This is

is CBS Eye on the World. Here's John Bachelor.

Patrick K O'Donnell, the author of Dog Company, the Boys of Puantu Oke, the Rangers who accomplished

Eide's toughest mission and led the way across Europe.

It is now late summer, 1944, the Rangers have been on several trips in different directions, including

being guards for German POWs, and taking what you'd have to say is a break between their impossible mission on

Norman on D-Day and now another impossible mission given them by

by command. If I understand Patrick's presentation correctly, the Allies needed a big port and the Germans knew it.

So they were destroying what port facilities at Cherbourg existed and they were holding off at Khan.

This will be a problem for the Allies across 40, Ford into 45.

The long tail and they need a big port that brass the reinforcements by Germany. Brest is a fortress that Hitler orders to hold till the end at all costs.

The Rangers are part of a unit given the impossible task of assaulting minefields and heavy guns and a dug-in

garrison of good troops commanded by overall commanders who are in communication

with Germany hold at all cost destroy the facility.

Again, the Rangers know that their mission here is unlikely,

except we come to September 6th. There are some big gun units here too. The Grafspay guns which can

destroy ships at sea so you can't get too close. The Germans have prepared this to survive forever and the Allies don't want to leave it behind their lines.

Patrick, Lieutenant Edlund is a star. He's a man with charm. What is his mission that day against the Fortress at Breast?

His mission is to sort of scout out the position and see if there's a weakness or a whole.

And the fabulous for, this is Edlund and his three other scouts,

move forward, and they notice a path within the minefield that's it looks like it's been used by a local to

to get food maybe to the fort or something.

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