5th Ranger Battalion on D-Day: S/Sgt.Charles Klein

Ken Harbaugh:

I’m Ken Harbaugh, host of Warriors In Their Own Words. In partnership with the Honor Project, we’ve brought this podcast back at a time when our nation needs these stories more than ever.

Warriors in Their Own Words is our attempt to present an unvarnished, unsanitized truth of what we have asked of those who defend this nation. Thank you for listening, and by doing so, honoring those who have served.

Today, we’ll hear from Staff Sergeant Charles Klein. Klein commanded a section of riflemen in the 5th Ranger Battalion, and was part of one of the first units to land on D-Day.

S/Sgt. Charles Klein:

My name is Charles Klein, K-L-E-I-N. I was the staff sergeant with the company F for the 5th Ranger Battalion on D-Day.

A ranger is a specially trained infantry soldier. He's given intense training. He's a seagoing soldier. He's trained for water operations, invasions, raids. We're given cliff scaling to get off rugged beaches, and they sharpened up our map reading skills so we could penetrate enemy lines and do operations behind enemy lines. We're given a lot of hand-to-hand combat training, and we're trained to be independent soldiers, if we're on our own we're taught how to handle ourselves.

Well, it was adventure and my father was in World War I and he was a sailor and he was in what they called a suicide fleet. And that sounded very adventurous to me, and I wanted to do something to, well, I thought it would please my dad and I wanted to be like him. I was only a boy then. I was only 18 years old when I signed up for the Rangers.

Well, the way it happened with me, we saw a notice up on a bulletin board indicating that they were forming a new ranger battalion, and then they described some horrors that the Rangers were supposed to be exposed to. I think that was designed to discourage us from volunteering if we had any misgivings about an operation or an organization like that. And the next step, we signed up for these things and there was an interview date that we had with former members of the first ranger battalion. There was two staff sergeants and a major, and then the future colonel who was the command of our battalion was also in the interviewing team. And at the time I was with the 60th engineers who served the 35th Infantry Division, and I was a technician. I was in a water purification group. I had a nice job there. It was hard work, but was I thought a safe job. And I was young and adventurous like most young people are, and I thought I was too young for an organization like that. So when I posted the notice about interviewing future Rangers, potential Rangers, I put my signature down. I was very enthusiastic about it. Then we were interviewed by each man was interviewed. Well, first you had to go through a physical that screened out some of the men. Incidentally, all of Rangers were volunteers. They didn't take anyone who didn't volunteer for it. So they didn't want anybody who was conscripted into it. Now I was taken into the service under the draft, but then I volunteered to join the Rangers and one of the luxuries we had, anytime we wanted out, we only had to make that statement and we were let out. They didn't keep us against our will, and that way they had our loyalty all the time. One is more receptive and cooperative if he volunteers for something then if he's forced into something. So we were always free to leave if we so desired.

We trained first in [inaudible] in England, I believe that's south of London. And we did a lot of speed marching there to condition us after the trip over the Atlantic. We stayed there several weeks and from there we went up to Scotland. We Americans don't pronounce this very well, but we GI's call it Tyner Brook, and I think the Scots call it Tana Brock or something like that, but that's as close as I can manage. Up there we got a lot of map reading exercises. They took them in and they gave us a schedule of where we'd meet in the mountains and they gave us a topographic maps and we'd go group up with two or three, sometimes four men, and we'd find our own way out to where the exercises were going on and God help you if you didn't get there on time. So it did sharpen up the men on their map reading abilities.

Were trained very well. We were given cliff scaling in Scotland and in England also. We were taught the techniques of cliff scaling and we still didn't know our mission, but we thought it had something to do with cliff scaling because we had that training. Of course, we were seagoing soldiers. We were trained in the yard of handling rubber bolts and navigating in close to shore through the surf. And then we got training on landing craft and well, the full scale of things that landing operations require, like climbing down cargo nets to reach the landing craft and different exercises like that. So the training was very thorough.

We had some casualties on that too. We had some men were injured on the cliff scaling exercises, and we always practiced with a lot of ammunition, live ammunition. We had some men were injured through short rounds of mortar rounds and different exercises were vigorous and we had injuries as one would expect just like football players, I guess.

No, I never thought of leaving. And one time I thought I'd be sent away because I had an injury to my foot and they couldn't diagnose it right away. And there was a fear that I'd be shipped out of the organization and I was heartbroken over that. It was a serious thing. I felt it was like a disgrace to be let go. So I was rather injured by the prospect of being let go.

By that time I was very close to people. And strangely enough, I was very fond of these people. They were like brothers to me. But strangely enough, I never grieved over the loss of any of those men. And I have to give the army credit for that. I think they toughened us up physically and mentally as well. I think about those people now and I get very emotional about it. But then I didn't spend much time grieving over a loss. I think the Army did a good job, toughening our minds as well as our bodies.

Oh, I get teary-eyed and very sentimental over some of these people, I was very close to these men.

We left on the evening before the invasion. We left on June 5th and we landed on June 6th. And we loaded from the port of Weymouth and the boats took us from the dock out to the ship. And I remember that very vividly because I was just filled with admiration for those sailors. I have never seen so many vessels in all my life or ever again will I see anything like it. There were ships everywhere and it gave us a feeling of confidence to see so many vessels. Gosh, one would think, how could we lose? And of course, that was a point of no return. And there's some doubts. Everyone has doubts about himself. We had never experienced actual battle, but they kept us pretty busy aboard ship. Men were caring for their weapons. Some of us were assigned air watch. I don't think they really needed us. I think they had enough crew to handle that, but they just wanted to engage us in something.

So I was assigned a post near the bridge, and the Englishman who was on the bridge talked with me a lot, and he was curious about the Rangers and we were exchanging a lot of information to each other. And it was fun. It was a fun operation too, even though it was the eve of the invasion. Then when I was off duty, I'm not a very good worrier, so I have an easy way to escape reality. I'd go to sleep. I was a very good sleeper. So rather than sit and worry and fidget, I used to go to sleep. And that seemed to give me my escape from anxiety like that, didn't save the- all anxiety, but it spared me a lot of anxiety doing it that way.

I remember being on the deck and loading into the landing craft, stepping from the deck into the landing craft. And we took our positions. We had a couple of dry runs, so everyone knew what he was supposed to do and where he was supposed to be. So it was very well handled, well planned, it was a good operation.

We were closer to the French shore at that time. And we could hear the ships firing away and the seas were very rough that day. They were much rougher than the practice runs we had made. We called them dry runs because we didn't fire ammunition. They were practice runs. So there was some misgivings about the high seas that day. For good reason, we almost sank when we were out there. When we were going in towards the beach in training, we were all hunched down out of sight inside the vessel and we started taking on water. So the coxswain, who was the captain of that little vessel, ordered us to start bailing. So they had two hand pumps and the men were operating the pumps to bail water out. And then he informed us that that wasn't enough. We were still taking water and taking it fast, and that if we didn't do something else that we're soon be on the bottom of the English Channel. So then before long, everybody was standing up in the boat. We had our helmets off. That helmet was very useful for many things. We were bailing that boat with our helmets in addition to the two pumps working. And it was all contrary to the way we were trained, but we had to do that just to get to the beach. So everybody was bailing with their helmets. It was very interesting to see that. It was not according to the book, but that's what we had to do to get there.

Well, the situation for landing was not very favorable. The channel was very angry that day. They were very heavy seas. And being the channel, it's a relatively small body of water as compared to an ocean where you get the high waves. But the frequency of the waves are less than they were in the channel, like the crest and the channel, or maybe running maybe 50 yards between crest. So a vessel would be riding up one steep wave and plunging down into the valley of another, where in an open ocean, the crest of the waves are very far apart. So I guess you would classify that as very choppy. And it made it, that's why the vessels were taking so much water, the rising and falling and the waves was a very steep angle. So they were plunging into the water and taking on a lot of water and that's why we almost sank.

We passed by the US Texas. She was standing offshore broadside to the beach. But that's such a big vessel. It was a very visible, and it was still dark. This sky was a little aglow from the sun rising. I don't know what time it was, but it was very early when you see a sunrise like that and Texas is standing broadside to the beach, all her guns were trained on the beach. And she fired broadside. When she let a salvo go, all her guns went off, at least all the big guns. And she lit up the sky. I didn't think there could be anything existing on a beach after she let a salvo go, it was just awesome. And she rolled, it must be a tremendous recoil from those guns. She actually rolled when she fired, recoil from the explosions. It was a tremendous thing to see. She put on quite a show.

The reason we were landing at low tide, I didn't figure that out until later, but the Germans had driven piles into the bottom of the channel, close to shore. And instead of being vertical piles like you have supporting a dock, they were driven at an angle, we call it a batter. And they were sloping in from the bottom of the channel out towards the sea. And on the end of each of these piles, they had a teller mine, which is an anti-tank mine. And apparently they were supposed to be just maybe a foot or so below water level at high tide. And I think now looking back on it, that we landed at low tide merely to expose those obstacles so we could see where they were and try to avoid them. But even though it was low tide that we landed, the seas were so high that the crest of the waves were covering these piles. And the vessel I was on was riding on a wave. However, the wave, fortunately for us, the wave was traveling faster than us. Just before we reached this particular pile. The wave dropped out from under us and we were in a trough and we ran into one of these piles, but happily for us, we struck this pile below the mine. We didn't contact the mine and the coxswain of this boat ordered us to push off. I happened to be the first man in the middle row. I jumped up and I put my shoulder to it and I was pushing, trying to push us free of this thing. My first sergeant was on my left, he jumped up to assist me, and even the two of us couldn't push it off. Now there's a man on my right side who jumped up, but he had the presence of mind to use the butt of his rifle as like a crowbar. And he put it between the pile and the ramp of this vessel that we're on.

Now, if you've seen a landing craft, it has a ramp on the front, that's the bow of the boat when you're cruising in the water. But when it hits the beach, the ramp comes down, the men are supposed to race off it and engage the enemy. Well, the ramp sort of crimped onto this pile. And when a man, the soldier on my right, put his rifle button there, he managed to pry us off. In a coincident concurrently with that effort, the coxswain had the landing craft in reverse, and they had two engines that were pulling at high power, I guess full power to pull us off. So when we disengaged ourselves from the pile, the boat raced backwards and then the coxswain maneuvered the vessel. So we were able to go between these piles and we grounded on the beach, well, not the beach, it was a sandbar before the beach from the erosion of the waves hitting the beach and put a sandbar between us and the shoreline.

So at that point, as soon as we were beached, the coxswain tried to lower the ramp, but it wouldn't go down for us because it was deformed and jammed. So it was stuck in place and we couldn't get it down. Now we had people who were carrying, most of us were riflemen, so we could handle that. But the heavy weapons, well, we didn't have heavy weapons, but we had heavier weapons and rifles. Like we had Browning automatic rifles, and we had 60 millimeter mortars, but they're rather heavy to carry. And the people who were carrying ammunition were carrying a lot of weight too. So we had to get off this boat and had to get off in a hurry. So the coxswain ordered us to jump up on the gunnels of the ship, not the ship, but this landing craft and jump overboard. Well, the people who were carrying these heavier weapons couldn't climb up and jump off at the same time with these weapons that they were carrying. So the rifleman had to stand on this wide gunnel that they had on the ship and take the weapons from the weapons people.

Meanwhile, they climbed up on top of the gunnel where we were, and they jumped overboard and we handed the weapons down to them so they could go ashore. And all during this interval, the Germans were shooting at us and we were in a very exposed position. We didn't have any casualties at that point. I think the only reason that we survived was that there were so many targets for the Germans to shoot at. We weren't the only craft landing, were many crafts on our left and that were landing concurrently with us. So having so many targets, I think what they were doing was shooting randomly at the boats that were coming in and not spending enough time taking aim. Because I'm sure if I was at the range that they had, I'm sure I would've hit more people and they were hitting, they were hitting enough as it was. But I think they could have killed more people if they were taking aim. I think they were just shooting at random. So at that point, I think we were pretty lucky. And then of course, we had to go to the deep water that was between us and the beach.

I was near the coxswain in the forward end of this landing craft. And I turned to the coxswain and I said, "Are we going to have a dry landing?" He says, "Oh, yes, we will." And we all had waterproofing on our rifles, like a plastic bag. So I thought, well, I want to go off of this thing shooting. So I stripped the waterproofing off my rifle, when we jumped overboard and crossed the sandbar we were in deep water and I was treading water to get the shore. And of course my rifle was completely submerged, so I didn't have a dry rifle to land on shore with.

We were supposed to land on Omaha Door Green beach. And fortunately for us, we had a very experienced battalion commander. His name was Mac Schneider. He had served with the first Rangers and he served, oh, in some of their raids in, I don't know how many battles, but he was a well experienced man, like a friend of mine used to say, he had the smarts. Well, he's quite an experienced bright man.

You know, before we made the invasion, he came around informally and he talked to the men in the different companies. And one thing that he said to us that I'll never, never forget, he said, "We have a very good battle plan." And he said, "You men are all smart men." He said, "But the Germans are smart too. They have a defensive plan." And he said, "They probably have a very good defensive plan, just like you have a good offensive plan. So remember this, the fellow who's going to lose this battle is a fellow who makes the first mistake and the most mistakes, he's the fellow that's going to lose this battle." And I thought that was very significant. It was a very good lesson to learn from an experienced soldier. He was combat hardened, he had trained hard, and he had combat experience. He knew what it was all about. He was a sophisticated, solid soldier.

He was observing the beach on the way in. He didn't hide behind a ramp or anything. We were exposed because we had to be exposed to keep afloat. He exposed himself merely to view the beach and to see what was going on and how did directors come in. And he saw the intense fire that was laid down by the Germans on Omaha Door Green. And he thought, "Boy, our job is to survive, not to perish under that slaughter." So he moved us to the left of Door Green where the fire was less intense. It was a very wise move because our people were able to get off. Our earlier companies that landed on the first wave we're able to get off the beach almost immediately and make penetration. They blew holes in the breaches in the barbed wire so the rest of the battalion could get through. They did an excellent job. And it was due to the wisdom of this one man that I think was responsible for surviving and being as successful as we were on our mission.

The beach was a very unusual beach. It wasn't a sandy hard beach we're used to finding on our American shores. It was a very round, smooth stones. Pebbles, you might say. And it was like running on a bed of marbles. Marbles would displace as you run on it. And the footing was very bad. Even if he wanted to dig a slit trench, he couldn't because of the stones would just slide right back into the hole. You couldn't find any shelter for yourself on that beach. There were men lying in the water at the water's edge. Many of them were wounded. There were some that weren't wounded, for the life of me I don't know why they didn't leave the water and run up to the shelter or that sea wall. I think we more or less intuitively ran from the water to the sea wall. We regrouped there and we were ordered off the beach almost immediately.

There wasn't anybody that was secure on that beach. Between the shelling, their positions were well-prepared and they didn't expose themselves very often. They had communication trenches where they could run from installation to installation without even being seen by the Americans. They could run several hundred yards and never be visible because they were in these communication trenches. So actually we were at the mercy for, until we could clear the beaches like that. They even had a gun on, there's a little road that came down to the beach that served at the road that was on the sea wall. It came down from a little village called Vierville-sur-Mer. And when the road turned to run parallel to the beach, they had emplacement there that was protected by concrete, and they had an artillery piece in there.

Now that artillery piece neutralized every tank. We didn't have many tanks that were able to reach the beach, but those few that did, many of them were disabled by this artillery piece. So that accounted for the casualties in our tanks, and for many personnel that were killed by that. And machine gun positions were similar to that. So they had very good coverage of that beach. So we could neutralize those. We were at their mercy all the time.

Well, the Germans had a lot of time to prepare the shore, the batteries of guns and their machine gun and placements. And I think the Germans had these positions fully manned. The reason I think that way is because they were conducting maneuvers at that time. So they had an influx of manpower in that area. So I'm sure all their positions were fully manned.

When you were in the thick of it, there was no escape, then you had to face up to it. And it's funny, as a rifleman on the assault, was much different than a rifleman sitting in the slit wrench being shelled. You couldn't do anything about that. But when you were on the attack and you were seeing things and shooting at things, I don't think you felt any fear at that time. I don't remember fear at that time, but I remember fear when I was under shelling, when I was doing nothing, I felt fear. You couldn't do anything about it. You were at their mercy.

But when you're on the attack, it was, I don't know what happened to you, they called the Germans fanatic or the Japanese rather fanatic. But sometimes I think we're a fanatic too. When you think about it, the enemy has prepared positions and they're shooting down on you, and you are running right into that stuff. I don't know what happens to a man, that isn't unique, it happened to all of us. It looks heroic, but I don't think it is. I think something happens to you when you're doing things like that and you get carried away.

Like the young people have an expression: “You're on a roll.” I guess you're on a roll and you just do it. Get carried away. So it's no sense of reasoning there anymore. You're committed and you have to go through with it.

Going inland from the water, we had this sea wall to, it wasn't a very steep or high sea wall, but it supported or protected a roadway. So we had to climb the sea wall, cross the road. And between the road and the high ground, it was a little like a valley. It was low ground, and it looked like it was water grasses growing there. But they were all dried out. This was early spring, it was in June, and the water had dried up. There wasn't any water in this slow spot, so the grass had all dried out and died. And we had to run through that. And then after clearing that, we had to go up a very steep hill to reach high ground.

I guess you could call him bluffs, just a steep bluff overlooking the shore. When we got up to the top of that hill, of course all of us were panting and coughing from the inhalation of that smoke. I was lying down on the shore side of the crest. It gave me a little shelter from a small arms fire there. And I was looking down on the beach and an LSI, which stands for Landing Ship Infantry, and it's a very large vessel, and that came onto the beach. It grounded, and they lowered, they had like ship's ladders on either side of the bow, and they put those ladders down. And I guess the men were just about to leave that vessel because I guess initially they weren't quite firm yet. So it took a little bit of time to really firm them up. And before the men started to disembark from that vessel, a shell hit that ship and I have never, never seen anything go off so quickly. It was just, have you ever put fuel on a charcoal fire and you throw a match into it and it goes poof. That's the way that vessel went up. I don't think there was a living soul that managed to get off that vessel alive. That vessel went up just like a charcoal fire. Poof and it was a mess of flames. Now I don't know how many men an LSI carries, but by the size of that ship, there must have been, I would guess, about 200 men on that vessel. And we lost 200 men in one instant like that. It was a horrible thought, a lot of waste.

It was very engaging. I was looking over the sea wall, and of course I was looking for targets to shoot at, and they offered very few targets, believe me, they had things pretty well planned there. And I saw a soldier sort of slinking along the top of that bluff, and I started to draw a bead on him. I think he is maybe 300 yards away, which is a normal battle range that you would anticipate having. And I started to draw a bead on this man. And for some reason or other he bent over to pick something up. I don't know what he was going after, but when he did that, the handle of his entrenching tool became silhouetted against a bit of background where I could distinguish what it was. And I realized that's an American. And yeah, I thought to myself, wouldn't that be horrible if the first person I killed was an American? I think it was somebody from A Company, because I think they were the first company that left the beach, so it couldn't have been anybody else but an A Company man.

Each of us riflemen had to carry an HE heavy 81 millimeter mortar shell. Now, the reason we had to carry these shells, a range company is only 60. Well, at that time it was only 65 men strong. And just for the invasion of Normandy, we took our sea company and we made them a heavy weapons company. Normally we didn't carry 81 millimeter mortars, but we made them a heavy weapons company because we thought we would need the support of a heavier gunfire. But being such a small company, they didn't have enough ammunition bearers to bring all the shells that they thought they'd need. So every rifleman in the battalion had to carry an HE heavy 81 millimeter mortar shell, which weighs about 16 pounds. Now I had mine, I carried mine in a little side bag that had a strap that went over my shoulder across my chest, much like a Bandelier would, only had a bag at the end of it. And when I came out of the water and reached the sea wall, that was cutting a groove in my shoulder and I was in pain. So I took that shell off and I thought would be there a while. But that was suddenly ordered off the beach, in the excitement, I climbed the wall and I ran across that road and into the grass and started up the hill. Just as I was about to start up the hill, I remember, oh, my mortar shell. And I turned around and I ran back for the mortar shell. And I picked that up and I had to run like crazy to catch up to the men that I was with. And then I was really gasping for air that time because of the smoke too. It was quite an exertion.

And that night when we were setting up a perimeter defense around Vierville, they asked for our mortar shells. And I prayed it up and I dumped mine with the other shells. And there weren't very many there. And then I realized many of the men, most of the men got rid of their shells and I felt like such a fool. I was one of the few that carried it. So my platoon leader said, "Oh, bless you, Charlie." I did feel very foolish for carrying that thing all day long. It was quite an incumbence. Oh, what boys will do. I'm a lot smarter now. I don't think I would've done it now.

That was my baptism of fire, on D-Day.

You know, a lot of people have told me that they thought it was going badly, but I never had an overview of what was going on. If I had that thought, I don't recall it. And I don't think I ever did have that thought that we're going to be pushed off the beach. I just thought that that Americans won everything they did, and I guess that's the way I felt.

When we broke out of Caen, we started racing across the country. Then I thought we were going to win it, then I was pretty sure we were going to win it. Then we had come a long way. We cleaned out the North Africa. Italy, the Italian campaign wasn't going great, but I mean, they weren't kicking us out of there either. I don't really believe, it's hard to say if I had any doubts, but I don't think I did. I wasn't sure that I'd survive the war. But up to a point, you feel like you're indestructible when you're young and you have a close shave, you have a near miss with your car or something like that. You laugh about it later. Wow, that was a close one. Well, young people are like that. And we were like that as soldiers too.

Not that you don't get frightened when you're under an artillery barrage, but when it's all over, you make a joke out of it. And let's see, the luxury had been a youth, who was it, Twain said the youth is wasted on... No, that was a comedian said that, youth is wasted on a young, I can't think of his name now, but I guess that's the way we were. I think all the youth were that way.

Well, I was wounded twice. I was wounded once up in the city of Brest. We were in on that battle. The Germans had submarine pens up there and had cordoned off the city of Brest, and we needed a deep water harbor. The harbor hadn't fell yet when we started that campaign. So we were engaged there. And there again, I had all hardened bunkers up there, concrete and good protection for their defenders. And we were attacking one of those installations and one of those people occupying at the bunker that we were attacking through a hand grenade. Well, they call them potato mashes. You've probably seen those in the movies. And the fragment of that got me.

Then the second time I was injured was in the Siegfried Line. As a matter of fact, it was near a town named, I believe it was [inaudible]. Now whether I'm saying that right or not, I don't know, but that's the way I pronounce it. And it was a night attack that we had made. It was a beginning of a very exciting job that I got knocked out of it in the beginning. And I have mixed feelings. I'm glad I didn't go there. I probably wouldn't have made it because they lost a lot of people there. And at the same time, when I hear the stories that they tell, I feel as though I've missed something. But they had a minefield and we moved to the minefield at night and they could detonate these mines remotely or on contact with trip wires. And one of these mines went off and had these pieces of steel that they had, was reinforcing bar for concrete. They chopped them up in random pieces and they put them inside this explosive and when it exploded, it threw these pieces of shrapnel all around. I was hit in the legs, both legs. One went in one side and out the other, and another one lodged in the leg. I had one went through my abdomen, they had to remove that one, and that was about it. And that was the last day of combat that I saw. And I guess I was lucky. I guess it was a minor wound because it wasn't life-threatening or anything like that.

I landed in Omaha on June 6th, on D-Day of '44. And I was with every campaign, even though I was wounded by that grenade, it was a very slight wound. So I didn't lose any combat time at all. I went on until February 19th of '45. That wasn't very long. What is that? Six, eight months? That wasn't very long. I guess I was one of the lucky ones. I think that was the happiest day of my life when they brought me back to England, threw me in that white clean bed of first clean bedding I'd seen since the invasion. And then I knew I was going to make it too because the war was winding down after that. I knew I was going to make it then. I was pretty happy about that. Who doesn't like to be a survivor?

I feel that I was a survivor. I'm proud of that. I hear the word hero all the time. And I know I wasn't a hero because I felt intense fear during the whole operat ion. That was rather humiliating to know that I could feel fear because I'd never felt fear like that before. So that was a humiliating experience. I'm older and wiser now. I suppose I wouldn't be ashamed of it anymore. But at that time I didn't think Rangers was supposed to feel fear. But every man feels fear, I think some show or less than others.

Anybody that, I think anyone on that beach was as exposed as the next fellow. No matter who you served with, if you are on that beach, you were exposed. There's no place to hide on that beach except that sea wall. And that didn't stay a shelter for very long, from what I'm told by the people who were left on the beach. That's a sanction, that's security left when the tide came in, that's what I'm told. So they didn't even have the shelter from that sea wall.

My first sergeant got hit coming off the beach, and he never attended any of our reunions. I missed him. I liked him. He was a good man and a good leader. And I met him about, I guess it was about a year ago at Fort Benning. And I said to him, "Howard, this is the first reunion you've attended, isn't it?" And he says, "Yes." I said, "Why haven't you attended before, we missed you?" And he said, "Well, you know I got hit on a beach, Charlie. I didn't participate in the things that you fellas did." He said, "I felt bad about that." As though that would make any difference to us. We liked this man. He went to all the heavy training with us and we thought a great deal of him and we missed him. It was good to see him again. It was a rather emotional meeting for all of us.

The Rangers were very close. It's funny, we were very competitive too. They put the second and fifth Rangers in the town of Swanage one time, that's in England, and we were exposed to each other. And before long, there was a battle raging between the two Ranger battalions. The British must've said, "My God, how are these men going to win a war when they're fighting with each other?" Can you imagine that, Americans fighting Americans? Yet, when I was in the hospital, a man came into the ward and he said, "I understand there's a Ranger here." And I said, "I'm a Ranger." He said, "What battalion are you from?" I said, "I'm from the fifth." He said, "Oh wow, I'm from the second. Do you need anything from the store?" Or from the, I guess I call it, we still call it a PX then, "Need anything from the PX?" So he did my shopping for me and took care of my needs.

But yet we would fight if we're in the same town. It was something. But a good spirit there. And now meeting the fellows from the different battalions, they had nice people too. I've become very fond of some of the other battalions people. It's a fraternity.

Well, I like that phrase, lead the way Rangers. It sort of sets us apart and very flattering. Well, there's a lot of historical significance to the Rangers. The Rangers were formed in the Revolutionary War. They had the Rangers at that time, and they were unique people. They were volunteers, the same as we were. It was sort of a tradition that these people set up, like the football teams that today they have their traditions. We had ours, and I guess that's a good feeling. When I look at each battle or each engagement you have, a streamer is put onto your colors. So when our flag is carried from the American flag, there's all these streamers. And when I look at that, you see all those battle streamers flowing forth. Boy, I choke up. Just think that these small units at full strength were only 500 men and there's six battalions. So that was 3,000 men, and I have all these battle streamers. Boy, I really feel honored when I see that. I really choke up every time I see it. Funny feeling, a good feeling, good because I made it, I survived it.

The first time I realized this, that it was such a waste when I was in the hospital and I looked at the beds around me and all these young, handsome guys flirting with the nurses. And you think of the waste and you wish there was a better way to solve our problems and just start shooting at each other like this. It's funny, life is so valuable to me now. Well, I've had my own children, I know how valuable they are. Well, all I can say, it just has to be a better way. There's not much more I can say about that.

Well, like I told you before, I didn't grieve for anybody then, I guess it was part of the toughness of being young. And the Army did a great job, I think. I hear a lot of people criticize people who worked for the government. They say, "Oh, the government is so inefficient." Gee, the Germans were supposed to be the best soldiers in the world. And we were sort of laughed at by the professional soldiers of the world. But here, the government or the army and the different services took these boys who were supposed to be spoiled and weak. And we got the job done, didn't we? They made soldiers out of us. And maybe we weren't the best in the world, but we got the job done. And I think that's a wonderful thing. I wish the government could maintain faith with us, we had great faith in our government then.

When I was a youth, gee, anything the government said, it had to be right, because the US government said so. Gee, if only we could get that faith in our government back again, if they could be true to us like we thought they were then, it would be a wonderful thing, wouldn't it? Boy, to have trust like that and to do the government's bidding like we did. And there are people doing it today too, and I don't think they get the respect they deserve. We didn't think of ourselves as being great then either. But when I look back on it now, I think, wow, boy, what great kids, be so loyal.

There's something funny we had, where was this now? Oh, the first German town we attacked was called, it was named [inaudible]. We had a tough time capturing that town, and we had a lot of casualties. One of them, in fact, the guy from my section wanted the DSC on that operation. And I prayed for all of them. I go through a litany of prayers for those guys, and I mentioned each of them by name that we lost in my company. And then there's a sort of an afterthought, I pray for the men that I killed because some of them were soldiers just like us. They went because their country asked them to serve. And I guess God loved them just as much as he loved us. So I pray for them too because I shortened their lives. They were young people too.

But getting back to my story, we put our wounded down in the basement of this house, and we were cut off for a while. Actually, it was three days that we were cut off. And the only treatment they had was from our aid man. They didn't have any extensive help for those people. So they were rather miserable by this time. So one of the lieutenants went down to encourage these men, and he was talking with them, and he talked to this one fellow and he says, "Well, Jim, how are you feeling?" "Well, I feel good, lieutenant." Oh, he says, "I'm feeling better." But he said, "I'm not feeling good you know." And then he thought for a while, and he said, "Lieutenant," he says, "I don't mind fighting for my country." He said, "It's a dying part I don't like." So I guess that's about sums it up. He said it all, didn't he, he didn't like the dying part.

Ken Harbaugh:

That was Staff Sergeant Charles Klein.

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Warriors In Their Own Words is a production of Evergreen Podcasts, in partnership with The Honor Project.

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