Okay,

So you've click this to find out what on Earth is a 'pointduhoc', and here's the story behind it:

Years ago I had to pick a 'nic' for the internet, right?  I'm sure you've got one/some yourself.  So being a HUGE World War II historian, I wanted something to reflect my passion for that.

Back in 1944, on June the 6th, the Allies invaded the European continent in Normandy, France.  On that day, the Americans were assigned the Omaha Beach and Utah Beach sectors (see map below) to land at.  Between these two beaches was a area of cliff that the Germans had placed four 155mm (read: HUGE!) artillery pieces that were capable of raining fire down on not only the invading infantry on the two beaches, but the ships at sea as well!

Of course we couldn't stand for that, so the Army Rangers (2nd Battalion) got the task of climbing the 100' cliffs and taking control of the area.  They did all this that morning under HEAVY enemy machine gun fire as well as the famous "potato mashers!" (German hand grenades).

The Rangers took the cliff and secured the area (of course there's more to the story than this, I'm just giving you the short version) under heavy losses (at the end of the second days action, the landing force of 225+ was reduced to about 90 men who could still fight), and disabled the big guns (that had been relocated inland by-the-way) and won the day.

The cliff that they took and held was called...Pointe-du-Hoc.

Close Window