belly. An enraged Petty and McHugh dragged the wounded private back to cover by his heels. Petty was still dosing Bouchard’s gutshot with sulfa powder when, at precisely 0730, the American barrage ceased. Behind the Ranger line, German artillery detonations had crept to within thirty yards. Masny and McBride shouted near simultaneously, “Go!”
It was as if a tense and furious serpent had finally uncoiled and struck. The Rangers, firing at will, leapt from their defilade and surged across the open field. Bill McHugh, still seething over what he considered the new lieutenant’s ineptitude, emptied the clip of his tommy gun. “Let’s go get the bastards!” he hollered at the top of his lungs.
He was answered by what Lt. Len Lomell described as a wild chorus of “Indian war whoops.” Enemy machine gunners and riflemen secreted on the slope finally opened up. Rangers dropped left and right. Not far from Lomell, PFC Kenneth Harsch had taken but a few steps when a mortar round “splattered” his face. Another trooper, new to the outfit, took one look at the raw meat that sprouted from Harsch’s pole-axed neck and froze, dropping to the ground and curling up into a ball. Lomell did not begrudge him; combat, he had learned, turned men into mysterious animals.
Turning to wave his men on, Lt. McBride took a slug in his right buttocks. Bleeding and cursing – he considered it an insult to have been shot in the ass – he dropped to one knee and continued to urge his Dog Company Rangers forward. When the last man had passed him, he hobbled back toward Doc Block’s aid station. He stopped often along the way to treat and mark the location of injured men. Among them was Fox Company’s Bill McHugh. The “bastards” had got him before he could get them.
At the edge of the field where it met the road, McBride spotted the wounded Ranger Tony Ruggiero, the tap dancer from Massachusetts who had been with the outfit since Camp Forrest. A large piece of shrapnel had sliced through one of his legs. McBride remembered “Rugg” entertaining his platoon – and likely concealing his own anxiety – by dancing to the strums of a smuggled ukulele during the Channel crossing back on June 6. Ruggiero, who was all of five-foot-three, was lucky if he tipped the scales at one-hundred-and-twenty pounds. Despite his wound, McBride bent down and threw him over his shoulder. Ruggiero puked all over his company commander’s back.
It took less than two minutes for what was left of the assault force, a little over one-hundred Rangers, to reach the base of the hill. The surrounding trees shook as scores of fragmentation grenades turned log bunkers into kindling. The Germans dug in on the slopes turned and ran for the top. The shrieking Rangers followed, the frozen scree beneath their combat boots giving way as they scrambled up the forty-five-degree incline. The adjusted German mortar barrage nipped at their heels as they climbed. It was like scrabbling up a thirteen-hundred-foot child’s playground slide while being shot at.
Watching the assault from the church bell tower, Howard Kettelhut called in a withering round of artillery. American shells – 105mms, 155mms, 240mms, eight-inch howitzers – raked the top of the hill. The ground shook from the force of the explosions. Kettlehut halted the barrage as the first wave of Rangers neared the crest. The fight atop Hill 400 was now a chaotic brawl. Americans and Germans, many with no opportunity to reload, attacked each other with knives, entrenching tools, steel helmets, bare fists. “No quarter was asked,” notes the Army veteran-turned-military historian Douglas Nash, “and none given.”
Tom Clavin is the bestselling author/co-author of 18 books, including Lightning Down: A World War II Story of Survival. To pre-order The Last Hill: The Epic Story of a Ranger Battalion and the Battle That Defined WW II, please go to your local bookstore or to Bookshop.org, Amazon.com, or BN.com.
You might as well have put a big red target on their uniforms as the officer was commanding them to attack. Reminds me of the revolutionary and civil wars where soldiers stood side by side as they attacked only to be easy pickings for the enemy.
Thomas Rowland's granddaughter here. With both of my parents recently passing, I inherited my grandmother's scrapbooks. My mother never wanted to read anything about her father's death which occurred when she was four months old, so I didn't know details until recently.
I have read a lot of the letters my grandmother received about Tom's passing that day, including one from an PFC Raymond Macmillan who was with him when he died. Another letter from Commanding Infantry Major George Williams describes his death. He was wounded in the leg and then struck again, dying instantly, while one of his men was carrying him to safety (perhaps that was Macmillan). Williams goes on to say "Lt. Rowland commanded the respect of his men and was well liked by all officers and men."
I believe what you wrote and it makes sense that the mission was full of tension, as there had been previous failed attempts to seize the Hill before the 2nd Ranger Battalion got there. I am adding to the story because you are writing about history. Tom Rowland went out too and he got killed. Also, in your paragraph eight, he is referred to as "this newbie second lieutenant." He was a First Lieutenant.
Bless all these men. Soldiers in the 2nd Ranger Battalion were all volunteers. My grandfather graduated from Dartmouth, briefly worked as a stock broker, and then joined the army. He received the Silver Star several months before he died. He left behind a wife and newborn daughter. In a letter to his parents, he wrote, "Truly the Infantry is still 'Queen of Battle'."