EDITOR’S CORNER
Do you ever drive to Bryan-College Station? Bet you do, And, if you do, I’ll bet you use the Texas 6 loop around the twin cities at some point.
Except Texas 6 has a name. It’s called the Earl Rudder Freeway.
We drive on streets that are named all the time, of course. But we seldom think about those names. When was the last time any of us went down Murray Avenue in Rockdale and thought “wow, this used to be the road that went out to the Murray Cemetery?”
Me neither.
But we really ought to think about Earl Rudder every single time we set a tire on that freeway. Especially this week, as it falls in between Memorial Day and June 6th.
James Earl Rudder was born in the spectacularly misnamed Eden, Texas, not far from San Angelo.
He graduated Texas A&M and went on to coach and teach at Brady High School.
Then the world dissolved into insanity and Rudder did what members of that Greatest Generation did. He went to war.
The late spring of 1944 found him a 33-year-old Army Reserves lieutenant colonel. The planners and thinkers were about to set in motion the largest sea-based invasion force in history, to mark the beginning of the end of this particular insanity.
It was to be, of course, the invasion of Normandy. American troops were to hit beaches given the names “Omaha” and “Utah.”
And smack between them, towering over those two expanses of sand and brush was Pointe du Hoc, a 100-foot promontory, heavily fortified by the German Army.
Those guns on Pointe du Hoc had to be silenced or soldiers on Omaha and Utah Beaches would be taking part in a turkey shoot. They would be the turkeys.
The Germans believed the point to be unassailable. A senior American battle planner wryly remarked: “That place could be defended by three old ladies with brooms.”
Gen. Omar Bradley picked Rudder to head the elite Army Ranger team tasked with taking Pointe Du Hoc.
Their “strategy,” if it can be called that, was to scale the cliffs, under murderous fire, and those who were still able, once they reached the summit, would take it, “neutralizing” the Nazi fortifications on top.
How did it go? When one Ranger fell, another would take his place. When one rope was cut, a Ranger would grab another and begin his climb again.
By the time they reached the top, and they did, about one-third of the 200 men who started up, were dead or wounded.
Then they engaged in hand-to-hand fighting and accomplished their objective. Half-accomplished would be a better description. They had to hold it and, communications being what they were, neither the Rangers nor the men on the beaches were really sure how the others were doing.
Twenty-three more men were sent up. Rudder and his men held the rock for two days as the entire Allied beachhead was secured.
By the second day only 90 of the 223 Rangers were able to bear arms. Rudder was wounded twice.
Now, I am not saying Earl Rudder won D-Day all by himself.
But I am saying the names of some roads are more important than the names of other roads.
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