Mike Ranney

Background

When Easy Company's non-commissioned officers declared they would no longer serve under Captain Sobel after his court-martial charge against Lieutenant Winters, Ranney and Terrence 'Salty' Harris were treated as the ringleaders: Colonel Sink demoted both to private and transferred Ranney to I Company. The two then joined the Pathfinders, the roughly eighty volunteers who would land first and guide the main waves of the invasion, but Ranney wrote to Winters pleading his case and, five days before D-Day, orders came through returning him to Easy Company. He jumped into Normandy and fought in the assault on the Brécourt Manor guns, teaming with Carwood Lipton during the attack, and received the Bronze Star for it; he was later wounded and sent to hospital to recover.