Jocko Podcast - D-Day 2024. We Must Never Forget What They Did.

Episode Date: June 6, 2024

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Despite the problems, most transports arrived at the rendezvous point as scheduled at 0.330, some 11 miles from the Normandy coast. The Gap assault team members straightened up, donned their 40-pound haversacks, bulging with charges, slung their carbines, wrapped in clear plio film, shook hands with the army tankers, and wished them luck. and in pitch black darkness clambered down the cargo nets into their bobbing landing crafts. For two more hours they waited, crammed on top of one another, while the landing craft turned endless circles like so many diesel churning sharks. Before long, the smell of exhaust adjoined with the four to six foot chop to kindle a seven-bag case of vomiting so bad, that many men lost their fear of landing.

When the boats stopped circling, it was time. The date was June 6, 1944. As the first wave of landing craft turned south to close the final leg to Omaha Beach, the men who rode them could see nothing of what lay ahead except the wave crest that the cross winds was whipping into white curls. Suspended in darkness and diesel thrum, this lull was finally interrupted at 0.530, with the opening scream of a rocket salvo to their rear that sent to flinch through every closed-shouldered rank, snapping heads from hypnosis and eyes skyward

to watch the suddenly visible cloud gray ripple with glowing red strips. A moment later, explosions like heat lightning could be seen against the mist-draped hills before them. Seconds after this, the unseen thunder roar of 10,000 airplane engines shrank every helmet beneath them into its corresponding collarbone and lifted every eye to the still distant shore and the promised light splash of bombs. At the wall of assembled battleships now lined up parallel to the beaches, the armada of the landing craft slid through the gaps. Among these was Boat Team 8, which passed just under the prow of the USS, Texas, as its first

broadside of 10, 14-inch guns erupted in satanic tongues of red flame and smoke so black that it turned the night into a mine explosion, a blast so powerful to the passers-by that it jolted away any remnants of nausea, and, in the words of Lieutenant Wes Ross, would have blown the helmet off my head if the chin strap had not been fastened. As they motored toward the beach, boat Team 12 approached a floating tank. Its entire crew huddled on the turret, waving and yelling frantically as their improbable vessel sank beneath them. His boat crammed with men and explosives. The team's coxen shrugged and motored on toward the black shore. There was nothing else to be done.

At 0.633, precisely three minutes after 8 hour and right on schedule, Boat 1's ramp splashed down. In a scramble of clumping boots, Gap Assault Team 1 plunged up to their chest into a 54-degree surf, too filled with fear and adrenaline to notice the cold. Remarkably, no one was shooting. Looking to the right as he waited to shore, chief petty officer Bill Freeman now in command of NCDU 11 the only enlisted man so

entrusted could see the cliffs of Pointe to Hawk where the second Rangers were already supposed to be ascending no matter to his front where the tanks and infantry and rangers were already supposed to be barreling ahead there was no one neither was there a single crater a single wrecked obstacle or any sign of halls promised bombardment. Before him lay Rommel's perfect forest of deterrence.

Belgian gates, stakes, ramps, hedgehogs, all untouched. Born and raised in Chicago, already tested and hardened in Morocco, and now is skeptical of assurances from superiors as he was of those by

Bible thumping chaplains. Freeman waited for no officer and led his men forward, his thighs lunging out of the water, the bone-chilling waves, shoving him shoreward. For reasons unknown to all in the first wave, the enemy was holding his fire. As Freeman made the most of this lull to hustle to the shore, so too did everyone else, including his army superior, Lieutenant Bill Cahaley, who wasted no time and pointed his engineers toward the first belt of obstacles, a line of Belgian gates, not yet covered by the waves. After sprinting upright through the damp sand to reach them, Cahaley and his soldiers

used frantic fingers to strap each one with 16 strategically placed charges. Running past these, Freeman and his demolitioners were equally exposed and did not stop until surrounded by the second belt. A mine, barnacled thicket of wooden stakes and log ramps, all of which they immediately started to wrap with Haversacks. Left behind in this rush were Seaman Farrell and Conti, two of the boot camp graduates who were straining against bow lines trying to drag their rubber boat through the surf, the only cover around them a 400-pound pile of explosives. Through all of this, the only sound to muffle their voices

were the guns out to sea and the gentle rhythm of the waves crashing behind them. It was, for those few tense moments, not at all the kind of battlefield for which Kaufman's Hell Week had prepared them. Then it was. First, an MG-42 machine gun started barking in the hills, then another.

Their bullets stitching across the sand, splintering the wooden sand, stakes. Mortars followed, slamming into earth and surf and splashing hot shards of metal in every direction. Next came the dreaded 88s, anti-aircraft guns used by Rommel as beach artillery, the shells exploding plumes of sand and water in terrible groups of three. First of Gap Assault Team 1 to be hit was the boat, through the rubber skin, buckling in the air, and into the waves with all the extra charges. Beneath the whip and snap of machine gun fire,

Seaman Farrell and Conti frantically grabbed what they could, the beach markers, then turned and ran toward the shingle. As they did, Farrell was shot through the knee and Conti through the back. Immediately an army medic rushed to their aid, dragged them from the surf, tucked them behind the stakes, and then dropped dead from a sniper's bullet. Gunners' mate's second class Ozzy Mingoldorf,

A Fort Pierce graduate from Douglas, Georgia, who had valiantly left a sick bed just two days before so as to not miss this invasion, strapped his charges to the wood pilings just as he had in all those months of training. As he did, a bullet slammed into his leg. As the demolitioners crawled and sprinted between posts, Freeman dashed around them all, paying out his telephone reel of yellow primer cord and connecting the charges into a single trunk line. Then, better late than never, the first Sherman tank trundled out of the surf, the sea draining off the beast in waterfalls. As it shook free of its flotation skirt,

it turned parallel to the shingle, firing toward the enemy. With every round, it drew attention away from Freeman and his men. When it turned back, threatening to overrun and cut his trunk line, Freeman sprinted from cover, waved his arms like mad, and cursed the tankers until they went around it. Less than 20 minutes after the landing, the team won engineers were ready to blow the gates, gripping the waterproofed fuse lighter. Lieutenant Cahaley sucked the smoke-filled air into his lungs and yelled, fire in the hole. In the same breath, he pulled the fuse, dropped it, and ran, tossing a purple smoke,

as he went. Freeman and his sailors saw the signal and pressed their bellies into the sand. As soon as the gates exploded and flattened beneath the waves, the landing craft flooded past. Rushing down their ramps, infantry men fell back at the sight of mortars and artillery bursts and instinctively crouched forward against the machine gun bullets, now drumming into the wooden posts and human flesh. As if caught in a hurricane, soldiers huddled next to the only cover available, falling in behind log ramps and stake posts. Around them, the demolitioners inspired open-mouth expressions of amazement. As they shinnied up the stakes and stood on each other's shoulders

to crown each mine with a charge to ensure that it blew apart at the same moment the poll did, With terrified soldiers frozen in place, neither advancing nor retreating, Freeman and Cahili sprinted between posts, yelling obscenities and kicking the infantry men away. Once clear, Freeman gave the signal, tossed a purple smoke grenade, and Petty Officer Bass pulled the fuse. Fire in the hole! At 0.6.55, only 22 minutes after landing, the whole area exploded in a roll. that drowned out the battle's din shooting skyward a hell's mixture of water smoke wood sand and steel high into the air the defender's response was vicious as soon as the smoke and debris settled the fire from the hills became unbearable as Mingledorf

the Georgian with a hole in his leg crawled hand over hand to the seawall and safety a round slammed through his helmet into his forehead, killing him instantly. With the obstacles blown and all the beach cover gone, Petty Officer Bass, a former CB from Durham, North Carolina, resisted the urge to run and instead found Seaman Farrell alone, still writhing from the hole in his knee and with a fresh wound to his right eye. Bass bent down to cradle the boy to cover him, and as he did, a bullet tore through his back,

entering just to the right of his spine and blowing a hole out of his right shoulder. Sergeant Murphy, one of the army's naval augmentees, found them both and dragged them to the seawall, wounded himself, and with nearly everyone in his crew either shot or dead, Freeman was unstoppable, blasting obstacles, clearing out infantry men before his charges blew, helping his wounded to cover. Though they had been cut to shreds, Gap Assault Team 1 had completed its mission. Their 50-yard gap was clear.

It was an excerpt about one small part of D-Day from the book By Water Beneath the Walls, written by Benjamin H. Milligan. and it explains in great detail the history of the Navy SEALs, where we came from and why. And he exhaustively researched his book from now unclassified archives and records, documents in personal and family collections and articles and interviews, all during countless hours in government and public and private library halls

in order for him to capture and understand and explain the history of our heritage in the seal teams. And being a seal himself, Ben was committed to accurately and methodically chronicle our lineage. And there's perhaps no more seminal moment for the frogmen of the United States Navy, the forefathers of the SEAL teams, than D-Day, June 6, 1944. The mission was treacherous. They were exposed. It was chaotic and unpredictable, but they got the job done. Gap assault team won, and the rest of the teams cleared. enough of the beach. They opened enough gaps in the formidable Nazi defenses to allow a beachhead

to be captured and the rest of the campaign for Europe to commence. And in doing so, of the 190 men from the Navy combat demolition unit that participated in the assault on Omaha Beach, 65 were wounded and 32 were killed. A casualty rate of over 50%. And by midnight on June 6th, D-Day, thousands of other Americans and Allied servicemen had given their last full measure. But the fight continued.

And ultimately, hundreds of thousands of soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines would die in this war. And they did this. they made these sacrifices to stop the Nazis and to free the world from darkness and tyranny and we must never forget what they did and the sacrifice they made for us to protect our unalienable rights of life liberty and the pursuit of happiness We will remember them.