D-Day veteran remembers storming the beach

At 92 years old, Denman Wolfe has the tough exterior you’d expect of such a man. He served in the D Company of the 5th Ranger Infantry Battalion that landed on Omaha Beach on D-Day. He looks you straight in the eye and speaks with a strong, south Kentucky accent.

On Sept. 1, 1943 Wolfe’s battalion was activated at Camp Forrest, Tenn. Over the next few days, 34 officers and more than 500 enlisted men joined the battalion. After four months of strenuous training, they shipped out in early January 1944 and arrived in England for still more training.

On June 6, 1944, more than 100,000 troops—including the men of the 5th Ranger Battalion—stormed the beaches on the northern coast of France. Part of their mission was to take Point du Hoc, a German-occupied, 100-foot cliff on the Normandy coast.

An estimated 4,000 Allied troops died on that one day. Many more were wounded or missing in action.

Wolfe was just 23 years old. Although the invasion was meticulously planned, things went wrong, and Wolfe’s company got different orders from the original landing plans.

“The colonel that was in charge, he called back 40 minutes later and said ‘Tally Ho,’ that means for us to choose another position,” Wolfe said. “So we all landed, the rest of us Rangers, on Omaha Beach at the back side of the cliffs.”

Wolfe jumped off the boat with his rifle and grenades, rough waters over his head. Everyone knew casualties would be high. He kept only one thought in his mind: Get across the beach. The Germans’ machine guns were trained on them. Men fell all around him.

“Then they had to run across 75 yards of pure sand to get to the wall, the seawall the Germans had put it up. It was 4 or 5 feet high, and we had to cross it, too,” Wolfe said.

The next force of rangers arrived and started fighting. Brig. Gen. Norman Cota saw those Rangers coming.

“The general … seeing who was on that beach there, he jumped up on that wall and hollered, ‘Rangers, lead the way!’” Wolfe said.

Climbers used mini-rocket launchers to shoot hooks into the cliff bushes so they could pull themselves up by rope.

“The first man to climb that rope got shot off,” Wolfe recalled.

Because of the heroic sacrifices made that day, the tide of the war changed and led to the Allies’ victory over Axis powers. Typical of veterans from that era, Wolfe doesn’t like to talk about the details. He earned many decorations, but the only one he’ll really describe is the Good Conduct Medal.

“I was a good soldier. I never shirked no job. Never questioned it or nothing,” Wolfe said. As for the others, “They’re just [the] Purple Heart, Bronze Star, one thing or the other like that. … Too many of my friends are laying up on the hill above Omaha Beach. They need the Purple Heart. I made it. I don’t need the Purple Heart.”

Wolfe retired from the Army as a master sergeant in 1962 after 22 years of military service.

Being an Army Ranger on D-Day makes Wolfe part of history’s elite fighting men. “I wouldn’t take a million for my experience,” he says, “or give a penny for another one.”