Sergeant Leonard Lomell

I have been away for a couple of weeks and much has happened that I would like to discuss. But before that I would like to say a little about Leonard "Bud" Lomell. You have never heard of him? Neither had I until a few hours ago and, even then, it was only because he had died. He was not a young many anymore. In fact, he was 91. I would like to have met him because he was an ordinary man of whom America could be proud.

Bud Lomell was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1920, the adopted son of Scandinavian immigrant parents. He grew up in New Jersey and at school was a star player in both football and baseball. He was good enough to win an athletics scholarship to Tennessee Wesleyan College where he edited the student's newspaper. This was the 1930s when America was drowning in the Great Depression and Bud's father was struggling to make some money to feed his family. Bud found a job as a brakeman on freight trains until in 1942 he joined up with the US Army 76th Infantry Division and then volunteered for the US Army Rangers.

In 1944 he found himself in Britain training for the upcoming invasion of France. When the D-Day landings occurred, Bud Lomell played a crucial part in both saving American and British lives but also in guaranteeing the success of the mission. Shortly before H-hour on D-Day, 6th June 1944, Sergeant Lomell with his platoon came ashore on the French coast in an assault landing craft carrying their weapons and grappling equipment to climb the 100 ft cliffs of the Pointe de Hoc in Normandy. Lomell was hit by machine gun fire as he waded ashore but, in spite of his wound, he carried on and made for the ropes up the steep cliff face. The object of the platoon and the 200 men of the 2nd Ranger Battalion was to eliminate six clifftop German artillery guns that threatened the entire D-Day assault on Omaha and Utah beaches. The Americans climbed the cliffs under heavy fire from machine guns and grenades and with the Germans trying to cut the ropes. The Rangers made it onto the cliff top only to find that the artillery guns were not where aerial reconnaissance had shown them to be. The pictures were of dummies. After sustaining heavy losses Bud Lomell and Sergeant Jack Kuhn moved inland and found the real weapons located in an orchard about 3/4 mile from the coast. The Germans who would man the guns had taken cover in a farmhouse about 100 yards away as the area took heavy fire from the US battleship Texas and RAF aircraft. The Americans were starting to come ashore on Omaha beach and the guns were ready to bombard them and probably destroy the invasion. While the guns were unattended, Sergeant Kuhn kept watch while Lomell twice crawled across open ground to put all the guns out of action using incendiary grenades. By that time Sergeant Lomell destroyed those guns he had lost 12 of 22 men, dead or wounded from his platoon and of the 225 men of three companies of the 2nd Ranger Battalion only 90 were left standing, neither injured nor dead at the end of D-Day. Sergeant Lomell made it to Berlin and he was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for his action on D-Day as well as a Silver Star for his bravery in capturing Hill 400 in December 1944, during the long Battle of the Bulge.

After WWII, Leonard Lomell trained as a lawyer, married Charlotte Ewart and had three daughters. He rarely spoke about the war and even when he did, it was with great reluctance. However, in a book published in 1998, The Victors: Eisenhower and his Boys, Stephen Ambrose said that Sergeant Bud Lomell was the single American next to Eisenhower most responsible for the success of D-Day. This may have been true but Lomell was concerned more about a different view and said "I lost half my guys. What more is there to know?"

Bud Lomell died on 1st March 2011. The picture above was painted by the young military artist, Larry Selman, who came to know the soldier very well and shows Bud Lomell on Pointe de Hoc, firing at the Germans as his comrades scramble over the cliff top. On hearing of Bud Lomell's death, Larry Selman said that although Leonard Lomell was an ordinary American "His passing makes the world a little poorer but his contribution made it a much better place to be in."

An ordinary American but one who did extra-ordinary things. The Independent newspaper recalls that once, when a group of lawyers refused entry to a Jewish associate into a private club, Leonard Lomell told them flatly that "I didn't climb the cliffs of Normandy to find fascists in my own back yard."

Farewell, Sir, and Rest in Peace.

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