Point du Hoc (Part II)

In the prior entry, I showed one of the results of the aerial and naval bombardment. The site is relatively untouched since WWII, and you can see the extensive pattern of craters from the shelling and the bombing. The morning of D-Day, it must have looked like the face of the moon.
However, the US didn't trust the bombardment to put the batteries out of action. The 2nd Ranger Battalion was assigned to scale the bluffs and put the guns out of action (This action is depicted in the film The Longest Day, which is not too inaccurate as these things go, but does contain some errors.) The following photo shows the bluffs in this area (not the ones the rangers climbed, but a nearby, representative example):