Ep. 8 - Bloody Red - Blood-soaked Omaha Beach Remembered

Bloody Omaha Beach bore the brunt of D-Day’s savage fighting with more casualties than all of the other D-Day beaches combined.  Aware that the men he led in one of the first waves to land on Bloody Omaha Beach had no prior combat experience, Staff Sergeant Walter Ehlers single handedly took out several German machine gun nests even while he was in their crossfire.  Ehlers was at first elated when he was told he would be receiving the Medal of Honor for his actions, but he was soon brought to his knees upon learning the terrible loss he suffered on Omaha beach. Trying to sleep after having witnessed so much death and suffering on Omaha beach, Charles Toole’s buddy told him that 24 hours from now there’d be a lot more dead in their own company.  Toole’s buddy’s words proved eerily prophetic.  Thanks to two Texas Rangers, there were far less dead on Omaha beach than there would have been otherwise.  Leonard Lomell and his buddy Jack Kuhn climbed the 100 foot cliffs of Pointe du Hoc even as Nazi soldiers fired down upon them, threw grenades, and cut their ropes.  Lomell and Kuhn knew the lives of countless Americans depended on them finding the huge 155 mm coastal howitzers the Nazis had hidden above, capable of firing five miles or more out to sea, far enough to hit the troop ships landing for the invasion.  Nothing in their 18 years of life could have prepared Frank Caruk and Mark Wilson for all the suffering they witnessed landing in the initial waves at Omaha beach.

Walter Ehlers

Walter and Roland Ehlers

Charles Toole and the podcast host John Ulferts

Frank Caruk and his wife Janet

Leonard Lomell