George Kerchner, who as a junior Army officer led his Ranger company up the Pointe du Hoc cliffs during the Normandy invasion and managed to silence German big guns that threatened the D-Day landings, died Feb. 17 at his home in Midlothian, Va. He was 93.
He died of sepsis and pneumonia, said his son, Greg Kerchner.
Kerchner, a Baltimore soda jerk, joined the Army in 1942 and volunteered the next year for duty in the elite Army Rangers. He trained for six months in England, climbing seaside cliffs in anticipation of raiding Pointe du Hoc, a well-fortified promontory jutting into the English Channel.
The mission, under the command of Lt. Col. James E. Rudder, was viewed as near-suicide. In an oft-quoted line, attributed to an intelligence officer, Rudder was warned that the 100-foot ascent up Pointe du Hoc "can't be done. Three old women with brooms could keep the Rangers from climbing that cliff."
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But Pointe du Hoc held crucial strategic importance. According to military reports, the Germans had stationed there six 155-mm guns capable of reaching up to 15 miles into the channel. The guns at Pointe du Hoc - halfway between the Normandy beaches code-named Utah and Omaha - threatened Allied troop ships offloading thousands of soldiers.
On the dawn of the June 6, 1944, invasion, Lt. Kerchner entered his British-manned landing craft with other members of Company D of the 2nd Ranger Battalion.
As Kerchner neared France, he said, he vowed to be the first ashore.
"OK, let's go!" he shouted, before plunging into the head-deep water amid the rising tide and losing his rifle. He said he felt a strong desire to "cuss out the British navy" but the miscalculation probably saved his life. Soldiers behind him jumped into shallower water, and many were shot.
By the time he got to the rocky beach, he found himself in charge of D Company; every senior officer had been killed or severely wounded. From several hundred yards away, German machine-gun fire continued to rake the beach.
When Kerchner reached the top of Pointe du Hoc, he found the big guns had been removed from their casements. Kerchner sent out patrols to locate and destroy the guns using incendiary grenades. Five were found scattered nearby; a sixth had been destroyed in an earlier Allied bombing.
Germans remained at the perimeter in overwhelming force, and Kerchner and 15 men under his command were surrounded for 2 1/2 days. He held his position, fighting off Germans until finally being relieved by reinforcements.
The operation at Pointe du Hoc was as devastating as it was dramatic. About 100 out of the 225 Rangers at Normandy on June 6 were killed or wounded, said April Cheek-Messier, a vice president of the National D-Day Memorial Foundation in Bedford, Va. Kerchner received the Distinguished Service Cross, the Army's second-highest award for valor.
