How Four Rangers Pulled Off the Impossible: Capturing the Lochrist Battery

The 2nd Ranger Battalion during World War II was one of the Army’s most elite fighting units, made forever recognizable by their fictional portrayal in Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan. They were a highly unconventional unit by the standards of the day, and because of their incredibly rigorous training and baptism by fire on the sands of Omaha Beach and the cliffs of Pointe du Hoc, they were a force to be reckoned with. Their exploits are renowned, yet this particular story of just four rangers on a routine patrol will make you realize just how badass, ballsy, and flat-out insane the rangers were.

To set the scene, by late summer 1944, the 2nd Ranger Battalion was attached to the Brittany campaign to take the westernmost peninsula (Brittany) of Northern France. By September the Americans had neared Brest, a large port town on the western tip of the peninsula. Brest, along with the Germans occupying it, remained one of the last objectives to take. At this point, Brittany was almost completely in American hands. Save for the few hardline idealogues, most of the Germans that remained in Brittany saw the writing on the wall. Many were surrendering themselves to the Americans when they had the chance. However, Brest remained a German stronghold and a vital strategic point for the Germans. The city was one of the final objectives for the Allies to take in Brittany, and Hitler ordered the men defending the city to hold it to the last man.

On September 9, Lieutenant Robert “Bob” Edlin led his four-man patrol, given the sobriquet the “Fabulous Four,” with rangers Bill Dreher, Bill Courtney, and Warren Burmaster to scout out the Lochrist, or Graf Spee, battery. The battery was a set of four 280mm naval guns that sat in a 50-acre complex. It included a three-story bunker in the center that acted as the battery’s command post and observation center. The 50-acre complex was surrounded by all sorts of defensive fortifications: barbed wire, mines, machine gun nests, sandbag fortifications, and deadly pillboxes (manned concrete bunkers armed with machine guns or other weaponry), not to mention the hundreds of German soldiers garrisoned there. Edlin and his boys had to be careful — one wrong step and the squad gets shredded by a machine gun or blown to bits by a landmine.

The battery looked over Brest’s port and was crucial to take before the city could be moved on. Plans were underway for its capture, and the day before the assault, the four rangers were given orders to mark down the locations of minefields, pillboxes, machine gun nests, etc. that guarded the fortress’s perimeter. All the better to have an eyes-on understanding of what you’re going up against.

So far unseen, The Fabulous Four make their way to the periphery of the complex. They’re standing at the edge of a minefield protecting one of the large pillboxes that menacingly looks out beyond the perimeter. Courtney spies a way through the minefield and leads the way; bomb craters from allied aircraft had left an open trail through. The four rangers jump from crater to crater across, then scurry to the rear of the pillbox. Huddled by the pillbox door, Edlin now has a choice to make: go back and report what they had discovered so far or try and take the pillbox on their own and hope things go their way. Option one makes sense. The bombed-out alley through the minefield is a big defensive flaw that can be exploited, exactly the kind of thing the higher-ups were looking for. There’s also a lot that can go wrong with option two; however, they were here to fight a war after all right? They all nod at one another in agreement — everyone’s on the same page. Crashing through the door they go.

Twenty German soldiers stand stunned by the sudden entrance. The rangers shout at the Germans to get their hands up, and the Germans comply even though they have the Americans outnumbered five to one. After Courtney tries to speak to their new prisoners in his broken German, An officer among them steps forward saying he speaks English and can facilitate. Edlin realizes he now has the opportunity to try something so audacious and flat-out crazy that it just might work. He tells the German to lead him to the command post; he wants to talk to the commandant of the battery. The Wehrmacht officer agrees to show them the way. The rangers decide among themselves that Edlin and Courtney will go with their newly captured officer to the command post while Dreher guards the rest of the prisoners, and Burmaster high-tails it back to friendly lines to radio in what’s transpiring.

On the long walk to the command post, running straight through the middle of the complex, Edlin and Courtney try to act as naturally as possible. They do their best to make small talk and look as if they belong when they walk. They somehow reach the fort unchallenged and descend into one of the tunnels that runs underneath. Inside the base of the fort they come across a medical bay and the rangers again immediately bark at everyone to get their hands up. They’re met with blank stares and more shocked faces. Edlin and Courtney’s German officer lets everyone know that the two Americans were there to negotiate the surrender of the fort, and the room begins to calm down.

The officer then leads them up the stairs and points to a door: the commandant’s office. Edlin and Courtney, routine by this point, bash through the door. Edlin rushes in shoving the barrel of his Thompson sub-machine gun into Lt. Col. Furst’s neck. Unfazed, Furst gets up from his desk, pours himself a drink, and curtly asks what the Americans want. Edlin tells Furst he should surrender the fort.

“We have it completely surrounded,” Edlin says in full confidence, which is of course a blatant lie. Furst offers no reply, picks up the phone receiver on his desk, and dials. He converses in German into the receiver, then looks up at the rangers.

“They’ll call back in a few minutes,” Furst says to the anxious rangers. The smug-looking lieutenant colonel offers them something to drink while they wait. The Rangers decline. A nerve-racking few minutes pass by until the phone rings again. Furst picks up, and upon hearing what the other line has to say, lets out a wide grin. Edlin and Courtney are made. Furst tells the rangers he knows there are only three of them, the two of them in the room right now and the other guarding the pillbox.

“Now you are my prisoners,” Furst explains with his grin. They won’t be surrendering the fort anytime soon, nor are they going to be making it back to Allied lines. Edlin’s few (very few) options are running through his mind. Ever one to roll the dice, the “Fool Lieutenant” hatches another idea.

“Courtney, hand me a grenade.” Suddenly, Edlin shoves the grenade into Furst’s crotch. Furst, although suddenly looking a little less smug, doesn’t budge. Then Edlin pulls the pin and removes the lever. With the lever no longer attached to the grenade, it’s got about five seconds until it blows everyone in the room to shreds. Edlin keeps his eyes locked on Furst. One long second. Then two, three…

“Okay!” shouts Furst. Edlin quickly returns the lever and pin back into the grenade. Furst agrees to surrender the fort. The foolishly brave decision to play a game of deadly chicken pays off for Edlin. Furst walks to the PA system behind his desk and announces the surrender of the complex to the rest of the Wehrmacht soldiers present. There were over 800 of them. The Lochrist battery was now securely in American hands thanks to the Fabulous Four and their almost suicidally brave leader.