This is John Bachelor, conversation with my good friend Patrick O'Donnell for his book, Dog Company,

The Boys of Wanda Walk, the Rangers who landed at D-Day and fought across Europe.

In this moment, a sergeant who climbs the cliffs, the

mission is to destroy the guns that range over the Allied landing beaches, discovers that there are no guns. They are in fact logs

pretending to be guns. And Patrick explains where the guns are and how the

Rangers who have been assigned this one mission destroy the guns must now find

them to destroy them.

This is the moment where there is this enormous letdown from good information that turned into not

be useful after this risk, after this dare, after the casualties, and success after all, although

there's days of fighting ahead.

Patrick O'Donnell, Dog Company, the boys of Buantwaq,

80th anniversary of Dede, 80 years ago right now. What we're looking at is the Allied invasion force getting ready

to assault the beaches of Normandy, and the Rangers are ready to assault that cliffside,

not knowing the guns are not in place.

Patrick O'Donnell, more of this later.

And the Rangers have to fight through this maze, this fortress on top effectively,

which is, there's also a third... is the point that is you know fully operational and they're firing upon the Rangers and

the Rangers literally have to fight through this maze up top of the point and

the defenders are using the underground labyrinth of tunnels and bunkers to their advantage as they fight the Rangers.

And LeMell gets to the casement that he is assigned to and he finds a telephone pole in place of the guns in the casement.

And this is the case with all the cas Germans knew the point was going to get plastered.

So they took the guns and moved them from the most obvious place which is casements

...