World War II

AIRBORNE
BATTLES
World War II
AIRBORNE
BATTLES
Warfare History Network Presents
D-DAY:
The Fight for
Ste-Mere-Eglise
MARKET-GARDEN:
A Bridge
TOO FAR
FIRST VICTORY:
Glider Assault
on Eben Emael
Fallschirmjgers
Bloody Fight for Crete
OP. VARSITY
The
Final
Drop
AB-C-1 Disticor cover_BB-Winter05 C-1 Bookstore 10/14/14 2:35 PM Page 1
04 | EDITORIAL
BY FLINT WHITLOCK
06 | AIRBORNE TOUR OF DUTY
General James M. Gavin and the 82nd Airborne
Division became legendary during World War II.
BY MICHAEL D. HULL
16 | THE FALL OF EBEN EMAEL
A handful of well-trained German glider troopers
subdued a seemingly impregnable fortress in a
matter of hours. BY ROY STEVENSON
26 | SCANDINAVIAN AIRBORNE ASSAULT
German paratroopers fought stubborn defenders
during operations against Denmark and Norway.
BY HENRIK O. LUNDE
38 | PYRRHIC PARACHUTE VICTORY IN CRETE
German parachute troops found the resistance
from Commonwealth soldiers particularly brutal in
the fight for the Greek island. BY RICHARD RULE
50 | AIRBORNE!
The U.S. Armys elite infantry had to earn their
wings before they could leap into battle.
KEVIN M. HYMEL
52 | TARGET: SAINTE-MERE-EGLISE
In Normandy on the night of June 5/6, 1944, the
U.S. 82nd Airborne Division overcame countless
SNAFUs to take a key village. BY FLINT WHITLOCK
68 | A SCREAMING EAGLES JOURNEY
Trooper Lud Labutka of the 101st Airborne Divi-
sion, fought his way through Normandy, Holland,
and the Battle of the Bulge. BY RICHARD A. BERANTY
78 | GLIDER ASSAULT ON PEGASUS BRIDGE
A bold British glider assault seized a pair of vital
bridges in the early hours of D-Day.
BY CHRISTOPHER MISKIMON
90 | CLOSE ENCOUNTER
An American airborne engineer recalls his drop
into southern France and an operation with British
comrades. BY CHRIS BLENDHEIM
96 | ACTION AT ARNHEM
BY DAVID H. LIPPMAN
A bridge across the Rhine proved an insurmount-
able goal for the ill-fated British 1st Airborne dur-
ing Operation Market-Garden. BY DAVID H. LIPPMAN
112 | AMERICANS IN MARKET-GARDEN
Troopers of the U.S. Airborne Divisions fought with
distinction during the air-ground assault in the
autumn of 1944. BY GEN. MICHAEL REYNOLDS
128 | CANINES TO THE RESCUE
To help downed airmen, the U.S. Army trained dogs
to parachute out of airplanes.
BY MICHAEL DOLAN AND KEVIN HYMEL
130 | THE LAST DROP
The mission to breach the Rhine in March 1945
was the Allies biggestand finalairborne/glider
operation of the war. BY STEPHEN L. WRIGHT
142 | ANGELS TO THE RESCUE
Thousands of prisoners were at risk outside Manila
when the 11th Airborne Division staged a daring
and coordinated assault to bring them to freedom.
BY DONALD J. ROBERTS II
World War II Airborne Battles 2014 by Sovereign Media Company, Inc., all rights reserved. Copyrights to stories and illustrations are the property of their creators. The contents of
this publication may not be reproduced in whole or in part without consent of the copyright owner. Published by Sovereign Media, 6731 Whittier Ave, Suite A-100, McLean, VA 22101.
PAGE
52
Cover: An American paratrooper prepares to board a transport plane for a combat jump, somewhere in Europe.
CONTENTS
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WORLD WAR II AIRBORNE BATTLES 4
EDI TORI AL
We are pleased to present the contributions of the airborne
forcesAmerican, German, and British. Like comman-
dos, rangers, mountain troops, frogmen, submariners,
etc., paratroopers are regarded as one of the elite mili-
tary forces.
Made up strictly of volunteers, these high-risk types of
units are characterized as possessing tough, special training,
distinctive capabilities, exceptional courage, and an
unmatched esprit de corps. Often the first into battle, these
units also traditionally suffered disproportionately high
casualties. Yet, there were (and are today) no shortage of
volunteers. It is amazing what some men (and women, too)
will endure just to wear a small cloth insignia or metal
badge on their uniforms signifying that they are a cut above
the average.
Parachutes were first imagined by Leonardo da Vinci in
the 15th century and tested by the Croatia-born Renais-
sance scholar Faust Vrancic when he jumped from a tower
in Venice in 1617. People then began jumping from hot-air
balloons and, once the airplane became a practical reality,
from aircraftprimarily as a means of escape.
The credit for developing a military parachute doctrine
goes to the French, Italians, and Russians in the 1920s. But
it was Nazi Germany and Luftwaffe General Kurt Student
who advanced the concept into a potent weapon of war,
when Students Fallschirmjger units used this surprise tech-
nique on May 10, 1940, to capture Belgiums Eben Emael,
then considered the strongest fortress in Europe. On that
same day, an even larger drop of Fallschirmjger took place
during the invasion of Holland.
One year later, though, after Germanys successful air-
borne and glider raid on the British garrison at Crete
resulted in heavy casualties to the sky soldiers, Hitler for-
bade further large-scale airborne assaults. At this same time,
however, the British and Americans began expanding their
airborne capabilities.
In this Special Issue, we bring you fascinating stories of
the airborne forces. Youll land with the Fallschirmjger at
Eben Emael, and try to take a bridge too far with the
British paras in Holland. Youll learn about the harrowing
experiences of a 101st Airborne Division trooper who
jumped into France and the Netherlands. Youll be treated
to photo essays of American paratrooper training and even
the exploits of para-dogscanines who earned their
jump wings!
Youll find out about by the 11th Airborne Divisions dar-
ing attempt to rescue POWs in the Philippines, and discover
the little-known exploits of Canadian paratroopers during
Operation Varsitythe Allies massive crossing of the Rhine
near wars end. Theres something here for every fan of air-
borne operations.
On a personal note, I have a strong attachment to the para-
troopers, as I made the required minimum five jumps at Fort
Benning, Georgia, in 1965 to qualify for my parachutists
badge. I still recall the mixture of fear and exhilaration that
I felt on those jumpsthe sense that, while jumping out of a
perfectly good airplane with just a few square yards of silk
attached to my shoulders, I was doing something either
incredibly brave or incredibly stupid. I also still recall that,
during my three weeks of grueling training, I gained a healthy
respect and deep admiration for the airborne soldiers who,
just 20 years earlier, had jumped into enemy-held territory
and skies full of flying lead.
Today, some say that paratroopers are an anachronism,
as militarily obsolete as the horse cavalry, their arrival in a
battle zone having been superceded by helicopter-borne
troops. That may be true from a strictly tactical point of
view, but there is no denying that those who still qualify
for their jump wings consider their training and elite sta-
tus to be an important part of the overall military tradi-
tion, worthy of respect and emulation.
Flint Whitlock, Editor
Warriors in the Wind
Carl A. Gnam, Jr.
Editorial Director, Founder
Flint Whitlock
Editor
Samantha DeTulleo
Art Director
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P R O F I L E S M I C H A E L D . H U L L
SHORTLY AFTER MIDNIGHT on Monday, June 5, 1944, the dark skies over the
coast of northern France were filled with thunder.
Fourteen hundred C-47 and C-53 transport planes and 3,500 gliders were carry-
ing 20,000 British and American paratroopers to assigned drop zones behind the
French coast to spearhead the massive, long-awaited Allied invasion of Normandy
on the morning of June 6. The airborne soldiers were to seize key junctions and bridges
and to prevent German reinforcements from reaching the five landing beaches.
Wave after wave of planes droned over the coast and approached their drop zones.
Inside each transport and glider, young paratroopers sat tensely fingering their
weapons, adjusting their heavy packs,
and waiting for the order to hook up
and jump.
The U.S. 82nd and 101st Airborne
divisions, led by Maj. Gens. Matthew B.
Ridgway and Maxwell D. Taylor,
respectively, were headed for the town
of Ste. Mere-Eglise astride the Merderet
River in the Cotentin Peninsula. Maj.
Gen. Richard N. Gales British 6th Air-
borne Division was headed for a 24-
square-mile area east of Caen, where the
famed Red Devils were to capture
bridges on the Caen Canal and the Orne
River and knock out a coastal battery at
Merville threatening British landings at
Sword Beach.
The formations of transports carrying
the American paratroopers neared six
drop zones within a few miles of Ste.
Mere-Eglise. In the first C-47, leading
the battle-tested 82nd All-American
Division, a slim, handsome officer
peered through a window at the dark-
ness and waited impatiently. Except for
pathfinders who had jumped an hour
earlier to prepare the drop zones, Brig.
Gen. James Maurice Gavin, deputy
commander of the division, would be
the first man to parachute 10 miles
behind the German lines.
Thirty-seven-year-old Gavin and his
men had taken off from Cottesmore in
the English Midlands a few hours before.
Gavin knew that his troopers had only
eight and a half minutes in which to jump
in order to land in the correct drop zones.
After ordering the men to stand and hook
up their parachutes, Gavin glanced out of
the window again and saw the thickest
fog he had ever seen. He could see noth-
ingnot even the next plane.
The fuselage door was opened, and
suddenly the fog disappeared. It
was gone just as quickly as it had
appeared, Gavin reported later.
I could see Ste. Mere-Eglise
down there. I think it was the
most dramatic moment of my life.
Everything had depended on us
jumping at just the right time. A
few seconds later, he shouted,
Airborne Tour of Duty
General James M. Gavin and the 82nd
Airborne Division became legendary during
World War II.
WORLD WAR II AIRBORNE BATTLES
6
Adjusting his parachute
pack, James Gavin pre-
pares to jump into Holland
during Operation Market-
Garden in September of
1944. Despite being
injured in the jump, Gavin
retained command of the
82nd Airborne.
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AB-Gavin-new_WW-Mar04 Ordnance 18, 20-23 10/14/14 11:17 AM Page 6
Lets go! He tumbled out of the door at an altitude of 600
feet, and stick after stick of paratroopers leaped out into the
darkness.
Men of the 101st Division dropped into flooded meadows
near Utah Beach after their planes slipped past German coastal
batteries without being fired on. But the 82nd ran into increas-
ing fire, and many inexperienced pilots
veered off course during the final run
into the drop zones. Many troopers
jumped several minutes too late into a
sky filled with tracers and small-arms
fire. They were critically scattered.
Ridgways division fared much worse
than Taylors. Some men landed as much
as 25 miles from Ste. Mere-Eglise, and
many of the gliders plowed into
hedgerows and buildings, pancaked into
rivers, or settled helplessly into the
Merderet River marshes. Casualties were
high, and 60 percent of all equipment
including mortars, radios, and ammuni-
tionwas lost. Hundreds of gear-laden
troopers fell into treacherous swamps,
and many drowned in less than two feet
of water. Only one unit of the 82nd, the
505th Parachute Infantry Regiment,
jumped into its assigned zone.
Meanwhile, scattered groups of troop-
ers struggled out of the marshes, using toy
mechanical crickets to recognize each
other in the darkness and trying to
regroup and organize themselves. General
Ridgway found himself alone, pistol in
hand, in a field. At this time, Gavin was
miles away in the Merderet River
swamps. He had dropped into a pasture
north of La Fiere, far from his assigned
drop zone. But Slim Jim Gavin wasted
no time, for he knew that by dawn his
men would be under heavy attack when
the German defenders realized what was
happening.
By 4 AM, he had managed to round up
a small group of stray troopers. He stood
knee deep in cold water while the men
tried unsuccessfully to salvage an anti-
tank gun from a half-submerged Waco
cargo glider. Gavin did not know where
he was until his aide, Lieutenant Hugo
Olson, reported that there was a railroad
embankment nearby. The general knew
that the Cherbourg-Carentan line passed
through the Merderet valley. He felt better.
He led his band, which now numbered about 200, southward
along the embankment to the vicinity of La Fiere, where he
found another 300 men from various regiments milling about.
Gavin split the force. He kept half at La Fiere, to seize the bridge
there, and sent the other men to Chef-du-Pont to capture
another bridge.
As the sun rose on June 6, Gavin found
himself walking back and forth between
La Fiere and Chef-du-Pont, organizing
and encouraging his troops as they
fought to secure the two vital Merderet
River spans. The Chef-du-Pont bridge
was seized after a bitter fight, but it
would take two days to capture the La
Fiere span from the tenacious Germans.
Meanwhile, Gavins men dug in
around the Merderet and Douve cross-
ings and held the rear of Utah Beach,
where the 4th Infantry Division was
landing. Gavin, never without his M-1
rifle, was close to his men at all times.
They loved and respected him because
he was a first-class soldier and was con-
cerned with their welfare. They called
him Grandma because his first ques-
tion to a GI was often: When was the
last time you had a hot meal, son? His
rapport with enlisted men was unique
among generals.
He was the kind of man who never
had to raise his voice, said Jack Norton,
who served under him for nine years. He
led by example. Another trooper,
Sergeant William Tucker, reported,
Gavin was always up front prowling
around ... Wherever the battle was, wher-
ever the troops needed to see and hear
him, there was Gavin. Ted Morgan, a
medical corpsman and later selectman in
Edgartown, Massachusetts, would recall
Gavin administering first aid to a badly
injured staff sergeant during the Battle of
the Bulge and bandaging him up.
He seemed to be fearless. Bill Walton
of Time magazine reported, I remem-
ber seeing the two of them (Ridgway and
Gavin) walking down a road in Nor-
mandy with all sorts of stuff flying
around. I was creeping along down in the
ditch by the side of the road, and when
they saw me, they yelled simultaneously,
WORLD WAR II AIRBORNE BATTLES
7
BELOW: James Gavin, the youngest
Major General at the time.
BOTTOM: Dotting the sky, men of the
82nd Airborne exit a C-47 transport
aircraft and descend earthward.
AB-Gavin-new_WW-Mar04 Ordnance 18, 20-23 10/14/14 11:17 AM Page 7
Get up here and walk like a man! And I did. Gavin was a
soldiers soldier. One division veteran recalled, He could jump
higher, shout louder, spit farther, and fight harder than any
man I ever saw.
The All-Americans fought hard on a minimum of rest and
food during those early days in Normandy. By the morning of
June 8, they had gained almost full control of their objective
area and were eliminating pockets of resistance. Casualties
were high; on D-Day alone, the 82nd lost 1,259 men killed,
wounded, or missing.
After the capture of the La Fiere bridge and the successful
drop of the 325th Glider Infantry Regiment, the 82nd Air-
borne began a drive to cut off the Cotentin Peninsula. The
troopers captured Saint Sauveur-le-Vicomte and advanced to
La Haye du Puits near the western coast of the peninsula.
Casualties continued to mount; 57 percent of the divisions
men were killed or wounded in 33 days of fighting without
relief.
In the second week of July 1944, with
the Normandy beachhead secured and
the strategic port of Cherbourg in Amer-
ican hands, the exhausted troopers of the
two airborne divisions boarded LSTs for
England. The 82nd had 5,245 of its men
listed as casualties. In Southampton,
brass bands greeted the All-Americans,
and in the Midland towns around their
base, they were treated to many rounds
of drinks in the inns.
General Gavin was awarded a cluster
to his Distinguished Service Cross for
extraordinary heroism while person-
ally reorganizing a battalion and direct-
ing an attack on the town of Le Motey
on June 9. That August, when General
Ridgway was given command of the
18th Airborne Corps, Gavin moved up
to head the 82nd Airborne Division. At
37, he was the youngest divisional commander in the Army
since the Civil War.
The man who was proving to be one of the leading airborne
tacticians and combat officers of World War II came from hum-
ble beginnings. Born in Brooklyn, New York, on March 22,
1907, Gavin was orphaned before he was two years old. He
was adopted by Martin and Mary (Tearle) Gavin, and brought
up in Mount Carmel, Pennsylvania. His new father was a semi-
literate immigrant coal miner, and the family lived in poverty.
My parents were kind people; they could hardly read or
write, Gavin recalled. The boy attended parochial schools
and did odd jobs to help support his parentsdelivering news-
papers, picking coal, and assisting in a barber shop.
Young Jim developed a thirst for knowledge, with a partic-
ular interest in military affairs. He wrote an outline of the Civil
War for his class and read every book he could get his hands
on. There was then no library in the town, so he had to con-
tent himself with reading the books in the store where he
picked up his newspapers. At the age of 15, Jim left school to
become a clerk in a shoe store and later managed a filling sta-
tion. But by the time he was 17, he was restless.
He was frustrated by his lack of education and felt that he
had exhausted the few opportunities that Mount Carmel
offered. Learning that he could further his education in the
Army, he left home a week after his 17th birthday in 1924 and
enlisted in the Coast Artillery. He served in the 16th and 2nd
Regiments and rose to corporal in 15 months.
Assigned to the Panama Canal Zone, Jim was delighted to
find a library at his new post. He made full use of it, teaching
himself algebra and other subjects. An old sergeant persuaded
him to take a competitive examination for admission to the
U.S. Military Academy. Gavin had only an eighth-grade edu-
cation, but he was ambitious and determined. He laboriously
mastered the textbooks page by page, managed to pass the
tests, and was accepted as a cadet at West
Point on June 30, 1925.
With his humble background and lack
of education, he realized that he was an
oddball in the Long Gray Line. When
they got me, they got a case they could
put in a laboratory and watch, he said
later. I was a perfect experimental sub-
ject. Well, they stimulated me to study
my goddamn head off. I began to read
extensively. To pass his first-semester
writs, the young man had to get up at
4:30 AM and study in the barracks
latrines. He persevered, squeaking
through his first year and gradually
catching up with his classmates. He fin-
ished in the top third of his class, rank-
ing 185th in a class of 299. Gavin grad-
uated on June 13, 1929, and was
commissioned in the infantry.
After taking three months of flight training at the Army Air
Corps Primary Flying School at Brooks Field in Texas, Lieu-
tenant Gavin joined the 25th Infantry Regiment at Camp
Harry S. Jones in Arizona. Then followed tours of duty with
the Infantry School at Fort Benning, Georgia (graduating in
1933), and with infantry regiments in Oklahoma, the Philip-
pines, and Washington State. He was promoted to first lieu-
tenant in 1934 and captain in 1939.
In August 1940, Gavin returned to West Point as an instruc-
tor in tactics. He studied the European war closely, particu-
larly airborne operations, and saw their almost limitless pos-
sibilities. He applied for a transfer to a new parachute battalion
at Fort Benning, but he was one of the best young instructors
at the academy and the superintendent disapproved it. But
Gavin persisted, cajoling a friend at the War Department to
pull some strings and find a replacement for him at West Point.
WORLD WAR II AIRBORNE BATTLES
8
Transport aircraft fly low over an open
field as the 82nd Airborne conducts a
training exercise in North Africa.
AB-Gavin-new_WW-Mar04 Ordnance 18, 20-23 10/14/14 11:18 AM Page 8
So, in August 1941, the tenacious young
officer left for the new Army Parachute
School at Fort Benning.
He completed jump training and dis-
played considerable ability in organizing
and training units in airborne infantry
tactics. Promoted to major and then lieu-
tenant colonel, he attended the Com-
mand and General Staff School at Fort
Leavenworth, Kansas, and eventually
took command of the 505th Parachute
Infantry Regiment at Fort Benning in the
summer of 1942. He welded the regi-
ment into an efficient unit. Gavin
devoted himself fully to airborne tactics,
though he would often admit to his men,
Jumping is a poor means of trans-
portation from the plane to the ground.
The regiment was transferred to Fort
Bragg, North Carolina, where it became
part of the new 82nd Airborne Division.
Gavin became a temporary colonel in
September 1942, and the following April
the division was sent overseas.
After a 12-day voyage, Maj. Gen. Matthew B. Ridgways
division docked in Casablanca on May 10, 1943. It moved
overland by train to Oujda in French Morocco, where pup
tents were set up and more training started. The troopers
chafed and itched for action. Ridgway told them, Youve
got to be tough because the German you meet will be god-
damned tough!
Ridgway told Gavin that the 82nd and the British 1st Air-
borne Division were to spearhead Operation Husky, the Allied
invasion of Sicily, that July. It would be the largest two-nation
sea and air assault in history and would inflict the first sledge-
hammer blow on Nazi-held Europe. There were not enough C-
47s available to drop the entire division, so the initial assault
would be made by Gavins 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment,
reinforced by a battalion of Colonel Reuben H. Tuckers 504th
Parachute Infantry Regiment. They would be the first U.S.
troops to invade Europein the first American airborne oper-
ation on a regimental scale, and the first mass parachute drop
at night.
More training followed in bivouac at Kairouan, Tunisia.
After General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Allied ground com-
mander, and his Algiers staff finally approved the plan for
Operation Husky, Colonel Gavin distributed a letter on July
9 to his troopers. It read, Tonight you embark upon a com-
bat mission for which our people and the free people of the
world have been waiting for two years. The eyes of the
world are upon you. The hopes and prayers of every Ameri-
can go with you.
The airborne drops would precede an amphibious invasion by
General Bernard L. Montgomerys British Eighth Army and Lt.
Gen. George S. Patton Jr.s U.S. Seventh Army. The paratroop-
ers would block enemy counterattacks against the beaches and
seize key bridges to block Axis reinforcements. Gavins force
was to drop north and northeast of the port of Gela and cap-
ture strategic high ground at Piano Lupo, while the British Red
Devils would land in gliders and take the Ponte Grande bridge
to allow the Eighth Army to attack Syracuse.
The Allied armada steamed toward the rocky island of Sicily.
Daylight was fading on July 9 as Brigadier P.H.W. Hickss
British paratroopers clambered aboard 144 Horsa and Waco
gliders at airfields around Kairouan. C-47s and Royal Air
Force Albemarle and Halifax bombers towed them aloft and
droned toward Sicily. Two hours later, Gavins force boarded
266 C-47s and took off into the night.
The inexperienced pilots ran into high winds shortly after take-
off, and the transports were blown off course as heavy weather
assaulted the armada below. Many of the C-47s missed signal
beacons on Malta, two gave up and returned to North Africa,
and one plane crashed into the Mediterranean. Instead of
approaching in orderly V-formations, many of the planes carry-
ing Gavins men neared Sicily from every direction.
The British were faring worse. Approaching Cape Passero,
the British formation was hit by enemy antiaircraft fire and
tracers, and confused pilots released their gliders prematurely.
Sixty-seven gliders plunged into the sea with a loss of 200 men,
and only five gliders managed to reach Cape Passero. Less than
100 Red Devils reached the Ponte Grande bridge, but they held
it until British infantry arrived.
Meanwhile, riding in a C-47 that was off course, Colonel
Gavin stood in the open door and looked for a landmark.
WORLD WAR II AIRBORNE BATTLES
9
Gesturing toward a map of the landing area, Gavin holds a briefing for his staff
shortly before the Holland jump.
AB-Gavin-new_WW-Mar04 Ordnance 18, 20-23 10/14/14 11:18 AM Page 9
There was land beneath, but was it Sicily? The green light
flashed, and Gavin leaped into the darkness. Immediately
behind him came bearded John H. Thompson of the Chicago
Tribune.
When he hit the ground, Gavin was still not sure that he had
landed in Sicily. Twenty troopers landed near him, but the offi-
cer did not know that the airborne assault had been chaotic and
that U.S. paratroopers were being scattered all over south-
eastern Sicily. Most of his men were floating to Earth near
Noto, 60 miles to the east in the British sectorfar from their
drop zone near Gela.
Gavins planeload had come down near the town of Vitto-
ria, 20 miles east of Gela and in the hills overlooking the
beaches where the U.S. 45th Thunderbird Division was to
land. Four hours after the drop, Gavin still had only 20 men
under his command. He had left Tunisia with 3,405. As dawn
approached, he felt angry and impatient.
Small groups of paratroopers were now roaming across the
rocky hills, cutting telephone wires and skirmishing with
enemy patrols. Shortly after 3 AM, thousands of Allied infantry-
men began wading ashore from landing craft, meeting fierce
but brief resistance.
Gavin and his little group marched toward the sound of dis-
tant gunfire, hoping to find the rest of the combat team. But
they still did not know what island they had landed onSicily,
Corsica, or Sardinia? Early on the morning of July 11, Gavin
found out when he stumbled onto an outpost of the Thunder-
birds. He then led his group to Vittoria, where he grabbed a
jeep and driver and raced toward Gela as dawn was breaking.
Along the way, Gavin rounded up 250 wandering men of his
combat team. He felt better now.
Meanwhile, General Paul Conraths elite Hermann Gring
Panzer Division was grinding toward Gela to smash the 45th
Infantry Division. Along the road to Gela, Gavin heard heavy
small-arms fire erupting half a mile away from the Biazza
Ridge, where the Germans were dug in. A force of 750 panz-
ergrenadiers, a company of Tiger tanks, and an armored
artillery battalion, the eastern column of the Gring Division,
headed over the ridge toward Gavin and his troopers. He did
not know it, but Gavin and his little force were about to fight
one of the critical actions of the Sicily invasion.
Jumping Jim Gavin commanded a motley group of para-
troopers, engineers, cooks, clerks, orderlies, and riggers. He
had no field guns, antitank guns, or tanks, and he knew he
would be greatly outnumbered. But he decided to fight; he had
waited long enough for action.
He formed his men into a skirmish line, with himself in the
center, and waved his arm. The Germans on the ridge opened
up with automatic weapons and rifle fire, killing three of
Gavins scouts. The troopers hit the dirt, firing. More men were
cut down, but Gavin and his soldiers pressed forward. The
Americans fired furiously and yelled wildly. Despite increasing
casualties, Colonel Gavins little force expanded. Hearing the
clatter and whine of gunfire, other GIs in the vicinity rushed
to Biazza Ridge. They included part of a company of the 180th
Infantry Regiment, a lost platoon of the 45th Division, knots
of paratroopers, and even a couple of Navy ensigns who had
parachuted in to coordinate naval gun support.
With their firepower increased, Gavin led his men up the
ridge, and the Germans withdrew. By afternoon, the Ameri-
cans were atop the high ground and enjoying a brief rest. But
the fight was not over. As the GIs took over the enemy fox-
holes, German artillery and mortar fire began to rock the
ridge. The Americans tried feverishly to deepen their holes.
Gavin, using a shallow slit trench as his command post, then
decided to follow a basic rule he had learned at West Point:
when the enemy is on the run, pursue him. He ordered his
men into action again.
The troopers moved down the ridge and along a road toward
the retreating Germans. Then they heard a fearful soundthe
rumble of diesel engines and the clank of steel treads. The Tiger
tanks were coming to crush the All-Americans. Rounding a
bend in the dusty road, Gavins men suddenly were confronted
by half a dozen big Mark VI Tiger tanks. The paratroopers
had only ineffective 2.36-inch bazookas with which to defend
themselves against armor. Fired at point-blank range, the rock-
ets bounced harmlessly off the tanks. One GI was crushed
under a Tigers treads, and machine gunners leaped from the
tanks and overran the bazooka teams before they could reload.
The Americans cursed and raged.
Gavin was alarmed, and the battle raged on. But the Amer-
ican firepower increased slightly. A couple of 81mm mortars
began lobbing shells at the Germans, and airborne artillery-
men rushed two 75mm pack howitzers into position on the
ridge and fired directly at the enemy tanks. Gavin dashed back
and forth fearlessly, shouting encouragement to his men.
Were staying on this goddamn ridge, no matter what hap-
pens! he shouted.
The Tigers rolled on as the howitzers blasted them and troop-
ers edged up to them and fired bazooka rockets into their vul-
nerable gasoline tanks and ammunition racks. One tank turned
and withdrew, and three others were demolished and their
crews killed. Gavin lay on the ground, firing away with his
rifle. The fight grew more intense as more German tanks were
deployed. The Germans were massing for a major assault to
retake the ridge.
As mortar rounds kicked up dust clouds around him, Gavin
decided that he needed support, so he sent an officer back to the
command post of Maj. Gen. Troy Middleton, commander of
the Thunderbirds. The troopers fought on as the Germans
pushed to within a few hundred yards of Gavins command
post. Then came the heartening sound of American 155mm
shells whooshing overhead, and the ground shook as the rounds
exploded among the enemy infantry and tanks. The enemy force
wavered and then started pulling back. The shelling ceased, and
Biazza Ridge was quiet until Gavin and his weary men were
alarmed to hear the sound of heavy engines behind them. But
it was half a dozen Sherman tanks and several half-tracks haul-
WORLD WAR II AIRBORNE BATTLES
10
AB-Gavin-new_WW-Mar04 Ordnance 18, 20-23 10/14/14 11:18 AM Page 10
ing antitank guns; more help had arrived from the 45th Divi-
sion. Cheers went up.
Salvoes blasted the German positions, and the troopers
moved forward through mortar and machine-gun fire to close
with the enemy. The American 155s opened up again, and the
Germans withdrew from the battlefield, leaving behind their
dead and wounded and tons of equipment and supplies.
Colonel Gavin was proud of his untried paratroopers who
had bested a battle group of the Hermann Gring Division
and blocked a threat to the landing beaches.
However, the cost had been high. Many of the troopers,
including Gavin himself, had suffered wounds, and 50 Amer-
icans were dead. That night, the fallen were buried on the ridge
as heads bowed in prayer and Gavin wept.
The exhausted Colonel Gavin fell asleep in a shallow foxhole
under a clump of olive trees. He was awakened early on the
morning of July 12 by the hot sun on his face. One of his legs
was stiff and sore, and his shinbone was red and swollen. He
had fought for hours and then slept without realizing that he
had been wounded by shrapnel. Fearing an infection and not
wanting to be removed from the front, he went to an aid sta-
tion and had sulfa powder sprinkled on his wound.
Early the next morning, Gavin rode a jeep to the high ground
at Piano Lupo. After inspecting the barren terrain covered with
bloated bodies where other All-American troopers had blocked
the western column of the German division, he rode on to Gela.
There was a lump in his throat. On a hill outside Gela stood
General Patton, resplendent in his trademark starred helmet,
cavalry jodhpurs, jackboots, and ivory-handled pistols.
As Gavin approached, rifle in hand, Old Blood and Guts
grinned and said in his high-pitched voice, Hello, Gavin. You
and your men did one hell of a goddamn great job! Then he
offered the young colonel a drink from a large whiskey flask.
Although the Allied military command was critical of the
results of the airborne phase of the Sicily invasion, enemy
officers were impressed. Field Marshal Albert Kesselring,
commander of the German forces in the Mediterranean The-
ater, stated later, The paratroopers effected an extraordi-
nary delay in the movement of our troops, and caused large
losses. General Kurt Student, founder and commander of
the German airborne forces, said, It is my opinion that if it
had not been for the Allied airborne forces blocking the Her-
mann Gring Armored Division from reaching the beach-
head, that division would have driven the initial seaborne
forces back into the sea.
Led by the British Eighth Army, the Allies next invaded the
Italian mainland. At the Salerno beachhead, the British and
Americans encountered stiff opposition. Despite all the power
of artillery and naval gunfire brought against them after the
September 9, 1943, landings there, the Germans managed to
drive a two-mile wedge in the beachhead line and advance to
within three miles of the waters edge. By September 13, the sit-
uation was touch and go at Salerno, according to General
Mark W. Clark, commander of the U.S. Fifth Army. He sent
an urgent message to Ridgway in Sicily for reinforcements.
Ridgway wasted no time. That night, men of Colonel Reuben
Tuckers 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment jumped into the
beachhead and were in the front lines before sunrise on Sep-
tember 14. That night, 120 transports dropped Colonel Gavin
and his 505th Regiment into the beachhead, and they, too,
were positioned by dawn the next day. Allied morale at Salerno
rose with the arrival of the airborne units, and by the afternoon
of September 15, the enemy had been beaten to a standstill. A
German withdrawal all along the Allied front began on Sep-
tember 18.
The British and American forces began to punch their way
out of the beachhead on September 23. Gavins regiment spear-
headed the drive northward, past the ancient ruins of Pompeii
and around Mount Vesuvius. Early on September 30, 1943,
British armor and infantry entered the outskirts of Naples, the
first major European city to be liberated in the war. While ele-
ments of the 82nd Division remained in Naples, the Allied main
force pushed on northward to the Volturno River, where the
enemy halted and dug in.
Gavin, now 36 years old, received his first star as brigadier
general (temporary) and was promoted to assistant comman-
der of the division that October. In November, he was ordered
back to England to assist General Eisenhower, now comman-
der of the Allied expeditionary forces, as the chief American
airborne planner for the forthcoming invasion of Northern
Europe. The 82nd set up base near Leicester for rest and train-
ing before the Normandy invasion.
After taking command of the division in August 1944, Gavin
WORLD WAR II AIRBORNE BATTLES
11
Two paratroopers from the 82nd, with helmet covers fash-
ioned out of parachute silk, chat with 4th Infantry Division
soldiers after the fight at La Fiere, Normandy. A German sol-
dier lays dead at their feet.
AB-Gavin-new_WW-Mar04 Ordnance 18, 20-23 10/14/14 11:19 AM Page 11
was anxious to get back into combat. He would not have to
wait long. The All-Americans were assigned a role in Opera-
tion Market-Garden, Montgomerys bold, hastily planned air-
borne invasion of Hollanda lightning stroke that he believed
would end the war in 1944. The plan was to cut off major
German forces in Holland that were blocking the Allies from
using the strategic Belgian port of Antwerp, to outflank the
Siegfried Line, and to place sizable British forces across the
lower Rhine at Arnhem, Holland, where they would be posi-
tioned for a quick thrust into the Ruhr Valley, the German
industrial heartland.
Lieutenant General Lewis H. Breretons Allied 1st Airborne
Army was to lay a 50-mile carpet of parachute and glider
troops from Eindhoven northward to Arnhem. After the troop-
ers had seized key bridges and towns, Lt. Gen. Brian Hor-
rockss British 30th Corps, spearheaded by the crack Guards
Armored Division, would roll along the carpet to the Zuider
Zee, loosing the full weight of British might on the Ruhr.
The British 1st Airborne Division was assigned to capture
the big Rhine bridge at Arnhem, General Maxwell D. Taylors
101st Airborne Division would capture a 15-mile stretch of
the main north-south highway between Eindhoven and Grave,
and Gavins division would drop along a 10-mile stretch of the
road in the middle of the carpet, seizing the Waal River bridge
at Nijmegen, the Maas River span at Grave, the Maas-Waal
Canal bridges, and the Groesbeek Heights southeast of
Nijmegen.
Montys plan was a bold one, but it was fraught with poten-
tial problems. The Arnhem bridge was 64 miles behind the
German lines, there was only one main two-lane highway, and
the rest of the terrainswampy and crisscrossed by canals
was unsuitable for an advance by armor. Several British and
U.S. commanders voiced doubts about the operation. But
Montgomery, the prickly, cocky victor of El Alamein, was con-
fident and would brook no doubts. Dutch underground reports
about panzers gathered at Arnhem were downplayed.
Shortly after 10 AM on Sunday, September 17, 1944, the
sunny skies over southern England thundered as 1,545 trans-
port planes and 478 gliders lifted from two dozen airfields and
headed for Holland. It was the greatest armada of troop-car-
rying planes ever assembled for a single operation. The planes
streamed along two parallel routes over the coasts of Holland
and Belgium. The British Red Devils took the northern route,
followed by Gavins 82nd, and the 101st followed the south-
ern route. Antiaircraft and small-arms fire peppered the
armada, and several planes were hit. But the transports and
gliders flew steadily on.
At 1:30 that afternoon, the airborne army began dropping
behind the German lines. As they watched the parachutes drift-
ing down and the Horsa and Waco gliders veering in for crash
landings, Dutch people returning from church services waved
and cheered. After more than four years under the Nazi yoke,
they saw their moment of deliverance at hand. The parachute
and glider troops were dropped accurately, despite the enemy
gunfire, and many soldiers said it was the most precise drop
they had ever made. But the cost was high that day, with 68
transports, gliders, and escorting fighters going down in flames.
The German occupation forces were caught by surprise. At
his headquarters in the village of Vaught, General Student,
commander of the German 1st Parachute Army, stood on a
balcony and was awed by an endless stream of enemy trans-
port and cargo planes as far as the eye could see. Landing in
a great cluster, Taylors Screaming Eagles swiftly orga-
nized themselves on landing and began seizing bridges at Saint
Oedenrode, Zon, Veghel, and Eindhoven.
As in the air drops at Sicily, Salerno, and Normandy, Gen-
eral Gavin rode in the lead C-47 of the formation carrying his
All-Americans into action. The green jump light flashed, and
he stepped coolly out into space. Throughout the 25-mile air-
head, the divisions infantry and light artillery elements
dropped with pinpoint accuracy. Landing at both ends of the
big Maas River bridge near Grave, Colonel Tuckers 504th
Regiment was able to capture it swiftly. This was the most sig-
nificant accomplishment of the day by an airborne unit.
Meanwhile, at 2:35 that afternoon, the great armor and
infantry column of General Horrockss 30th Corps began its
64-mile push up the backbone of Holland along the strategic
route the paratroopers were fighting to hold open. At the
northern end of the carpet, Maj. Gen. Robert E. Urquharts
Red Devils were already fighting desperately against heavy
oddsthe 9th and 10th Panzer Divisions positioned in the
Arnhem area. One British battalion battled to hold the north-
ern end of the critical Arnhem road bridge, and the rest of
Urquharts division, outgunned, outnumbered, and hampered
by malfunctioning radio sets, struggled to hold its drop zone
near Oosterbeek.
Gavin, who had fractured two vertebrae in landing near
Groesbeek but was not aware of it until later, rounded up his
men and led them in capturing the town of Groesbeek. The
troopers then set up defensive positions along the Groesbeek
Heights facing the Reichswald Forest. That night, Gavin sent
two companies into Nijmegen, where, aided by a Dutch guide,
they made their way to the main post office where the Ger-
mans had set up mechanisms for detonating the big Nijmegen
highway bridge. The troopers cut the wires but then found
themselves battling the Germans defending the span. The
enemy retained its grip on the bridge for another five days.
By the end of September 17, it was evident that serious prob-
lems were already threatening the success of Operation Mar-
ket-Garden. The Screaming Eagles had been unable to capture
Eindhoven, Gavins men had been halted short of the Nijmegen
bridge, and the British at Arnhem were out on a limb.
On September 18, the three airborne divisions endeavored to
improve their tactical situations and to secure landing zones for
glider reinforcements. Maj. Gen. Stanislaw Sosabowskis Pol-
ish 1st Parachute Brigade was held in reserve and then was
delayed by fog in England.
After a fierce struggle against German artillery, tanks of the
WORLD WAR II AIRBORNE BATTLES
12
AB-Gavin-new_WW-Mar04 Ordnance 18, 20-23 10/14/14 11:19 AM Page 12
British Guards Armored Division
clanked into Eindhoven that Monday
evening and linked up with the 101st
Airborne Division. The armor rolled on
and joined Gavins troopers at Grave the
following morning. Meanwhile, the
82nd held tightly to the Groesbeek
Heights and continued to fight for the
Nijmegen bridge. That night, a Dutch
message from Arnhem reported that the
panzers were getting the best of the
British paratroopers.
General Horrocks reached Gavins
command post on the afternoon of Sep-
tember 19. The American general briefed
him on a plan for seizing the Nijmegen
bridge so that the British armor could
continue northward to Arnhem. That
afternoon, the 2nd Battalion of the 505th
Regiment, supported by British infantry
and tanks, attacked the southern end of
the bridge, but the enemy loosed a deadly
hail of crossfire and held on.
Next, Gavin proposed to send some of
his men across the Waal River in small boats to try and seize
the northern end of the bridge. But there were no such boats
in the area. Horrocks solved the problem by offering the use
of 33 canvas and wood engineer assault boats, but they could
not be brought up until the following day. The crossing would
be made by the 3rd Battalion of the 504th Parachute Infantry
Regiment led by Major Julian A. Cook. It would be a haz-
ardous crossing because the Waal was 400 yards wide and had
a fast current.
On September 20, the battalion made ready to cross sup-
ported by mortars and artillery of the 82nd Division and 30
tanks of the Irish Guards Brigade lined up on the riverbank.
Finally, after frustrating delays caused by German artillery and
traffic jams on the single north-south highway, the assault boats
arrived on 30th Corps trucks. They were hastily assembled,
and around 3 PM, Major Cooks men clambered into the flimsy
craft and pushed into the river. A deafening British-American
barrage hammered the far shore as Cooks troopers paddled
across, using their rifle butts as oars. Enemy small-arms fire
raked them, and men were killed and wounded. The Americans
used their helmets to bail out water and stuffed handkerchiefs
into bullet holes in the boats.
The troopers paddled on into the German fire, with Major
Cook alternately shouting encouragement and breathlessly
repeating, Hail Mary, full of grace, blessed is the fruit of thy
womb, Jesus His men struggled against the current and
were exposed when the wind shifted and blew away a protec-
tive smokescreen, but somehow the 26 boats that had started
out made it across. However, only 13 of them were fit for a
return trip to pick up the next assault wave.
Major Cook and the survivors of the crossing scrambled
ashore, formed small disorganized groups, and dashed across
open ground to gain a toehold on the northern bank. With
rifles, bayonets, and hand grenades, they fought their way to
the bridge. Lt. Gen. Frederick Boy Browning, British deputy
commander of the Allied 1st Airborne Army, who had jumped
into Holland with Gavin, told General Horrocks, I have never
seen a more gallant action.
Eventually, after fierce fighting, the Nijmegen bridge
was in Allied hands that evening. Tanks of the British
Grenadier Guards rumbled across the span, but they would be
unable to get through to Arnhem, where Urquharts Red Dev-
ilsequipped only with small arms and running out of ammu-
nition, food, and medical supplieswere being overwhelmed
by the panzers. After the Nijmegen action, Gavin was visited
by Lt. Gen. Miles C. Dempsey, the skilled, unassuming com-
mander of the British Second Army, who told him, Im proud
to meet the commanding general of the greatest division in the
world today.
By September 24, Montgomery and Brereton realized that
the British paratroopers at Arnhem were being annihilated, so
their withdrawal was ordered. Of the 10,005 Red Devils there,
7,578 were casualties. The 101st Airborne Division lost 2,118
men in Operation Market-Garden, and Gavins division suf-
fered 1,432 casualties. The operation had failed, and Gavin
was angered when the British press depicted Arnhem as some-
thing more than a glorious defeat.
After some more ground fighting in Holland while the British
and Canadian Armies struggled to clear the approaches to
Antwerp, the two American airborne divisions were trucked to
WORLD WAR II AIRBORNE BATTLES
13
Paratroopers move across a field to the assembly area as comrades make their
way to the ground.
AB-Gavin-new_WW-Mar04 Ordnance 18, 20-23 10/14/14 11:19 AM Page 13
camps near Rheims, France, for well-earned rests. Gavin was
promoted to major general that October and was awarded the
Silver Star for gallantry. He also received British, Dutch,
French, Belgian, and Russian decorations, while his All-Amer-
icans were awarded a Presidential Unit Citation, the French
and Belgian Fourragere, and the Dutch Order of Willem.
General Gavin was dining with his staff on the evening of
December 17, 1944, when the telephone shrilled. The Ger-
mans had broken through in the Ardennes Forest the previ-
ous day, and the American situation was critical. The 18th
Airborne Corps was alerted to move to the front within 24
hours after daylight the following day. Characteristically,
Gavin moved swiftly. He sent word to the 101st Division,
alerted his troop units, and briefed the commanders. Another
telephone call informed Gavin that the crisis in the bulge was
now more urgent, and the airborne corps was ordered to move
immediately toward the strategic road junction town of Bas-
togne in Belgium.
Acting as temporary commander of the 18th Airborne Corps
in the absence of General Ridgway, who was in England, Gavin
issued orders for the All-Americans to move by truck toward
Bastogne an hour after daylight on December 18, with the
Screaming Eagles following in the afternoon. While his troop-
ers drew weapons, rations, and extra ammunition, Gavin
rushed to General Courtney Hodgess U.S. First Army head-
quarters in Spa, Belgium. The First Army was bearing the brunt
of the German offensive. Hodges assigned the 82nd Division
to V Corps, defending terrain north of Bastogne and along the
northern shoulder of the enemy penetration. The division
would set up defensive positions around Werbomont, directly
in the path of enemy units then attempting to encircle St.-Vith,
while the Screaming Eagles were ordered to defend Bastogne.
Gavin met leading elements of his division when they started
rolling into Werbomont on the evening of December 18. Road-
blocks were set up, and Gavin established his command post
in a farmhouse in the little crossroads village. Ridgway arrived
that night as the truck columns continued to rumble in. As the
enemy panzer and infantry groups pushed deeper into Belgium,
Ridgway took over operational control of the 3rd Armored
and 30th Infantry Divisions, conducting a brilliant defensive
battle along the northern shoulder of the bulge.
At daylight on December 19, Gavin learned that Field Mar-
shal Gerd von Rundstedts panzers had cut the road leading
southward from Werbomont to Bastogne. The situation was
serious. The outnumbered American units at St.-Vith and Bas-
togne held firm, though both towns were surrounded by
December 20. The Germans were forced to split their forces
as the Americans fought desperately, and the enemy offensive
weakened.
While the Screaming Eagles under Brig. Gen. Anthony C.
McAuliffe, deputy commander, heroically held Bastogne,
Gavins men fought equally hard to the north. After the encir-
cled U.S. armored forces were pulled back from St.-Vith, the
weight of the enemy attack fell upon units of the 82nd Air-
borne Division. The 504th Parachute and 325th Glider
Infantry Regiments fought stubbornly against the Germans
who had overrun St.-Vith, and refused to yield much ground.
Colonel Tuckers 504th Regiment was awarded its second Pres-
idential Unit Citation for gallantrythe first such citation won
by an American unit in the Battle of the Bulge.
When the enemy threatened to break through at an isolated
key road junction at the village of Baraque de Fraiture, Gavin
rushed in a company of glider troops to
reinforce a motley force of tankers and
infantrymen there. He also dispatched a
glider infantry battalion to the town of
Fraiture, a mile northeast of the cross-
roads. The two units arrived on the
morning of December 22, just in time to
confront the first contingent of the 2nd
SS Panzer Division. Heavily outnum-
bered, the GIs withstood artillery bar-
rages and assaults by tanks and a panz-
ergrenadier regiment. The Americans
stood their ground for more than an
hour but were overwhelmed. Only 44 of
the 116 glider troops sent to the junction
escaped; the rest were killed or captured.
After General Montgomery had been
ordered by Eisenhower to tidy the
Allied lines in the northern bulge, the
82nd Airborne withdrew to a stronger,
more consolidated position a few miles
to the north. Gavins troopers groused
about retreating, but their morale was
WORLD WAR II AIRBORNE BATTLES
14
Cold and frostbitten, members of the 82nd Airborne march with tanks of the 2nd
Armored Division and advance into the northern sector of the Bulge.
AB-Gavin-new_WW-Mar04 Ordnance 18, 20-23 10/14/14 11:20 AM Page 14
still high. They blew up bridges across
the Salm River, planted mines, and
strung wire. By Christmas morning, all
was ready. The enemy counterattack had
run out of steam in the snow-clad, fog-
shrouded Ardennes, and on December
26, besieged Bastogne was relieved by
Sherman tanks of Lt. Col. Creighton W.
Abramss 37th Tank Battalion of the 4th
Armored Division.
The following day, Von Rundstedt
threw the 9th SS Panzer and 62nd Volks-
grenadier Divisions against Gavins All-
Americans in a last desperate attempt to
breach the northern shoulder of the
Allied defense line. Howling and firing
their weapons as they charged, the Ger-
man infantry attacked the paratroopers
east of the village of Manhay. One bat-
talion was overrun, but the rest of the
Americans held their ground. When they
saw the big Tiger and Panther tanks
rolling toward them, the GIs ducked
down in their foxholes and rallied after they had passed.
Gavin committed a reserve company, the Americans fought
fiercely, and the Germans were forced back to their own
lines. Some captured enemy soldiers said they had never before
seen Americans fight so tenaciously.
On January 3, 1945, the Allied forces on the northern shoul-
der launched an offensive to reduce the German bulge. Gavins
men were in the thick of it, fighting aggressively though ham-
pered by deep snowdrifts and bitter weather. The 82nd and
the 1st Infantry Division led the offensive. The All-Americans
blasted through the dragons teeth of the Siegfried Line later
that month, and by the night of February 2, they were on Ger-
man soil. Switched to the Hrtgen Forest sector, the scene of a
grim attritional struggle reminiscent of the Western Front in
World War I, Gavins division took part in the advance to the
Roer River. On February 17, the exhausted troopers were
relieved and trucked back to Rheims.
The 82nd rested and refitted, and then went back into action
in April 1945. It crossed the River Elbe, and on May 2, Gavin
received the surrender of the German 21st Army Group.
Threadbare but elegant in field gray, with red collar tabs and
an Iron Cross at his throat, Lt. Gen. Kurt von Tippelskirch
went to Gavins command post and asked for the general in
charge. He was directed to Gavin, standing on a street corner
wearing his faded jumpsuit and with his M-1 rifle slung over
his shoulder. He looked like any other GI except for the two
stars on his collar and helmet.
He looked at me with some disdain, Gavin reported, say-
ing that I was too young and did not look like a general to
him. It took only a moment to change his mind.
When the European hostilities ended, Gavin and his division
were assigned to the U.S. occupation zone
in Berlin. There, Jumping Jim served as
the American representative on the City
Kommandatura. On Sundays, though still
pained by the cracks in his spine, he would
drive out to the Tempelhof airfield and
make parachute drops to get the cob-
webs out. He and the All-Americans left
Berlin in October 1945, and returned
home in December. Gavin and his division
proudly led New York Citys victory
parade in 1946.
He stayed with the division at Fort
Bragg until March 1948, when he
became chief of staff of the Fifth Army
in Chicago. He was assigned as chief of
staff of Allied forces in southern Europe
in June 1951, led the Seventh Corps in
Germany, served at the Pentagon as
assistant chief of staff for plans and
research with the rank of permanent
lieutenant general, and was appointed
chief of research and development, with
the status of deputy Army chief of staff, in October 1955.
But Gavin found himself increasingly at odds with the new
look defense policies of the Eisenhower administration,
whereby strategic retaliatory power was emphasized at the
expense of conventional forces. Manpower was pared, and
there was a slowdown in the development of tactical weapons.
The Army was cut from 27 to 15 divisions, and Gavin believed
that it was being left unprepared to fight limited wars. He
chafed and developed a reputation as a maverick. He was
unwilling to watch the Army he loved whittled to a skeleton
of its former self.
In January, 1958, after much soul-searching, he reluc-
tantly retired. He worked for 12-14 hours a day on a book,
War and Peace in the Space Age, in which he insisted that the
only way America could fight a limited war was to expand its
forces to permit maximum mobility and flexibility. Gavin pro-
posed the airmobile concept.
Gavin became vice president of Arthur D. Little Inc., but
his corporate career was cut short when President Kennedy
asked him in 1961 to become his ambassador to France. Gavin
got along well with the irascible French leader, General
Charles de Gaulle, and his 18-month tour of duty in Paris was
a success.
Gavin became a vigorous opponent of the Vietnam War. He
suggested in 1966 that U.S. troops in South Vietnam should fall
back to fortified enclaves while America sought a diplomatic
solution through the United Nations. He even considered run-
ning for the presidency on an antiwar platform, but abandoned
the idea when Eugene McCarthy made a good showing in the
New Hampshire primary. He died in Baltimore on February
23, 1990.

WORLD WAR II AIRBORNE BATTLES

15
Gavin negotiates a well-trodden path in
Belgium during the beginning phases
of the Battle of the Bulge.
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WORLD WAR II AIRBORNE BATTLES 16
AT 4:25
AMin the predawn darkness of May 10, 1940,
nine German gliders silently skidded to a stop
on the hilltop of the most heavily defended fortress in Europe, disgorg-
ing 71 highly trained German Fallschirmjger.
These paratroopers were about to attack what was considered the
most impregnable fortress in Europea mission that was regarded as
nothing short of suicidal. Yet, by 11:30 AM the next day a Belgian offi-
cer clutching a broom handle with a white bedsheet attached, and accom-
panied by a trembling bugler, appeared at the entrance of Fort Eben-
Emael to surrender the massive concrete fortification to the German
forces. Only six German Fallschirmjger were killed and 15 wounded,
while 780 dispirited Belgian troops marched out of Fort Eben-Emaels
casemate, hands held high in surrender.
Adolf Hitlers big gamble on this early strike of World War II had
worked. The gateway to Belgium had been forced. The German offensive
rolled over the Albert Canal and into the neighboring country. By May
28, after only 18 days of fighting, Belgium had capitulated and German
panzers had plunged deeply into France through the green, rolling hills
of the Belgian Ardennes Forest, outflanking the French Maginot Line.
Not only had Belgium fallen, but Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and
France had also surrendered or were on the brink. By the end of May
British and French forces would be forced to evacuate the Continent at
Dunkirk. This marked the beginning of five long, dark years of German
BY ROY STEVENSON
THE FALL OF
EBEN EMAEL
A handful of well-trained German glider
troopers subdued a seemingly impreg-
nable fortress in a matter of hours.
German paratroopers atop Eben Emael blast the fortress with a
flamethrower and machine guns, May 10, 1940.
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WORLD WAR II AIRBORNE BATTLES
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WORLD WAR II AIRBORNE BATTLES 18
occupation until Europe would be liberated by Allied forces
after the D-Day landings on June 6, 1944, and by Soviet
forces coming from the east.
World War II literature is filled with examples of shock
attacks where sheer audacity, combined with swift action
in a surprise lightning strike, has resulted in a small num-
ber of well-trained commandos overcoming a numerically
superior force of enemy soldiers in short order. Although
relatively unknown outside Belgium, the Netherlands, and
Germany, the dramatic lighnting strike that led to the fall
of Fort Eben-Emael is, for many reasons, World War IIs
most impressive example of such a shock action. Despite its
relative obscurity, the classic airborne invasion and capture
of Fort Eben-Emael in May 1940 is still used today at West
Point and other military colleges as a classic textbook exam-
ple of the effectiveness of airborne operations.
The capture of Fort Eben-Emael is renowned for a num-
ber of military firsts. It was the worlds first gliderborne
attack, where specially trained glidermen were inserted into
an enemys defensive position. It was the first time that hol-
low shape-charge explosives were used to breach steel and
concrete fortifications that were considered impregnable.
And the attack on Eben-Emael (and the adjacent Albert
Canal bridges) also marked the first useof Hitlers Blitzkrieg
tactics. This bold action changed the way military strategists
would prosecute war in the future, and it still heavily influ-
ences military planning today.
Why did Hitler choose to attack the most heavily armed
fortress in all of Europe as his opening thrust in World War
II? Fort Eben-Emael lay within 15 miles of the German bor-
der, south of the Dutch city of Maastricht, and adjacent to
the Meuse River, the border between the Netherlands and
Belgium. The fort was situated to cover the Vise Gap
through which it was anticipated that German forces would
pour when they began their invasion of the Netherlands
and Belgium. It was also the portal to the Gembloux Gap
that led to routes into central Belgium; if Eben-Emael fell, the
heart of Belgium would be open to invasion.
Eben-Emael was the foremost central bastion in a large
chain of 12 formidable and heavily manned Belgian
fortresses interspersed with natural obstacles of marsh-
lands, rivers, valleys, and mountains that ringed the city of
Lige and protected the entry to the flatlands of central
Belgium. This ring of fortresses was named Position For-
tifie de Lige.
Fort Eben-Emael was designed to be the showstopper.
Lying alongside the newly constructed 50-yard-wide Albert
Canal, dug as a strategic defensive barrier, the fort had large
gun casemates emplaced into the side of the canal. Their
function was to lay covering fire up and down the canal to
protect the three large steel bridges that a German army
would have to cross to enter Belgium and the Netherlands.
The importance of these three bridges cannot be under-
estimated. Hitlers divisions first needed to cross the Kanne,
Vroenhoven, and Veldwezelt Bridges to enter Belgium. If
Hitlers advance forces could be stopped cold here, or so the
thiking went, there would be enough
time for the Belgian and the Dutch
armies to prepare defensive positions
farther inland, and the invasion would
be held up long enough for the French
and British armies to rush to the scene.
Thus, Eben-Emaels strategic posi-
tion was a linchpin in overcoming
other defenses behind it. If Eben-Emael
could not hold, Belgium and the
Netherlands would be unable to con-
tain an invasion, and their defenses
would likely unravel, exposing the
heart of Belgium.
The fort was built between 1932 and
1935 on Saint Peters Hill, a strong
defensive position and natural over-
look from which hostile military
movement could be seen miles away.
It was literally built into the hill at a
cost of 50 million Belgian francs, a
massive cost at the time for a small
country like Belgium.
Eben-Emaels design rendered it vir-
Eben Emael was built into a 200-foot bluff above the Lanaye lock of the newly
built Albert Canal. The lock joined the canal to the Meuse River.
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tually unassailable by conventional
ground forces; in fact, it was built to
deter an aggressor from the east from
contemplating breaching Belgian neu-
trality.
Shaped like an arrowhead or dia-
mond, with the sharp point facing
north, the fort measures 3,600 feet
from north to south and 2,600 feet
from east to west, and occupies an area
the size of 70 football fields. The forts
defenses took advantage of natural
and engineered obstacles that would
make it too costly to attack. The Albert
Canal, running along its eastern edge,
lined with near-vertical concrete sides
more than 130 feet high, rendered
assault from that quarter impossible.
To the west, the fort was bordered by
the Geer River and reinforced by an
antitank ditch. To the south it was
defended by a 30-foot-wide antitank
ditch 20 feet deep.
Fort Eben-Emaels offensive and
defensive capabilities and weaponry
were awesome, even by todays stan-
dards. To intimidate anyone contem-
plating attacking the fort, it boasted a
total of 16 gun emplacements. The top
of the fort, 120 feet higher than the
entry blockhouse at the base, was dot-
ted with seven fortified blockhouses
armed with 60mm antitank cannon
and machine guns, topped with small concrete observation
domes.
Six other thick, concrete casemates were sprinkled around
the top of the fortress, four of which were armed with triple
75mm guns with a range of seven miles. Two of these case-
mates were positioned to fire to the north where the Albert
Canal and Maastricht were located, thus they were called
the Maastricht casemates. Two casemates faced south
toward the small town of Vise, and were named Vise 1 and
Vise 2. These casemates covered the southern bridges across
the Albert Canal and could also be used to fire on the other
fortresses around Lige if they came under attack.
Three large, flying-saucer-shaped cupolas with 12-inch-
thick, 360-degree rotating armored domes fitted with twin
75mm guns that could fire in all directions were also placed
on top of the fortress. The domes could rise four feet above
the casemate for better observation and firing elevation
and then be retracted for reloading. Coupole Nord (Cu
120), the center cupola, had the largest guns in the fort
two 120mm guns positioned alongside each other for max-
imum firepower effect. Three false cupolas made of thin
steel were emplaced around the forts perimeter to further
confuse and deter potential attackers. Each casemate or
cupola had electric elevators to provide ammunition to the
gun emplacements.
Two blockhouses were sited on the banks of the Albert
Canal to fire north and south to protect the bridges and
were thus named Canal Nord and Canal Sud. Six outside
artillery observation posts were linked to the fort, covering
the most likely enemy approaches. Additionally, five large,
heavily defended concrete blockhouses protected the south
and east sides of the fort, with Bloc 1 being the forts main
entrance. Gun crews consisted of 16 to 30 men, depending
on the type and number of guns in the emplacement.
And, as if all of these positions were not formidable
enough, two concrete machine-gun emplacements, Mi
Nord and Mi Sud, were sited to cover the other gun
emplacements on top of the fortress in the unlikely event
Map 2014 Philip Schwartzberg, Meridian Mapping, Minneapolis, MN
Strategically located on commanding heights, the mammoth fortress of Eben-
Emael could only be successfully penetrated from the airby glider troops.
AB-Eben Emael_Layout 1 10/14/14 11:22 AM Page 19
WORLD WAR II AIRBORNE BATTLES 20
that any enemy ground troops managed to penetrate the
impressive exterior defenses.
Thus, the forts Offensive Battery comprised the north- and
south-facing artillery casemates, while the three gun cupolas
and the Defensive Battery consisted of the blockhouses and
machine-gun emplacements, with four antiaircraft pits added
on the south end of the fort for good measure.
Despite the impressive machine-gun and antiaircraft
emplacements, the forts upper surface lacked fully devel-
oped belts of barbed wire, mines, and trenches to protect
the casemates and cupolas from direct airborne attack sim-
ply because Belgian planners had never thought the idea of
an airborne attack was feasible. The scarcity of antiaircraft
emplacements indicates exactly how
oblivious the planners were to such
an eventuality. Airborne assault,
whether by paratrooper or glider,
had still not been fully conceptual-
ized in 1940. Hitler ordered his air-
borne troops to train in absolute
secrecy, lest the Belgians be warned
of his plans.
Five miles of underground tunnels
and galleries inside Saint Peters Hill
were installed over the fortresss two
levels. Signs at intersections indi-
cated which direction the soldiers
should go to reach their defensive
positions. Even today, when touring
the fort, guides are very careful to
keep the groups together so no one
gets lost in the long passageways.
The Lower Level, accessed
through Bloc 1, contained a decon-
tamination room, defensive posi-
tions, armorers workshops, toilet
and shower facilities, holding cells
for recalcitrant Belgian soldiers, electrical generators,
kitchens, storerooms, a commanders office, barracks, an
infirmary, and a pump room. The Intermediate Level con-
sisted of three miles of tunnels that provided access to all
fighting blocs, casemates, cupolas, and defensive block-
houses, plus a command post, telephone exchange, ammu-
nition magazines, and ammunition hoists and stairs.
To ensure maximum security, the fort was designed with
back-up defensive systems that could be brought into place
if any of the cupolas or casemates were breached. A series
of armored doors could seal off each gun emplacement if
the emplacement was captured. The armored doors were
arranged in twin pairs, with a space between that could be
filled with sandbags and eight-inch steel beams in an emer-
gency. These worked effectively when the German glider-
men attacked, and the forts interior was never breached.
The garrisons normal complement of soldiers was 500,
plus another 200 for command, technical, and administra-
tive duties. However, in May 1940, many were sick from
throat and respiratory irritations from their weeklong stints
in the dusty tunnels. On May 9, 1940, the day before the
attack, the gun battery strength was down by 100 men, as
many conscripted soldiers, with war looming, were
recruited away into the Belgian Army. Between sick sol-
diers, conscripts whose service had expired, and an addi-
tional 150 men away on leave, the garrison was 250 men
below operational strength at this crucial time.
The total authorized garrison strength of 1,200 men, 233
of whom were stationed four miles
away in the village of Wonck, meant
that reinforcements would be late if
the fort were to come under attack;
the off-base soldiers would be sum-
moned by the firing of 20 blank
rounds from the forts big guns. By
May 1940, morale was low due to
repeated alerts and false alarms dur-
ing the Phoney War, and the men
were bored with garrison life. Train-
ing suffered, and equipment was not
maintained for combat readiness.
Furthermore, the Belgian troops
were all artillery trained, versus
infantry trained, which showed in
combat when the Belgian soldiers
were ordered to counterattack the
Germans on top of the fort.
The complicated Belgian chain of
command meant that fort comman-
der Jean Jottrand could not directly
order the guns to fire. They could
only be fired on the command of the
Belgian units in the surrounding area, and only at targets
specified by them. This would prove to have dire conse-
quences during the assaultfor this lack of independent deci-
sion making and immediate reaction would enable the Ger-
mans to gain a foothold on the fort before the guns could fire.
While no single one of these mistakes would have resulted
in the fall of the fort, the combined effect would cost valu-
able lives and time at critical moments during the attack.
The airborne assault on Fort Eben-Emael was only one
part of a complex airborne and ground attack plan. Hitlers
strategy called for three other glider parties to be launched
at the same time as the Eben-Emael assault group.
These three groups were to take the three road bridges
across the Albert Canal. Sturmgruppe Stahl (Assault Group
Steel) was to capture the Veldwezelt Bridge, Sturmgruppe
German glider infantrymen dash across open
space during the attack.
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WORLD WAR II AIRBORNE BATTLES 21
Breton (Concrete) would attack the
Vroenhoven Bridge, and Sturmgruppe
Eisen (Iron) was to capture the bridge
at Kanne.
All bridges had been wired for demo-
lition by the Belgians, so the assault
groups had to land as close as possible
to the target bridges in simultaneous
surprise attacks before they could be
defeated by the Belgian defenders. All
of this while the fort was being neu-
tralized by the fourth glider assault
groupcode-named Sturmgruppe
Granit (Granite). It was the largest of
the four groups, with 87 men assigned.
Altogether, 420 Fallschirmjger and
42 glider pilots under the overall com-
mand of Captain Walter Koch were
assigned these difficult tasks.
Junkers Ju-87 Stuka dive-bombers would be provided for
close air support. Then paratroopers would land to pro-
vide support 40 minutes after the initial glider landings, fol-
lowed by the 4th Panzer Division of the German Sixth
Army that would provide artillery support as the troops
approached the bridges from the border.
The key to successfully overcoming the forts defenses
would be to knock out the fortifications within the first
hour, while the Belgians were confused and disoriented. If
this could not be done, the Belgians would have time to
regroup and counterattack, hindering the Fallschirmjgers
demolition of the guns. The pioneers (combat engineers or
sappers) of Granit were divided into 11 sections, with one
section in each glider. Each section was assigned a particu-
lar numbered target on the forts surface. Granits first pri-
ority was to destroy the antiaircraft guns, then the obser-
vation domes on top of the casemates. Then the Granit
force would destroy the guns pointing north.
The German combat engineers would be relieved within
24 hours by pioneers of the 51st Battalion and 151st
Infantry Regiment, who would attack the interior of the
fort and force its surrender. Even today, many regard this
complicated plan as too risky, yet Hitlers Fallschirmjger
trained for it with great relish and confidence.
The Sturmgruppe Granit glidermen, under the direct com-
mand of 1st Lieutenant Rudolf Witzig, were essentially Ger-
manys first Special Forces, trained in firearms, night oper-
ations, parachuting, and survival training, with much
emphasis placed on independent thinking and mental and
physical resilience. They were even trained on how to drive
Belgian trams. Because the battalion trained in Branden-
burg, near Berlin, they were called the Brandenburgers.
They were then moved to Czechoslovakia to practice on
the Czechs fortified defense lines in the Sudetenland, then
to Poland, and finally to two airfields near Cologne.
The Brandenburgers trained in complete secrecy for six
months before the attack, completely cut off from the out-
side world. No mail, no visitors, no leave, and no contact
with other German soldiers were permitted. Their para-
chute badges were removed from their uniforms. The place
they were going to attack was never mentioned; they only
learned the name of the fortress after they had captured it.
Two paratroopers who were overheard making indiscrete
comments about their mission were court-martialed and
sentenced to death within hours, although the sentences
were commuted the day after the assault took place.
Highly trained sport glider pilots were recruited for the
assault, although many at first refused the opportunity to
take part in this attack; they were expected to become
infantrymen after the landing and participate in the fight-
ing. Reluctant pilots were eventually persuaded to take
part in this great adventure by appealing to their patriotism
for the Fhrer, and were given the same pioneer train-
ing as the Brandenburgers.
Hitler, who had conceived of this complex assault, had
another secret weapon up his sleeve. His engineers had
recently invented a new type of explosive, the hollow-charge
weaponwithout which the attack could not have been
attempted. By shaping conventional explosives around a
copper cone, the detonation produced a plasma jet of
molten metal that could penetrate nearly 10 inches of steel
and even go through almost 14 inches of concreteperfect
for the bunker busting at Fort Eben-Emael.
The shaped charges came in two sizes. The largest charge,
weighing 110 pounds, was in two sections and had to be
hand placed on the bunker. Then a fuse had to be lit while
the soldiers took cover. The smaller charge could penetrate
One of the gliders that delivered German paratroopers to Eben Emael lies broken
atop the fortress near a false cupola.
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WORLD WAR II AIRBORNE BATTLES 22
from 4.75 to 6 inches of steel. The paratroopers trained to
carry the explosive charges by carrying heavy rocks
around, making their fellow soldiers think they were mil-
itary prisoners.
Ironically, a Swiss scientist had invented a similar explo-
sive for the French military, and the French officially
approved it on May 10, 1940, the day the shaped charge
was used by the Germans on Eben-Emael.
The DFS 230 glider was based on the design for a mete-
orological aircraft, with a short airframe and stubby 72-
foot wingspan. With a framework of steel tubing covered
by painted canvas fabric, the DFS could carry eight troop-
ers, a pilot, and several hundred pounds of ammunition,
for a total payload of 4,600 pounds. It was towed by a
Junkers 52 transport plane and, once released from the
tow plane, could glide 12 miles and land accurately on a
pinpoint target. Its undercarriage was a skid attached
below the fuselage.
Two full dress rehearsals of the glider assault on Eben-
Emael were made, but it was found that the gliders could
not stop on top of the fort; they would have slid right across
the top and over the edge. To address this, a wooden saw-
toothed drag brake was installed under the glider to dig
into the ground. Hannah Reitsch, Hitlers famous test pilot,
personally tested the glider braking system and found it to
be operational.
As the date for the operation drew near, the gliders were
disassembled and loaded into furniture trucks, then trans-
ported to the Cologne airfields under heavy security and
along empty roads at night. The airfields were surrounded
by barbed wire and hidden from the view of other German
troops by straw mats that were hung around them.
At midnight on May 9 the German High Command,
Oberkommando des Heeres (OKH), issued orders to start
the invasion of Belgium. Captain Koch received the orders
at 12:40 AM, woke the men at 3 AM, and ordered them to
make final preparations. The Junkers aircrews and Luft-
waffe ground crews arrived at the airfields to make last-
minute preparations. The departure time was 4:30 AM, cal-
culated to have all four glider groups landing at 5:25 AMon
their various targets. All went smoothly; at 4:35 the last
glider was off the ground.
The pilots flew along a path illuminated by a line of blue
searchlight beams and bonfires 20 kilometers apart, direct-
ing them to the Dutch border, at 8,500 feet. Problems soon
arose. The glider carrying commander Lieutenant Witzig
was cast loose early, and another glider was freed by a near
collision, depriving the Granit assault group of two gliders
before they had even reached the fort. This was 20 percent
of their strength and included their commanding officer.
Nevertheless, once the plan had been activated, it could not
be recalled, so the remaining planes continued.
A strong tail wind meant that the Junkers had to tow the
gliders over the Dutch border, compromising the silent
approach. The gliders were finally released at 5:10 and,
after 15 minutes of gliding, approached Fort Eben-Emael.
Much earlier, the Dutch and Belgian armies had detected
the sound of German armor moving along the border, and
Eben-Emaels commander, Major Jottrand, received an alert
order at 12:32 AM from Headquarters III Corps. The forts
internal siren rang and the process of
calling in key personnel by telephone
began. Confirmation of the alert came
at 4 AM, when the Junkers were heard
flying over Dutch airspace. Jottrand
finally sounded the invasion alert. He
ordered the Kanne Bridge and the lock
at Lanaye to be demolished, and for
the two temporary wooden barracks
at the entrance to Bloc 1 to be razed to
the ground to permit a full field of fire
from the position.
Unfortunately, some of the gun crews
sent to demolish the barracks were Jot-
trands experienced gunners, leaving
inexperienced troops at the guns.
These soldeirs did not know the pro-
cedures for summoning the rest of the
troops at Wonck (firing 20 blank
rounds). Further, firing pins from
Coupole Sud had recently been
removed and had not been replaced
German troops cross the Albert Canal as an artillery round smashes into Eben-
Emaels 40-meter-tall walls.
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WORLD WAR II AIRBORNE BATTLES 23
properly. Finally, an armorer replaced them and some warn-
ing blanks were fired at 3:25, but the muzzle flashes set fire
to the camouflage netting, obscuring the firing periscopes
view. The warning shots were not completed, and many of
the Belgian soldiers at Wonck ignored the summons.
At 5:15 AM, Jottrand was informed of unidentified aircraft
over Maastricht, so he put the four machine-gun and anti-
aircraft crews on high alert. By 5:25 the gliders were already
skidding to a stop on top of the fort, and the machine-gun
crews that had opened fire at close range could not zero in
on the fast moving gliders. Two of the machine guns
jammed. Gliders were landing simultaneously by the three
bridges on the Albert Canal. Ten minutes later the German
ground offensive began.
The 71 German paratroopers fanned out as they landed
and rapidly went about their business, now under com-
mand of Sergeant Helmut Wenzel. The machine-gun posi-
tions at the south end of the fort were captured immediately
by Sergeant Erwin Haugs section, the first glider team to
land. The glider landed so close to one position that it tore
a machine gun right out of the pit and stopped beside
another pit. Sergeant Karl-Heinz Lange led a brief charge
on the pit and threw a stick grenade into it, killing one Bel-
gian and enabling the Germans to capture two others.
Sergeant Karl Ungers section landed within 30 meters of
its target, Coupole Nord, and was joined by Haugs sec-
tion. Privates Hannes Else and Herbert Plietz dashed
toward the objective. Inside the cupola, the Belgians had
discovered that they did not have any canister rounds ready
to sweep the top of the fort. Had they been available, these
rounds may well have tilted the odds in favor of the defend-
ers. Else detonated a 110-pound charge outside the infantry
exit doors, killing and wounding several Belgian soldiers
inside. On top of Coupole Nord, two German glidermen
had detonated one of the new 26-pound shaped charges,
making an impressive explosion that shook the ground
around the cupola. The blast twisted the guns, damaged
the ammunition mechanism, and cut the cables to the con-
trol system. Coupole Nord was put out of action. The sur-
viving Belgian soldiers retreated down the stairs and pre-
pared the barricade of steel beams and sand bags.
Sergeant Hans Nidermeier and his section quickly attacked
the Maastricht 2 casemate after their glider landed heavily in
the open ground between Maastricht 2 and Coupole 120. The
two observers in the small observation post atop Maastricht
2 had not seen the gliders landing, but they knew something
was up when they saw legs in German uniform on top of their
casemate. A Belgian sergeant barely had time to warn the gun
crews below when a charge went off atop the post, killing the
men inside and causing splinters to fly in all directions.
A second charge was placed below a gun port, throwing the
75mm gun off its mountings, killing two Belgians and
wounding one, and opening a two-foot square hole through
which the glidermen scrambled after throwing hand
grenades. Some Belgians lay stunned from the blasts, but the
remainder scrambled down the stairs to the intermediate level
where they packed steel beams and sandbags into the secu-
rity door.
Sergeant Peter Arents section attacked Maastricht 1 after
landing only 80 feet from it. They placed a shaped charge
against one of the gun embrasures and blew one of the 75mm
guns off its mounting. The Belgians retreated down to the
Both: National Archives
A flame-thrower attack against a Belgian position can be seen in the upper left. This photo and the opposite are stills taken
from the German propaganda film, Victory in the West.
National Archives
AB-Eben Emael_Layout 1 10/14/14 11:24 AM Page 23
WORLD WAR II AIRBORNE BATTLES 24
intermediate level and prepared to counterattack, but Arent
dropped a bundle of hand grenades down the elevator, forc-
ing the Belgians to seal off the lower entrance with the steel
beams and sand bags.
After landing only 55 yards from Mi Sud, Sergeant Ewald
Neuhaus found it empty because its gun crew was still back
at Bloc 1 clearing the administration offices and tearing
down the wooden barracks. However, Belgian machine
gunners soon arrived and opened fire on the attackers.
Sergeant Ernst Schlosser discharged a flamethrower against
the embrasure, silencing the guns, and soon two 27-pound
and three 110-pound hollow charges detonated in the
southern embrasure, causing the shaken Belgians to with-
draw to the intermediate level below.
Kurt Engelmanns section assaulted Mi Nord in a similar
manner. They attacked with flamethrowers, a 2.2-pound
charge, a 27-pound charge and a 110-pound charge, blow-
ing a hole through its walls through which they attacked.
Several dead Belgian soldiers lay about. The field telephone
rang, and Engelmann calmly answered it. He listened to
some rapid-fire French then said, Here are the Germans,
to which the Belgian officer replied, Oh, Mon Dieu. Mi
Nord was to become the German command post for the rest
of the assault.
By 6:30 AM, Lieutenant Witzig, whose glider had been
cast loose from the tow plane too early, had commandeered
another glider and Junker tow plane, landed on the fort
and resumed command. His immediate problem was
Coupole 120, which was still rotating although its guns
could not fire because its periscope had not been attached
to the cupola and the ammunition hoists and loaders were
not working. However, the soldiers within were firing their
rifles at the attacking Germans.
At 6:45, Witzig ordered another attack on Coupole 120;
the Germans advanced, sheltering behind Belgian prisoners,
and attached a 121-pound hollow charge above the left-
hand gun. Although the charge did not penetrate, the
cupola stopped turning. So the Germans moved on, think-
ing the cupola was out of action, and attacked Bloc 2. How-
ever, the Belgians reoccupied Coupole 120, wearing gas
masks to protect themselves against the poisoned atmos-
phere, and continued shooting at the Germans. Later, one
of Haugs men, Sergeant Ernst Grechza, roaring drunk from
rum in his water bottle, climbed up Coupole 120 and sat
astride the gun, riding it like a bronco. Furious, Wenzel
ordered the soldier down and placed some charges into the
gun barrels.
Within 20 minutes the glidermen had successfully
attacked nine of the Belgian positions. Charges were
placed on seven armored observation domes, with five
domes rendered inoperable. Nine of the 75mm guns in
three of the casemates were destroyed. Most of the other
casemates and emplacements fell like dominoes. Thus, the
main gun emplacements that could have seriously hin-
dered the Albert Canal attacks, with one exception, had
been cleared by only 71 men. Coupole Sud was the only
gun atop the fort that remained operational, firing on tar-
gets aimed by the Bloc 1 observation posts. All German
German troops, tank obstacles, destroyed buildings, and the shell-scarred exterior of Bloc 1 are all visible in this photo taken
several days after the Eben-Emael garrison surrendered.
National Archives
AB-Eben Emael_Layout 1 10/14/14 11:24 AM Page 24
WORLD WAR II AIRBORNE BATTLES 25
attempts to destroy these positions
failed, including attacks by Stuka
dive-bombers.
As the day wore on, things got hot
for the Germans as the Belgian army
recovered from the initial shock of the
attacks. There were two half-hearted
counterattacks by the Belgians within
the fort, but these soldiers were
artillery trained and did not know how
to prosecute a ground attack.
The exhausted and thirsty Germans
had not been relieved according to the
timetable. An effort to cross the Albert
Canal on the evening of May 10 to
relieve Sturmgruppe Granit on Eben-
Emael was stopped by Blockhouse
Nords 75mm guns.
At the fort, Witzigs assault group
was running low on ammunition and
water. To make matters worse, the
other Belgian fortresses within range
of Eben-Emael began directing their
fire onto its upper surface to dislodge the Germans, lob-
bing 1,200 shells onto the position. Several Germans were
wounded, but most of them safely sheltered in the gun
emplacements they had captured.
After dark the Germans renewed their attacks on several
operational gun emplacements. Descending into Maastricht
1, they found the armored doors blocking their way. They
went up to the surface and returned with a 110-pound hol-
low charge with which they blew in the armored doors,
killing four Belgian soldiers, but could go no farther into the
fortress because of the debris.
Meanwhile, two bridgeheads over the Albert Canal had
been taken intact, with the third, the Kanne Bridge, destroyed
by the Belgians. Just 40 minutes after the glider landings, para-
troopers reinforced the glidermen, and eventually Belgian
resistance was overcome.
At 4 the next morning, Pioneer Battalion 51 managed to
cross the Albert Canal to subdue Bloc II by firing a
flamethrower through the aperture and exploding a 110-
pound charge against the embrasure, killing one Belgian
gunner and wounding six more. By 7 AM, the Germans were
climbing the slope of the fort and linking up with Witzigs
group, and at 8:30 Witzig turned the captured installations
over to them.
Still, some defenders were holding out. By mid-morning,
the air inside the fort was deteriorating as poisonous fumes
from the explosions spread through the ventilation system,
and Belgian morale was falling. Major Jottrand planned
the surrender, and at 11:45 a Belgian bugler, Vervier, and an
officer, Captain Vamecq, stepped outside Bloc 1, walked
across the retractable bridge across the moat and, with a
white sheet flying on a broom handle, negotiated the sur-
render of the fort.
The firing ceased, but no one had pulled the bridge back,
and suddenly the entire garrison of 780 men came out with
their hands in the air behind a perplexed Vamecq; the line
of despondent Belgian prisoners was one mile long. The
garrison had suffered 21 killed and 145 wounded. The sur-
vivors were transported to Dortmund and Hemer and kept
in strict isolation until July 4, 1940, because the Germans
did not want knowledge of their glider attack or their secret
hollow-charge weapons to reach the Allies. Finally, they
were imprisoned in a POW camp at Fallingbostel, near
Hannover, Germany.
The fall of Eben -Emael demonstrated how a fast, hard-
hitting, surprise attack could shock defenders, causing
morale to plummet rapidly, leading to surrender. Through
excellent planning, innovative use of gliders, and hollow-
charge technology Eben-Emael fell in just over 31 hours.
Sturmgruppe Granit suffered six killed and 15 wounded. All
officers of the glider assaults received the Knights Cross,
and the NCOs and men of Sturmabteilung Koch, the par-
ent regiment, received a generous allowance of Iron
Crosses, personally presented by Hitler in a special cere-
mony on May 15, 1940.
The daring assault on Fort Eben-Emael paved the way
for rapid German victory in the West. Within weeks, Hitlers
army marched into Paris.

After their successful assault, decorated Fallschirmjger, including Oberleutnant

Witzig (second from left) and Hauptmann Koch (third from left), pose with Hitler.
National Archives
AB-Eben Emael_Layout 1 10/14/14 11:25 AM Page 25
SCANDINAVIAN
AIRBORNE
ASSAULT
German airborne troops, known as
Fallschirmjger, retrieve their para-
chutes after landing in Norway north of
the capital city of Oslo in April 1940.
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WORLD WAR II AIRBORNE BATTLES 27
THE POLISH CAMPAIGNin 1939 demonstrated the awesome
effectiveness of aircraft as weapons platforms for close ground
support. Along with flexible control of tactical operations, it
became part of the concept popularly referred to as blitzkrieg.
The effectiveness of this doctrine was again demonstrated by the
German military during the Norwegian campaign in 1940.
This campaign also demonstrated the usefulness of aircraft as
vehicles for transporting supplies and reinforcements. The Luft-
waffe made a significant contribution to the reinforcement and
supply effort by successfully carrying out the largest air transport
operation in history up to that time. Largely due to the efforts
of the Luftwaffe, for more than two months the Germans were
able to hold on to an increasingly precarious beachhead in and
around Narvik over the great distances that separated those
forces from the other beachheads.
The Germans were also pioneers in the use of airborne troops
and initially planned to use paratroopers in the Polish cam-
paign; however, German success was so quick and crushing
that they were not used in air assault roles. The invasion of
Denmark and Norway in 1940, codenamed Weserbung,
Exercise Weser, saw the first use of the vertical envelopment
concept to seize airfields and key objectives far behind enemy
lines. The assault on Sola Airfield and the airborne operation
against Dombs were the first contested airborne operations in
history. These early operations revealed problems familiar to
present-day planners and executors of such operations.
The German parachute forces in 1940 were organized into
the 7th Air Division under Luftwaffe command. The divi-
sionorganized along the lines of an infantry divisionwas
commanded by Maj. Gen. Kurt Student, but it did not reach
full strength until 1941. In April 1940, it consisted of two
regiments, each having only one battalion.
The 1st Regiment was commanded by Colonel Bruno Bruer.
The 1st Battalion, commanded by Captain Erich Walther, con-
stituted the airborne assault force for the invasion of Denmark
and Norway. One of four companies was employed to seize air-
fields and bridges in Denmark, while the other three compa-
nies were used in the invasion of Norway.
Company 4, commanded by Captain Walther Gericke, had
two primary missions in Denmark. One platoon of 36 troops,
commanded by 1st Lieutenant Eckleben, parachuted directly
onto the two airfields at Aalborg (Aalborg East and West) at
7:15 AM on April 9 from three Junkers Ju-52s and secured
them without resistance for the landing of an infantry bat-
talion. The paratroopers also seized the bridge over Limfjord
north of Aalborg without opposition.
The mission of the rest of Company 4 was to capture the
3,200-meter Storstrm Bridge connecting Falster Island with
Seeland Island and hold it until the arrival of Group Buck, led
by Colonel Buck, commander of the 305th Infantry Regiment.
The bridge consisted of two spans. The longest span by far was
the one from Falster to a small island called Masned. A much
shorter span connected Masned to Seeland. There was an old
fort on Masned that the Germans believed was active and
needed to be captured in order to secure the bridge.
Company 4 was scheduled to make its parachute assault on
National Archives
German paratroopers
fought stubborn defenders
during operations against
Denmark and Norway.
BY HENRIK O. LUNDE
Norwegian soldiers pose with their rifles and machine guns
on April 9, 1940. Despite the fact that the coordinated Ger-
man onslaught threatened to overrun their country quickly,
the Norwegian troops fought well and killed or captured a
number of German paratroopers.
AB-Scandanavia_Layout 1 10/14/14 11:30 AM Page 27
WORLD WAR II AIRBORNE BATTLES 28
Masned at 6:15 AM from nine Ju-52s, capture the fort, and
secure both bridge spans. The assault was delayed 20 minutes
due to weather conditions, but the paratroopers quickly cap-
tured the fort, which was not manned. Simultaneous with the
arrival of the paratroopers, engineers from Group Buck were
landed on Falster from ships and secured the bridge between
Falster and Masned. The paratroopers, meeting no resistance,
proceeded to secure the second span between Masned and
Seeland.
The German assault units for the attack on Norway con-
sisted of six task forces. Task Force 5, to be landed by ship, had
the mission of capturing Oslo and the Norwegian government
early on the morning of April 9. The Germans believed that this
would lead to a Norwegian surrender and a peaceful occupa-
tion of the country. This plan was frustrated when Task Force
5 met unexpected resistance as it approached the capitals last
line of defense, the Oscarborg fortress complex. The task
forces flagship, the brand new heavy cruiser Blcher, was sunk
by gunfire and torpedoes and about 1,000 sailors and soldiers
were killed.
The Germans also planned to capture Fornebu Airport
southwest of Oslo by parachuting two airborne companies
directly on the airfield. The 1st and 2nd Companies of the 1st
Parachute Regiment, commanded respectively by 1st Lieu-
tenant Herbert Schmidt and Captain Kurt Grschke, were car-
ried in 29 Ju-52s. The plan called for these troops to seize the
airfield quickly, allowing German transport aircraft to land
two infantry battalions and an engineer company from the
324th Infantry Regiment.
The German airdrop at Fornebu was cancelled when the air-
craft carrying the paratroopers encountered heavy fog over the
drop zone. Most aircraft turned around and landed at Aal-
borg, captured by the Germans that morning. One aircraft
crashed into the ocean, and 12 paratroopers from Company 1
were lost along with the planes crew. Three planes carrying
paratroopers did not return to Aalborg but joined the transport
aircraft that later landed at Fornebu. The paratroopers at Aal-
borg were brought to Norway on April 13.
The landing of transport aircraft at Fornebu was predicated
on German paratroopers having secured the airfield. Through
a communications failure or a misunderstanding of orders,
some of the transport aircraft continued on to Fornebu after
the airdrop was cancelled, and they landed along with a
squadron of German Messerschmitt 110 fighters, the protec-
tive force for the airdrop. The Messerschmitts did not have
sufficient fuel to return to either Germany or Denmark.
The German planes landed despite heavy Norwegian fire,
which resulted in two German aircraft destroyed and five
severely damaged. This was in addition to five shot down or
Library of Congress
On April 10, 1940, German Junkers Ju-52 transport aircraft,
laden with troops and supplies, fly above a Danish village.
German aircraft losses were high during the invasion of Den-
mark and Norway.
AB-Scandanavia_Layout 1 10/14/14 11:30 AM Page 28
WORLD WAR II AIRBORNE BATTLES 29
forced to make emergency landings as a result of aerial fights
with seven Norwegian Gloster Gladiator fighters stationed at
Fornebu. The number of Germans killed is not given, but the
Norwegians were forced to withdraw at 8:30 AM when they
exhausted their ammunition. The Germans quickly took con-
trol of the airfield and signaled for subsequent waves to land.
Oslo was surrendered to the Germans at 2 PM.
Stavanger is the fourth-largest city in Norway, and Sola Air-
field, about 10 kilometers southwest of the city, was the best
airfield in the country in 1940. Sola was a primary strategic
objective since it was critical for air operations against naval
forces in the North Sea and was located only 300 miles from
Scapa Flow, Great Britains most important naval base.
The German plan called for the seizure of Sola Airfield by
Company 3, 1st Parachute Regiment, on the morning of April
9. The company was commanded by 1st Lieutenant Freiherr
Heinz Henning von Brandis. The paratroopers would be
dropped directly on the airfield from 12 Ju-52s. These aircraft
along with the Ju-88 bombers and Me-110s were on a one-
way mission since they did not have sufficient fuel to return
to Germany or Denmark. Follow-up forces, consisting of the
regimental staff and two battalions of the 193rd Infantry Reg-
iment commanded by Colonel Karl von Beeren, were to air-
land as soon as the airfield was in German hands. The Nor-
wegian Army depot at Madlamoen, three miles from
Stavanger, was to be occupied as soon as Sola was secured.
The 1st Battalion, 2nd Norwegian Infantry Regiment was
located at Madlamoen. It had arrived there on March 29, after
less than three months training in eastern Norway. The bat-
talion was assigned to Colonel G. Sprck, commander of the
8th Norwegian Infantry Regiment.
Sola Airfield was alerted to the possibility of a German attack
around noon on April 8. However, the battalion at Madlam-
oen was not alerted until 1:30 AM on April 9. One infantry
platoon and one heavy weapons platoon from this battalion,
a total of 64 men, were at Sola on April 9. The heavier defen-
sive weapons consisted of four infantry machine guns and six
machine guns used in an air defense role.
An Army bomber squadron of eight aircraft was stationed
at Sola. This squadron was in the process of moving to east-
ern Norway to be replaced at Sola by a reconnaissance
squadron. The exchange had already started with the depar-
ture of the ground crews. Because of these transfers, there were
10 Norwegian aircraft at Sola on April 9.
Construction of concrete bunkers at Sola had begun, but
only one was completed by the day of the invasion. Most of
the Norwegian troops from the two platoons were in open
positions at the north end of the field near the hangars and
administrative buildings. The completed bunker on the east-
ern side of the field was occupied with one antiaircraft
machine gun. Three antiaircraft machine guns were located
at the northwest corner of the airfield and two at the south-
east corner, all in uncovered positions.
The German assault on Sola Airfield began with dive-bomber
attacks intended to eliminate Norwegian resistance while mini-
mizing damage to facilities. Eight Ju-88s appeared just as nine
Norwegian aircraft were in the process of taking off for eastern
Norway. German reports that most Norwegian aircraft were
destroyed are inaccurate. One aircraft was hit and unable to take
off while another was damaged on takeoff and forced to make
an emergency landing. The remaining seven aircraft arrived
safely in eastern Norway.
The Norwegian machine guns opened an intense fire against
the German planes, but the small-caliber rounds had no effect
on the Ju-88s. The water-cooled Norwegian machine guns
overheated, causing the guns to jam to the point where only
single rounds could be fired. The heavy German bombing and
strafing and the inability to inflict any damage on the German
planes were morale breakers for the two Norwegian platoons,
Map 2014 Philip Schwartzberg, Meridian Mapping, Minneapolis, MN
German airborne operations were a major component of
Operation Weserubung, the invasion of Denmark and Nor-
way, which was undertaken a month before the commence-
ment of the Battle of France.
AB-Scandanavia_Layout 1 10/14/14 11:31 AM Page 29
WORLD WAR II AIRBORNE BATTLES 30
which withdrew rather hastily.
The second phase of the attack began with the arrival of a
formation of 10 Ju-52s. There had been 12, but one returned
to Germany while another landed in Denmark. Approxi-
mately 110 paratroopers exited the aircraft at low altitude,
between 200 and 250 feet. Most landed in an area covered
by the machine gun in the only completed con-
crete bunker.
The lone machine gunner, Private Gallus
Johansen, made up for his comrades lack of
determination. The Germans who landed within
the field of fire of the Norwegian machine gun
were rather helpless and had difficulty finding
cover and retrieving the weapons canisters that
landed on the airfield. Until they could retrieve
the canisters, they were armed with only pistols
and grenades. A substantial number of Germans
were killed or wounded.
The German losses were between 10 and 40,
according to Norwegian reports. The German casualty reports
also vary greatly from a low of three killed and eight wounded
to 18 killed and about 30 wounded.
It did not take the paratroopers who landed outside
Johansens field of fire long to work their way behind the
bunker and throw hand grenades through its firing aperture.
Johansen was wounded and captured after the Germans used
explosives to open the bunker door. The airfield was under
German control by 9 AM. The Norwegian losses were a few
lightly wounded and 40 prisoners, mostly air corps personnel.
Colonel Sprck decided not to move the battalion at Mad-
lamoen against Sola because it was his only active
unit and he wanted to preserve it as a covering
force for the mobilization of the 8th Infantry
Regiment. With total German air dominance,
this was probably the best decision. The battal-
ion at Madlamoen moved eastward to avoid
entrapment on the Stavanger Peninsula. The
evacuation of the base was completed before the
Germans arrived at 11 AM.
Meanwhile, the third phase of the German oper-
ation, air-landing part of the 193rd Infantry Reg-
iment, started shortly after 9 AM. Approximately
200 aircraft brought in two battalions in the
course of the day. Stavanger was occupied by the German
troops without resistance during the afternoon.
The critical situation in Norway and the slow progress of
the drive from Oslo brought on a crisis in the German high
command. The German troops in the various beachheads were
isolated because Weserbung had failed
to achieve its most important objective
a Norwegian surrender. Rumors of
planned Allied landings at ndalsnes and
Namsos reached the Germans beginning
on April 13.
Hitlers primary military advisers,
General Wilhelm Keitel, chief of the
OKW (Oberkommando der Wehrma-
chtArmed Forces High Command),
and Maj. Gen. Alfred Jodl, chief of
Operations at OKW, received a full pre-
view of Hitlers sometimes irrational
behavior when confronted with bad
news later in the war.
The word fhrungschaos (leadership
chaos) in Jodls diary gives an apt
description of the tension and excitement
at the highest echelons. Jodl wrote in his
diary, We are again confronted with
complete chaos in the command system.
Hitler insists on issuing orders on every
detail; any coordinated effort within the
existing military command structure is
impossible.
Arguments erupted between Hitler and
Keitel, Jodl, and Grand Admiral Erich
Raeder, the commander of the German
Public Domain
ABOVE: Lieutenant Herbert Schmidt commanded Company 1 of the German 1st
Parachute Regiment. He was seriously wounded and captured in Norway. BELOW:
Indicative of the low altitude at which German airborne troops jumped into com-
bat, this photo was taken from a Ju-52 transport aircraft on April 9, 1940.
National Archives
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WORLD WAR II AIRBORNE BATTLES 31
Navy. The disagreements between Hitler
and Keitel became so heated on April 19
that Keitel walked out of the meeting.
Hitler wanted Raeder to use two large
ocean liners to bring a division to Trond-
heim. Raeder told Hitler that the whole
German Navy would be required to
escort the two liners and that the result
would likely be the loss of the Navy, the
liners, and the division. Hitler relented
but insisted on the use of all means to
quickly open a land route between Oslo
and Trondheim.
The Germans established an air
bridge between Oslo and Trondheim
starting on April 14. In addition to
much-needed supplies, the airlift brought
one engineer and five infantry battalions
to Trondheim by April 20.
To further speed the link up between
their separated forces, the Germans
launched an airborne operation in the
Norwegian rear at Dombs. This was an
important road and railroad junction,
where the railroad and roads from Oslo
to Trondheim intersect with those lead-
ing west to ndalsnes. While the primary
goal of the operation about 225 kilome-
ters behind Norwegian lines at the south-
ern end of Lake Mjsa was to prevent
Allied forces from reaching the southern
front, it would also serve as a blocking
position for any Allied attempt against
Trondheim.
The airborne operation was launched
on April 14. It was executed in all haste, without adequate
intelligenceaerial reconnaissance could not be carried out
because of bad weatherno time for planning, and inadequate
forces. When it appeared that the airborne operation against
Dombs might be cancelled because of bad weather, General
Karl Kitzinger, commander of Air Region Norway as of April
15, sent his chief of staff, Maj. Gen. Wilhelm Sssmann, to the
airport to ensure the operationordered by Hitler through the
OKWwas carried out.
Fifteen German aircraft carried the reinforced Company 1,
1st Parachute Regiment (185 men). The company comman-
der, 1st Lieutenant Herbert Schmidt, had the only map for the
Dombs area. He used it to brief his five platoon leaders before
the operation.
Dombs is located in the mountains at an elevation of about
2,100 feet, but the surrounding mountains are much higher.
The German paratroopers had no winter or camouflage cloth-
ing. The soldiers had provisions for only three days, and
ammunition was limited to what could be carried. Each aircraft
carried four weapon canisters that were dropped separately.
These contained a large number of automatic weapons, includ-
ing 22 MG-34 machine guns. Some of these canisters could
not be located in the darkness after the drop.
The element of surprise was lost when the German aircraft
stayed below the clouds and followed the railway on their flight
to Dombs. They soon received antiaircraft fire from Norwegian
forces, and one aircraft, carrying part of the communications
platoon, was damaged by antiaircraft fire and forced to make an
emergency landing near Lillehammer. All survived the crash, but
the Germans opened fire on approaching Norwegian troops.
One German was killed and three wounded in the exchange that
followed. Thirteen Germans were captured.
The German aircraft had difficulties finding suitable drop
zones in the Dombs area since there were only a few breaks
Library of Congress
German paratroopers, some mounting bicycles, quickly assemble in their drop
zones near the Norwegian town of Dombs in central Norway.
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WORLD WAR II AIRBORNE BATTLES 32
in the cloud cover and they were receiving heavy fire from Nor-
wegian forces. Furthermore, the aircraft had to return quickly
to Oslo because of low fuel levels and approaching darkness.
According to Norwegian sources, the drops took place shortly
after 6 PM, while some German sources say they took place
from 7:45 until after 10 PM.
The paratroopers were dropped in different locations over
a 30-kilometer area around Dombs, from Lora about 25
kilometers west of Dombs to Folkstua eight kilometers to its
northeast. Not a single platoon was able to assemble all its
personnel.
Lieutenant Schmidt and the 12 paratroopers in his aircraft
jumped into an area six kilometers south of Dombs, along
the rail line and road, and some of the weapons canisters could
not be located after the drop.
The aircraft carrying the 1st Platoon under Lieutenant
Becker dropped its paratroopers in the
Folkstua area eight kilometers north-
east of Dombs. One trooper was
killed as he became entangled in power
lines, and six were badly injured as the
high winds dragged them along the
ground. Some of the weapons contain-
ers could not be found. The wounded
were left at a local farm.
First Lieutenant Ernst Mssingers 2nd
Platoon was dropped near the Lie farm
about three kilometers south of Dombs.
One paratrooper was killed on landing.
One Ju-52 from Mssingers platoon
was shot down, with four killed and
three wounded. Some paratroopers man-
aged to jump southeast of Dombs
before the aircraft crashed. Most of those
who jumped before the crash were
wounded in action with Norwegian
forces and surrendered on April 15. Lieu-
tenant Mssinger was able to assemble
about two-thirds of his platoon and link
up with Lieutenant Schmidt.
The 3rd Platoon, under Sergeant
Bobrowski, landed on Hill 1173 on the
eastern outskirts of Dombs. Seven para-
troopers mistakenly exited the aircraft
too early, over the town of Dombs. Two
were killed in fighting with Norwegian
forces and the rest were captured.
Bobrowskis platoon encountered Nor-
wegian forces four kilometers south of
Dombs, and two paratroopers were
killed. The remainder of the platoon
linked up with Lieutenant Schmidt on
April 15.
The 4th Platoon, under Feldwebel
Alexander Uhlig, overshot the target area
and landed about two kilometers south-
east of Lora along the Dombs-ndal-
snes rail line. Uhlig started moving his
men in the direction of Dombs.
The communications platoon of 24
Library of Congress
TOP: Several German Ju-52 transport planes landed on Hartvig Lake, froze solid
into the ice, and were abandoned. The Norwegians later captured the planes,
which were eventually recovered by their original owners or destroyed. BOTTOM:
German planes sit on the airfield at Fornebu, near the Norwegian capital of Oslo,
in April 1940, as smoke from a British air raid rises in the background.
Authors Collection
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WORLD WAR II AIRBORNE BATTLES 33
men landed near Hill 1578 about 12 kilometers southwest of
Dombs. One paratrooper exited the aircraft too early. He
reached Dombs, covered his uniform with civilian clothes,
and managed to avoid capture until April 29. The rest of the
platoon dug into the snow for the night.
The return of the German aircraft developed into a cata-
strophe. Only five of the 15 aircraft made it back to Oslo. Two
landed at Vrnes Airfield near Trondheim. The rest were shot
down or forced to make emergency landings as they ran out
of fuel. One aircraft made an emergency landing in Sweden.
The Germans had the misfortune of landing near the loca-
tion of the Norwegian 2nd Battalion, 11th Infantry Regiment.
The Norwegians had moved this unit to Dombs on April 13
to take part in the planned Allied operation against Trond-
heim. The isolated groups of German paratroopers, with no
maps and in over six feet of snow, soon found themselves under
attack by superior forces.
Lieutenant Schmidt tried to reach Dombs on April 14 in a
commandeered vehicle but ran into two truckloads of Nor-
wegians from the 11th Infantry. The Germans attacked, forc-
ing the Norwegian troops to retreat. However, Lieutenant
Schmidt and one paratrooper were seriously wounded and
another was captured. The move against Dombs was aban-
doned. The wounded paratroopers eventually died.
The Germans entrenched themselves on two farms, Ulekleiv
and Hagevoll, in excellent positions that dominated the sur-
rounding landscape. Lieutenant Schmidts group grew to 63
when the men from Bobrowskis 3rd Platoon joined them on
April 15. Although suffering from a severe stomach wound,
Schmidt did not relinquish command.
The German airdrop near Dombs worried the Norwegian
authorities since members of the government and the royal
family were located nearby and the gold reserve of the Nor-
wegian Central Bank was being evacuated by train from Lille-
hammer to ndalsnes. Intelligence was scarce, and the Nor-
wegians had only the vaguest idea of the size and location of
the German force.
General Otto Ruge, commander of the Norwegian Army,
was critical of the disorganized and piecemeal actions by his
troops. He wrote that the first force sent against the Germans
allowed itself to be ambushed and that a second attempt by
larger forces on April 15 repeated the stupidity.
Two platoons of Norwegian troops, commanded by Cap-
tain Eilif Austlid, were involved in security operations for mem-
bers of the government. This force was ambushed by Schmidts
men, and two Norwegians were killed. Captain Austlid per-
sonally led a counterattack that reached to within a few meters
of the German positions. He and four of his soldiers were
killed, and the counterattack failed. Twenty-eight Norwegians
were captured. During the day the German paratroopers cut
the rail and telephone lines.
The Norwegians renewed their attacks on April 16 with one
company of the 5th Infantry Regiment from the south while a
company from the 11th Infantry Regiment, supported by mor-
tars, attacked from the north. There was a break in the fight-
ing when the Germans sent a prisoner they had captured the
previous day to the Norwegian lines under a flag of truce. Lieu-
tenant Schmidt, through the returned soldier, informed the
Norwegians that their fire endangered the lives of Norwegian
prisoners that the Germans had in their positions, and he
National Archives Authors Collection
LEFT: Enjoying a lull in the fighting against the Germans at Konigsvinter, northeast of Oslo, these Norwegian troops fought
valiantly against a German attack there on April 28. RIGHT: Company 6, 11th Norwegian Infantry Regiment, shoulders its
skis and prepares to advance toward invading German airborne troops near Dombs.
AB-Scandanavia_Layout 1 10/14/14 11:32 AM Page 33
WORLD WAR II AIRBORNE BATTLES 34
demanded that the Norwegians surrender.
The response by the Norwegian commander was to send a
German sergeant they had captured to Schmidts position with
a demand that the Germans surrender.
Lieutenant Schmidt had an ulterior motive for entering into
these pointless negotiations. He had concluded that the posi-
tion he occupied had become untenable, and he tried to gain
time to move his men to new positions during the night. The
German disengagement benefited from a sudden blizzard that,
along with the darkness, concealed their movements. The Ger-
mans attacked and drove back the force opposing them in the
north, then disengaged and withdrew south toward Dovre.
The withdrawing Germans encountered a platoon-sized Nor-
wegian security force at a bridge but drove it back in a sharp
night attack.
Other Norwegian forces meanwhile continued to mop up Ger-
man paratroopers who had not managed to join Schmidt. Lieu-
tenant Beckers platoon approached Dombs from the north-
east and ran into units of the 11th Infantry Regiment. One
paratrooper died in the ensuing fight, and the rest surrendered.
Sergeant Uhligs 4th Platoon tried to reach Dombs from the
west. One paratrooper was killed in an engagement with Nor-
wegian troops. Uhlig decided that he had no option but to sur-
render his 22 men near Kolstad on April 16. One day earlier,
Lieutenant Gerholds communications platoon had descended
the northern slope of the mountains on which they had landed,
intending to reach the Dombs-ndalsnes road and approach
Dombs from the west. They were soon surrounded by Nor-
wegian troops, and 23 were captured near the Bottheim rail-
road station about nine kilometers from Dombs.
The main German force sought new positions at daybreak
on April 17, settling on the small Lindse farm about 800 meters
from the main road and less than 300 meters from the rail-
road. The stone barn on the farm became the main German
position. The Norwegians believed that most of the Germans
were still at Ulekleiv, and they continued to send reinforce-
ments to that area. The 1st Battalion, 11th Infantry Regiment
was replaced by the 2nd Battalion of the same regiment. A
40mm antiaircraft gun was also brought in.
The Norwegians realized at the end of the day that the
whole German force had withdrawn to new positions. The
fact that Norwegian forces were ambushed on the morning of
April 17 by the Germans at Lindse provided the final proof
that the Germans had escaped the encirclement at Ulekleiv.
Major Kjs and part of the vanguard of the Norwegians
caught in the ambush were captured, and other Norwegian
forces withdrew to Dover.
By morning of April 18, the Germans were again surrounded
in their new positions with the 1st Battalion, 11th Infantry
Regiment to the north and the reinforced Company 1 of the
5th Infantry Regiment to the south. The Norwegians also used
the antiaircraft gun against the German positions. They began
their attack early on April 18, and the situation soon became
desperate for the Germans.
Crouching behind the cover of a Panzer I tank mounting twin
machine guns, German infantrymen advance cautiously
along a muddy road in central Norway. Still blanketed by
spring snow, the countryside posed a challenge to logistics
and rapid operations.
National Archives
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WORLD WAR II AIRBORNE BATTLES 35
The only relief received by the paratroopers arrived on April
18, when a Ju-52 dropped badly needed supplies. The supply
containers were dropped without parachutes, and 90 percent
became unusable.
Reichsmarshal Hermann Gring, commander of the Luft-
waffe, refused to send reinforcements despite urgent requests.
Still hoping for an early link-up with the forces in Trondheim,
General Nickolas von Falkenhorst, German commander in
Norway, planned a second airborne operation on April 16 to
bypass the Norwegian defenses in the Lake Mjsa area. The
operation was cancelled after the Luftwaffe declined to par-
ticipate because of technical difficulties.
The German paratroopers at Lindse were completely sur-
rounded by the morning of April 19. The Norwegians had also
obtained reinforcements in the form of a howitzer mounted
on a flatbed rail car and operated by a crew of British Royal
Marines. The German ammunition supply was running low,
and Schmidt sent his second in command, Lieutenant Ernst
Mssinger (he also commanded the 2nd Platoon) to negotiate
an acceptable surrender. The Norwegian commander, Major
Arne Sunde, demanded an unconditional surrender, and the
Germans complied at 11:30 AM on April 19.
Forty-five Germans became Norwegian prisoners, among
them six severely wounded. The wounded were sent to a Nor-
wegian hospital in lesund, while those who were not
wounded, including others mopped up by Norwegian forces,
were sent to a prisoner-of-war camp near the city of Kristian-
sund. The prisoners were freed by German forces on May 6,
and many later participated in operations at Narvik under the
command of Lieutenant Mssinger.
The exact number of German casualties in the operation is
not known but it is believed to include 23 killed (including
pilots), 25 badly wounded, and 14 missing. Norwegian losses
are placed at 20 killed and about 20 wounded.
The German airborne operation at Dombs, although a fail-
ure, had important psychological consequences. Norwegian
and Allied commanders tied up badly needed forces in antici-
pation of similar threats in other areas. The operation also had
repercussions at the highest level of the German armed forces.
Court-martial charges were brought against General Sssmann
for having allowed the badly prepared operation to proceed in
weather conditions unsuitable for airborne operations. The
charges were dropped in June 1940, probably due to Grings
intervention.
Narvik is located 210 kilometers north of the Arctic Circle,
and the distance to Oslo is approximately 1,450 kilometers.
Narvik is an excellent ice-free port, and Swedish iron ore was
shipped through this town when the Baltic Sea was frozen.
The Germans did not plan to use airborne forces at Narvik.
The city was well beyond the range of all but specialized Ger-
man aircraft until they could secure suitable airfields in central
Norway. Furthermore, the Germans believed they would meet
only token resistance. When this assumption failed to materi-
alize, Maj. Gen. Eduard Dietl and his 2,000 troops from the
3rd Mountain Division found themselves isolated about 600
kilometers from the nearest friendly forces in Trondheim.
The Germans captured Narvik and the nearby military depot
on April 9, but were unable to secure Bardufoss Airfield
Photographed on April 15, 1940, German soldiers march
toward their assigned positions after landing at the military
airport of Stavanger.
Library of Congress
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WORLD WAR II AIRBORNE BATTLES 36
because of stiffening resistance from rapidly mobilizing Nor-
wegian units that went on the offensive within two weeks of
the landing. The British were also bringing forces into the
region.
The Germans made a concerted effort to supply the Narvik
forces starting within a few days of the landing. These were pri-
marily by long-range aircraft, seaplanes, and aircraft with mod-
ified fuel capacity. Eleven Ju-52s landed on a frozen Hartvig
Lake on the evening of April 13 with a battery of mountain
artillery from Berlin. Three aircraft were damaged while land-
ing, and one was destroyed by Norwegian aircraft. The remain-
ing Ju-52s froze into the ice, and all, except one, were unable to
take off and were eventually captured by the Norwegians. After
this ill-fated experience on the lake, the Germans turned to air-
drops and the use of seaplanes.
Germany received permission from Sweden to send sup-
plies and personnel to General Dietl through Sweden on April
17 and 18, provided they were of a humanitarian nature.
It is estimated that the provisions received by this route in
April were sufficient to sustain 4,000 troops for three months.
Some military personnel apparently disguised as Red Cross
workers were also brought in. The Germans were not per-
mitted to transport weapons, ammunitions, or reinforcements
through Sweden.
Despite organizing the 2,100 sailors from the crews of
destroyers sunk by the British in recent naval actions into
infantry units, reinforcements became the most critical prob-
lem after Norwegian forces drove the Germans from the high
mountain plateau on May 22. The front was near collapse,
pressure was mounting, the line of retreat was threatened, and
the trickle of reinforcements was not sufficient to replace losses
or turn the tide of battle.
A total of 164 paratroopers from Company 1, 1st Parachute
Regiment, rescued from a Norwegian POW camp and now
commanded by Lieutenant Mssinger, dropped into the area
near the Swedish border between May 14 and 16. Seaplanes
brought in 98 mountain troops from central Norway between
May 18 and 22.
With his forces near collapse, Dietl needed additional troops
to shore up the front and give some of his mountain troops a
chance to rest. General Falkenhorst had no further airborne
forces and asked OKW on May 15 for one parachute battal-
ion. He argued persuasively that the valiant efforts by the
troops in Lieutenant General Valentin Feursteins 2nd Moun-
tain Division, driving north from Trondheim, would be in vain
if Narvik could not be held until they arrived.
Falkenhorsts request produced results. Hitler ordered the
rest of the 1st Battalion, 1st Parachute Regiment, under Cap-
tain Walther, to Narvik. This force had participated in the oper-
ations in Holland on May 10. It was anticipated that this unit
should start arriving in Narvik within a week or 10 days.
In the meantime, Falkenhorsts command had carried out
expedited and abbreviated parachute training for some of the
mountain troops. The first group of these65 men from Com-
pany 2, 137th Mountain Infantry Regimentparachuted into
the Bjrnefjell area adjacent to the Swedish border where
Dietls headquarters was located on May 23. The Germans
expected 10 percent casualties in the operation, but only two
soldiers sustained minor injuries. Another drop of mountain
troops was made the following daythis time involving 55
troops from Company 1 of the 137th. Fifty-four troops from
Company 1, 137th arrived by parachute on May 25, as did 44
troops from Company 2, 138th Regiment. These were rushed
to Narvik before May 28 when an Allied and Norwegian
amphibious assault captured that city.
The remainder of the 1st Battalion, 1st Parachute Regiment
began arriving on May 26, when 81 men parachuted into the
Bjrnefjell area. Inclement weather delayed the next lift until
May 28 when 46 paratroopers were dropped. Another 134
arrived on May 29, and the remaining 46 were deployed on
June 2. Although 599 troops arrived in the Narvik area
between May 23 and June 2, Dietl concluded that he needed
another 1,500 to 2,000 men to replace losses and hold out.
The airdrop of weapons and ammunition for the Germans
at Narvik was not without mishap. The airdrop of 15 captured
Polish antitank guns was unsuccessful as all weapons became
unserviceable. About 30 percent of the infantry weapons that
were airdropped were badly damaged and unusable. A slightly
lower percentage of the ammunition parachuted into the
Narvik pocket was damaged to the point where it was useless.
The OKW was searching frantically at the end of May and
early June for ways to bring Dietl the reinforcements he needed
to hold out until General Feurstein arrived from the south. Dietl
was promisedas soon as the weather permittedtwo para-
chute battalions, about 1,800 men and practically the whole
German airborne force, and another 1,000 mountain troops
who were to be given a quick parachute course.
In early June, OKW planned a new operation to bring relief
to the Narvik pocket. This involved landing a strong force
about 90 miles north of Narvik at the same time as para-
troopers captured Bardufoss Airfield. The plan included the
transport of about 6,000 troops and a dozen tanks to Lynge-
fjord aboard the fast ocean liners Bremen and Europa.
Raeder pointed out to Hitler that the operation could not be
launched before June 20, too late to help Dietl, and he suggested
that it would be quicker and easier for the Luftwaffe to seize
Bardufoss with a parachute and glider force and then bring in
troops by transports. Hitler decided that both operations, Lyn-
gefjord and Bardufoss, were to be carried out simultaneously.
The final Norwegian offensive against Dietl was under way
at the end of May, but support from Allied forces was not
forthcoming because of their decision to evacuate Norway on
May 24. The evacuation from Dunkirk was under way, and
it was decided that all available forces were needed to defend
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WORLD WAR II AIRBORNE BATTLES 37
Great Britain. The news was kept from the Norwegians for
security reasons.
Any chance of forcing a German surrender or driving Dietls
forces into internment in Sweden came to an end on June 1,
when the Norwegians were informed about the British evacua-
tion. Requests from the Norwegians for a postponement of the
evacuation or air support and supplies for Norwegian forces to
continue their offensive were denied. In the end, the Norwegian
government opted for exile. An armistice with the Germans was
concluded on June 10.
Colonel Bruno Oswald Bruer was promoted to major gen-
eral in 1942, and he commanded the 9th Airborne Division in
1945. He relinquished his command for medical reasons in
April of that year. Bruer was captured by the British and extra-
dited to Greece where he was tried for crimes dealing with the
deportation of Jews. He was executed by firing squad in Athens
on May 20, 1947.
Captain Erich Walther participated in the airborne opera-
tions in Holland between the initial invasion of Denmark and
Norway and his later involvement at Narvik. Walther rose
rapidly in rank and ended the war as a major general. He
was captured by the Soviets in May 1945 and died in a POW
camp in 1947.
Captain Kurt Grschke rose to the rank of colonel and was
the commander of the 15th Parachute Regiment in 1945. He
was captured by the British and released in 1946.
First Lieutenant von Brandis and his company participated
in the airborne operation against the Dordrecht bridges in
Holland on May 10, 1940. The company was decimated in
heavy fighting, and Lieutenant von Brandis was killed.
Dombs holds the unfortunate distinction of being the place
where the first U.S. military casualty of World War II, Captain
Robert M. Losey of the Army Air Corps who served on the
defense attachs staff in Helsinki, Finlnd, lost his life. Losey
had been ordered to Norway to assist in the evacuation of the
embassy staff and other U.S. citizens. He was killed by a bomb
fragment on April 21, 1940. Hermann Gring sent a letter of
regrets and condolences to the commander of the U.S. Army
Air Corps, Major General Henry H. Arnold, a few days after
the incident. The citizens of Dombs erected a memorial to
Captain Losey in 1987.
First Lieutenant Herbert Schmidt recovered from his wounds
and wrote a book about the Dombs operation in 1941, Die
Fallschirmjger von Dombas. Schmidt was killed by the French
Resistance in 1944.
Major General Wilhelm Sssmann commanded the 7th Air
Division during the invasion of Crete in 1941. He was killed
when the glider in which he was riding crashed.

Henrik O. Lunde is a retired U.S. Army colonel and the author

of a forthcoming book on World War II in Norway.
Library of Congress
Wary of potential resistance, German soldiers advance cau-
tiously along a Norwegian road in April 1940. The Germans
were surprised by the tenacity of the Norwegian troops who
defended their country.
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WORLD WAR II AIRBORNE BATTLES 38
U.S. Army Art
PYRRHIC
PARACHUTE
VICTORY IN CRETE
BY RICHARD RULE
German paratroopers advance across a danger-
ously open field as their comrades drop from
Junkers Ju-52s in the sky above Crete during
the opening of Operation Mercury. A German
veteran painted the scene from memory.
AB-Crete_Layout 1 10/14/14 11:34 AM Page 38
WORLD WAR II AIRBORNE BATTLES 39
IN MAY 1941, GENERAL KURT
Students elite paratrooper forces
descended like an anvil on the
British garrison defending Crete.
Instead of winning a quick and
decisive victory, ----the airborne
troops found themselves locked in
brutal battle against some of the
toughest veterans in the British
Army. Here, on the sun-parched
Mediterranean island of Crete, the
Germans appeared to be on the
brink of their first military defeat
of the war.
As part of Germanys peripheral strat-
egy against the British Empire in the
Mediterranean, Hitler invaded Greece in
early April 1941, with a provision for
General Kurt Students airborne troops
to seize Crete. Within weeks, Hitlers
panzer columns had decisively smashed
all opposition in their path and were
relentlessly streaming toward central
Greece. Allied forces sent to the main-
land had been completely outclassed and
were soon left contemplating the
prospect of another Dunkirk.
While German troops were enjoying
incredible success in the Balkans, Gen-
eral Student feared that Hitler had
changed his mind regarding the deploy-
ment of airborne forces in the Greek
campaign. Desperate to get his men into
the fight, Student decided to present the
case for an air invasion of Crete directly
to Hitler.
On April 21, he expansively outlined
the many threats that Britains advanced
air bases on Crete posed to German
interests in the Balkans. Not the least of
these were bombing raids against the
vital Romanian oil fields at Ploesti, the
German Armys main source of oil.
Elite German parachute troops found the
resistance from Commonwealth soldiers
particularly brutal, but prevailed at terrible
cost in the fight for the Greek island.
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WORLD WAR II AIRBORNE BATTLES 40
Hitler, immersed in the planning of Operation Barbarossa, the
invasion of the Soviet Union, reluctantly agreed to the invasion
of Crete on the provision that he be delivered a swift and deci-
sive victory.
Fearing Hitler might once again change his mind if prepara-
tions stalled, Student and his staff pulled off a logistical mira-
cle by quickly procuring the 1,200 aircraft needed for the
attack, code-named Operation Mercury. While brilliantly con-
ceived, Students planning for the invasion was in many ways
compromised by an unrealistic time frame. The Greek airfields,
for example, were ill suited to accommodating so many aircraft
and no ships were yet available to carry out additional
seaborne landings. The tight schedule allowed little time to
accumulate accurate intelligence about the enemy.
Based on air reconnaissance that had detected very few pre-
pared defenses or troop deployments, the Germans believed the
Allies were undermanned and totally unprepared. It was a bold
assumption. For Student to launch a major operation of this
kind without solid, detailed intelligence was deemed an accept-
able risk. For the men going into battle, however, it was a mat-
ter of life or death.
For Operation Mercury, General Student would use his one
parachute division, a glider regiment, and Maj. Gen. Julius
Ringels tough 5th Gebirgsjager (Mountain) Division, part of
which would be flown in when a suitable airfield had been cap-
tured, the rest ferried across by sea.
The 22,000 troops to be deployed were
deemed sufficient to deal with the Allied
garrison, estimated to be fewer than
5,000 disorganized, ill-equipped troops
likely to surrender at the first opportu-
nity. The reality would be far different.
It was a bold and tactically simple plan
that would involve two waves of air-
borne landings in four locations along
the north coast of the island. The first
wave of paratroopers and gliderborne
troops of the crack Air Assault Regi-
ment, designated Group West, would
secure the vital Maleme Airfield and
clear the way for sea landings by the
mountain troops. Simultaneously, the
3rd Paratrooper Regiment, Group Cen-
ter, would land and take control of
Galatas and the island capital, Canea.
The German forces would then link up
and push eastward to overwhelm the
defenders at Suda Bay, allowing tanks to
be shipped across to help roll up the
defenders from the west.
During the afternoon, the second wave,
Group East, comprising two more para-
trooper regiments, would descend on
Retimo and Heraklion to seize their air-
fields and Heraklions harbor. It was a
daring undertaking that would see the
elite of the German Army launch the first
massed airborne invasion in history; Stu-
dents vision of war from the air was
about to be realized. When it was over,
however, a visibly shaken Hitler would
never allow another.
Crete lies in the eastern Mediterranean
between the isles of the Grecian archi-
pelago and the coastline of North Africa
Imperial War Museum
This early in the war, British soldiers still carried sword bayonets of the pre-
World War I pattern. The older weapons proved invaluable for hand-to-hand
fighting in Crete.
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WORLD WAR II AIRBORNE BATTLES 41
and western Egypt. It is a rugged island approximately 65 kilo-
meters north to south and 265 kilometers east to west. Behind
the islands northern lowland coastal plain rises a narrow
mountain range with steep, rugged cliffs overshadowing a
labyrinth of defiles, ravines, rock, and scrub that are passable
by only a few tracks and rudimentary roads.
The northern half of the island contained the only defen-
sible harbor, Suda Bay, along with Cretes three operational
airfields at Maleme, Retimo, and Heraklion. British Middle
East Command had always recognized the strategic impor-
tance of Crete, but was stretched too thinly to act on recom-
mendations to upgrade its airfields or reinforce the garrison. It
was not until the impending fall of Greece placed Crete as the
most forward British position facing the Axis in the Mediter-
ranean that Allied command would take a greater interest in
the island.
The question of defending Crete left many senior officers,
fresh from the mainland Greece fiasco, harboring grave reser-
vations. They argued that Cretes physical makeup played
directly into the hands of the Axis. All the key airfields, cities,
and harbors were located in the north closer to German bases
in Greece than British bases in Egypt. In any case, it appeared
unlikely that Crete could receive enough equipment and air-
craft to defend itself against an invasion.
However, with the swastika now flying triumphantly above
the Parthenon, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill dis-
missed these concerns, gambling heavily on the edge he had
secretly attained through the codebreakers at Bletchley Park.
As Student forged ahead with his plans at breakneck speed, he
was unaware that almost the entire operation had been fatally
compromised. For the first time in the war, the ULTRA inter-
cepts had given the British almost complete knowledge of what
was to come. It was a priceless advantage upon which
Churchill was determined to extract maximum value, and in
a blunt cable to Middle East Command he made it clear that
Crete was to be held at all costs.
The upcoming battle would need a fearless com-
mander, and Churchill chose a New Zealander, General
Bernard Freyberg, for the job. Not everyone agreed with this
decision. Despite his legendary fighting reputation, there were
those who felt the 50-year-old Freyberg had neither the train-
ing nor intellectual capability for an independent command of
such difficulty and complexity. The British prime minister, how-
ever, would hear none of it, for in Freyberg, Churchill believed
he had a fighting general who would inspire the garrison and
defend the island to the last.
Toward the end of April, with the Greek campaign in its
death throes, the Royal Navy was heroically evacuating as
many troops as it could from the mainland. For the sake of
expediency many of these men found themselves on Crete
instead of in the relative safety of Egypt some 650 kilometers
farther south. The harbor at Suda Bay was soon swamped with
a massive influx of exhausted soldiers, many of whom had
arrived with nothing but their rifles.
General Freyberg, one of the last to be evacuated, was landed
at Suda Bay on April 29, expecting only a brief stay before
moving on to Egypt. Soon after his arrival the matter of com-
manding Crete was placed squarely in his lap like a poisoned
chalice. He was completely taken aback by the proposal, and
the subsequent briefing he received did little to endear him to
the task. The island, he was told, could expect air attacks
almost immediately, followed up within weeks by major air-
borne landings supported by a seaborne invasion carrying
tanks. His forces, numbering over 41,000 men, were gravely
short of equipment, particularly artillery and antiaircraft guns,
and could count on little help from the Royal Air Force or
Royal Navy. Freyberg, who could not understand why Crete
was being defended at all, felt that with most of his New
Zealand command already on Crete he had no alternative but
to take the assignment.
From his new headquarters outside Canea, the stout-hearted
Freyberg faced formidable difficulties. In spite of knowing lit-
tle about Crete, he set to work bringing order to the confu-
sion, processing and organizing the thousands of demoralized
troops he now commanded. Recognizing that the close-com-
bat encounter that loomed would be for fighting men only, he
saw to it that the wounded and most of the nonessential per-
sonnel were evacuated to Egypt. Those that remained
amounted to approximately 17,000 British, 7,750 New
Zealanders, 6,500 Australians, and 10,200 poorly equipped
Imperial War Museum
Hard-fighting Greek soldiers and civilians displayed a wide
variety of uniforms and gear, but all were committed to
defending their homeland to the death.
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WORLD WAR II AIRBORNE BATTLES 42
Greek troops.
The Cretan population, shaped by a tradition of guerrilla
warfare, was determined to fight alongside the Allies. Frey-
berg, not opposed to the idea, wanted them incorporated into
a formation similar to the British Home Guard, but nothing
was organized before the invasion. Without the protection of
military law, many hundreds were to be executed
as partisans by the Germans.
Due to the geographical makeup of the island
and his prior knowledge of German plans, Frey-
berg planned his defense around four self-con-
tained fighting groups deployed in the regions
where the airborne invaders would most likely seek
a foothold. These areas would form the focal
points of the Crete defense plan.
The first of these, at Heraklion, would be
defended by an 8,000-man garrison comprising
Australian, British, and Greek troops under the
command of Brigadier B.H. Chappell. The second,
in the Retimo-Georgioupolis sector, would have
Brigadier G. Vasey commanding Australian and
Greek units totaling 7,500 men. The third, in the
Suda Bay-Canea sector, was under the command of
Maj. Gen. E.C. Weston with a force of 8,000 men,
while the fourth, under Brigadier E. Puttick, cov-
ered the Maleme-Galatas sector just west of Canea.
The New Zealanders in this region were responsi-
ble for defending the airfield, the coast, and Prison
Valley against the Germans.
Malemes airfield was vital to both sides, and its
defense fell to Colonel L.W. Andrewss 22nd New
Zealand Battalion which, supported by two dug-in
tanks and two artillery pieces, took up positions on
the slopes of Hill 107 overlooking the airfield run-
way. It was a precarious deployment, for the nearest support-
ing troops would be over two miles away.
Brigadier Putticks forces covered the airfield and the coast
as Freyberg had ordered, but his defensive lines were very
thinly spread, punctuated by yawning gaps that could not be
sealed. Effective command coordination under these condi-
tions would be difficult.
Freyberg, who emphasized camouflage and concealment,
saw to it that each sector had a sprinkling of field artillery, a
few antiaircraft guns, and a couple of tanks. The lack of short-
range radios on the island would make communication a prob-
lem, leaving Freyberg to rely heavily on the initiative of his
local commanders. In public, at least, he adopted a positive
outlook, confidant that his men would give an excellent
account of themselves. Privately, he had grave concerns.
As predicted, the Luftwaffe was soon launching round-the-
clock raids against ships and installations in Suda Bay. To add
potency to the attack, Junkers Ju-87 Stuka dive-bomber pilots
had been provided with a basic proximity fuse that detonated
their bombs just before impact, resulting in a more lethal
spread of shrapnel. The harbor was a nightmare of exploding
bombs and choking black smoke, but with only a couple of
fighters and precious few AA guns, there was little Freyberg
could do to help the men on the docks.
Ships that had avoided the Stukas soon found
themselves maneuvering through a waterway clut-
tered with the debris of war to be unloaded by
troops who often worked as bombs fell around
them.
As the invasion drew closer, the intensity of the
air raids increased sharply. The islands three air-
dromes at Maleme, Heraklion, and Retimo were
given special attention, forcing the Allied command
to withdraw Cretes six remaining fighters to Egypt
and leaving the troops with no air cover at all. With
raids pushing men at all levels of command to the
breaking point, many bitterly observed that RAF
should stand for Rare as Fairies.
At 7:30 AMon May 20, an enormous air
armada launched fierce strikes around Suda Bay
and the vital airfields. The New Zealanders at
Maleme were singled out for one of the most con-
centrated local air attacks of World War II. Their
positions were inundated with high-explosive and
machine-gun fire.
Half an hour later, the main invasion commenced
as nearly 600 Junkers Ju-52 troop transports surged
slowly toward the island, disgorging paratroopers
over the target areas. Brigadier Putticks New
Zealanders around Maleme bore the brunt of the
first attack as troop-carrying gliders and para-
troopers of the Air Assault Regiment descended into their midst.
Having lost the element of surprise, the Germans were in
trouble almost immediately. Many of the gliders were system-
atically shredded by intense machine-gun fire while others
crashed on the rocky terrain, wounding and killing many of the
occupants. Those troops that scrambled to safety quickly ral-
lied to overrun the AA guns south of the airfield, but most
found themselves isolated and pinned down by heavy and accu-
rate ground fire.
The men of the Air Assault Regiment fared little better,
descending helplessly into a hail of bullets from strong New
Zealand defensive positions beneath them. Hundreds of para-
troopers, killed before they hit the ground, were paying the
ultimate price for inadequate intelligence.
The airborne forces that had landed near the village of
Kastelli encountered an even more hostile reception when they
were mercilessly set upon by Cretan villagers as they struggled
in their harnesses or while caught in the olive trees. Incidents
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Brigadier General
Julius Ringel (top)
and Major General
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WORLD WAR II AIRBORNE BATTLES 43
such as these were repeated at all the drop zones as the popu-
lation took up arms against the invaders. The Germans had not
anticipated this type of determined civilian resistance, but
would quickly retaliate with unbridled savagery of their own.
Meanwhile, at Maleme the paratroopers who landed unscathed
regrouped in a dried-up riverbed near the western edge of the
airfield and provided covering fire for other survivors to link up
with them. Instead of quickly subduing a disorganized rabble,
they found themselves in a parched, dusty hell pitted against bat-
tle-hardened veterans clearly capable of holding their own.
From their foothold near the riverbed, the superbly led
paratroopers immediately began assaults on both the airfield
itself and the New Zealanders occupying the vital Hill 107
that dominated the sector. In rugged, sun-bleached terrain,
battered by searing heat and tortured by thirst, both sides
were quickly locked in savage fighting that raged unabated
throughout the morning. The Germans were unable to make
inroads, so, in a desperate attempt to regain the initiative,
they advanced up Hill 107 behind a group of RAF prisoners
forced to act as a human shield.
Tragically, many of the airmen were cut down by friendly
fire before the defenders realized what was happening. With
cries of shame ringing in their ears, the Germans were once
again forced back.
With most of the senior German officers already casualties,
the operation at Maleme was in turmoil. The situation wors-
ened as reinforcements in the Air Regiments 3rd Battalion
were slaughtered by ground fire within moments of jumping.
The few survivors who managed to link up with forces near the
airfield were too dazed to offer much fight.
Confronting the dreadful realities of war with all its unimag-
inable horrors had left many Germans too traumatized to func-
tion at all, while scores would surrender at the first opportu-
nity. Crete was not proving to be the glorious adventure these
young men had envisioned.
In the face of stubborn resistance, the Germans were unable
to push the New Zealanders off Hill 107. By late morning,
Freybergs forces around Maleme had every reason to be sat-
isfied, for despite mounting German pressure, they had pre-
vented the men of Group West from achieving a decisive break-
through.
While the troops at the Maleme airfield were paying a
heavy price, the men of Group Center in the Canea-Suda Bay
sector suffered a similar fate as airborne and gliderborne
troops descended into the muzzles of the defenders. Hun-
dreds were killed in the air or captured soon after landing,
while many others were dragged to the bottom of a nearby
reservoir. The survivors who had landed outside the New
Zealand defensive areas quickly converted a prison into a
strongpoint to which stragglers from other landing sites soon
converged.
The troops, who had expected to land on a gently sloping
valley, found themselves corralled into a funnel-shaped depres-
sion surrounded on all sides by the enemy. The only course
Another German view of the airdrop in Crete. The Germans,
expecting to be greeted as liberators, were surprised by the
rough welcome they received from Cretan civilians.
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WORLD WAR II AIRBORNE BATTLES
44
open to them was to seize the heights around Galatas and from
there break through to Canea; the alternative was to be slaugh-
tered where they stood. Once again the New Zealanders were
in the thick of the fighting and eager to hit back after weeks of
constant air attack.
The Germans pushed toward the village of Galatas, but casu-
alties were high and by late afternoon they disengaged to con-
solidate for the night in anticipation of a counterattack. Group
Center, which failed to take any of its objectives on day one of
the invasion, now faced the prospect of being overrun alto-
gether. Here, as in Maleme, the Germans had lost the initiative;
any thought of taking the Maleme-Canea sector in the first
attack had been completely dismissed.
News of the crushing German losses gave rise to
optimism among senior Allied commanders that the situation
on Crete was well in hand. Their spirits were lifted further with
reports that an attempted German seaborne operation had
been thwarted by the Royal Navy. Elements of General Julius
Ringels 5th Mountain Division, en route to Crete aboard a
fleet of commandeered Greek fishing boats, were intercepted
by British warships during the night. In a one-sided engage-
ment, the Navy sank many of the small vessels and scattered
the rest. Ringel, who had been skeptical about the whole oper-
ation on Crete, was seething when he learned two entire bat-
talions had been lost in the ill-fated expedition.
While Freybergs defensive sectors had thus far weathered
the storm and maintained their lines, the men were low on sup-
plies and feeling the effects of the intense fighting. The warn-
ing signs were ominous. Freyberg was frustrated by a totally
inadequate communications network that quickly put him out
of touch with the developing battles, affording him little oppor-
tunity to decisively influence events. The battle was effectively
left in the hands of the four sector commanders who, due to a
lack of radios, rarely knew what was happening outside their
own areas.
In the meantime, an air of crisis pervaded Students head-
quarters in Athens. Reports of the losses at Maleme and Canea
had stunned the entire command. The man who had arrogantly
anticipated a quick and glorious victory now found himself
desperately trying to stave off Germanys first defeat of the war.
Acutely aware of the rumblings of dissatisfaction from Berlin,
Student banked heavily that the second series of landings by
Group East at Retimo and Heraklion would capture one of
the airfields.
The operation at Retimo depended on tight coordination
between the air strikes and the parachute drops. Due to hasty
planning, however, Student had not allowed an adequate turn-
around time for the aircraft from the mornings landings. As a
consequence, the second wave of paratroopers was delayed
and did not begin their drop until around 5 PM, nearly an hour
after the Luftwaffe raids had ended. The two battalions of the
2nd Parachute Regiment, believing the Retimo airfield was vir-
tually undefended, were given a hot reception from Australian
and Greek battalions under Lt. Col. I. Campbell, who occu-
pied the dominant features on Hills A and B to the east and
west of the airfield.
As the transport craft slowly flew in at 400 feet, the Aus-
tralians opened fire. Within minutes, seven aircraft were shot
down. In the chaos that followed, paratroopers spilled out over
the ocean and drowned. Some had parachutes that did not
open at all, while those who fell among the Australians were
killed or captured.
A sizable force had still managed to regroup outside the
defensive zone and immediately started to fight its way
The narrow island of Crete, 60 miles
from the southernmost tip of Greece,
offered an enormous harbor and multi-
ple airfields, making it a tempting tar-
get for the German Luftwaffe.
Map 2014 Philip Schwartzberg, Meridian Mapping, Minneapolis, MN.
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WORLD WAR II AIRBORNE BATTLES 45
toward the summit of Hill A. It was a savage engagement in
which Australian gunners on the hilltop defended themselves
with picks and shovels and fired their artillery into the
advancing Germans at point-blank range. Both sides were
paying a terrible price, but by nightfall the exhausted Ger-
mans had captured the hill at a cost of nearly 400 men. Their
attempts to capture the town of Retimo, however, were
thrown back by Cretan police and armed civilians who put
up violent resistance.
For the landings at Heraklion, Student had gathered his
strongest force with the objective of capturing the airfield
and harbor. The Germans, expecting fewer than 400 defend-
ers, would in fact be facing close to 8,000 men supported by
tanks and deployed in a horseshoe defense around the air-
field, town, and harbor.
The air assault commenced late in the afternoon
of May 20 with 250 Ju-52s dropping thousands of men into
battle. The strong Allied antiaircraft defenses, forewarned of
what was coming, quickly went into action and sent 15 trans-
ports plummeting to earth. Some artillery on the high ground
was able to fire virtually straight through the side doors as the
Ju-52s flew past, blowing them to pieces.
One Australian machine gunner recalled, The planes burst
into flames, [the men] leapt out like plums spilt from a burst
bag. [One aircraft flew] out to sea with six men trailing from
the cords of their parachutes which were tangled to the fuse-
lage. The pilot was bucketing the plane about in an effort to
dislodge them.
The intense ground fire forced the air transports to fly higher
than normal, which in turn increased the time of the descent;
hundreds were killed as they hung helplessly beneath their
parachutes. Many who made it to the ground alive were cut
down by machine-gun fire or set upon by Cretan civilians. Oth-
ers were scattered all over the countryside and would take most
of the night to regroup.
These tough, resourceful troops gained their bearings and
managed to force their way into Heraklion itself. Throughout
the night, the ancient town echoed with the sounds of auto-
matic gunfire as running battles raged up and down the nar-
row streets and lanes.
As at Retimo, the Germans found themselves battling hard
against Cretan police and civilians, who eventually forced the
paratroops to fall back with heavy losses.
The action at Heraklion descended into a bitter and bloody
engagement with the Luftwaffe bombing the town itself and
German troops shooting civilians in reprisal for atrocities com-
mitted by partisans. The Cretans counterclaimed that their
actions were revenge against German troops who had deliber-
ately set alight buildings with people still inside. This vicious
cycle of partisan resistance and Nazi reprisal would continue
without respite until the end of the war.
The Heraklion landings were a disaster from the begin-
ning. By nightfall the following day, the Allied defenders had
collected 1,250 enemy dead on top of the 200 killed during
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A Junkers Ju-52 burns furiously as it plunges to the ground
on May 21, 1941, over the Akrotiri Peninsula.
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WORLD WAR II AIRBORNE BATTLES 46
the initial landing. The remaining 500
troops desperately fought on.
Operation Mercury appeared to be
coming apart at the seams, but Student
would not allow a withdrawal. With his
career and the reputation of the airborne
forces hanging in the balance, he decided
to concentrate all his efforts on Malemes
airfield, where his troops had at least
established a tenuous foothold. He was
a desperate man staking everything on
one card.
The situation at Maleme, however, was
far from encouraging; a serious New
Zealand counterattack would have eas-
ily overwhelmed the exhausted para-
troopers there, spelling the end of Oper-
ation Mercury. Student planned to
reinforce Maleme with paratroopers and
General Ringels mountain troops the
following morning, but everything
hinged on his forces holding until then. Student spent a fitful
night with a pistol by his bed, ready to use on himself if the sit-
uation collapsed.
With the Germans seemingly in disarray, Freyberg sent a cau-
tiously optimistic cable to headquarters in Cairo: We have
been hard pressed. I believe that so far we hold the aerodromes
at Maleme, Heraklion and Retimo and the two harbors. The
margin by which we hold them is a bare one and it would be
wrong of me to paint an optimistic picture.
In reality, the battle was about to slip from Freybergs grasp
as Students gamble at Maleme lay the foundations for an
unlikely German victory. Preceded by a massive combination
of dive-bomber and artillery bombardment, the Germans
pressed the attack at Maleme in the early hours of May 21.
Boosted by fresh troops and supplies, the paratroopers
launched a surprise attack that drove the New Zealand forces
off Hill 107.
The Germans then turned the captured guns against Allied
positions around the airfield. The New Zealanders, already
stretched to the limit of endurance, attempted a belated coun-
terattack at 3:30 AM on May 22. With typical ferocity, they
launched fierce grenade and bayonet assaults but could not get
near the airfield until after daylight. By then it was too late; the
Germans were firmly entrenched and could not be dislodged.
Colonel Andrewss men had put up a stirring defense, but by
the third day of fighting nearly half the force around Maleme
was either dead or wounded. With communication to his out-
lying positions lost and little hope of reinforcement, Andrews
saw no alternative but to pull his decimated units back from
the airfield. It was a fateful decision that altered the balance of
force on Crete.
At Maleme, Student now had possession of the vital airfield
that the operation so desperately needed, and he wasted no
time reinforcing his foothold. Ignoring the intense Allied
artillery and mortar fire sweeping the runway, German pilots
began flying missions to replace the men and equipment lost
in earlier fighting. In retaliation, RAF bombers from Egypt
launched aggressive bombing raids on the airfield, but these
would have little impact.
As paratroopers began cautiously pushing forward beyond
the airfield perimeter to secure Maleme, Student flew in Gen-
eral Ringels mountain troops, many of whom had never
flown before. Arriving at dusk they found themselves descend-
ing into a terrifying inferno of exploding and burning planes.
Many were killed as they scrambled from their aircraft. The
airstrip at Maleme was not designed to cope with such a large
volume of air traffic, and accidents and collisions were com-
monplace. With burning wreckage piled up on the airstrip,
pilots began landing on any open space they could find to
deliver the men to the battlefield. The arrival of these addi-
tional troops and heavy weapons would allow Student to
weather the storm on Crete, but the general found himself los-
ing a political battle in Berlin.
The slaughter of the first day had shocked and
angered Hitler. Furious at the prospect of a drawn-out cam-
paign on Crete, he had Student unceremoniously removed from
command and replaced by General Julius Ringel. Student was
devastated. There was no love lost between the pair, for Ringel
thought Student was a dreamer, while Student viewed Ringel
as a plodder, blinded by the dust of the infantry.
In spite of Students damning assessment, Ringel was a very
Imperial War Museum
Dead German assault troops lie beside the wreckage of their glider. Many were
killed before they could even exit the aircraft.
AB-Crete_Layout 1 10/14/14 11:36 AM Page 46
WORLD WAR II AIRBORNE BATTLES 47
capable, no-nonsense commander determined to finish the bat-
tle on Crete as quickly as possible. Upon assuming control at
Maleme, Ringel wasted no time forming three battle groups to
get the ground fight firmly in hand. The first would advance
west and south to capture Kastelli and clear the way for the
landing of tanks. The second was to cover Maleme from the
east and push along the coastal road toward Canea, while the
third group was to swing south on a wide outflanking move
over the hills, forcing the New Zealanders to withdraw their
guns, which were shelling the airfield. The ultimate aim was to
join up with the survivors of Group Center and drive on to
Suda Bay.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the island at Retimo, ele-
ments of the 2nd Parachute Regiment were still heavily engaged
in a bitter struggle with Australian troops over the hill features
that dominated the sector. In a seesawing battle, fighting for
control of Retimo airfield would continue without respite until
May 23, when both sides agreed to a three-hour truce to bury
the dead and collect the wounded.
A joint hospital out of harms way was established where
German and Australian doctors, working side by side, could
share supplies and medicines. With the completion of this
humanitarian task, the fight resumed, but the Germans
adopted a different strategy. With the capture of Maleme air-
field, the paratroopers concentrated on pinning down the
Allied garrison until the situation at Canea and Suda Bay had
stabilized.
Ringels flanking drive had successfully forced the withdrawal
of Allied troops at Maleme, leaving the airfield out of the reach
of their artillery. The loss of the airfield severely dented Frey-
bergs confidence. Neither an encouraging cable from Churchill
nor the fact that the Germans had lost so many men could lift
his spirits. All over the island the hard-fighting defenders bat-
tled gamely, but their isolated victories were no longer enough
to stem the tide now that the Germans had a supply route onto
Crete. With each passing day it became clearer to Freyberg that
his forces were being bled white with no way of making up the
losses. No matter how many German troops they killed, more
would quickly arrive to take their place.
Freyberg later remarked, At this stage the troops would
not be able to last much longer against a continuation of the
air attacks which they had during the previous five days. it
was only a question of time before our now shaken troops
must be driven out of the positions they occupied.
Having committed practically all his men and running des-
perately short of ammunition and supplies, he would have no
alternative but to order a retreat to a shorter line.
Ringels aggressive thrusts around Maleme forced Brigadier
Puttick to order a general retreat from the west of Crete to
form a new line running from the sea west of the Kladiso River
through the Daratsos Ridge to the Australian positions at the
base of Prison Valley. With two airborne and one mountain
regiment concentrated against his weary men and a second
mountain regiment pushing toward Suda Bay from the south,
Putticks 4th New Zealand Brigade was withdrawn even far-
ther to new positions outside Canea.
After four days of fighting, Ringels battle groups, pushing
along the coast toward Palanias and through the hills to the
south, finally joined with the third group at Stalos. With
Groups West and Center finally linked up, Ringel prepared a
major drive to overwhelm the Allied troops grimly holding the
last defenses before Suda Bay. With Luftwaffe support, he
wanted to crash through this line and then drive eastward to
relieve the parachute troops at Retimo and Heraklion.
At this time a tragic chapter in the battle of Crete unfolded
as German troops probed toward Kastelli. Among the olive
groves and vineyards they came across the bloated corpses of
paratroopers who had been attacked by Cretans and left lying
where they had fallen on May 20. The bodies showed signs of
mutilation and torture. The discovery enraged Ringel, who
ordered that any civilian caught with a weapon was to be
Imperial War Museum
Wearing their distinctive rimless helmets, three German
paratroopers march toward an assembly point as others
land behind them.
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WORLD WAR II AIRBORNE BATTLES 48
immediately shot and that 10 hostages would be executed for
every hostile act against the German Army.
The first to suffer under this harsh policy would be the civil-
ians who had fought alongside Greek troops defending Kastelli.
Despite protests from German POWs in the captured town,
200 male hostages were rounded up and shot. Brutal reprisals
were carried out in other villages as the Germans exacted sav-
age revenge for the atrocities they claimed had been commit-
ted against them.
With the west of the island under German control and assured
of a constant flow of reinforcements, morale was again high.
On May 25, with 15,000 troops in the Maleme sector alone and
the battle now in hand, Berlin Radio belatedly broadcast news
of the invasion. It was a clear indication to all that Hitler believed
the operation was now going well.
The same day the German public learned of the invasion,
a gaunt Student arrived at Maleme to see his men. He was
now a mere spectator, only permitted to offer advice and
make suggestions; for the dynamic Student it was a depress-
ing experience. With his career in tatters, he had to endure
the indignity of watching the operation, which he alone had
believed in, being led to victory by a fierce rival. It was a bit-
ter pill to swallow.
As the Germans steadily advanced across Crete, the Allied
command in Cairo could see the writing on the wall and
ordered Freyberg to pull his forces back to Retimo and make
a stand on the eastern part of the island. But it was too late;
the road to Retimo had already been cut, the Canea front had
collapsed, and Suda Bay was only a day away from being cap-
tured. There were really only two alternatives: surrender or
evacuation.
Ringel, sensing that the overall Allied effort on Crete was
near collapse, urged his men to crush the Allies as quickly as
possible and prevent them from falling back toward Heraklion
and joining with the forces there. As a result, he neglected the
route to the south and concentrated his pursuit along the coast
with his mountain troops, leaving the surviving paratroopers
in reserve around Canea.
Freyberg had done his best to defend the island,
but now it was time to save his men. With the battle all but lost,
he saw no other alternative but to order evacuation prepara-
tions to proceed. Rumors of a withdrawal quickly caused the
roads into the mountains to be crowded with leaderless men
and deserters eager to escape the fighting. Freyberg tried unsuc-
cessfully for two days to get orders to withdraw through to
the Australians still fighting at Retimo.
By May 29, however, the men there were effectively isolated
and too closely pinned down to have any chance of disengag-
ing as a formed body. Utterly exhausted and with barely any
food, water, or ammunition and with no hope of relief, the
Australians had no alternative but to surrender. It had been a
stirring defense that had cost them 120 dead and 200
wounded, but the action at Retimo had cost the Germans over
800 men.
Brigadier Chappells forces at Heraklion were confident they
could continue to hold the Germans at bay. Despite relentless
pressure, Chappell had thrown up such a stiff and spirited
defense that the German High Command in Athens had aban-
doned any hope of a landing in the harbor. However, days of
continuous and brutal fighting saw the men, low on ammuni-
tion and supplies, nearing the end of their tether.
With the road south cut by the Germans and reinforcements
being dropped out of range, the Allied position had become
untenable. The Germans could not get into Heraklion, but
Chappell and his men could not get out. Unable to communi-
cate with Freyberg, Chappell was taking orders directly from
Cairo, which informed him that the Royal Navy would evac-
uate his men from the Heraklion harbor on the night of May
28-29, but they would have to leave their seriously wounded
behind. As they had done in mainland Greece, the British and
Australian troops once again destroyed their equipment and at
dusk made their way silently through the stinking wreckage of
Heraklion to the harbor.
An Australian officer recalled the destruction they were leav-
ing behind: Roads were wet and running from burst water
pipes, hungry dogs were scavenging among the dead. There was
the stench of sulfur, smoldering fires and broken sewer pipes
but over everything hung [the] stench of decomposing bodies.
Australian War Memorial
German soldiers zero in with their light machine guns on
Allied artillery on the island of Crete.
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The resistance at Heraklion had achieved all its objectives,
preventing the Germans from using either the airfield or the
harbor. The men had fought magnificently, yet tragically a fur-
ther 800 would subsequently be killed, wounded, or captured
as a result of enemy air attacks en route to Egypt.
While thousands of troops had been successfully evacu-
ated from Heraklion, escape for the troops still engaged in
heavy fighting on the main battlefields around Suda Bay,
Canea, and Maleme would prove far more difficult. Frey-
berg wanted to conduct an orderly retreat, but with Allied
ships unable to approach Suda Bay these troops faced a 30-
mile trek along a narrow road winding across the moun-
tainous backbone of Crete to the southern shore town of
Sfakia. With a rear guard comprising Australians, New
Zealanders, Royal Marines, and commandos forming a pro-
tective screen, the weary men trudged south through vile
weather to the beaches from which they might be collected
by waiting ships.
Initially, Ringel had disregarded reports that the Allies were
heading south; he could not believe that his enemy would con-
template a mass escape from a fishing village. Ringels mis-
understanding of the situation eased Freybergs problems, as
did the Luftwaffes beginning its delayed move to Poland for
Barbarossa. The troops on the road south would therefore be
spared the kind of crushing attacks they had experienced ear-
lier, as would the Royal Navy coming to evacuate them. It
also meant that air reconnaissance failed to detect the Allied
movement southward, affording Freybergs men a valuable
head start.
The main body initially made solid progress, but likened
themselves to souls marching into Purgatory. The arduous
journey soon began to take its toll as many collapsed, com-
pletely exhausted or totally lame. The Germans soon realized
what was happening and swung south in a hot pursuit punc-
tuated by several violent clashes with the defiant rear guard.
Braving grave hazards to reach Sfakia, rescue ships would
eventually evacuate over 15,000 men from Crete, but for
many in the rear guard there was no escape. The sands had
run out of the hourglass before they could get to the beach.
Sadly, their reward for such a magnificent effort would be
years in captivity.
After 12 days of what had been regarded as the fiercest fight-
ing of the war, the Allies had once again been defeated, but it
had been a pyrrhic victory for the Germans. Of the 22,000
German soldiers involved, 6,698 were casualties including
3,352 killed. Allied losses were equally grim, with the Army
and Navy suffering a combined loss of over 3,500 dead and
nearly 2,000 wounded, while 11,835 became prisoners.
Students career and reputation had been dealt a terrible blow.
He was not decorated for his role in the battle and had no per-
sonal contact with either Hitler or Luftwaffe chief Hermann
Gring for nearly a year. His forces would never undertake
another major airborne operation, and for the rest of the war
they would fight with distinction alongside the infantry.
Within a short time, Cretes strategic importance had dimin-
ished; the airfields that had cost the lives of so many were rarely
used for offensive action. The Nazi policy of terror instigated
by Ringel continued unabated during the occupation, with over
3,500 Cretans shot in reprisal for partisan operations.
In 1944, when German forces abandoned Greece, the garrison
on Crete was left besieged by local forces until it was, ironically,
rescued by the British after the surrender in May 1945.

A
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German shells burst among the waterfront installations
during the evacuation of Australian troops. This photo was
taken aboard HMAS Perth.
AB-Crete_Layout 1 10/14/14 11:37 AM Page 49
WORLD WAR II AIRBORNE BATTLES 50
EVERY AMERICAN SOLDIER WHO JUMPED INTO
North Africa, Europe, the Philippines, and other combat
zones around the globe during World War II had to first
learn his trade at Fort Benning, Georgia. For one month,
soldiers went through tough physical training as well as
classes and demonstrations on how to hurl themselves
out of perfectly good airplanes.
They started off learning to fold and pack parachutes.
Then, it was a week of jumping into piles of sawdust from
mock doors four feet off the ground. Halfway through the
training, the troopers jumped out of 30- and 250-foot
towers. Attached to parachute harnesses to cushion their
falls, they learned the stomach churning experi-
ence of falling helplessly until the wires
slowed their speed. They also learned
how to collapse their chutes while
fighting against a wind machine.
To earn their jump wings, the para-
troopers had to make five jumps out
of a Douglas C-47 cargo plane. They climbed aboard, 25
men to a plane, and waited anxiously to get airborne.
The jumpmaster ordered, Stand up and hook up! For
each mans parachute there was a line attached to a
metal clip that the men would attach to another line
strung up within the length of the cabin. Once the men
jumped out of the plane, their line would pull against
the cabins line and release their parachutes.
From that point on, it was all physics. The unfurling
parachute would catch the planes prop blast and inflate.
The fall would be jolted to what felt like a standstill, and
the men would begin swaying to and fro until they
touched down.
Those lucky few who completed the training were
presented with a certificate recognizing their
status as qualified parachutists and the cov-
eted Airborne wings to wear on their chest.
Now, they were ready to jump behind enemy
lines anywhere around the world.
A I R B O R N E !
AB-Training_Layout 1 10/14/14 11:42 AM Page 50
WORLD WAR II AIRBORNE BATTLES 51
BY KEVIN M. HYMEL
The U.S. Armys
elite infantry had to
earn their wings
before they could
leap into battle.
ABOVE: New recruits
wearing soft headgear
board a C-47 for their first
practice jump.
LEFT: Boom! Airborne
artillerymen fire off a
round from their 105mm
howitzer during a battle
simulation.
ABOVE: A paratrooper prepares to jump
from a mock tower while instructors look
on. Students were taught to put their
hands outside the plane door before
jumping. If they kept their hands inside,
the instructors would push them aside
and let the other students jump.
LEFT: An instructor demonstrates how to
collapse a parachute to a class of Air-
borne hopefuls at Fort Benning.
AB-Training_Layout 1 10/14/14 11:43 AM Page 51
WORLD WAR II AIRBORNE BATTLES 52
In Normandy on the night of June 5/6, 1944,
the U.S. 82nd Airborne Division overcame countless SNAFUs
to take a key village.
TARGET:
SAINTE-MERE-EGLISE
BY FLINT WHITLOCK
www.jamesdietz.com
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WORLD WAR II AIRBORNE BATTLES 53
Seize the Day by Jim Dietz shows men from the 505th
Regiment, 82nd Airborne in Sainte-Mre-glise, the
parachute of trooper John Steele still hanging from the
church tower in the background.
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WORLD WAR II AIRBORNE BATTLES 54
T
HE NIGHT OF JUNE 5/6, 1944, was pretty
much like every other night since the Germans had
occupied Normandy and the Cotentin Peninsula in
the summer of 1940: dark, quiet, chilly, and mostly boring.
While there had been innumerable overflights by Allied air-
craft (probably taking reconnaissance photos) and the occa-
sional aerial bombing, Normandy was still considered good
duty for anyone who had had his fill of war on the Eastern
Front and was recovering from wounds psychological and
physical.
Here in Normandy there was plenty to eat and drink
(especially Calvados, the strong brandy made from apples),
scenery that hadnt been mostly destroyed by heavy fight-
ing, and French people who seemed to, if not exactly
warmly welcome, at least be resigned to and tolerate the
presence of foreign soldiers on their soil.
When not on actual watch, looking for the first signs of
an invasion that might or might not come to this location,
the soldiers in Normandy had busied themselves by fol-
lowing Field Marshal Erwin Rommels orders to so strongly
fortify the coast that the Allied invaders would not stand a
chance, that they would, as Rommel had put it, be driven
back into the sea.
This night, with the peninsula cloaked in darkness, and
the farmers and villagers fast asleep beneath the cloud-
obscured moon and the German soldierswho were on
watch in their observation bunkers straining with the help
of strong French coffee to keep their eyelids open and scan
the black horizon or sound asleep in their barracks or mak-
ing love to their French mistresseshad no idea what was
about to hit them.
A glance at a map of northwest France reveals a basic
truth: there are no large cities in the arc between Cherbourg
and Caen; only Carentan, Montebourg, Bayeux, and Val-
ognes can be regarded as sizable. A spiderweb of roads con-
nect one town and village and hamlet to another. One town
at the center of a web of roads is Sainte-Mre-glise. But
the roadsmostly narrow farm roads suitable for bringing
produce to market or for driving herds of slow-moving
cows from the barn to the fields and back againalso made
it hard to move large formations of military vehicles and
large numbers of troops.
For centuriesever since the Vikings or Normans first
set foot here, giving the region its name of Normandiethe
area has been pastoral and bucolic, with time measured by
seasons rather than by the clock. The sturdy homes, shops,
and churches are built solidly of stonea whitish-grayish-
yellowish limestone native to the region, capable of fend-
ing off the strong winds that blow in fiercely from the North
Atlantic and sometimes rattle the shutters and window-
panes. Although treated to the same warm currents that
can give southern England a semi-tropical feel (there are,
after all, palm trees growing along the English Channel), the
winds can sometimes be bitter, and the cold can penetrate
BELOW: During the German occupa-
tion of Sainte-Mere-Eglise, two Ger-
man soldiers on a motorcycle pose for
the cameraman in front of city hall.
RIGHT: Men of the 82nd adjust gear
before boarding their transports on
June 5, 1944.
All Photos: National Archives, except as noted.
AB-Ste Mere Eglise_Layout 1 10/14/14 11:44 AM Page 54
WORLD WAR II AIRBORNE BATTLES 55
through multiple layers of fabric like a gunshot.
The people, too, like their buildings, are a sturdy lot.
Hard-working like any agrarian populace, the dour Nor-
mans typically rise at (or before dawn), put in a full days
worth of physical work, eat a hearty dinner topped off with
a glass or two of Calvados, and retire at sunset.
The stolid citizens of Normandy were not happy, of
course, when, in June 1940, the gray-uniformed Germans
marched in and took over, but they accepted their fate the
way they accepted most everything that came their way.
For the most part, they did not go out of their way to wel-
come the occupiers, nor did they collaborate with them.
They merely tolerated them and went about their usual
business of growing the apples that went into the making
of Calvados, pulling fish from the Channel, and pasturing
their cows, extracting the milk to make into cheese.
It was Sainte-Mre-glise, roughly halfway between
Montebourg and Carantan, that had caught the eye of
American military planners as early as 1942. Control
Sainte-Mre-glise and you control the Cotentin, the
planners saw. No fewer than five roads pass through it,
plus it was only seven miles from the westernmost
amphibious landing beach known as Utah. Drop an air-
borne division or two, along with their glider-infantry
regiments, into the area and you stood a good chance of
preventing German reinforcements from Cherbourg in
the north and Brittany in the west from slamming into the
troops coming ashore at Utah. The western end of the
60-mile-long beachhead that ran from La Madeleine to
Ouistreham would thus be secure and the seaborne
troops could move inland after overcoming local German
opposition. Yes, Sainte-Mre-glise would definitely have
to be taken in the early hours of D-Day.
In the days before D-Day, Alexandre Renaud was a man
with a dilemma. Besides his full-time job as the local phar-
macist, the World War I veteran was also the mayor of
Sainte-Mre-glise and, as such, he was expected by the
occupiers to cooperate with themand by his constituents
to resist. Whenever the Germans gave him an order to do
something, such as provide tools, transportation, and labor-
ers to assist in the building of some defensive work, and he
could find no one willing to perform the work, punishments
would follow.
In May 1944 the Germans were demanding all sorts of
things. It was obvious that the local Germans were expect-
ing an invasion and that Sainte-Mre-glise would likely
be caught up in it. The roads through the town were filled
with trucks towing artillery pieces and carrying troops in all
directions. In the fields cordoned off by hedgerows, holes
were being dug and large poles were being plantedRom-
melspargel (Rommels Asparagus) some wag called them
designed to discourage glider landings. Trenches were being
dug, and anti-aircraft guns emplaced.
When Renaud spoke clandestinely with townspeople,
everyone seemed to have an opinion: the Alliesif and
when they attackwill cross at the Pas de Calais, Cher-
bourg, Le Havre, Dieppe, Boulogne, Dunquerque. Brittany
will be the target. No, it will be the Cotentin. Ridiculous
the Allies will feint at Normandy but land on the Belgian
coast. Few thought that Sainte-Mre-glise was in any real
With faces blackened and their divisional insignia obscured
by a censors brush, these smiling, heavily laden paratroop-
ers prepare to board their transport plane, June 5, 1944.
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WORLD WAR II AIRBORNE BATTLES 56
danger unless Allied bombers decided to target the anti-air-
craft batteries that were being installed around the town.
After all, air attacks had struck at the bridges at Beuzeville la
Bastille and Les Moitiers en Bauptois. Someone else pointed
out that leaflets were recently dropped over the area hinting
at paratroop landings and showing illustrations of Allied
tanks and jeeps and what British and American paratrooper
uniforms looked like, and giving instructions on what to do
in the event of an invasion. The Allies are probably dropping
them all over France, someone else pointed out, just to keep
the Germans guessing.
Renaud noted that the digging of trenches around Sainte-
Mre-glise was almost completed, but that the Germans
didnt seem to be in any rush. With the means of punish-
ment at its disposal, he said, [the German command]
could have made the work go five times as fast, and could
have demanded that it should be done by June 1st.
Throughout May, the presence of German troops
increased. Renaud said, We have seen encamped in our
fields infantry, artillerymen, Aryan Germans, and also Geor-
gians and Mongols with Asiatic features ... commanded by
German officers. In the latter part of May, the artillery units
quarter in Gambosville [less than a mile south of Sainte-Mre
-Eglise]. The officers come to see me at the Town Hall. They
need spades, picks and saws immediately. The town is to be
secured, and the work has to be finished in five days.
I reply that there are no more spades or saws in the neigh-
borhood and that they will have to canvass all the houses in
order to find a few tools. They phone the Feldcommandan-
tur at Saint L to get instructions about what punitive mea-
sures to take. He gives an evasive answer. Discouraged, they
finally go to a hardware store where, after threatening to loot
everything, they manage to obtain a few tools. Guns are then
installed at all the town approaches; on the Carentan road, on
the La Fire road, before Capdelaine, on the Ravenoville road.
Then, suddenly, three days after their installation, the
guns are taken away, and I am asked to provide transport
immediately to haul ammunition and food to Saint Cme-
du-Mont . . . . Sainte-Mre-glise is once again alone with
its anti-aircraft unit.
The invasionOperation Overlord, with the airborne
phase known as Neptunehad been delayed for a day
because of a fierce storm that had swept over England, the
English Channel, and the Normandy coast, but now it was
back on. At RAF airfields with such quaint, typically Eng-
lish names as Upottery, Cottesmore, Down Ampney, Tar-
rant Rushton, Greenham Common, Barkston Heath, Brize
Norton, and others, superbly trained British, American, and
Canadian paratroopers and glider infantrymen waited for
the orders to go.
The U.S. 82nd and 101st and British 6th Airborne Divi-
sions had been training for months in anticipation of just
this moment. Despite some SHAEF staff officers worries
that the American airborne and glider operations would
meet with disaster, everything that could have been done to
ensure success was done. The maps, aerial photos, and sand
table models of each units objectives
had been carefully studied and memo-
rized. Each plane had its precise sched-
ule as to when it was to take off. All
the necessary equipment had been
gathered and issued. Knives and bayo-
nets had been sharpened, faces black-
ened with burnt cork, last letters home
written, last prayers said.
The advance U.S. assault wave that
would strike Normandy before the
seaborne troops arrived numbered
about 17,000 men being carried by 822
C-47 transport planes. They were the
dice that American Generals Eisenhower
and Bradley were willing to throw.
Although the overwhelming majority
of the sky soldiers had never been in
combat before, and had only an inkling
of what to expect once they reached
France and the bullets began to fly, they
were supremely confident of victory.
Sergeant Spencer Wurst, an 82nd Air-
borne trooper, spoke for them all when
In a somewhat fanciful representation of D-Day, a combat artist shows Waco CG-
4A gliders mixed in with the aerial invasion force.
AB-Ste Mere Eglise_Layout 1 10/14/14 11:45 AM Page 56
WORLD WAR II AIRBORNE BATTLES 57
he said, It may seem nave now, but at no time did we ever
dream that we would not be successful in Normandy. We
never even mentioned the possibility of defeat. The com-
manders may have agreed among themselves that if the
beaches were not held successfully, everyone who could get
out would head for Sainte-Mre-glise. But down at my
level, absolutely nothing was said about withdrawal or
evacuation.
That evening [June 5] we got the word that we were
going, said Henry Duke Boswell, G Company, 505th
Parachute Infantry Regiment, 82nd Airborne. They took us
out to the planes in city buses; they didnt have enough trucks.
It was hard to get in the buses with all our equipment. We
got to the plane and Lt. Col. [Ed] Krause, 3rd Battalion C.O.,
came around and talked to us, and every other word he had
to say was a curse word; I guess he was a good leader, but I
sure didnt like that part of his personality.
Boswell also remembered that Krause held up an Ameri-
can flag and said, This was the flag we raised over Naples
when we took Naples, and when you meet me in Sainte-
Mre-glise, were going to raise this flag there. We loaded
up [on the plane] and we were nervous. Some of the guys
tried to joke, but most of the guys were quiet. Some of them
had been in combat before and some hadnt; we had had a
lot of replacements. Everybody was just kind of thinking
their own thoughts.
On the flightlines of a dozen British airfields, the C-47s
began to roll, then took off into the dark sky and headed
for France. The invasion was on, and no force of man or
nature could turn it back now.
Because of the German-imposed curfew, the town of
Sainte-Mre-glise, like all the towns in Normandy, was
dark and shuttered tightly on the night of June 5, 1944.
Mayor Renaud was awakened shortly after midnight by the
distant thumping of anti-aircraft batteries. As a precaution,
he herded his wife and children into the familys makeshift
bomb shelter when there came a pounding on his door.
Renaud opened it to find the towns fire chief standing there
in his shiny brass helmet, anxiously informing him that the
two-story home belonging to the Hairon family, just off the
southeast corner of the town square, was ablaze. The chief
asked the mayor if he could get the commandant to lift the
curfew. Renaud said he would try.
He hurried to German headquarters at the town hall,
explained the situation to the duty sergeant who, without
waking the commandant, gave Renaud permission to call
out the volunteer fire department and citizen bucket brigade
to help extinguish the fire. German guards were also called
out to stand watch over the volunteers and make sure no
acts of sabotage were committed.
Renaud then dashed to the parish house and asked Father
Louis Roulland to have the sexton toll the bell as a means
Their faces displaying a variety of emotions, these para-
troopers from the 101st Airborne prepare to take off in a C-
47 Skytrain on D-Day.
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WORLD WAR II AIRBORNE BATTLES 58
of alerting the citizenry. Soon more than a hundred men
and women, some still in their nightclothes, had assembled
outside the church to form a line of buckets from the pump
at one end of the Place de lglise to the firemen at the scene
of the fire some 50 yards away. Some 30 well-armed Ger-
man soldiers stood watch over them.
While the British 6th Airborne Division was crossing the
Channel toward its objectives at two bridges over the Orne
River and Canal and the casemated guns at Merville on the
far eastern flank of the 60-mile-long invasion area, the para-
troopers of Matthew Ridgways 82nd Airborne Division
Mission Bostonwere following the C-47s that were
carrying Maxwell Taylors 101st Airborne troopers.
The invasion route took the airborne armada to the west-
ern side of England, then south toward the Channel Islands,
finally east across the Cotentin Peninsula. The C-47s were
in formation and traveling at 130 mph; as they approached
the drop zones, the pilots would reduce speed to about 110
mph or less.
In a C-47 that was carrying 18 paratroopers from Com-
pany H, 508th PIR, 82nd Airborne, Lieutenant Victor
Grabbe was leading his men in song, even though the tune
and lyrics were swallowed up by the sound of the engines.
One of Grabbes men, Lew Milkovics, recalled, All was
quiet for a time while we were flying over the Channel.
Most of us, like myself, I am sure had our thoughts on our
loved ones and, no doubt, were feeling sorry for ourselves
as we knew what would soon be happening. We wondered
how many of us would survive. Lieutenant Grabbe sensed
the tension and he loudly shouted, Hey, fellows, how about
some songs?
That broke the silence. Someone started with Let Me Call
You Sweetheart, then Dont Sit Under the Apple Tree with
Anyone Else But Me, then Deep in the Heart of Texas. And
so it went as we sang many more oldies for the next 10 or so
minutes. It was great, as it relaxed us, and took our minds
off ourselves and the coming danger.
Milkovics said, I sat there thinking, Boy, that Grabbe
he is one smart cookie. Under our kind of pressure, I doubt
if any other stick leader thought to do this. I will never for-
get the intelligence and smart thinking of our lieutenant.
Unfortunately, Grabbe would die of wounds suffered in the
upcoming battle.
Sergeant Otis Sampson, E/505/82nd, remembered his
flight being quiet, no singing, each man with his own
thoughts as the plane winged its way to our rendezvous;
each second drew us closer. As we crossed the coast of Nor-
mandy we stood up and hooked up. I saw no guns firing
below. Everything was going good, too good for my liking;
it seemed we were going into a trap. Being near the open
door, I could see the moon-drenched countryside below,
with no sign of life. I stood with perfect control of my mind
and body as the plane went into a
dive.... We leveled off and then went
into another dive. By this time we were
well inland; the plane slowed down. It
looked so peaceful below. I never
expected it to be that way.
In the lead ship was the 82nds assis-
tant division commander Jumpin Jim
Gavin; he would be jumping with the
508th. He wrote in his memoirs, We
began to receive small-arms fire from
the ground. It seemed harmless
enough; it sounded like pebbles land-
ing on a tin roof. I had experienced it
before [over Sicily] and knew what it
was.
Shortly after the planes entered the
airspace over the Cotentin, they flew
into a bank of thick clouds. Sergeant
Elmer Wisherd, a flight engineer in a
C-47 carrying elements of the 101st,
recalled the heart-stopping moments
when his formation hit the clouds: I
cant figure out how we went through
those clouds without collisions or
damage to the planes. Then we came
Aerial photo of Sainte-Mre-glise after its capture. Note American military
vehicles lining the main street.
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WORLD WAR II AIRBORNE BATTLES 59
out and started getting AA fire. I could
see the other planes around us taking
ground fire. We went back up through
the clouds; it was quite a layer of
clouds. And we came out in formation!
How we did it I have no idea. Our
pilots were the best, all instrument-
rated pilots. There was no talking
between planes whatsoevercomplete
radio silence. But Ill tell you, it was
pucker when youre going through
clouds and you cant see the airplanes
around you and all at once you pop
out on top and here you are, still in for-
mation. Then we dropped to 800 feet.
It was clear over the drop zone.
At the controls of a C-47 loaded
with 82nd Airborne troopers was 1st
Lt. Bill Thompson. Despite the months
of training, he recalled that many of
the other pilots panicked when they
flew into the clouds and when the
ground fire began to reach up for
them. Many broke formation, swerving wildly to avoid the
ordnance, suddenly accelerating, or violently going into
steep dives or sudden climbs.
I could see the tracers in front of us, Thompson said.
They were leading us too much since they probably were
not used to firing at slow-flying aircraft. We did not get hit
so finally I let down some more and broke out of the clouds.
I could see the water on the other side.... My right wingman
saw the water and I guess he got excited and started drop-
ping [his paratroopers] before I signaled him to.
Lieutenant Edward V. Ott, Headquarters, 2/508/82nd,
said that he felt the drop was doomed to be a disaster
when the C-47 pilot began to take evasive action to avoid
the heavy flak. He gave us the green light when the plane
was in a climbing attitude as the engines roared at top
speed. When I jumped, the prop blast was so severe that it
tore off my pack and equipment so that when I hit the
ground, the only weapon I had was my jump knife. I did-
nt see any other member of my stick.
Sergeant Ed Barnes, a communications section leader in
3/507/82nd, had dozed off during the hour-long flight but
was awakened as the aircraft closed in on France. We were
given the signal to stand up and hook up and check one
anothers equipment. We were all standing there poised and
looking at the red light, waiting for it to turn green. As we
peered out the door, we could see the flak and tracer bul-
lets coming up out of the darkness. Then the light turned
green and we started to pile out the door.
As the jump master in his plane, Lieutenant J. Phil
Richardson, H/508/82nd, recalled, When we arrived at
the drop zone in France, I looked down at the DZ and saw
it was covered with tracers. I felt that we should not land
in that area and I told the pilot not to slow down but to
keep going, which he did. Soon, the English Channel
became visible on the other side of the peninsula. We had
an order that no airborne troops could return to England
[by plane] once they had left. The area that I looked at then
was clear of tracers and we did the jump there; this was
near the small city of Bayeux. But Bayeux was over 30
miles from H Companys drop zone.
James Eads, another 82nd paratrooper, remembered
vividly that his C-47 was receiving heavy AA fire on the
run in. We had been hit at the worst time by flak and
machine-gun fire. We were off target. The green light came
on and the troopers started out of the plane. The fifteenth
man had equipment trouble. After some delay trying to fix
his rig, Ibeing the 16th and last man to go outbailed out
on a dead run.
Glen C. Drake, H/508/82nd, said, I knew there was no
one more anxious to get out of the plane than I. After hook-
ing my static line to the steel cable that ran the length of the
plane, I had to hang on to the cable and the side of the plane
to stay on my feet. I was next to last of our stick, and I was
wondering if I would get out.
At last the green light came on and the line of heavily
laden men began moving toward the door and disappear-
ing into the night. It seemed to take forever, Drake said.
All the way back to the door we had to struggle to stay on
All that remained of a C-47 that crashed and burned in Normandy.
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WORLD WAR II AIRBORNE BATTLES 60
our feet and I was thinking, God
damn it, lets go, lets go, lets get the
hell out of this damn plane before it
goes down!
When I finally went out the door, I
knew right away I had jumped from
the frying pan into the fire! It was a
night jump, but the hundreds of white
phosphorous flares floating on small
parachutes turned the night into day.
What a field day those Krauts had
like shooting fish in a barrel!
Sergeant Spencer Wurst, F/505/82nd,
wasnt happy about the haphazard
nature of the drop. The discipline
acquired over many months of training
with the C-47 crews seemed to have
evaporated in the heat of the moment,
as pilot after pilot broke formation in
an effort to avoid the ground fire.
Hopelessly lost, and under orders not
to bring any paratroopers back to Eng-
land with them, some pilots simply
flipped the switch that turned on the
green jump lightwhether or not
they were over their designated DZ.
Wurst said, As it turned out, 2nd
Battalion, 505, had the best drop of all
six regiments in the American airborne
effort. We knew exactly where we
were, we knew what we had to do, and
we proceeded to do just that.
In his C-47, Dwayne Burns,
F/508/82nd, was becoming more and
more anxious as the moment to jump
grew nearer. The red warning light by
the door suddenly came on, meaning
that they were just minutes away from
being given the go signal. The jump
master in Burnss plane was hanging
out the door, trying to see how far we
were from land, when our airship
entered a cloud cover and the pilots
started to spread out. Most pulled up and tried going over
the top. It was going to be bad for jumpers because we
would be widely dispersed at landing, but the aircrew
needed to avoid possible collisions. No one wanted to be
taken out of action that way.
It seems we stood in position for a long time before our
flight began picking up flak; it was light at the beginning.
At least I knew we were finally over the coastline. Then our
waiting for the green light really started. The flak grew
quickly and became really heavy while
we tried to wait it out. The ship was
getting pinged from all sides. The noise
became awesome, an indeterminate
mix of twin engines, flak hitting the
wings and fuselage, and men yelling,
Lets go! But still the green light did
not come on.
To Burns the aircraft was bouncing
like some wild bronco. A ticking sound
danced across the bottom side of the
plane as machine-gun rounds found
us. It became hard to stand up while
the pilots tried to maneuver and troop-
ers lost their footing and fell down.
They fought to get back up. Other
jumpers had to help them but they
could hardly remain standing them-
selves. Some were getting sick, I know,
because the stench of vomit drifted my
way from somewhere else. It was one
hell of a ride. With all the training wed
had, there was still nothing that could
have prepared a soldier for this event.
I wondered if anyone of us would get
out of the plane alive.
The fire at the Hairon house was not
anywhere close to being contained.
And then they heard it, the citizens and
the soldiers. Above the church bells
and the noise of the fire and the peo-
ple fighting it came the sound of air-
craft, at first far off to the west but
quickly growing closer and louder
until it was a wall of thunder beating
the air directly overhead. People
looked up and out of the blackness
there came human forms floating
down beneath mottled green para-
chutes! They were American para-
troopers, and they had come to liber-
ate a continent.
All across Normandy in the early
hours of D-Day, chaos reigned. Small groups and indi-
vidual parachutists jumped into German positions and
fought pitched battles with the enemy in the dark. Some
troops landed in trees and dangled helplessly until they
could either cut themselves down with their combat knives
or were shot to death by the Germans. Others drowned
in flooded fields, pulled underwater by their heavy equip-
ment. Flaming transport planes crashed or exploded in
midair. Farmhouses became fortresses, bridges barriers,
Courtesy Vincent Wolf Courtesy Otis Sampson
Author Photo
TOP: A dummy representing Private
John Steele, F Company, 505th PIR,
82nd Airborne Division, still hangs
from the steeple of the church in
Sainte-Mre-glise. In actuality, Steele
hung from the opposite side of the
steeple. LOWER LEFT: Lieutenant Vin-
cent E. Wolf, 82nd Airborne Division,
photographed in an English studio
prior to D-Day. LOWER RIGHT:
Sergeant Otis Sampson, E Company,
505th PIR, 82nd Airborne Division,
was deadly with a mortar.
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WORLD WAR II AIRBORNE BATTLES 61
and roadways killing zones.
The enemy had no idea of the scope of the airborne
assault and fought back furiously, aware that theirand
Germanysvery existence depended on defeating the
Allied paratroopers who seemed to be behind every tree,
building, and hedgerow. In some cases, Soviet POWs, who
had been impressed into German service, fought as fiercely
as their German overseers but, given the opportunity, were
more likely than not to surrender at the first opportunity.
German commanders sent frantic messages back to higher
headquarters where the captains and majors and colonels
had no better idea interpreting what was transpiring than
did the average Lndser in his foxhole.
Almost nowhere was the scene more chaotic than at
Sainte-Mre-glise.
Spencer Wurst, F/505/82nd, was one of those dropping
over the town. The first thing I remember seeing as I
descended was a large spire in a bunch of buildings that
later proved to be Sainte-Mre-glise, he said. To my
surprise, there were fires in the town. Almost immediately
afterthese things happen in microsecondsI started
receiving very heavy light flak and machine-gun fire from
the ground. This was absolutely terrifying. The tracers
looked as if they were going to take the top of my head off,
but they were actually coming up at an angle. Many rounds
tore through my chute only a few feet above my body.
The third thing I remember is the explosions on the
ground, making me fear that the Germans had already
zeroed in on our DZ. I later found out that these explo-
sions resulted from our mine bundles. Either the speed of
the plane pulled the chutes off, or the bundles dropped
faster than expected, and the impact bent the safety clips on
the fuses, causing them to explode.
Another paratrooper, Pfc. Ernest Blanchard, was floating
down over the town when a buddy next to him, loaded
with a mine or demolitions, exploded and completely dis-
integrated right in front of him.
Duke Boswell, G/505/82nd, recalled, When we jumped,
we floated over the edge of the town. There was fire com-
ing up. We could see the tracers from the machine guns.
And you know for every tracer round you can see theres
about ten bullets in between. When they went by you,
theyd pop and made you kind of jump. Its funnyyou
jump with 10,000 troops and you hit the ground and youre
all alone. Thats a hell of a thing. For a moment or so, youre
right there by yourself, period. We actually hit our desig-
nated target, right outside Sainte-Mre-glise. I think that
all of the other units, including the pathfinders that went in
ahead of us, missed their targets. I landed within a half a
mile of Sainte-Mre-glise, or closer.
Lieutenant Vincent Wolf, a platoon commander in
F/505/82nd, also had indelible memories of the drop. The
2nd Battalion did not land in any of the flooded areas;
that was mostly the 1st and 3rd Battalions, so we were
ABOVE: Troopers of the 505th PIR run for the door of the
church in Sainte-Mre-glise as German artillery lands in
the town on June 6, 1944.
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WORLD WAR II AIRBORNE BATTLES 62
lucky. After we landed, we took fire immediately from
the Germans; thank God I had my Thompson sub-
machine gun.
Misdropped men from the 101st were also drifting over
Sainte-Mre-glise. The jump master of his stick, Lieu-
tenant Charles Santarsiero, 506/101, remembered looking
out his C-47s doorway as the plane neared the town. I
could see fires burning and Krauts running about. There
seemed to be total confusion on the ground. All hell had
broken loose. Flak and small-arms fire was coming up and
those poor guys were caught right in the middle of it.
Earl McClung, E/506/101st, was jumping with a leg bag
full of machine-gun and mortar rounds that weighed more
than 60 pounds. I couldnt lift it, he said. When he
jumped, he noticed that he was coming down above a town
where a major fire was burning; it was Sainte-Mre-glise,
and he was many miles from his intended DZ.
I landed on the roof of a small Catholic shrine about a
block and a half west of the church. I hit that roof and
bounced off. It was pretty hectic for the first few seconds.
Two Germans were running toward me. I guess they saw
me coming down, but they were shooting at my chute that
was on this little roof. I jumped with my M-1 assembled and
in my hands. It was no contestthey were only a few feet
away and I took care of those guys. At least I think I did; I
didnt wait around long enough to make sure. I went on by
them and headed out of town. I ran through the graveyard
and ... joined up with the 505th of the 82nd for about the
next nine days. I finally rejoined my unit at Carentan.
Most of the parachutists landed safely in the dark fields
around Sainte-Mre-glise, but some of themprimarily
from F Company, 505thwere coming down in the very
center of the town, where the light from the burning Hairon
house made it easy for the Germans to spot them. Break-
ing out of their momentary bewilderment, the German sol-
diers suddenly unshouldered their Mausers and Schmeisers
and began firing up at the descending forms. The para-
troops hit the ground or landed in trees or snagged their
chutes on utility poles, killed in their harnesses even before
they could reach their Thompson sub-machine guns or
remove their disassembled rifles from their carrying cases
and put them together. It was an unmitigated slaughter.
The civilian bucket brigade scattered as the lead flew
indiscriminately and a full-scale battle for the town square
erupted. But neither the French nor the Germans immedi-
ately realized that the parachutists were Americans; most
everyone thought they were British. As David Howarth
noted in Dawn of D-Day, The people of Sainte-Mre-
glise, through all their years of listening to the BBC, had
never dreamed that their liberators, in the end, would be
Americans. It was only after the American flags sewn onto
the sleeves of the dead paratroopers jump jackets were seen
that the truth became known.
One paratrooper was caught in a tree
near the church and was machine-
gunned to death as he struggled to
release his harness. Mayor Renaud
recalled, About half a dozen Germans
emptied the magazines of their sub-
machine guns into him and the boy
hung there with his eyes open, as
though looking down at his own bul-
let holes.
One paratrooper pulled his risers
hard to slip away from the gunfire in
the square but found himself drifting
straight for the burning house. Having
jumped from the plane so close to the
ground, he had no time to maneuver
and dropped into the inferno that was
sucking in the air all around it; all the
munitions he was carrying detonated.
Another of the paratroopers, Private
John Steele, a member of Wolfs pla-
toon, was shot in the foot as he
descended, then got his canopy
snagged on a corner of the church
steeple and dangled there helplessly.
A captain in an 82nd Airborne Division medical unit (right) gives a cigarette to a
wounded German soldier.
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WORLD WAR II AIRBORNE BATTLES 63
With all the wild gunfire going on below him, Steele decided
that the best thing he could do was play dead.
A German soldier, Corporal Rudolph May, was up in the
churchs bell tower when the airborne attack came. Notic-
ing Steele dangling outside one of the openings in the
steeple, May said, There was a man hanging there, sus-
pended. He hung there like he was deadbut after a while
he started moving. Then we also heard him sighing. Mays
comrade raised his weapon as if to shoot him, but May
stopped him. He decided to try and cut the suspension lines
of Steeles chute. After he had cut several, he threw Steele a
rope by which he could lower himself to the ground and be
taken prisoner.
The exact number of paratroopers who came down in
Sainte-Mre-glise is unknown, but Cornelius Ryan esti-
mated it to be no more than 30, with about 20 of that num-
ber landing in and around the church square.
Lieutenant Colonel Ed Krause patted the pocket of his
jump jacket to make sure it was still there. It was the flag
he had raised over the Naples city hall eight months earlier
and he had sworn to repeat that act here in Sainte-Mre-
gliseif he lived to do so.
On the outskirts of town, Krause, from Green Bay, Wis-
consin, and commander of 3rd Battalion, 505/82nd, sur-
veyed the ville which, minutes before, had been in an
uproar, what with a fire blazing, parachutists dropping here,
there, and everywhere, and bullets flying.
One of those who landed with Krauses battalion was Pfc.
Leslie P. Cruise, Jr., H/505/82nd. He said, We could hear
sounds of machine-gun and rifle fire all around, but noth-
ing was from our immediate location. We had secured our
area and were waiting orders to move, which came after the
confrontation with a civilian who had been convinced to
join our group by a group of troopers. With the assistance
of our newfound friend we moved out toward Sainte-Mre-
glise with G Company in the lead, followed by H and I
Company groups. Some groups were missing by the plane-
load, and we had no idea where they were, but we could
not wait for them because time was very important to the
success of the mission.
Krause had nearly 200 men with him, hiding in the
weeds and in the hedgerows and behind buildings, prepar-
ing to enter the town. Without first making a house-to-
house search, Krause and his men would slip into the town
with their rifles empty, using only knives and grenades if
they should encounter the enemy. That way, if any flashes
were spotted in the dark, they would know it was the
enemy doing the firing and be able to pinpoint the location.
Krause knew that it was a dangerous gamble, but one he
had to take.
Spencer Wurst made a hard landing in a field outside of
Sainte-Mre-glise, hurting his back and hips. If it had
A unit of 82nd Airborne Division troopers advances past
a knocked-out M4 Sherman tank along a hedgerow in
Normandy.
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WORLD WAR II AIRBORNE BATTLES 64
been a training jump, he said, I would have sought med-
ical attention; I didnt have that luxury. Before I even
attempted to get out of my chute, I crawled over to the near-
est hedgerow to get some cover. I pulled my pistol out, put
it beside me, and went to work on the buckles of my chute.
As he lay there, Wurst saw C-47s above him seemingly
coming from all different directions and taking AA fire. He
then saw a green star cluster. This was the sign that some-
one in the battalion command group had reached the bat-
talion assembly location. With pain in his back and hips,
he hobbled off in that direction and met up with his platoon
leader, Lieutenant Joe Holcomb.
Despite the darkness at the battalion assembly point, Hol-
comb could see a standing paratrooper. Not wanting to give
the position away, Holcomb told Wurst to tell that soldier
to get down and take cover. Wurst said he hollered at the
individual. I dont know about the politeness of the lan-
guage I used. As the individual turned toward me, I saw
two big stars. It was General Ridgway. That was the first
and last time I tried to chew out the general.
As a platoon commander in the 82nd, Lieutenant Vin-
cent Wolf was supposed to be in charge of 40 men, but his
platoon was scattered from hell to breakfast. Strangely, he
didnt mind. If you had two or three guys together, he
explained, it was a lot easier because you knew what you
were going to do, instead of worrying about 30 or 40 other
guys and what the hell theyre doing; you could get your-
self lost in the dark a lot easier with 30 or 40 other guys.
And if you have a small group and you see the enemy, its
easier to knock them off with a knife.
Wolf said that, after landing, We cleaned out buildings,
ran into groups of Germans who were well-trainedGer-
man paratroopers [6th Fallschirmjger Regiment]who
were tough guys.
Also moving toward Sainte-Mre-glise, Sergeant Otis
Sampson, E/505/82nd, noted that the night sky was still
filled with paratroopers. Troopers came raining down to
the rear of us, he said. My heart was in my throat, afraid
that the first ones out would be hit by the lower-flying
planes as they floated to earth, and there were some pretty
close calls.
At the battalion assembly point on the outskirts of town,
Sampson came across the injured Lt. Col. Benjamin Van-
dervoort, his battalion commander. He had his back
against a wall and his legs outstretched, Sampson said.
He filled me in, saying, Some of the planes have become
lost. I have sent out to gather what men and equipment we
have; weve got the situation in hand. He paused for a spell
and then said, I came down quite hard on this leg, running
his hand along his left one. Ive done something to it; Ive
sent for a medic.
Sampson said, I could see he was in pain. There was
nothing I could do for him, so I turned to go. Im proud to
have you with us, he said as I walked away. It is me who
should be telling him that, with a busted leg and still in con-
trol of the situation; it was a nice compliment.
Spencer Wurst also saw Vandervoort. He had broken
his ankle in the jump and was hopping around on one leg,
using a rifle as a crutch. Broken leg or not, Vandervoort
had come to France to fight and lead his battalion, and that
was what he was going to do. The
505ths exec officer, Mark Alexander,
described Vandervoort as a hell of a
good battalion commander, but he was
hard-headed as hell.
Vincent Wolf recalled that Vander-
voort had a broken ankle but he
wouldnt let that slow him down. He
was the greatest guy alivegreat,
great, great, great. We always called
him Ben, never colonel. Hed give
you a rap on the head if you saluted
him in combat. I was the same way; I
told my men Never salute me,
because that gives away to the enemy
who the officers are, and then youd
get picked off by snipers. Thats what
we did with the Germans. Once you
knocked their non-coms off, the pri-
vates, hell, they didnt know what to
do. We could improvise a lot quicker
than they could.
The bodies of three German soldiers killed in the fighting in Normandy.
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WORLD WAR II AIRBORNE BATTLES 65
I knew that we were supposed to free the French peo-
ple, but I was more concerned about my men and me. The
men firstwhere the hell were they? How many guys have
survived? Out of the 18 that jumped with me, Russ Brown,
my 60mm mortarman, hes the only one that survived.
There were Germans all around. It was a matter of sur-
vivalwho saw who first.
Vandervoort nabbed a couple of 101st men with a cart to
haul him to his battalions objective. His mission was to get
to Sainte-Mre-glise and thats just what he intended to do,
broken leg or not.
As Lt. Col. Krauses group crept closer to the town, it
looked like everything was over; the fire was out, the towns-
folk had returned to their homes, and the German soldiers
had also vacated the square by the big church, apparently
thinking the battle was over, not just beginning. Smoke still
filled the air and the bodies of dead paratroopers hung from
trees and poles or lay sprawled on the pavement.
With stealth and silence the Americans slipped into town,
found a building that was being used as a German barracks,
and took 30 soldiers prisoner; 10 others were killed when
they resisted. The Yanks also found the main communica-
tions cable to Cherbourg and destroyed it, then established
a defense around the towns perimeter.
Although he didnt immediately know where he was other
than somewhere in northern France, Duke Boswell did his
best to round up other troopers. My mission was just to
get our group together and move into Sainte-Mre-glise.
I put a flashlight on top of a poleseveral sections that fit
togetherabout 20 feet high. I think the lens was colored
red or green. The idea was to stick it in the ground so the
troops could see it as an assembly point. We found some-
body right quick-like, and then we got several more
together. I assembled most of my squad and we got a few
more and then one of the officers got there. The officer took
charge and we went into Sainte-Mre-glise.
We had certain positions around the town that we were
to occupy, and the mission was to hold the village of Sainte-
Mre-glise, well, not really the whole village, but the cross-
roads and a bridge to keep [German] reinforcements from
getting to the beach and others at the beach from retreat-
ing. Seemed like our whole regiment was in and around
Sainte-Mre-glise. We established our position on the edge
of town on one of the roads. The first thing we saw when
we got there were some of our guys hanging from the trees.
They had jumped right over the town, and were shot before
they could get out of their chutes.
To hamper the Germans from returning to Sainte-Mre-
glise, Pfc. Leslie Cruise and other paratroopers had set out
A destroyed German self-propelled gun smolders along the
road leading from Neuville-au-Plain to Sainte-Mre-glise.
Private John E. Atchley, H Company, 505th PIR, was cred-
ited with destroying the assault gun with a 57mm antitank
gunthe first time he had ever fired one. His courageous
stand caused the Germans to halt their armored counter-
attack against Sainte-Mre-glise.
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WORLD WAR II AIRBORNE BATTLES 66
mines on one of the roads leading into the city, then dug
foxholes and set up firing positions to establish a roadblock.
After the first gliders began landing in the area, Cruise heard
equipment being off-loaded, followed by the sound of an
American jeep being started. The jeep, with two soldiers in
it, came tearing up the road toward Cruises position.
The paratroopers tried shouting to warn the jeeps occu-
pants of the roadblock and mines but the vehicle flew past
them at a high rate of speed. Cruise said, The occupants of
the jeep were in a big hurry as we at the roadblock heard
their running motor coming in our direction. Above all the
noise, the distinct yells at the roadblock of Hit the ground!
were heard clearly and we all buried ourselves in the dirt of
our foxholes. The driver must have thought our men were
Germans and was not about to stop. Down the road they
rode on full throttle.
KAPOW ! BLOOEY ! BANG ! BOOM !a deafening
crescendo of explosives sounds as a number of our mines
blew the jeep and its troopers into the air. All Hell broke
looseflashing lights with pieces of jeep and mine frag-
ments raining down around us. Directly across the middle
of our minefield they drove and immediately their direction
became vertical, and in an arching skyward path they
landed in the hedgerow beyond. We could hear the thump
and bangs of falling parts all around us. The men had left
the jeep on first impact and they had become the first casu-
alties in our area, but they would not be the last. We had
lost about half of our mines, which we had so carefully
delivered, and they would be sorely needed in case the
Krauts should attack. Those GIs sure wrecked the hell out
of our defenses.
The defenders would indeed need the mines, for it wasnt
long before the Germans tried to retake the town.
The sky finally lightened to a gray overcast. Ben Vander-
voort decided that he had assembled all of 2nd Battalion
that he was likely to gather and so, with about 400 men,
including some from the 101st, moved out cross-country
toward Sainte-Mre-glise, sending out small patrols to
farmhouses and barns to make sure that no German troops
were lying in wait.
Lieutenant Wolf said, We went into Sainte-Mre-glise.
It was chaos for the simple reason that everybody was all
over the place. We didnt know who was who, who was
supposed to do what, where the CP was. Total confusion.
Otis Sampson recalled, Orders were for us to take
Sainte-Mre-glise. It wasnt known at the time that the
city had already been taken by Colonel Krause and was
secure in his hands. It was early morning when our group
came into the city with our colonel [Vandervoort] on a
makeshift two-wheel stretcher. There were paratroopers
still hanging from their chutes where they had been caught
in the high trees before they could release themselves.
Colonel Vandervoorts first command: Cut them down!
In the northern part of town, Krauses American flag
flew proudly from the city hall flagpole. Next door, at the
large hospital/hospice, 505th surgeon Robert Doc Franco
and his medics set up shop, caring for Americans, Germans,
and civilians alike. I was there from about 4 am until noon.
During that time we treated about 30 or 40 casualties.
Somebody came in and told me that about a mile away
there was a farmhouse loaded with wounded guys. The
family who lived there was doing the best they could to care
for them. I walked to that farmhouse and, sure nough, all
around the outside there were dozens of wounded guys,
some of them badly wounded. There were a few inside, too,
in this large room. I was alone, with nobody to help me.
Franco himself would himself be wounded a few days later.
But if the Germans thought the onslaught ended with the
paratroopers, they couldnt have been more wrong; the
glider force was on the way.
By the next day, June 7, Sainte-Mre-glise was still in
82nd Division hands, but no one knew how long the
Yanks could hold if the Germans decided to counterat-
tack in force. Vandervoorts 2nd Battalion, 505th, was
supposed to have moved up to Neuville-au-Plain to pre-
vent the enemy from attacking from the north, but a Ger-
man assault from the south compelled General Ridgway
to order the bulk of 2nd Battalion to remain in Sainte-
Mre-glise and reinforce Krauses 3rd Battalion there.
Vandervoort decided on his own, however, to send a rein-
forced platoon to Neuville-au-Plain to forestall any attack
from that direction. General Gavin later called Vander-
voorts move one of the best tactical decisions in the bat-
tle of Normandy, for it was there that the Germans were
gathering for a panzer-and-infantry assault.
First Lieutenant Turner B. Turnbull III, a half-Cherokee,
took 44 men up the N-13 highway from Sainte-Mre-glise
to Neuville-au-Plain, pushed out the German defenders,
then prepared for the counterattack. Vandervoort, in a jeep
towing a 57mm gun, joined him. Receiving word from a
civilian that a group of paratroopers were approaching
from the north with a captured self-propelled gun and a
large number of German POWs, Turnbull and his colonel
watched and waited. Before long, the group was seen com-
ing down the road.
It was a trick. The POWs turned out to be well-armed
Germans, and the paratroopers were either Germans in
American uniforms that had been stripped from the dead
or were real Americans who had been captured by the Ger-
mans. At any rate, the SP gun, and more behind it, began
blasting Turnbulls positions in Neuville-au-Plain, along
with mortars and small arms. Vandervoort told Turnbull to
delay the enemy for as long as possible, then withdraw back
to Sainte-Mre-glise; the colonel then departed to alert the
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WORLD WAR II AIRBORNE BATTLES 67
troops in Sainte-Mre-glise that the enemy was coming.
Turnbulls men fought off the assault by the 1058th
Infantry Regiment, reinforced, 91st Air-Landing Division.
The battle lasted all day, with Turnbulls outnumbered force
giving as good as it got. At one point a soldier, Private John
Atchley, manning a 57mm gun he had never fired before,
knocked out a German SP gun, but the enemy was flank-
ing the Americans on both sides. Sergeant Otis Sampson,
located south of Neuville, personally dropped mortar
rounds on the enemy threatening Turnbulls platoon; his
aim was on target and his platoon leader, Lieutenant Ted
Peterson, called Sampson the greatest and most accurate
mortar sergeant in the business.
At about 5 PM, the time came to withdraw, given the fact
that Turnbull had only 16 effectives remaining out of his orig-
inal number. But it was too late for him. Lieutenant James
Coyle, E/505, recalled, We engaged the enemy and pre-
vented him from going any further in his plan of encir-
clement. We were able to hold them even though we were
outnumbered, while Turnbull got his surviving men out of
Neuville-au-Plain and on the way back to Sainte-Mre-
glise.
Turnbull never made it. Pfc. Stanley Kotlarz remembered
a terrible shelling during the pull-back: When [the shell]
hit, all of us seemed to go up in the air. I got hit in the wrist
and in the arm. A guy by the name of Brown got hit in the
head. And Lieutenant Turnbull, it sheered the top of his
head right off. When I got up, I saw Brown crawling away,
staggering. Turnbull was lying there with his brains peeling
out of his head. For his valor, Turnbull received the Silver
Star, posthumously.
The 82nd retook Neuville-au-Plain the following day with
the help of armor that had landed at Utah Beach. Turnbulls
delaying action had given the 505th time to consolidate its
position and likely saved the men in Sainte-Mre-glise.
Like the battles for scores of towns and villages in Nor-
mandy, the war passed through Sainte-Mre-glise, then
moved on toward the east, leaving hundreds of dead and
woundedboth combatants and civiliansin its wake. But
the dead were, and are, remembered.
Chaplain Francis L. Sampson, 501/101st, reflected,
The French people of the little city of Sainte-Mre-glise
had arranged that each family adopt a couple of graves [at
the American military cemetery above Omaha Beach]. On
Sundays and Holy Days they bedecked them with flowers,
promising always to remember those soldiers in their
prayers. This promise still holds good. American visitors
to the cemetery are always moved by the sight of a French
family placing fresh flowers on a grave or kneeling there
offering their prayers for the soul of an adopted son or
brother whom they had never seen in life.

This article is adapted from Flint Whitlocks book, If Chaos

Reigns: The Near-Disaster and Ultimate Triumph of Allied
Airborne Forces on D-Day, June 6, 1944 (Casemate, 2011).
Dead American paratroopers gathered in a field by a Graves
Registration unit prior to burial.
AB-Ste Mere Eglise_Layout 1 10/14/14 11:49 AM Page 67
IN AN EFFORT to calm his nerves just
before he jumped into Normandy on D-
Day, Lud Labutka thought it might be a
good idea to accept the drink being
offered from the paratrooper sitting
across from him on their C-47 transport
as it crossed the English Channel. It did-
nt matter to him at the time whether it
came from a bottle of blended Scotch or
from a bottle of after-shave lotion.
Labutka was simply looking for a little
kick to help him get over the anxiety he
felt about jumping from an airplane into
Nazi-occupied Europe.
There was a guy on our plane named
Albert Jones, Labutka says. He
looked over at me and said, Lud, do
you want a drink? I said, What? He
said, Do you want a drink? I still didnt think he had any-
thing to drink until he pulled out a big bottle of Aqua Velva.
I said, Youre crazy! He opened it and sucked down a drink.
I said to him, Jones, if youre crazy, Im crazy, too. This was
20 minutes before we jumped! So I took a big drink. When I
jumped into Normandy, I was heaving. I was puking on the
Germans. That stuff made me sick.
History has failed to record whether Labutkas stomach con-
tents had any effect on enemy troops; what is certain, how-
ever, is that never again would he consider drinking after-shave
for a quick buzz, just as jumping from an airplane had never
crossed his mind in 1939 when he joined the Pennsylvania
National Guard as a 17-year-old high school graduate. Even
to this day, more than 60 years after the war, a fear of heights
has kept his feet planted on the ground.
I wouldnt even go on the Ferris wheel at a fair, he says. I
WORLD WAR II AIRBORNE BATTLES 68
Trooper Lud Labutka
of the 502nd
Parachute Infantry
Regiment, 101st Air-
borne Division,
fought his way
through Normandy,
Holland, and the
Battle of the Bulge.
A SCREAMING
EAGLES JOURNEY
BY RICHARD A. BERANTY
Men of the 101st Airborne Division, their faces blackened to
reduce glare in the moonlight, listen to General Eisenhower
as he addresses Lieutenant Wallace C. Strobel. A short time
later they boarded transports for their night drop into
Normandy, June 5-6, 1944.
All photos National Archives, except where noted.
AB-Labutka 101st_Layout 1 10/14/14 11:50 AM Page 68
WORLD WAR II AIRBORNE BATTLES 69
still havent been on one. Im afraid of heights.
If that is the case, then how does this retired factory worker
from Ford City, Pennsylvania, explain his wartime experi-
ence as a Screaming Eagle with the U.S. 101st Airborne Divi-
sion, duty that not only took him into the night skies of
France but also into Holland during Operation Market-Gar-
den? It is because someone, at some point, questioned
whether he had the intestinal fortitude to jump from an air-
plane. In other words, it was the result of a dare.
In 1942 the Army was taking transfers into the Air Cadets,
Labutka says. We were kids, just 18-, 19-, 20-year-olds. Some-
body mentioned Airborne and I said, Airborne? Are you crazy?
Im not going to jump out of an airplane. So somebody called
me chicken. Thats all it took. I was going. We all figured that
wed make a difference, so three of usRich Dinger, Joe Mik-
los, and myselfwent to see the first sergeant of our National
AB-Labutka 101st_Layout 1 10/14/14 11:50 AM Page 69
WORLD WAR II AIRBORNE BATTLES 70
Guard company and told him to transfer us to the Airborne.
Labutka entered training on October 19, 1942, at Fort Ben-
ning, Georgia, where troops were hooked onto guide wires and
slid to the ground from 40-foot towers. Scary training is what
he calls it. This progressed to actual jumps from an airplane, five
of which were required to qualify for Airborne duty.
The first time I was up in an airplane I jumped. Back then
we packed our own parachutes. At that time they were round,
really huge things. Then, after jump school, riggers packed
them. Every time I jumped I always wondered if the riggers
had placed that little rubber band where it was supposed to be.
It held the end of the parachute to the static line.
Labutka left Benning for the rigors of
Fort Bragg, North Carolina, the new
home of the 101st, where its men trained
by making more practice jumps, often in
front of such dignitaries as Army Chief
of Staff General George C. Marshall.
They also endured 25-mile forced
marches without canteens, running the
last mile back to camp in cadence.
At first during these marches, the
route took us through a creek and some
of us didnt mind scooping up a handful
of water to drink. But after about three
days of this our sergeant caught on and
we were punished. We were made to do
push-ups.
Labutka was assigned to the divisions
502nd Parachute Infantry Regiment
(referred to as the Five-O-Two), 2nd
Battalion, Company E, 1st Platoon,
which left for Europe on September 5,
1943, in a convoy from Camp Shanks,
New York, aboard an aging British trans-
port. The ship encountered engine trou-
ble six days out, left the group, and put
in at the small Newfoundland harbor of
St. Johns, where repairs were made. But as the ship headed to
sea once again, it scraped bottom, forcing it back to port.
Arrangements were then made for the troops to make their
Atlantic crossing on the SS Ericsson, which left in another con-
voy and arrived at Liverpool on October 19. It took Labutka
44 days to reach England on a voyage usually made in a week.
The convoy we joined contained Company C of my old
National Guard outfit, he says. By then they were the 28th
Division. I didnt know it at the time, but I went overseas with
my old buddies from Company C of the National Guard.
Once on British soil, men of the 502 lived in tent cities at Den-
ford Lodge near Hungerford where they made more practice
jumps in preparation for their assigned role on D-Day. Since
the division had no battle history up to that point and its men
were an untested force, it seemed to the other GIs stationed in
England that these so-called Screaming Eagles were a group
of overpaid and overly cocky servicemen. They appeared more
famous for their fancy jump boots than for anything else. All
of that changed, however, when they jumped from their C-47
transports in the predawn darkness of Normandy, fulfilling
what General William C. Lee, the divisions first commanding
general, described as their rendezvous with destiny.
Four objectives were assigned the 101st in Operation Over-
lord, the invasion of the European continent: The paratroop-
ers were first to secure the roadway leading from Utah Beach
where the U.S. 4th Division was to land; second, they were to
eliminate a battery of large German guns
that threatened that beach; third, they
were to establish contact with the 4th
Division as it headed inland; and fourth,
with those missions accomplished, they
were to attack and occupy the French
town of Carentan, an important road
junction leading to the Cotentin Penin-
sula and the port of Cherbourg.
Labutkas 2nd Battalion was part of the
force charged with eliminating the four-
gun battery of 122mm howitzers at St.
Martin de Varreville, two kilometers
west of Utah Beach. General Omar
Bradley, U.S. ground commander, called
the guns a danger to the invasion forces
and insisted they be eliminated.
Another anticipated danger for the D-
Day invaders, this one limited to Air-
borne troops only, was the ability to rec-
ognize friend or foe in the Normandy
darkness. Brig. Gen. Maxwell D. Taylor,
who had assumed command of the 101st
in March 1944, solved this dilemma by
introducing one of the most ingenious
tools used in the invasion: the cricket.
Basically a kids toy, similar to those sold in five-and-tens at the
time, it proved extremely helpful for paratroopers to identify
one another in the dark. The toy clicked when the tab on its
back was pressed and released. One push asked, Whos there?
Two presses in reply meant Friend. A last-minute idea of Tay-
lors, the crickets arrived about four days before the invasion.
By late May the 101st was moved into new tent cities near the
airfields from which the men would fly to assault German posi-
tions in France. On June 5 at about 5:30 PM, they ate their last
preinvasion meal, consisting of pork chops and mashed pota-
toes, and returned to their assembly areas to take on their gear.
Labutka says it included an M-1 rifle with eight or 10 clips of
ammunition, six grenades, two canteens, two parachutes, flares,
a medical kit, compass, and enough C-rations for three days. All
Photographed shortly after the war
ended, a youthful Lud Labutka was
nevertheless a hardened combat vet-
eran. He had endured some of the most
difficult fighting of the war, including
the critical defense of Bastogne during
the Battle of the Bulge.
A
u
t
h
o
r

s

c
o
l
l
e
c
t
i
o
n
AB-Labutka 101st_Layout 1 10/14/14 11:50 AM Page 70
WORLD WAR II AIRBORNE BATTLES 71
told, their equipment weighed about 70
pounds. As evening drew on, Labutkas
platoon leader, 1st Lt. Wallace C. Strobel,
called his men away from their packing
for some last-minute instructions. As they
gathered outside their tents, General
Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Allied
supreme commander, paid them a visit.
A photograph was taken of this
encounter and it became one of the most
famous of the invasion. In it, Eisenhower
is standing on the left talking to Strobel.
The two are shown in an apparent con-
versation about the invasion. When asked
years later about what was said, Strobel,
who died in 1999, recalled that, in part,
it went like this: Where are you from,
lieutenant? Eisenhower asked. Michi-
gan, sir, replied Strobel. Michigan,
eh? Eisenhower commented. Good
fishing in that country.
Labutka, standing behind several other
men and unseen in the photo, says he
never heard the conversation.
We heard earlier that Ike might come
by and wish us luck, he says. But I have no idea what he said
to Lieutenant Strobel. I wasnt close enough. Believe me, if I had
known they were going to take a picture, I would have gotten
my mug in it somehow.
The men entered their C-47s at around 9 PMthrough the air-
crafts rear door, which stayed open for the entire flight. They
moved in single file with the first man headed to the front of
the plane. The 16 paratroopers took their seats, located on
both sides of the aircraft, facing one another. Along the ceiling
of the planes compartment stretched the static lines to which
their parachutes were hooked just prior to the jump. The pilots
were told to fly in a V formation of three planes each at an
altitude of 500 feet to avoid German radar detection over the
English Channel. Once they crossed the coast of France, the
planes were to climb to 1,500 feet and then descend to 400 feet
for the jump. Pilots were instructed not to veer from their
assigned flight paths. The distance to their drop zone was 136
miles, and it took about an hour to reach it.
We knew that it was about a hundred miles from where we
were in England to where we were going, Labutka says. We
were told to take out these guns. They didnt tell us why, just
that we had to take them out.
The flight was uneventful until they reached the French coast
and German guns began firing. Since Labutka and others of
2nd Battalion were in some of the first planes of the assault,
they reached France relatively unscathed.
Once we got over Cherbourg you could see the enemy
shooting at us, Labutka says. It looked like the tracer bul-
lets were coming out of a barrel. We could hear them hitting
the wings going knick, knick, knick. I was scared. That was
when Labutka took the healthy swallow of Aqua Velva. With
his stomach now churning, the C-47, piloted by men of the
438th Troop Carrier Group, neared its drop point and a red
light flashed, telling the paratroopers that their jump time was
near. It was shortly after midnight when a sergeant yelled,
Stand up and hook up! Moments later a green light flashed
and Labutka was the sixth or seventh man to leave the plane.
The sergeant hit the first guy on the ass and said, Go! We
were lined up tight, right against each other, Labutka explains.
We were taught to count, One thousand, two thousand
when we jumped. If we got to the third count and the chute
didnt open, we were to pull the reserve parachute. That one
was on our belly. The only thing I remember thinking when I
jumped was, I hope I land.
He did land, near the town of St. Marie du Mont just north
of Carentan and south of the guns his battalion was ordered
to destroy. I landed in a farm courtyard, all brick and all
fenced in, right beside a hay wagon, he says.
The machine gunner landed in one corner of the courtyard.
His name was Dempsey, from Rome, Georgia. In the other cor-
ner was Golembeski, the assistant machine gunner, from Penn-
sylvania. They both came over to me and said, Lud, what are
we going to do? Here, both of them were Pfcs and I was just
a private, their ammo carrier, and theyre asking me what to
Authors collection
Lud Labutka (standing fourth from left) poses with fellow paratroopers of the
101st Airborne Division during training at Fort Benning. Labutkas close friend
Henry Fuller of Wadsworth, Ohio, stands at far right.
AB-Labutka 101st_Layout 1 10/14/14 11:51 AM Page 71
WORLD WAR II AIRBORNE BATTLES 72
do! So I said to find a door so we could get out of this court-
yard. The night was very dark. We found a door, or a gate,
and went out and bumped into a guy here and a guy there until
there were six of us. We walked around, snuck around, crawled
around. We didnt meet anybody else. None of us fired a shot.
Finally, when it was just getting light, about 5:30, we were
walking around this hedgerow and saw a road.
We crouched down because we heard people walking and
talking, Labutka continues. These guys with me said, Lud!
And I said, Shhhh! I had my clicker and
when the noise got near I went click-
click with the cricket. Boy, the nicest
sound that I ever heard came back:
click-click, click-click. So we jumped
out on the road. Id say there were about
60 people there including a lieutenant
colonel, a lieutenant, and a couple of
sergeants, and we joined them.
Others in the drop were not so lucky,
particularly those who came after the
first wave. As the surprised Germans
grasped the scope of the situation, these
later planes received heavy doses of anti-
aircraft fire. Some pilots took evasive
action, broke formation, and went off
course. Paratroopers were scattered
around the countryside. Many landed in
swamps, rivers, and flooded fields. Oth-
ers found themselves stuck in trees or in
the middle of minefields. Some planes
took direct hits and crash-landed or burst
into flames before impact. Because of the ground fire and con-
fusion, the drop zone resembled a rectangle of about 25 miles
by 15 miles. Scattered troops sought each other throughout
the day and into the next.
The gun emplacements at Varreville did not pose a problem
when Labutka saw them on June 6. They had been destroyed
by Allied bombings just prior to D-Day and were void of Ger-
man troops. It was there that Labutka met his battalion com-
mander, Colonel Steve Chappuis, whose drop put him close to
the guns.
Im glad we had the Air Corps, states Labutka. They
knocked out a bunch of German guns. When I saw Colonel
Chappuis, he was sitting cross-legged on this cement curb. He
said, Well, it looks like the Air Force took care of the guns.
With that threat neutralized, the gathered troops of 2nd Bat-
talion moved toward the road leading south from Utah Beach.
Securing it was the primary responsibility of Lt. Col. Robert
G. Coles 3rd Battalion. By 1 PM on D-Day, Cole and his men
had made contact with elements of the U.S. 4th Division com-
ing inland from the beach, and the paratroopers found their
numbers increasing. Throughout June 6-7, those scattered in
the drop linked up into larger fighting groups. The massed
paratroopers set their sights to the south and the divisions final
objective, the town of Carentan.
I dont think we really got together with any sizable force
until about a day and a half after we landed, Labutka says,
estimating that they then numbered about two regiments
strong. None of us had gotten any sleep, unless we slept stand-
ing up. Its hard to believe, but we did sleep standing up.
Carentan was a high-priority target assigned to the 101st
because its main highway and railroad
connected Cherbourg to St. L, and ulti-
mately Paris. If American forces did not
take the town, it could be used as a cor-
ridor for a counterattack against Utah
Beach. Army intelligence estimated the
size of the German garrison there at a
battalion. As it turned out, the enemy
was apparently more plentiful and
extremely stubborn. The divisions route
of attack was down a causeway that ran
through flooded fields and swamps.
Labutka remembers that paratroopers
called it Purple Heart Lane, for obvi-
ous reasons. The 502s 3rd Battalion was
assigned the lead.
The first time I really heard gunfire
was going toward Carentan. The Ger-
mans had machine guns pointed right
down this road going into the town.
There were four bridges we had to cross
and swamps were on both sides of us. As
we fought our way down the road we had to run this way, run
that way, run this way, kind of zigzag our way down it.
It was here that Labutka first experienced the effects of the
German 88mm gun, one of the most devastating artillery pieces
used by either side during the war. He also encountered two
Airborne buddies from home, and both were wounded.
Once we started down this road I met Joe Miklos, Labutka
says. He got hit from a bomb burst. There was shrapnel in his
leg, and he was going back. After we crossed the second bridge,
who do I see but Rich Dinger with a patch on his shoulder. He
was hit pretty bad. He said, Lud, dont go down there. Its hell
down there. I said, Dick, I have to. My companys going down
there. Dinger was eventually shipped home. Farther down the
road I came across this poor soldier who was hit right above
his ear. I could see the matter leaking out. He tried to talk to
me. He wanted morphine. I asked him if hed had any but he
couldnt answer. He was gone. He must have been from the 3rd
Battalion, Dingers outfit, because they went in ahead of us.
The German 88s were finally silenced, but not before the
roads second bridge was shattered to pieces. This kept supplies
from being brought in and the wounded taken out. It also pre-
LEFT: Colonel Steve A. Chappuis com-
manded Labutkas outfit, the 2nd Bat-
talion, 502nd Parachute Infantry Reg-
iment, during the fighting in
Normandy. RIGHT: Colonel Robert
Cole commanded the 3rd Battalion of
the 502nd Parachute Infantry Regi-
ment. He was awarded the Medal of
Honor for leading an assault at
Carentan but did not live to receive it.
Cole was killed by a snipers bullet in
Holland.
AB-Labutka 101st_Layout 1 10/14/14 11:51 AM Page 72
WORLD WAR II AIRBORNE BATTLES 73
vented any possibility of retreat. Regardless, the paratroopers
advanced, crossed the third bridge, and ran into their stiffest
resistance on the other side of the fourth bridge. It was a heav-
ily defended farmhouse about 150 yards away. With Colonel
Cole and men of 3rd Battalion still in the lead, intense fire from
German machine guns, mortars, and artillery pinned them to
the ground for an hour. Knowing his men were low on ammu-
nition, Cole ordered an attack with fixed bayonets and per-
sonally led the charge over open ground, eventually flushing the
enemy from their positions. A bridgehead was gained across
the Douve River, and Cole earned the Medal of Honor, the
divisions first award in Normandy. He would be killed by a
snipers bullet in Holland just months later.
That Cole was a soldier, Labutka offers. I know Mik-
los didnt like him much because he was too hard on the men.
But he was a soldier through and through.
While division engineers worked to make bridge No. 2
passable, the badly depleted 3rd Battalion was replaced on the
front by 2nd Battalion. More fierce fighting ensued. At one
point the Germans counterattacked and some Americans
thought the order was given for them to withdraw. It had not
been, and reversing their rearward momentum was a challenge.
The American line held, but a final German attack neared
success once again until a five-minute barrage from division
artillery stopped it. Afterward, the fighting diminished as glider
troops from east of Carentan joined the fight.
After that we got to the edge of this hedgerow and the guys
in front of us must have had luck because the Germans backed
off, Labutka recalls. We were involved in a lot of hedgerow
fighting, a heck of a lot of it.
The hedgerows in Normandy were an obstacle underesti-
mated by the Allies. For centuries farmers had fenced their
small fields with solid walls of dirt, often four feet high, and
topped them with hedges whose tangled roots bound each row
into a natural fortification. They were created to prevent ero-
sion, but the Germans used them for lines of defense and coun-
terattack. Many little battles were fought around the
hedgerows. When attacking Americans approached one row,
they found a strong force of defenders behind it and properly
emplaced machine guns at both ends. If the enemy were dis-
lodged or fell back, German troops behind another hedgerow
went into action with mortars or artillery.
Finally, we got in a line across this last hedgerow and went
into Carentan. Thats when I saw dead Germans stacked like
cordwood. Honest to God! We were shooting blind into the
town, and when we got there, their bodies were stacked up
just like logs. The Germans themselves must have stacked them
that way. Somebody did.
On June 12, Carentan was declared clear of the enemy, and
the town was occupied. The final job for the 101st in Nor-
mandy was to maintain positions at the base of the Cotentin
Peninsula. As June turned into July this area proved relatively
quiet, manned largely by Allied patrols and inhabited mainly
by wandering cows. It was about a month after the landing
before we had a chance to get off the line, says Labutka. We
had no change of clothes and no showers during that time, but
afterward we were eating steak. Wed kill a cow and cook it
over a fire. We had steak for breakfast and steak for dinner.
Eight days after the 101st parachuted into Normandy,
American soldiers enter the bitterly contested French town
of Carentan on June 14, 1944. Troopers of the 101st had
taken the village during a tough fight with German airborne
troops and held it against a major counterattack.
AB-Labutka 101st_Layout 1 10/14/14 11:51 AM Page 73
WORLD WAR II AIRBORNE BATTLES 74
The 101st was relieved after 33 days of continuous combat,
and moved by trucks to an area behind Utah Beach on July 10.
The division history records that in little more than a month
of combat, the 101st suffered 4,670 casualties. According to E
Company historian Emmanuel Allain of Normandy, France,
Labutkas company of the 502 lost only three men during that
time: one officer and two NCOs were killed in action.
The paratroopers were taken to England by landing craft
from July 11-13 and returned to their old quarters north of
London. At least one month of back pay awaited them, and
leaves were approved. Labutka says most of the men who
were given passes went to London to celebrate. I went to
London for booze and women. Dont forget, he says, I was
just a kid.
The division was replenished and took part in further train-
ing over the next two months. More Airborne missions were
proposed, but each time they were canceled due to the rapid
Allied advance in France. But the good life in England didnt
last, as the 101st was slated to take part in a plan to liberate
Holland and advance quickly into the Ruhr, the industrial heart
of Germany. Dubbed Operation Market-Garden and devel-
oped by British Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, it called
for Airborne forces (the Market phase) to drop behind German
lines and secure a hundred-mile corridor as British armored
forces (the Garden phase) came up from Belgium to capture
vital bridges over the lower Rhine River.
Strategically the plan failed. Eisenhower had been reluctant
at first to support the mission, but eventually he relented.
Bradley called it the wrong plan at the wrong time in the
wrong place.
The three parachute regiments of the 101st had separate
assignments in Holland. The 502 was charged with securing its
landing zone near Eindhoven, capturing a bridge over the Dom-
mel River, and attacking the village of Best to protect the lower
section of the British thrust. The paratroopers were loaded with
the same amount of equipment as in Normandy, and the Sep-
tember 17 daylight drop into Holland was picture perfect.
It was nothing like Normandy; it went off like a practice
jump. There was no opposition. The only obstacle Labutka
encountered in the jump was barbed wire, which gave him a
cut above his right knee. The scar it caused has remained with
him. They wanted to give me a Purple Heart, but I turned
them down. Why should I accept a medal for a scratch when
guys around me were getting killed?
While the paratroopers had an uneventful flight from Eng-
land and an easy drop, it was different for the divisions glider
troops. Of the 70 gliders that took part, only about 50 made
it to Holland intact. Some landed far behind German lines,
some were hit by flak, and some were crashed upon landing
by obstacles planted in the fields.
The Germans had sticks, trees actually, buried in the ground
every 10 feet, which ripped those gliders apart, Labutka says.
Some of them contained jeeps and cannon and when they hit
the poles there was equipment all over the place.
With the landing zone secured and the Dommel River
crossed, the march on the bridge that crossed the Wilhelmina
Canal at Best commenced. Just as intelligence reports of enemy
troop strength at Carentan were in error, so it was there. The
Germans who defended the area were thought to be of poor
quality, and Allied planners anticipated that a platoon could
handle the mission. When enemy defenses stiffened, a com-
pany was sent to help. Later, both 2nd and 3rd Battalions
joined the attack. At one point, 2nd attacked with three com-
panies in line across an open wheat field and took serious losses
from artillery, mortars, and machine guns.
Some of the guys near me were bunched up, Labutka
explains. I even yelled at them to scatter. Youre never sup-
posed to get close to the next guy. Thats what they taught us
dont bunch up because thats what the enemy is looking for.
Then a mortar shell hit three of them. One guy was hit right
in his lap. Another one of them was dying. He had me recite
the Act of Contrition to him. He died right there in my arms.
Another fatality was Colonel Cole of 3rd Battalion. After
calling for air support, friendly fire began taking its toll on
American troops, so Cole decided to place orange panels in
front of the line to benefit Allied pilots. While he was doing so,
an enemy sniper killed him with a shot to his temple. Cole died
never knowing that he had been awarded the Medal of Honor
for leading the bayonet charge at Carentan. When the battle
for Best ended, nearly half of the 101st had been involved,
along with a column of British tanks. The area had been
defended by about a thousand enemy troops.
We captured about 200 German soldiers at Best, kids and
old men, Labutka says. They just threw down their guns.
Two guys with bazookas were taking them back to the rear
when somebody said, OK, were moving. So I was walking
behind this machine gunner and he threw his machine gun over
his shoulder and must have pulled the trigger. There was one
shell in it and it hit my helmet, put a nick in it, and boy did I
hit the ground. I gave him hell. I said, Youre supposed to clear
your gun. He said, I thought I did.
After the fall of Best, the 502 was ordered to hold defensive
positions in the area. Company E lost 18 men killed in action
in the operation, 12 of whom had been with the outfit when
they jumped into Normandy.
Up to this time I was still a private, Labutka says. But
shortly after Best I went, on one order, from private to Pfc to
corporal to sergeant to staff sergeant to tech sergeant. Three
up and two down. Thats how many guys got wounded or
killed. In one order I went from private to platoon sergeant. I
had 47 guys under methree rifle squads and a mortar squad.
Thats when I was issued a Thompson submachine gun.
This one time in Holland, he continues, I was looking
through my field glasses and saw Germans about a hundred
AB-Labutka 101st_Layout 1 10/14/14 11:52 AM Page 74
WORLD WAR II AIRBORNE BATTLES 75
yards away. They were squatted, with their pants down, so I
radioed over to my mortar sergeant, Earl Rodd, and asked, Do
you see that? He said, How about me going back and laying
a couple of shells in there? I said, Thats just what I want you
to do when I let you know there are more Germans. So he went
back and I was on the radio with him and about five or six
more of them came down. I said, Earl, lay a couple in there
now. He did. They were all tree bursts, hitting these big fir
trees. Those Germans scattered all over. You should have seen
them run with their pants halfway up. I laughed. I think it was
the first time I laughed like that since Id gotten over there.
It was also in Holland that Labutka had a chance encounter
with the divisions artillery commander, Brig. Gen. Anthony
C. McAuliffe, who later gained fame with his Nuts response
to a German surrender order at Bastogne. After their Holland
jump, the paratroopers were told to take off their jump boots
and wear regular-issue combat boots so the Germans could
not identify them as Airborne if they were captured.
One day, this was also after Best, General McAuliffe,
accompanied by my platoon leader, Bill Parks, was checking
our company area. Lieutenant Parks called me over and Gen-
eral McAuliffe said, How are your men eating, sergeant? And
we had just passed third platoon, and they had a pig on a spit.
I said, Were eating well, sir. He said, So I guess you are.
And then he asked me, How do you like your combat boots?
I said, I hate them, sir. He said, You do know why we cant
wear jump boots? I said, Sure, the enemy will know were
paratroopers. He said, Thats right, sergeant.
Whether German forces would have treated Airborne troops
any differently from the regular infantry if they were captured,
Labutka is not sure. But the switch of boots would be repeated
again when the division was sent to Bastogne.
Since the main objective of Market-Garden, an advance into
the Ruhr, never materialized, the operation failed. However,
the Allies did drive 65 miles through German lines, crossed
two major rivers, seized airfield sites, and created a buffer to
protect the port of Antwerp. By mid-November, after 72 days
of combat, the 101st was moved to its base at Camp
Mourmelon, a one-time airfield in France, where paratroopers
received passes to Paris, enjoyed good food and champagne,
and experienced frequent USO performances.
Bob Hope came one time. But that wasnt my cup of tea. I
never went to a movie or saw a show, smiles Labutka. I was
busy drinking and playing poker. I had to be the unluckiest
poker player in the world. Maybe I drank too much when I
played. But what else was there to do? There were no women
around.
Once again the good times were about to end as German
forces opened their last offensive in Western Europe through
the Ardennes Forest in Belgium. Their attack, launched on
December 16, 1944, rolled through the sparsely held line of
either inexperienced or battle-weary American troops. The
101st was soon in the center of the action during what has
come to be known as the Battle of the Bulge.
I was AWOL in Paris when they attacked, Labutka says.
I had a pass, but it was overextended. You see, me and my
first sergeant were close. He gave me a pass whenever I wanted
one. All I had to do was sign somebodys name to it and show
it to the bus driver. He didnt know one lieutenant from
another. It was easy. So me and a buddy were in Paris. I think
Douglas C-47 transport aircraft fill the European sky as
U.S. paratroopers hit the silk. Airborne assaults were risky
undertakings during World War II, and the C-47 was a
mainstay of the air bridge from England into the war-torn
Continent.
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WORLD WAR II AIRBORNE BATTLES 76
wed been there four days and were planning to visit the Folies
Brgre, the famous nightclub. But before we got there we
stopped at this little outside caf drinking gin and orange juice.
We never got to the nightclub because somebody rolled us. It
was probably one of the girls we met.
So without any money we went back to Rainbow Corner.
This was a place in Paris where all the GIs went. A lieutenant
came by and said, Sergeant, I got bad news for you. Be at
Rainbow Corner at 5 oclock tomorrow morning. I asked,
What happened? He said, Breakthrough. There were about
two truckloads of guys from our outfit in Paris and we went
back to Mourmelon.
The surprise German attack easily knifed through the Amer-
ican lines. Poor visibility grounded Allied planes, and over the
next three days the situation worsened for the Americans. One
option for Eisenhower was to commit his reserve units, one of
which was the 101st. With its division commander in the
United States and assistant commander in England, the job fell
to General McAuliffe to lead the paratroopers into battle. But
this time they did not drop from the air. They went on trucks
and arrived in Bastogne, a key Belgian crossroads town, on
December 19. This was the southern sector of the German
thrust guarded in part by the tired U.S. 28th Division, which
had been sent to that area for rest. The division had seen action
since just after the Normandy landings, and more recently had
been involved in the desperate fighting in the Hrtgen Forest.
The 28th also contained men from Labutkas hometown
National Guard unit. As the Germans advanced, the 28th fell
back and the 101st moved in.
Going into Bastogne I was in charge of two trucks, recalls
Labutka. Thats when I heard that the National Guard from
Pennsylvania was there. I knew guys in Company D from But-
ler, and naturally I knew guys in Company C from Ford City.
So here they were, the 28th Division, coming out of Bastogne
while we were going in. One of the guys I knew I did see com-
ing out, Pete Rhodes from Company C.
Once in Bastogne, the 101st immediately set up a defensive
perimeter in all four directions around the town, a radius of
about 16 miles. The paratroopers were surrounded by Ger-
man forces, and Labutka found himself on the northwest side
of Bastogne during the worst winter in years, as nighttime tem-
peratures frequently dropped below zero. When men touched
a gun barrel, their skin stuck to it. Snow was as constant as the
American patrols probing the German lines.
We didnt go too far out on patrols, he recalls. They
just wanted to see how far [away] the Germans were. This
one time we were on patrol and my radio operator, Jimmy
Agnostis, was behind me. I was up the field a way, and I
stopped because I thought I saw some German troops about
200 yards away. Then I heard this pow-pow from behind me
and damn if I wasnt hit in my helmet again! I said, Jimmy,
you SOB! Thats twice I almost got killed with our own guns!
He said, Im sorry, Im sorry.
The Germans underestimated American resolve to defend
the town, and overestimated their own ability to take it. Four
Germans approached U.S. lines south of Bastogne on Decem-
ber 22. One of them carried a white flag, and another held a
message that proposed the Americans, since they were sur-
rounded, should surrender. If the offer was rejected, the note
promised that Bastogne would be destroyed by heavy guns.
When the ultimatum reached McAuliffe, his first reaction
was Nuts. That answer was eventually delivered, but the
German envoy did not understand its meaning. The Ameri-
can officer in charge said through a translator: If you dont
understand what Nuts means in plain English, its the same
as Go to hell!
The German bulge in the American lines was reaching its
high-water mark when the offensive began to run low on sup-
plies and meet stiffer Allied resistance. By December 24, Hitler
was said to be so incensed that such a small town could be
such a big thorn in the German drive that he ordered Bas-
togne annihilated.
The Germans did bring in tanks and shot 88s into our third
platoon, Labutka says. They got hammered. For the most
part, my platoon was in reserve. Thats why I didnt get into
contact with German tanks. But our third platoon from E
Company took it bad. E Company losses were 11 KIA, three
of whom had jumped with the company on D-Day.
As Christmas Day neared, the visibility cleared enough for
Allied planes, at times flying 250 sorties a day, to drop supplies
to the beleaguered paratroopers who were now running low
on everything. Most air drops reached American hands,
although some landed too far away. Labutka remembers cele-
brating the holiday with an ice cream-like concoction made by
putting snow in a canteen cup and adding lemonade powder
from dropped C-rations.
When those skies brightened and I heard those planes com-
ing over to give us ammunition, food, everything we needed,
he says, I thought that was the nicest Christmas present I
ever got.
A U.S. armored division finally arrived from the south on
December 26 and pushed its way into Bastogne a few days
later. This corridor was eventually widened, and on January 18,
1945, the 101st was poised to exit the town it had called home
for a month.
We marched out of Bastogne and got on trucks. Outside of
town, somebody had put up this big sign: The Battered Bas-
tards of the Bastion of Bastogne.
Now on trucks once again, the division was sent to Lux-
embourg and later to the Alsace region of France. Stationed
there until mid-February, the paratroopers saw little action.
Afterward, they returned by train to their camp at Mourmelon
where, on March 16, the 101st became the first division in his-
tory to receive the Distinguished Unit Citation (now called
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WORLD WAR II AIRBORNE BATTLES 77
the Presidential Unit Citation) as an entire division. General
Taylor also addressed the men in Mourmelon, telling them
that when the war in Europe was over the division would
probably be sent to the Pacific to fight the Japanese. It did not
go over well.
He said that, if possible, we were going to Japan and finish
off the Japs, Labutka remembers. We werent in the mood
for that. Do you know what he heard? From the rear ranks:
Boo! Then louder: Boo! Then finally from the entire division:
Boo! Can you imagine what that sounded like from a whole
division?
American forces by this time were well east of the Rhine
River, and the 101st was ordered to Dsseldorf and then to
southern Germany and finally to Bavaria, where Allied lead-
ers expected diehard Nazis to put up their last fight. The divi-
sions final assignment of the war was to capture Berchtesgaden
where Hitler had maintained his mountain home. That was
accomplished on May 5, and two days later radio reports told
that the Germans had agreed to unconditional surrender. The
next day it became official, and the war was over.
We were billeted in a nice house in Kempton, just outside
Berchtesgaden, Labutka says. At the time, people who
owned the house could put their valuables in a room or on the
third floor and lock it up. The house I was in belonged to Eva
Braun, Hitlers mistress. It had lots of big rooms, high ceilings,
but little furniture because it was all locked up. So somebody
from my platoon broke into one of the rooms and took a
bunch of stuff, mostly jewelry. We had a meeting with the com-
pany commander the next day, and he said, Well give you
guys til Reveille to put everything back. If not, theres going
to be repercussions.
At 5:30 the next morning, nothing was returned. So the
next day they made us go on a 25-mile forced march with a
full packrifle, blanket, no water. They said we were going to
do that every day until everything was put back. That night,
after our march, the guys who took the jewelry put it all back.
Three or four guys were involved. We knew who they were,
and everybody wanted to beat them up. And they would have
been beaten up if it had gone on any longer.
Labutka left Europe from the southern French port of Mar-
seilles on September 6, 1945, and arrived Stateside eight days
later. He was discharged on September 21.
I wouldnt take a million dollars to do it over again, he
says. And you couldnt give me a million dollars not to have
gone through it. Im glad I went through it. I was lucky. The
Lord took care of me because Im still here. But I know one
thing. I would never jump from an airplane again, unless some-
body called me a chicken.
Perhaps the most fitting tribute a soldier can receive comes
from the men who served with him. Lud was a leader even
before he became our platoon sergeant, offers Tony
Diarchangelo of suburban Philadelphia, who served in
Labutkas platoon through Normandy, Holland, and Bastogne.
He was one hell of a soldier, a great soldier, always calm, cool,
and collected. As a unit we never lost a skirmish.

Richard Beranty is a teacher of high school English and jour-

nalism in western Pennsylvania.
Relieved at last, war-weary veterans of the epic 101st Air-
borne defense of Bastogne trudge toward rest and a hot
meal. The troopers of the 101st held the encircled crossroads
town against repeated German attacks at the height of the
Battle of the Bulge.
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WORLD WAR II AIRBORNE BATTLES 78
ON A DARKENED AIRFIELD AT 2230 HOURS ON JUNE
5, 1944, a reinforced company of British gliderborne infantry,
D Company of the Second Battalion, Oxford & Bucking-
hamshire Light Infantry (Ox & Bucks), boarded gliders, pre-
pared to start the invasion of France. Their
commanding officer, Major John Howard,
watched them in the nights dim, shuffling for-
ward under the heavy load of their weapons and
equipment. He recorded, It was an amazing
sight. The smaller chaps were visibly sagging at
the knees under the amount of kit they had to
carry.
There was more to their burden, however,
than just Sten guns and spare ammunition. On
their shoulders rested responsibility for secur-
ing the left flank of the entire Allied D-Day inva-
sion force. A pair of small bridges was situated
south-southeast of Sword Beach, the eastern-
most of the five landing points. If they remained
in Axis hands, they provided fast access for Ger-
man armored units to counterattack the
beaches. If taken by the British, they could be
used for the advancing British ground units. The
mission of these glider troops was to seize the
bridges in question. Major Howards orders
weighed heavily on his mind as they set out on
their monumental mission: Your task is to
seize the [bridges] over R. Orne and canal ...
and to hold them until relief.
The preparation for this attack had been in
the works long before Howard and his men
boarded their gliders. Once the Allied command
decided on the Normandy coastline for the invasion of
France, planning began on how to secure the beaches and
pave the way for the advance inland. On the invasions left
Imperial War Museum
A bold British glider assault
seized a pair of vital bridges in
the early hours of D-Day.
BY CHRISTOPHER MISKIMON
GLIDER
ASSAULT
ON
PEGASUS
BRIDGE
Horsa gliders that transported British airborne troops
to their D-Day objective, the bridge over the Caen
Canal, lie broken in a field adjacent to the bridge. The
glider pilots made their landings with pinpoint accuracy.
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WORLD WAR II AIRBORNE BATTLES
79
AB-Pegasus_Layout 1 10/14/14 12:04 PM Page 79
WORLD WAR II AIRBORNE BATTLES 80
flank, attention quickly focused on a pair of bridges just a few
miles northeast of the French city of Caen. The bridge over
the river Orne allowed fast access for the invasion force to
move east after landing. Conversely, it could allow German
units to quickly move toward Sword Beach and attack the
British 3rd Infantry Division as it struggled to get ashore. Just
470 meters west of the Orne Bridge sat a bridge over the Caen
Canal, a manmade waterway that flowed directly to Sword
Beach. Together these crossing points were vital avenues to
whichever army held them.
The east-west road that crossed the bridges led east to the vil-
lage of Ranville, roughly 1,000 meters away, and then out to
the countryside. To the west, the road crossed the canal bridge
and came to a crossroads around 260 meters distant. This
crossroad led north to Sword Beach or south toward Caen.
On the west bank of the canal sat the village of Benouville.
Over time a plan formed to seize of the bridges using glider-
borne infantry. There were certain advantages to using gliders
for such an assault. They were quiet and would be towed by
transport aircraft; the German occupation force was by now
used to hearing Allied planes overhead and hopefully would
not pay much attention to them. This would provide a cover
for the incoming gliders and help achieve surprise. Also, using
gliders kept the attacking force concentrated. Paratroopers
could be scattered by wind or varying speed, altitude, and
direction of their aircraft. Even a good airborne drop would
require time for the parachutists to concentrate and move on
their objective. A glider force could touch down already con-
centrated with one planeload of soldiers ready to move upon
landing. If the gliders could land close together a large force
could be quickly brought to bear.
The British 6th Airborne Division was charged with landing
to the east of Sword Beach on D-Day and capturing the vital
bridges. Like any airborne unit, it was not heavy enough to resist
the sort of determined counterattacks the Germans could be
expected to make and would need the more heavily equipped
regular infantry and armored formations coming from the
beaches to arrive as quickly as possible. The division contained
two parachute brigades and one air landing (glider) brigade.
The force for the bridge assaults was drawn for the 6th Air
Landing Brigade commanded by Brigadier H.K.M. Kinders-
ley. The division commander, Maj. Gen. Richard Gale, went
to his brigade commanders with the plan for the bridges,
explaining to one of them, The seizing of the bridges intact
is of the utmost importance for the conduct of future opera-
tions ... the speedy overpowering of the bridge defenses will
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Two weeks prior to D-Day, Field Marshal Erwin Rommel,
commander of the German defenses in Normandy, inspects
troops of the 21st Panzer Division. This inspection took
place in the vicinity of the landing zone of the British 6th
Airborne Division.
AB-Pegasus_Layout 1 10/14/14 11:58 AM Page 80
WORLD WAR II AIRBORNE BATTLES 81
be your first objective and it is therefore
to be seized by the coup de main party.
You must accept risks to achieve this.
Gale asked Kindersley which of his
company commanders might be up to
the challenge. Kindersley chose Major
John Howard, the commander of D
Company.
Howard, a former enlisted man, had
risen quickly through the NCO and offi-
cer ranks after the war began because of
his ability and professionalism. He had
completed one enlistment during the
1930s and was a policeman until recalled
to duty after the war started. He
impressed superiors with his skill and
subordinates with his willingness to
share their difficulties.
To see if Howard and his men had
what it took, a three-day exercise was
conducted, with the troops required to
seize three bridges intact and hold them
until relief arrived. They succeeded and
ensured their place in the vanguard of the
entire invasion force. After the exercise
Howard was told what his mission
would be and that D Company would
certainly be the first British fighting
force to land on the continent.
They would not be alone, however.
Gale wanted the coup de main effort to
be reinforced, so Howard was told he
could choose any two platoons from
his regiment to be attached to his com-
pany. Also, a detachment of Royal
Engineers from the divisions 249th
Field Company would provide the
expertise needed to disable any demo-
litions placed on the bridges by the Ger-
mans. Howard chose two platoons
from the Ox & Bucks B Company to join his unit.
The detailed plan for the attack came together over the com-
ing months as the troops trained hard for their task, even
though due to secrecy needs they did not know their exact mis-
sion. They would embark aboard six Horsa gliders that would
each hold a platoon plus a small group of engineers. Howard
wanted flexibility in his plan and equipped his platoons so each
could attack a bridge by itself if necessary. During training he
envisioned the different ways things could go wrong and tried
to compensate. Also, each platoon cross-trained so it could
perform in anothers role as needed. The training was ardu-
ous, but it bonded the men together. Howard also had good
officers who shared hardships with their men and were aggres-
sive and capable.
Along with their training, the glider troops benefited from
access to constantly updated intelligence estimates. Photo
reconnaissance flights provided timely images of the bridges
and their defenses; over time the British noted improvements
being made, such as the installation of an antitank gun and the
construction of bunkers. Another invaluable source of infor-
mation was the local French Resistance network. This
included Madame Vion, who ran a maternity hospital on the
south end of Benouville. She collected information from resis-
tance operatives and passed it on to her contacts in Caen dur-
Both: Imperial War Museum
TOP: Taken some time after D-Day, this photograph depicts the bridge over the
Caen Canal and the Caf Gondree on the left bank. The caf was turned into an
aid station shortly after the action near Pegasus Bridge began. ABOVE: Hamilcar
gliders of the British 6th Airborne Division land near the town of Ranville, France,
on June 6, 1944. These gliders are carrying Tetrarch light tanks to support the
offensive operations of the airborne troops.
AB-Pegasus_Layout 1 10/14/14 11:58 AM Page 81
WORLD WAR II AIRBORNE BATTLES 82
ing her periodic trips there for medical supplies.
One of her primary sources of information was the conver-
sation at the Caf Gondree, located on the west bank of the
canal near the bridge. The owners, Georges and Therese
Gondree, simply kept their ears open and listened to the con-
versations of the various German soldiers who frequented the
establishment. Therese was from Alsace and spoke German,
while Georges spoke some English.
The intelligence effort gave them a fairly accurate picture of
the bridges defenses. About 50 troops guarded the two spans,
drawn from the 736th Grenadier Regiment of the 716th
Infantry Division. This unit was composed largely of con-
scripted men from German-occupied nations, such as Poles
and Russians with some, mostly older, Germans mixed in.
German NCOs and officers led the for-
mation. The bridge defenses were com-
manded by Major Hans Schmidt.
From the layout of the defenses, the
Germans expected any concerted attack
on the bridges to come from the east.
Most of the machine guns at each bridge
were oriented to the east while the single
antitank gun installed at the canal bridge
was located on the east side as well. Sev-
eral bunkers were also constructed, and
trench systems radiated around the
bridges for riflemen and machine gunners.
Barbed wire entanglements were also
emplaced, but these were mounted in such
a way as to be easily movable.
Preparations had been made to destroy
the bridges if necessary, but the explo-
sives themselves had not been installed.
This was due to fear of raids by the
French Resistance which might try to
blow up the bridges anyway. Some of
these defenses, such as the antitank
emplacement and the bunkers, were
begun only the month before on orders
of Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, who
toured the coastal defenses and found
them wanting. He ordered a number of
improvements throughout the area, including the upgrades to
the bridge defense network.
Now, on the night of June 5, the six gliders hung from tow
lines attached to Handley Page Halifax bombers, the whole
group making its way across the English Channel. Three pla-
toons would land at the canal bridge in a field to its southeast:
25 Platoon, led by Lieutenant Den Brotheridge, would lead
off with three men detailed to throw grenades through the
embrasures of the bunker on the east bank, thought to be
where the demolition controls were kept. The remainder of 25
Platoon would cross the bridge itself and seize the western side.
Lieutenant David Woods 24 Platoon would remain on the east
side and clear all the German positions there. Finally, in the last
glider to land, Lieutenant R. Sandy Smiths 14 Platoon
Imperial War Museum
Map 2013 Philip Schwartzberg, Meridian Mapping, Minneapolis, MN
TOP: Photographed a month after its
seizure, Pegasus Bridge appears as it
did the morning of D-Day. Two gliders
are visible at right, still lying in the field
where they landed on D-Day. BOTTOM:
The coordinated attack by elements of
the 6th Airborne Division in the
predawn hours of D-Day was intended
to take the German defenders of Pega-
sus Bridge by surprise.
AB-Pegasus_Layout 1 10/14/14 11:58 AM Page 82
WORLD WAR II AIRBORNE BATTLES 83
would follow Brotheridges men across
to the west side and reinforce them.
The other three platoons would land
near the river bridge to its northwest.
Lieutenant Tony Hoopers 22 Platoon
was tasked to overrun the defenses and
swarm the east side of the bridge. The
men of 23 Platoon under Lieutenant H.J.
Todd Sweeney would stay on the west
side and take hold of the defenses there
while Lieutenant Dennis Foxs 17 Pla-
toon in the last Horsa would reinforce
the first two groups.
The sappers attached to each platoon
would disable any explosives on the
bridges while the glider pilots would
unload and distribute the extra ammu-
nition and equipment. Once taken, the
code words Ham and Jam would be
sent to confirm the seizure of the bridges.
With both in British hands, the glider
infantry would hold until relieved by the
7th Battalion, 5th Parachute Brigade,
whose commander would take over
when he arrived.
As the platoons sat in their gliders, the
soldiers tried to pass the time by singing. Private Wally Parr led
the group with a song called Abby, Abby, My Boy. Parr had
been in the company practically since the beginning and was
once almost RTUd (Returned To Unit) for a disciplinary
infraction. Howard had personally intervened on Parrs behalf,
believing the man would be an asset once in action. Parr stayed
in the company but lost his corporals stripes. Now, with his
loud, cockney-accented voice, he sang one song after another.
In the front of the glider, Staff Sergeant Jim Wallwork con-
centrated on piloting the aircraft once it was free of the bomber.
A series of turns had to be made during the descent, exactly on
time, or the glider could wind up miles off course. Next to him
co-pilot Staff Sergeant John Ainsworth held a stopwatch to
time each turn and phase of the landing. The other glider pilots
likewise prepared for their landings.
Seated nearby, Private Willy Gray had a much more serious
problem. Before taking off he helped himself to plenty of tea
and a bit of rum and now had to urinate badly. With nothing
to do for it, he joined in the singing. Taking a break from his
own singing, Parr asked loudly, Has the major laid his kit
yet? On every training flight, Major Howard had suffered
from airsickness and experienced the natural result. For what-
ever reason, this time his troubled stomach was calm, and its
contents remained in his belly. Howard took the joke well and
laughed with the rest of the glidermen.
Finally, at 0007 hours, June 6, 1944, it was time to cast off
the tow line. The bombers roared off for their diversionary
attack on Caen, and the gliders began their descent toward the
bridges. At three minutes and 42 seconds, Ainsworth said sim-
ply, Now! and Jim Wallwork turned the glider to starboard.
The glider lost altitude rapidly, and seconds later Ainsworth
gave the signal for a second right turn that brought the glider
onto course for the landing field next to the canal bridge. At
first they could see nothing ahead of them, only the antiair-
craft searchlights and tracer fire behind them in Caen, firing
on the bombers.
Then, just as in their training, there it was. The bridge with
its distinctive shape, the bunker, the antitank gun, and fields
around it all were clearly visible. The barbed wire sat on the
north side of the landing strip. During training Howard told
Wallwork he wanted the nose of the glider right against the
wire. The pilot was dubious as to whether it could be done but
promised he would do his best. At 0016 hours, he did just that.
The glider touched ground and skidded across the landing field,
coming to a halt right at the wire.
The aircraft stopped so suddenly both pilots were thrown
out the front, crashing through the windscreen and landing
in front of the glider. In the rest of the glider, 25 Platoon sat
stunned for a few seconds. Major Howard was unconscious
for just a moment. His seatbelt had broken, throwing him
forward where he hit his head on the ceiling. The impact
forced his helmet down over his eyes. When he came to, he
Imperial War Museum
Glider troops of the 6th Airborne Division assemble near their wrecked glider in a
field outside the town of Ranville. Moments earlier, the glider had careened
through a stone wall during landing. Many of the casualties sustained by the
glider troops were due to rough landings.
AB-Pegasus_Layout 1 10/14/14 11:58 AM Page 83
WORLD WAR II AIRBORNE BATTLES 84
thought he was blind for a moment.
Behind him, Lieutenant Brotheridge opened the gliders door
and told a nearby Bren gunner, Gun Out! The platoon
quickly recovered and got out. The bridge was a mere 30 yards
away. Private Gray, also carrying a Bren gun, charged toward
the bridge; his mission was to clear a barn on the west side. As
he neared the span he saw a German soldier and fired a burst
at him. The enemy soldier went down, and Gray carried on
across the bridge, firing as he went. He reached the barn and
tossed in a grenade before emptying the rest of his magazine
into the structure. When he went inside to check, it was empty.
Meanwhile, Wally Parrs mission was to knock out the
machine-gun bunker with grenades. His had gone so dry that his
tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. He finally freed it by
shouting, Come out and fight, you square-headed bastards!
By the time he got onto the bridge, he had recovered. Now shout-
ing Ham and Jam! he went to the bunker, opened the door,
and threw in a grenade. When he heard someone still alive inside,
Parr pulled the door open again and sprayed the interior with
his Sten gun.
As Wally Parr was clearing his bunker, Lieutenant Den Broth-
eridge was leading his platoon across the bridge. Someone on
the German side fired a flare which now hung over the scene.
Perhaps the flares light exposed the young officer to enemy
view or it may have been simple bad luck, but just then a burst
of machine-gun fire lashed out across the
bridge. A bullet hit Brotheridge in the
neck, and he fell to the ground mortally
wounded. So intent were his men on the
attack no one noticed he had fallen until
moments later.
Wally Parr later recalled just reaching
the caf when someone called out,
Wheres Denny? He looked around
and saw someone lying in the roadway.
Running back to him, Parr discovered it
was Brotheridge. The private was struck
by the idea of his lieutenant spending so
much time preparing for this night only
to die in the first minutes. My God!
he thought. What a waste!
To the German sentries guarding the
bridge that night, the attack was over-
whelming. Private Vern Bonck, a young
Polish conscript, had just turned over his
post to Private Helmut Romer, an 18-year-
old from Berlin. Bonck ran into another
Polish draftee, and the two headed off to
visit a late-night bar. Romer and the other
sentry now on duty were to face the British
attack. The antitank gun was unmanned,
and the soldiers in the bunker and trenches
dozed at their positions. They had ignored the antiaircraft fire
and distant bombing; such things were commonplace by now.
They had dismissed the noise made by the glider landing as falling
wreckage from a bomber, again not uncommon.
There was no mistaking what they saw next. Dark, screaming
figures raced out of the darkness, faces blackened, firing auto-
matic weapons. The young Romer did the only thing he could;
he turned and ran the other way, shouting Paratroopers! as
he ran past the other sentry, who apparently fired the flare before
being shot down, possibly by Brotheridge. The soldiers in the
bunker and trenches were quickly overwhelmed.
A short distance up the road leading west, veteran German
paratrooper Sergeant Heinrich Hickman heard the weapons
fire and recognized it as British. He had been out collecting
some soldiers on guard duty and was on his way back to his
unit. He told two of the soldiers to get out of their car and take
the right side of the road while he and the other two took the
left. They had crept to within 50 meters or so of the bridge
when Hickman spotted the British soldiers advancing toward
him. What he saw frightened even him. He remembered that it
was at nighttime when you see a Para running with a Bren
gun, and the next with a Sten, and no cover round my back, just
me and four youngsters who had never been in action. So I
could not rely on themin those circumstances, you get
scared.... So I pull my trigger, I fire.
Imperial War Museum
Royal Marine Commandos march through the town of Colleville-sur-Orne en
route to Pegasus bridge and the relief of the lightly armed airborne soldiers.
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WORLD WAR II AIRBORNE BATTLES 85
His first target was Billy Gray, who
was just reloading after spraying the
barn. Gray fired back, but neither hit
the other. The British soldier ducked
back into the barn, so Hickman shifted
his fire toward the bridge. Inside the
barn, Gray finally took a moment to
empty his bursting bladder. Outside,
Hickman expended the rest of his
ammunition and realized it was time to
go. Motioning to the four privates, they
all got back into their car and raced off
toward Caen. With the bridge in British
hands his 15-minute trip back to his
unit would now take six hours as he
diverted around Caen.
At the bar, Vern Bonck rushed out into
the street with his fellow Pole when the
firing started. They ran up the street to
the intersection west of the bridge. They
took one look at the pitched battle and
ran south on the road toward Caen.
After running a while they stopped and
talked about what to do. Their conclu-
sion was simple; the pair fired all their
cartridges and ran back into Benouville. There, they reported
to their superiors that enemy paratroopers had attacked the
bridge and that they had fought until running out of ammuni-
tion before retreating to make their report.
By now the other gliders had landed and more British troops
surged onto the bridge. The second glider, containing Lieu-
tenant David Woods 24 Platoon, skidded to a halt mere yards
from the first. It broke in two pieces, and Wood was thrown
out onto the ground, though he managed to keep a grip on the
bucket of hand grenades he was carrying. On the ground next
to him were Private Harry Clark and several others. Fortu-
nately, none of the grenades detonated. They moved off, and
Clark remembered helping to clear the trenches. He ran past
an abandoned MG34 machine gun, an unfired belt of ammu-
nition hanging from its feed tray.
There was a lot of firing going on and a lot of shouting,
Clark said. We cleared the trenches on the other side very
quickly ... nothing really in the way of strong opposition.
The third glider, carrying Lieutenant Sandy Smiths 14 Pla-
toon, had a hard landing as well. It bounced heavily and sent
Smith flying through the cockpit Perspex. He landed in front
of the glider, stunned. Luckily, Lance Corporal Madge came up
to him and said, Well, what are we waiting for, Sir? Some-
how, that snapped Smith back into focus, and he led his able
men toward the bridge. Several of his men were injured and
stayed in the glider for the time being, including Captain John
Vaughan, the groups medical officer. Tragically, Lance Cor-
poral Greenhalgh, likely out of his senses as well, wandered
into an undetected marsh pond near the glider and drowned.
As Smith moved onto the bridge limping from an injured
knee, a German threw a grenade at him. A fragment from the
blast struck the officer in the wrist, and the German tried to
flee. I saw him climbing over the wall ... I shot him as he was
going overI made certain too. I gave him quite a lot of
rounds, firing from the hipit was very close range, Smith
recalled. Madge ran up and asked if he was all right. Smith
inspected his torn wrist and replied. Christ! No more cricket!
Smith moved on and was soon outside the Caf Gondree.
Upstairs, Georges poked his head out to see what was hap-
pening. Smith saw him and in the heat of the moment fired at
him. Luckily, the fire went high and the Frenchman ducked in
time. He took his wife and daughters to the cellar to await the
battles conclusion. A short time later there was a knock at the
caf door. Georges opened it and saw two British soldiers in
black face paint. They asked in French if there were any Ger-
mans in the building. After telling them there werent, the caf
owner beckoned them inside. There, he took the apprehensive
men toward the cellar, using gestures to convey his family was
down there.
Finally, one of the Englishmen must have realized what
Georges meant, because he told his comrade, Its all right,
chum. When the Frenchman realized they were speaking Eng-
lish, he began crying for joy. His wife and children began kiss-
ing them until their faces were smudged with the black cam-
Imperial War Museum
Partially concealed in a ditch, glider troops of the 6th Airborne Division guard a
crossroads near Ranville on June 7, 1944. Their glider is seen across the road
where it landed the previous day.
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WORLD WAR II AIRBORNE BATTLES 86
ouflage paint. Wally Parr recalled later giving one of the daugh-
ters, five-year-old Arlette, a chocolate bar. It was the first she
had ever had.
Within a short time the caf was converted into an aid sta-
tion. Casualties were brought into the main room while the
dining table became a makeshift operating table. Captain John
Vaughan would practice his skills here aided by Therese
Gondree, who was a trained nurse. Out in the yard Georges
grabbed a shovel and dug up some 90 bottles of champagne
he had buried when the German occupation began in 1940.
This he began giving out to whichever British troops came to
the caf. As the day went by many of the glidermen found an
excuse to go to the caf and get their free drink.
Meanwhile, Lieutenant Wood thought his platoon had fin-
ished clearing the buildings near the bridge and had started
back to report to Major Howard with his platoon sergeant
and batman. As they moved off, a hidden German fired a burst
of submachine gun fire that managed to hit all of them. Wood
collapsed with a wound to the leg. Luckily, the platoon medic,
Lance Corporal Harris, came along quickly and treated him.
Wood recovered, but the injury left him with one leg slightly
shorter than the other.
Howard, who had set up a command post in the trenches
near the bridge, initially was unaware he had lost two of the
platoon commanders so early in the fight. His radioman, Cor-
poral Tappenden, was with him. Howard first learned of the
loss of Den Brotheridge. The loss of a key leader was only exac-
erbated by the fact the lieutenants wife Margaret was pregnant
and due to deliver any day. Before long he learned all three of
his officers were wounded or injured to some degree. Still, the
canal bridge was in British hands.
At the Orne River Bridge, the first glider to land carried 23
Platoon under Lieutenant Todd Sweeney. Unfortunately, the
glider had struck an air pocket on the way down and landed
hundreds of yards from the bridge, perhaps as many as 1,300
yards by one account. Its occupants had no choice but to
unload and make for the bridge as quickly as possible. The
glider with Lieutenant Foxs 17 Platoon had better luck, at
least in the landing. The touchdown was smooth, and Fox
jumped up to open the door but it would not budge no mat-
ter how hard he pulled on it.
Then, Sergeant Wagger Thornton came up beside him and
said, You just pull it forward, Sir. In his excitement Fox had
been tugging the wrong way. With the door now open the sol-
diers poured out, but another problem arose. A soldier, Tommy
Clare, did not have the safety properly engaged on his Sten
gun. When he hit the ground the weapon was jarred and fired
a burst into the air. Quickly the platoon formed up under the
wing of the glider and listened.
Quiet greeted them and Fox said simply, To hell with it,
lets get cracking. The platoon moved out, and almost imme-
diately a German machine gun opened fire from the far bank.
Wagger Thornton was thinking ahead, however. He had
already set up a 2-inch mortar. He put two bombs on the
machine-gun position, and the crew fled into the dark as British
soldiers sprinted across the bridge. One of them took over the
now abandoned weapon and started firing at its former crew.
Within a matter of seconds, the river bridge was also in British
hands, this time without any casualties.
Minutes later, Sweeney and 23 Platoon arrived. The two lieu-
tenants gathered to confer. Sergeant Thornton recalled Sweeney
asking Fox what was happening. Fox, recalling their training
back in England, replied, The exercise went very well, but I
cant find no bloody umpires to find out whos killed and whos
alive! A message was sent to Howard via radio reporting the
seizure of the bridge intact.
There was still no sign of the third glider, however, and ulti-
mately there would not be. Carrying Lieutenant Hoopers 22
Platoon along with the missions second-in-command, Captain
Brian Priday, the last glider flew off course. It landed some
eight miles away at the Varaville Bridge. So now Howard and
his men had completed the first part of their mission. They had
seized the bridges. Now they had to hold them with one pla-
toon missing and several of their officers wounded, missing,
or dead.
Considering this, Howard modified his plan. He felt the
biggest threat to his position came from the west. The British
6th Airborne was landing in the area to the east of the river
bridge and would soon saturate it, providing a level of pro-
tection. Indeed, at 0050 hours, the first wave of paratroopers
flew overhead and dropped to the east around Ranville. The
men of Company D had a front row seat as tracer fire and
searchlight beams mixed with the descending parachutes.
Meanwhile, radioman Corporal Tappenden started sending
the signal, Ham and Jam, signifying both bridges were cap-
tured intact. After frustrating minutes of transmission, finally
an acknowledgement was received. Howard ordered 17 Pla-
toon to the canal bridge to bolster the defense.
When they arrived, Howard pushed them to the road inter-
section west of the bridge, where armored vehicles had been
heard moving. Each glider carried a PIAT antitank weapon,
but at the time only one could be found in working order. It
was given to 17 Platoon with a few rounds of ammunition.
Sergeant Thornton took the weapon and made ready. It was
now about 0200 hours.
As the British soldiers took cover around the intersection,
three German armored vehicles rumbled down the road in the
darkness. Thornton took a position 30 yards from the T-junc-
tion and watched as the armored vehicle began moving cau-
tiously toward the bridge. The Englishman later reported he
was shaking like a leaf and it was hard to see. Nevertheless,
he took careful aim and fired at the looming black shape. The
spring-loaded spigot in the PIAT launched its bomb straight
into the side of the enemy vehicle. Immediately, an enormous
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WORLD WAR II AIRBORNE BATTLES 87
explosion shattered the night air and flames rose into the
gloom. Four crewmen bailed out of the vehicle, and Waggers
assistant on the PIAT opened fire on them. A fifth man was
apparently trapped inside the flaming wreckage. The other two
vehicles beat a hasty retreat the way they had come as the
wreck continued to burn for over an hour.
Later reports variously identified the armored vehicle as a
PzKpfw. IV tank, a captured French Char B1 tank, or a half-
track. The unit identified as the first to reach the bridge in these
vehicles was probably Panzer Pioneer Company 1. Such a unit
would probably not have had tanks, but easily could have had
halftracks. If they were loaded down with explosives and
mines, as an engineer vehicle would be, it would explain the
pyrotechnic display of burning and exploding ordnance. What-
ever the case, the Germans made a mistake trying to advance
with armor unsupported by infantry.
To the east at the river bridge, the glidermen were also meet-
ing the Germans. Some of Sweeneys 23 Platoon spotted a
group of soldiers moving along the riverbank toward the
bridge. Since the British 6th Airborne had landed, a challenge
was given since it was expected the paras would gather at the
bridge. A reply was heard, but it was in German. The defend-
ers opened fire, wiping out the whole group. Sadly, when the
platoon checked after daylight, one of the dead was found to
be a British Para, a pathfinder apparently captured and
brought along.
Shortly after the German patrol was wiped out, the sound
of an armored vehicle was heard approaching from the east.
An armored attack was of great concern to Sweeney. Like his
comrades at the canal bridge, he had only a single PIAT.
Within moments a German half-track came down the road
followed by a motorcycle. Sweeneys troops were hidden in the
ditches alongside the road and watched as it approached. As
it passed, the British opened fire, peppering the vehicle, but it
continued across the bridge. The British troops on the other
side also opened fire, and a Corporal Jennings threw a grenade
into the open topped half-track as it passed him. The German
vehicle veered, crashing into the ditch.
With the action over, the British checked the vehicle and
found a wounded German, none other than the commander of
the bridge defenses, Major Schmidt. Wounded in the leg, he
was taken for medical attention by Captain Vaughan. Schmidt
spoke good English and proceeded to harangue the doctor with
threats of Hitler throwing the Allies back into the sea. After-
ward, he begged to be shot for having failed in his duties.
Finally, Vaughan gave him a shot of morphine; within minutes
Schmidt was much calmer and even thanked the doctor for
Royal Marine Commandos dig trenches and prepare defen-
sive positions near Pegasus after relieving the glider troops
who had taken the bridge across the Caen Canal hours ear-
lier. Several of the gliders used by the airborne troops are
visible in this photo, and the damage to the nose of one of
the aircraft is prominent.
AB-Pegasus_Layout 1 10/14/14 12:00 PM Page 87
WORLD WAR II AIRBORNE BATTLES 88
treating him. An alternate version of the story had Schmidt
arriving at the bridge in a staff car after a night with his mis-
tress, but that version turned out to be untrue.
Starting at 0300 hours, paras of the 7th Battalion, Parachute
Regiment began trickling in to bolster the defenses. One of
them was Lieutenant Richard Sweeney Todd, like the ear-
lier mentioned Sweeney also nicknamed for the murderous bar-
ber (at the time, any British soldier named Todd or Sweeney
seemed to earn the sobriquet). He and his paras began to relieve
the glider troops, many of whom were sent to reinforce else-
where. A number of them were sent to man the German anti-
tank gun mounted in its defensive emplacement, called
Tobruk, on the east side of the canal bridge.
Wally Parr was one of those on the gun. Quickly they dis-
covered a warren of tunnels. Using a flashlight, Parr searched
the tunnel under the gun and found a shaking, frightened Ger-
man soldier hiding under a blanket. Nearby, Sergeant Thorn-
ton found three German soldiers sleeping in an underground
barracks, rifles stacked nearby. Thornton removed the rifles,
and Lieutenant Fox went to rouse the captured Germans. He
pulled the blanket off the first man and said repeatedly in Ger-
man, Komm! The sleepy German, thinking it was a friend
joking with him, responded with an expletive.
Wagger Thornton collapsed in laughter at the spectacle,
while Fox, taken aback, left the job to his amused sergeant.
Thornton alerted the Germans to the seriousness of their
plight with a short burst from his Sten gun. One German pris-
oner could not believe what had happened but eventually
wound up sharing pictures of his family.
With sunrise, enemy snipers began firing on anything that
moved around the canal bridge. A medic attending to Lieu-
tenant Smith was shot through the chest as he stood up, cry-
ing Take my grenades out! He was worried another shot
might explode the deadly little bombs on his chest harness.
Thornton found two more prisoners, who turned out to be
Italian slave laborers. Howard ordered them released and given
food. To the surprise of the British, the two Italians went out
to the landing field, now littered with Horsa gliders, and began
putting up the antiglider poles they had been ordered to install
by the Germans.
Overhead, a pair of Spitfire fighters flew by at 0800 hours,
their pilots seeing the recognition signals the British laid out
to show they had seized the bridges. One of the fighters
dropped a package of the early edition newspapers from Eng-
land. None of them mentioned the landings, but Howard
recalled his men being more interested in the comic strip
adventures of the character Jane. An hour later, Maj. Gen.
Gale came walking down the road with two of his brigadiers,
Nigel Poett of 5th Parachute Brigade and Hugh Kindersley of
5th Air Landing Brigade.
Minutes after the officers arrived, Howards men faced their
next threat, this time from the water. A patrol boat approached
down the canal from the north, armed with a 20mm cannon.
When it got within 50 yards, Corporal Claude Godbold fired
a PIAT round striking the boat behind the wheelhouse. It
slewed over to the bank, and the crew, including its fanatical
Nazi commander, an insult-spewing teenager, was taken pris-
oner. Eventually a fed-up British soldier shut the boy up by hit-
ting him in the shoulder with a rifle butt.
As the German boat crew was marched off to captivity, a
second boat advanced from the south. Parr and the men man-
ning the antitank gun were trying to get it operational. They
had figured out how to load it but were still having trouble
with the firing mechanism when one of the men simply tried a
button and sent a round downrange. Reloading, they turned
the gun on the boat but missed with their first shot. Adjusting,
they fired a second round, which hit the boat now some 300
yards distant. The enemy craft turned around and withdrew,
but not before Parr and company gave it a parting shot,
another hit.
Now the newly formed gun crew was getting used to its
weapon. Parr spotted a water tower he thought was a perfect
spot for the enemy to observe the bridges. He put two rounds
through it to the cheers of his fellow soldiers. Water gushed
from the four small holes left by the rounds entry and exit; they
had fired armor-piercing shot, which held no explosive filler.
Parr next turned his attention to a chateau to the south. Sus-
pecting it as well, he shouted Number 1 gun, fire! and pro-
ceeded to put three rounds into the buildings roof.
Howard was nearby and heard the shout, which he found
odd considering there was only one gun in the area to begin
with. Quickly he ordered Parr to cease fire; the chateau was
actually the maternity hospital run by the local resistance
leader, Madame Vion. After a while his fellow soldiers became
annoyed with Parr for all his shooting; each time the cannon
fired it attracted a swarm of bullets in return. Howard ordered
him to stop firing.
At 1000 hours, the men of D Company saw a rare occurrence
on D-Day, the appearance of a German aircraft overhead. The
fighter roared down toward the bridge, sending the infantry-
men scrambling for cover. The German pilot released a bomb
that soared down, hit the bridge, bounced off, and splashed
into the canal. Howard, having taken cover in the pillbox, was
very impressed by the pilots accuracy but relieved his ordnance
had been a dud.
Midday came and went, and D Company grimly held onto
the bridge despite the incoming fire. Still, no concerted attack
by forces materialized. With the airborne landings, the beach
assaults, and everything else being thrown at them on June 6,
mounting an attack to retake the bridges proved beyond the
Germans that day. At 1330 hours, a few of the glidermen heard
bagpipes. When they said so, several of their comrades scoffed
at them, but after a few minutes the sound grew louder and
closer. It was the 1st Special Service Brigade commanded by
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WORLD WAR II AIRBORNE BATTLES 89
Lord Lovat. Since radio communication
was spotty at best, he had posted piper
Bill Millin at his side, knowing the bag-
pipe would be a good recognition signal.
Lieutenant Sweeney recalled a D Com-
pany man standing up and playing a
bugle in return.
Within minutes Lovat was shaking
hands with Howard, who apologized for
the incoming mortar fire. Apparently
Howard thought it was coming from the
area of the maternity hospital but had
orders not to fire on it. The commandos
began running over the canal bridge,
where several were hit by the ever-present
snipers. It was a hard crossing for the
commandos, but at least now the linkup
between the landing forces and the glider
troops had taken place. Howards force
would remain at the bridge, but the pres-
sure had slackened somewhat with the
arrival of Lovats troops.
As afternoon turned to evening, Ger-
man sniping and indirect fire were still
coming in but lacked the strength to
threaten D Companys position. Just
before nightfall, a massive British
glider drop occurred, hundreds of
them landing nearby. The bombers
towing them dropped supply canisters
from their bomb bays. Soon afterward,
friendly soldiers riding in jeeps came
pouring down the road and crossed the
bridge on their way east. It was all a welcome sight.
Even more welcome was relief, which came a few hours later,
not long before midnight. The 2nd Battalion of the Royal War-
wickshire Regiment marched up to the bridge, and Howard
turned the defense over to them. Company D had completed
its mission. They were among the first Allied soldiers to land
in France on D-Day and the first to enter combat with the Ger-
mans. It was a very impressive job for the companys first time
in combat. In their honor, the canal bridge was renamed Pega-
sus Bridge in recognition of the units shoulder patch, while
the river bridge became known as Horsa Bridge. Major
Howard was awarded the Distinguished Service Order for his
actions and leadership.
Months after the battle, Wally Parr was reading an Ameri-
can magazine that contained an article about the battle for the
bridge. It mentioned how the dastardly Germans, in their cru-
elty, had shelled the local maternity hospital during the battle.
He would later say, This was the first and last time I had
shelled pregnant women and newborn babies.
The seizure of the bridges was featured in Cornelius Ryans
postwar book The Longest Day, widening publicity of this
action. When the film version of the book was made in 1962,
the role of Major Howard went to actor Richard Todd, the
former para lieutenant who was at the bridge on June 6.
The Gondrees continued to run their caf and served free
drinks to veterans of D-Day each year on June 6. The caf and
bridge area are now considered national monuments, and a
museum is nearby. The bridge itself was replaced when the
canal was widened postwar, but the original bridge sits at the
museum. Also on display are a Horsa glider and Major
Howards beret along with various weapons and relics related
to the battle. It is a fitting honor to the memory of a small
group of men who risked so much doing their part to liberate
France from the Nazi yoke.

Christopher Miskimon is a regular contributor to WWII His-

tory. He is an officer in the Colorado National Guards 157th
Regiment.
Three days after it was secured by airborne troops on D-Day, the bridge over the
Caen Canal allows British vehicles to cross the waterway. The span was later
renamed Pegasus Bridge in honor of the heroic airborne assault and referencing
the insignia of the 6th Airborne Division.
Imperial War Museum
AB-Pegasus_Layout 1 10/14/14 12:01 PM Page 89
AT MIDNIGHT, the jumpers of 2nd Battalion, 517th Para-
chute Regimental Combat Team, as well as the 596th Para-
chute Combat Engineer Company, still dripping from the
paint-spray line, shuffled across Ombrone Airfield to the wait-
ing C-47s of Serial 6 and climbed aboard. Some were so
weighed down that air corpsmen had to assist them aboard.
The airborne combat engineers were not only weighed down
with a heavy load, but with dangerous explosives. We jumped
with boxes of tetro caps above our reserve chutes, Hal
Roberts, combat engineer of the 517th Parachute Infantry Reg-
iment, said. These were wooden boxes, felt-lined, with 24
caps each about the width of a pencil. If those exploded, thered
be nothing left of you. So you protected those things. They fig-
ured the only way we could get them down without explod-
ing was with us absorbing the impact shock of landing.
The details of Operation Dragoon were mind numbing.
Three hundred thousand men. Several thousand planes. A
thousand ships. An advance force of 5,600 paratroopers so
large it demanded its own operation title: Albatross.
Before equipment was packed up, it was neatly laid out on
shelter halves for an officers inspection, then packed. Each man
had two bandoliers of .30-caliber rifle ammunition, half a belt
for the squad machine gun, Mae West, a full musette bag, escape
WORLD WAR II AIRBORNE BATTLES 90
A group of British and American airborne troops takes a
break beside a farmhouse in southern France. Hal Roberts
participated in action against the Germans along with a
group of British paras. INSET: Airborne Engineer Hal Roberts
is shown in full jump gear, ready for Operation Dragoon.
An American airborne engineer
recalls his drop into southern
France and an operation with
British comrades.
CLOSE
ENCOUNTER
BY CHRIS BLENDHEIM
All photos: National Archives
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WORLD WAR II AIRBORNE BATTLES 91
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WORLD WAR II AIRBORNE BATTLES 92
pouch, canteen, entrenching tool, an M-1 carbine with a fold-
ing stock or a standard M-1 rifle broken down into three parts
in a Griswold case, bayonet, three knives, shelter half, raincoat,
main parachute, reserve parachute, and enough K rations, C
rations, and concentrated chocolate D bars to last three days.
Most of the men painted their faces with black and green
camouflage from Lily Dach cosmetic tubes, and some shaved
their heads to resemble Mohawks. The Nazi propagandists
used this as proof to the French people that the Americans
were murderers and lunatics. Some GIs, later lost in the French
countryside, had asked Frenchmen for directions, only to scare
them silly.
The engineers did not jump as a company. Third Platoon
jumped with 3rd Battalion, while Company Headquarters and
2nd Platoon came with Regimental Headquarters. First Pla-
toon jumped with the 509th Combat Team. As part of Com-
pany Headquarters, Hal Robertss plane lifted off around 1:30
AM, flew north along the coast of Italy, then veered northwest
at Elba.
We could see the marker ships below, he remembered.
These were positioned to guide the armada with marker lights.
After the last one of them, we turned inland, so I thought, Im
not going to need this Mae West anymore, and I chucked it.
Anticipating the jump, the last man, the pusher, inched for-
ward, causing the whole stick of jumpers to close in tightly
before the door. All the men had the forward lean of marathon
runners on their mark. Hal put his shoulder into the man in
front as he watched the red light. Before the jump, Lieutenant
Larson said three lasting words that echoed in his mind until
he jumped: God bless you.
At 4:32 AM the red light went out, and a green light pushed
reality into gear.
Go! Go!
The jumpers literally pushed the men in front of them so that
the plane flushed the men out in a long string within about
four seconds. Any sizable gap between men could mean a
jumper lost or dead. They went out at 1,500 feet, twice that of
a normal combat jump.
Just before the jump, the planes had climbed above the thick-
ening clouds where the moon illuminated the blanket of white
into what appeared like a shimmering sea. As I got out into
the sky, Roberts recalled, I thought, Oh God, I thought we
went inland! Am I going into the drink without my Mae
West?
Weighed down by his rucksack, a trooper tangled in a mass
of suspension lines might well drown. But relief swelled within
him as he slipped silently through a sheet of moonlit clouds and
into the black night below.
Before I hit the ground, I could hear the rapid burp of gun-
fire, Hal related. This was the German MG-42, a machine
gun that could fire up to 1,200 rounds per minute. Instead of
emitting the familiar bup-bup-bup-bup of the American M2
.50-caliber machine gun, it emitted the sound of ripping can-
vas, a buzzsaw, or a protracted belch.
I crash-landed in the bushes, said Hal. I didnt know what
I was in or where I was, but there was lots of burp gun fire.
And they fire so fast! I thought, This is not good.
Hal had landed in a vineyard in the town of Le Muy, miles
away from his planned drop zone and the rest of Headquar-
ters Company. Row after row of low-growing grapevines
striped the rock-hard soil and ran lengthwise between a road
and a dry riverbed. All around him were pockets of gunfire
and shouting men, all veiled in darkness.
I wasnt able to double up, due to a bush that was jammed
into the parachute backpack, so I couldnt get my chute off,
he said. So Hal called out for help to any jumper who might
be in the next row of low-level shrubs. The MG-42 immedi-
ately ripped through his area.
The only thought to rush through his
head was, Theyre shooting at me! I
cant believe theyre shooting at me!
Fear paralyzed him. Adrenaline shot
through his veins.
Clyde Hoffman, who had been right
behind Hal in the jumping stick, crashed
in the distance and in Hals row of
grapevines. Hoffman crawled to his posi-
tion.
You alright? You hit?
No, Im okay. But this is one helluva
way to greet visitors.
Hey, are you flipping your wig?
I cant get outta my chute.
Hoffman took out his trench knife and
cut away at the harness material.
Wait a minute, youre cutting me!
The Douglas C-47 transport aircraft was the workhorse of the U.S. Army airlift
operations in Western Europe. These two C-47s are en route to the skies above
southern France on August 15, 1944, during Operation Dragoon.
AB-Op. Dragoon_Layout 1 10/14/14 12:06 PM Page 92
WORLD WAR II AIRBORNE BATTLES 93
Rounds were tearing up the bushes all
around them since Hals white chute,
draped clearly over the shrub, marked
his position. Soon he was free, and they
moved under the only cover the orchard
would afford at a low crawl, lower than
a snakes belly, low so that your helmet
is plowing a trough for you to crawl
through, low so that your waistband
scoops dirt into your underwear and you
dont care, just as long as the German
machine gun does not find you.
Every time Hal pulled his leg up to
move, it bumped his entrenching tool
and the sound invited more fire. The
Germans were listening very intently.
He ditched it and his rucksack; they
were too big. Any sound made the enemy
machine gun come alive, and each mans
insides recoiled with the thought that any
one of those rounds had his name on it.
They remained still, and all was silent
between bursts.
Hal and Clyde weighed their situation.
At one end of the row was a two-story
building, beside it a tree that held a paratrooper above the
ground. His body gently rotated in the harness like a hanged
man at the gallows. The eastern sky showed some color.
Listen, Hoffman whispered. Its going to be daylight
soon. With that machine gun, were not getting out of here.
And theyre gonna be patrolling through here at daylight.
Whatre we gonna do?
Listen, the gliders should be coming in soon. Once they do,
thatll take some of the heat off of us. Then we can move.
After weighing a certain death against an uncertain future,
they agreed to dig in. For over an hour, the two paratroopers
carefully cut free strands of shrubbery and camouflaged each
other. Each man slipped into the small hole he had made in the
bush and pulled more branches in, above, and behind.
How do I look? Hal whispered.
From his side in the shrubbery, Clyde nodded. Sunrise soon
discovered them, shining light through the leaves and quick-
ening their feelings of vulnerability. They watched as a group
of German soldiers swung a dead American paratrooper, hang-
ing in his harness, against the side of the tree he landed in. The
Germans smoked cigarettes and laughed.
The two Americans heard slow footsteps from behind. Hal
thumbed the safety of his .45-caliber pistol.
A pair of boots and the muzzle of a rifle came into view. The
Germans leather soles crushed pebbles into the soil. Hal shifted
only his eyes into the next row where Hoffman lay, hoping
Clydes camouflage resembled that of his own.
The faceless Nazi passed them by. Hal thought the soldier
would hear his thumping heart. After what seemed an eternity,
they slowly crawled free of the vines so that anyone watching
the rows could not detect movement. At the opposite end of
the orchard was another two-story building heavily fortified by
a rock wall. Hal motioned to Hoffman to go toward the
riverbed. They began their long journey on their bellies over
and through the bushes, not as men, but as clumps of vegeta-
tion moving slower than the eye suspected.
They found other 517th jumpersdead. They had tried to
run out of the orchard in a low crouch, which put them high
enough for the MG-42 alongside the road to be effective. The
gun had worked the whole orchard that night.
From the last row of grapevines they spotted the riverbed.
The rocks were white as snow, Hal recalled. Wed have
been dead before two steps.
They turned back and crawled past the fortified building. A
sentry on top of the building looked out over the orchard and
the surrounding countryside, then turned and disappeared for
a few moments, only to return. They found a pattern to the
guards boredom, and they moved during his absence.
With dead ends on three sides, that left only one option: the
road, which was protected by the machine-gun emplacement.
They slowly moved their way into a position alongside the
road where they could view it. It took six hours to crawl this
route of a few hundred yards at a snails pace with hearts beat-
ing time.
The airborne drop zones for Operation Dragoon were clustered in areas to sup-
port the amphibious landings by Allied troops on the coast of southern France;
however, a number of airborne units were scattered over wide areas and missed
their drop zones by miles. Hal Roberts came down near the village of Le Muy,
some distance from his intended area of operations.
Map 2014 Philip Schwartzberg, Meridian Mapping, Minneapolis, MN
AB-Op. Dragoon_Layout 1 10/14/14 12:07 PM Page 93
WORLD WAR II AIRBORNE BATTLES 94
Two German soldiers manned the
machine gun, a triggerman and a belt
man who also had to frequently change
barrels on a weapon with such a high
rate of fire. They focused their gun over
the open field and into the hills where
activity was increasing. Hal raised his M-
1 Garand and fired two rounds, one
right after the other. They were so close
that he did not even use his sights. The
triggerman fell, then his assistant.
Hal mused, There was only one
way out, and thats what I had to do to
survive.
Running parallel to the road was a
ditch full of water. Had they known
about it from the beginning, it would
have saved them hours of low crawling.
They slid into the ditch just as mortars
started dropping where they had been.
Hal found himself up to his neck in water.
Clyde was about a head shorter. They
slogged along this waterway, passing
underground and into the cattails, cover-
ing their trail as they went. After being in
the cold water so long, the sun-warmed cattails felt wonderful.
We came across this little French kid, 10 years old or so,
Hal recalled. He came up to me and grabbed my arm and
kissed my shoulder patch. He said, Langlais est l, pointing
the way, and I said, Merci. We made our way over there and
met up with 40 Brits commanded by an English major. They
had been running into trouble, so I told them, Youre going to
have clear going because there was a machine gun there thats
not there anymore. They said, Yank, come on aboard! Hoff-
man and I didnt have our packs; we had left them in the
orchard and donated them to the enemy. So the English gave
us food and ammunition.
The unit, likely part of the British 2nd Independent Para-
chute Brigade, was preparing a raid on the fortified command
post, the same one with its inattentive guard that Hal and Hoff-
man had passed that morning. The plan was to approach the
command post on the opposite side where a huge cornfield lay.
One of the first things they told their American friends was,
You dont need that helmet.
They tore off triangles of camouflaged parachute silk and
gave them to the Americans.
Why?
It makes less noise, and you dont need anything that does-
nt stop bullets. That helmet doesnt stop bullets. Maybe a lit-
tle shrapnel and mud and dirt falling on your head, thats all.
Seeing how the Brits wore bandanas, the Americans followed
suit. They sat in a cornfield in the warmth of the sun, prepar-
ing their equipment for the task at hand, packing plastic balls
of composition C2 explosive with tetra caps.
Whatre we doing? Hal asked.
Yank, were making Gammon grenades!
At about 2:30 PM, the major gave his men the command, and
the two Yanks went along for the ride. The lead element
sprinted across the field, a number of them yelling, Bash em!
Bash em! The first set of men who made it to the wall tossed
Gammon grenades over and stood there, the next set hunched
down behind them, the third set crouched on hands and
kneesall together forming a human staircase. The remaining
Brits ran up their backs, shouting and throwing grenades.
Plumes of black smoke erupted from behind the wall, and the
Brits jumped headlong into them with Tommy guns firing.
By the time Hal and Clyde got over the wall, the Brits had
opened the gate from inside. They ran into the command post
to find the Brits stitching the ceiling both ways with hundreds
of rounds. They were just running those Tommy guns, con-
stantly firing. Those guns were hot, Hal remembered.
They had taken the command post in less than 10 minutes.
The Germans suffered 30 dead and 80 taken prisoner. Then
Hal discovered why the British had worked so fast: tea time.
These Limeys, Hal recalled with a laugh, they took out
their Bunsen burners and had their spot o tea! Three in the
afternoon, time to take a vacation from the war! I thought if I
was these Germans, Id time everything to take place at three
in the afternoon!

American paratroopers, with U.S. flags emblazoned on their shoulders for easy
identification and bayonets fixed, take cover along a dirt road near the town of La
Motte, France, on August 15, 1944.
AB-Op. Dragoon_Layout 1 10/14/14 12:07 PM Page 94
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AB-Op. Dragoon_Layout 1 10/14/14 12:07 PM Page 95
WORLD WAR II AIRBORNE BATTLES 96
ACTION
AT
ARNHEM
BY DAVID H. LIPPMAN
AB-Arnhem_Layout 1 10/14/14 12:14 PM Page 96
WORLD WAR II AIRBORNE BATTLES 97
A bridge across the Rhine
proved an insurmountable goal for
the ill-fated British 1st Airborne
during Operation Market-Garden.
IT
was getting dark when they
reached the bridge, but there it
was, still intact. Lieutenant Jack
Grayburns No. 2 Platoon was led by A Com-
pany, and soon they concentrated underneath
the ramp carrying the roadway onto the
bridge, out of sight of any Germans on the
bridge itself. Lieutenant Robin Vlasto later
wrote, Things were organized amid the most
awful row. There was a complete absence of
any enemy and the general air of peace was
quite incredible. The CO arrived and seemed
extremely happy, making cracks about every-
ones nerves being jumpy.
It was 8 PM, the evening of September 17,
1944. After a long march from its drop zone,
the 2nd Battalion of Britains elite Parachute
Regiment had reached the objective of the
entire Market-Garden campaign, the Arnhem
bridge. Now the battalionand elements of
the 1st Parachute Brigade trickling insimply
had to hold it until they were relieved by the
British 2nd Army, heading north from the
Dutch-Belgian border.
The 2nd Battalions arrival at the bridge was
the culmination of the Market-Garden plan,
which was the largest airborne assault in his-
tory. Some 35,000 British and American para-
troopers dropped up to 63 miles behind Ger-
man lines in The Netherlands to open an
airborne carpet across a series of rivers,
enabling the British 2nd Army to drive across
the Rhine and be in a position to menace both
the Ruhr and the Nazi V-2 sites in Holland.
It was a plan that gambled on speed, surprise,
and German disorganization, and it was the
brainchild of Field Marshal Sir Bernard Law
David Shepherd, Bridgeman Art Library
The wreckage of German vehicles lies strewn across
Arnhem bridge following a brisk fight between
British troops of the 1st Airborne Division and SS
forces on the afternoon of the second day of Opera-
tion Market-Garden. Although the Germans were
repulsed in this attack, heavy armor and over-
whelming numerical superiority eventually wore
down the lightly armed paras, who surrendered
after holding out much longer than expected.
AB-Arnhem_Layout 1 10/14/14 12:14 PM Page 97
WORLD WAR II AIRBORNE BATTLES 98
Montgomery, the victor of El Alamein, not a man known for
relying on speed and surprise. But if Montys audacious plan
worked, it could shorten the war by weeks or months.
In any case, the plan called for the British 1st Airborne Divi-
sion to make the deepest drop, at the town of Arnhem, 63 miles
behind enemy lines. The divisions paratroops and glidermen
would land on a field six to eight miles from the Arnhem
bridge, the final objective of the Allied drive. Once on the
ground, 1st Airborne was to send a squadron of jeeps equipped
with Vickers machine guns racing ahead of the ground forces
to seize the bridge and hold it until the foot troops marched up.
Assigned to reach the bridge first was the 2nd Battalion, a
veteran outfit that had been formed on October 1, 1941. Under
the command of the driving Lt. Col. John D. Frost, its men
had made combat jumps on a raid into France to seize a radar
station and airborne assaults in North Africa and Sicily. The
battalion had a strong Irish and Scots character.
The drop went off almost perfectly, with Frosts 481 men form-
ing up and heading along Route Lion, backed by some Royal
Engineers and five 6-pounder (57mm) antitank guns.
The battalion moved through the towns of Heveadorp and
Oosterbeek against light opposition, enjoying a rapturous wel-
come. Captain Tony Frank wrote of his memories of the march
to the bridge: One was [amazed by] the incredible number of
orange flowers or handkerchiefs that suddenly appeared like
magic. The Dutch were very much in family groups, in staid
clothing, out on this fine Sunday afternoon. The second mem-
ory was of the problem of trying to stop them slowing down our
men by pressing cakes, milk, etc., on them. It was an atmosphere
of great jubilation at the start of the move, mainly in the coun-
try area near Heveadorp and Oosterbeek, but it petered out
when the first hold-up and sporadic firing started. There werent
so many Dutch out then, but a few stout ones stayed on and
watched the fun.
Private Sidney Elliott remembered, The Dutch population
rushed out of their houses, cheered us, shook hands, gave us
drinks, apples and marigoldsand some of us were lucky
enough to receive the odd kiss. How could this be war? It was
a question that would be answered very soon.
Ordered not to accept any of the alcoholic drinks offered,
the British took the advance more seriously when they came
under sniper fire. Soon the battalion reached its first objec-
tive, the railway bridge across the Rhine at Oosterbeek. Lieu-
tenant Peter Barry and his men charged the bridge. As they
ran up, their hobnailed boots clattering on the bridges steel,
the center span of the bridge exploded, and metal plates right
in front of Barry flew into the air. Barry and his men halted
immediately.
It was lucky that we had stopped when we did, otherwise
we would have all been killed, Barry recalled. No one was
injured in the explosion. Then I felt something hit my left; I
looked back and asked if anyone was shooting. They all said,
No. It was a German bullet. Next I felt a searing shot through
my upper right arm, and it seemed to become disconnected; it
went round and round in circles; the bone had been completely
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Paras of the British 1st Airborne Division drop into an open
field during the early hours of Operation Market-Garden, the
Allied attempt to seize key bridges in the Netherlands and
strike into the Ruhr, the industrial heart of Germany.
AB-Arnhem_Layout 1 10/14/14 12:14 PM Page 98
WORLD WAR II AIRBORNE BATTLES 99
severed. There were only a few shots, but
whoever was firing certainly picked me
out as a leader and hit me.
Barry pulled his men off the bridge, los-
ing one man killed to German rifle fire.
Aside from losing a key bridge over the
Rhine, Frosts plan to take the main Arn-
hem road bridge by passing a company
over the rail bridge (thus taking the bridge
from both sides at once) was now impos-
sible. He would have to take the bridge at
its north end and grab the south side
through a coup de main.
Second Battalion moved on ... under a
railway bridge ... through an encounter
with a German armored car ... and onto
the bridge. The battalions B Company
was embroiled in a four-hour action on
the lower slopes of a terrain feature called
Den Brink, but the rest pushed on, fol-
lowed by the 1st Parachute Brigades
headquarters party under Major Tony
Hibbert.
Now at the bridge, 2nd Battalions men
moved to consolidate their position.
Frost chose as his headquarters a large
private house, the upper rooms of which
provided a good view of the area. Head-
quarters and support companies moved
into buildings close by, and the vehicles and antitank guns into
the sheltered yard of a large office building also nearby.
The Dutch owners of the homes and buildings put up with
their new tenants with a mixture of welcome, resilience, and
fear, knowing that they soon would be living at the epicenter
of a battle.
Second Battalion was soon joined by the Brigade HQ party,
which actually initially outnumbered Frosts force. Brigade HQ
was set up in a large office building near Frosts headquarters.
Now for the bridge itself. It was guarded by only 20 or so
elderly or very young German troops from a local flak unit, and
they were either in a pillbox a quarter of the way across the
bridge or asleep in some huts behind the pillbox. They seemed
unaware of the British arrival.
The Germans had failed to adequately garrison the bridge
because they were more concerned with holding the bridge at
Nijmegen. Maj. Gen. Heinz Harmel, who commanded the
10th SS Panzer Division, later lamented that failure, saying
that if a few soldiers had been left behind at the Arnhem bridge,
it would have been a different story.
Frost sent a group of men under Lance Sergeant Bill Fulton to
take the bridge. Fulton said later, I led off first, up those steps
on the west side of the bridge. When I reached the top I heard
voicesdefinitely German. I told the section to be quiet and I
peeped over. There was a truck with troops in the back, facing
south, only 15 yards or so away. An officer or an NCO was talk-
ing to the men in the back. I thought that the element of surprise
would be gone if we burst in, so I decided to wait. It was only
two or three minutes before the one doing the talking got into
the cab, and the truck moved off.
We started to walk along the right-hand side of the bridge.
It was very dark, but you could see outlines. I caught a few of
the enemy hiding in corners of what looked like small huts and
passed them back to the last man in the section and told him
to take them down the steps as prisoners. You could hear fir-
ing in other parts of the town, but there was no firing on the
bridge itself. Then, in the gloom, I saw a rifle starting to point
at me. I swung round to the right and started firing my tommy-
gun. I know I hit him because he fired his rifle as he was falling
forward and I caught the bullet in the top of my left leg. I told
the section behind me to report back and say that the bridge
was well-manned and would need more troops. I managed to
crawl behind an iron girder, and eventually a couple of medics
came for me.
Fulton spent the next two years in various hospitals.
Major Digby Tatham-Warter, who commanded 2nd Battal-
The pilot of a Royal Air Force reconnaissance aircraft snapped this photo of the
north end of the Arnhem bridge and the destroyed German armored cars and
troop carriers that were hit by British paras on the afternoon of the second day of
fighting during Operation Market-Garden.
Imperial War Museum
AB-Arnhem_Layout 1 10/14/14 12:14 PM Page 99
WORLD WAR II AIRBORNE BATTLES 100
ions A Company, realized a more forceful attack would be
needed. He assigned Lieutenant Jack Grayburn to the assault.
Grayburns men painted their faces black and bound their
boots with strips of curtains to make sure there was no rattling
equipment or weapons.
Grayburn and his party crept up the side of the embank-
ment and silently began to cross the bridge. They swiftly came
under heavy machine-gun fire and had to withdraw, Gray-
burn wounded in the shoulder, along with seven other men.
For the next effort, at 10 PM, Frost had an antitank gun under
Sergeant Ernie Shelswell skillfully backed up by a jeep two-
thirds of the way up a path on the side of the approach road
embankment and then manhandled to the top to face the
bridge. At the same time, a flamethrower team was sent to the
house nearest the pillbox, where a gap was made in the wall
by firing a PIAT antitank missile into it.
When all was ready, the 6-pounder fired shots at the pillbox,
and Sapper Ginger Williams opened up with his flamethrower.
The fire missed the pillbox and instead hit a hut, cooking off an
ammunition and fuel store. The explosion set off paintwork on
the bridge, and the fire burned all night. The attack was stalled
again.
Incredibly, as the night wore on a small convoy of German
trucks came onto the bridge from the south. The ammunition
aboard the trucks exploded, adding to the inferno and din, and
the occupants of the trucks were either killed or bailed out to
surrender. The 17 men bagged turned out to be part of a unit
that was firing V-2 rockets at England.
Meanwhile, British reinforcements arrivedpart of the 3rd
Battalion, the long-delayed B Company of 2nd Battalion, and
more engineers. In all, Frost had a decent force: 340 men from
his 2nd Battalion, 110 men from 1st Parachute Brigade HQ,
75 men from 1st Parachute Squadron Royal Engineers, 45 men
from 3rd Battalion, 17 glider pilots, even a war correspondent.
It was an estimated 740 men dug into buildings around the
embankment and ramp leading to the north end of the Arnhem
bridgea sizable force, about one and one-half parachute bat-
talions. Frost himself was the senior officer. The 1st Parachute
Brigades commander, Brigadier Gerald Lathbury, was with
3rd Battalions men, who were blocked from advancing to the
bridge.
During the night, the Germans did not make any major
counterattacks. Both sides waited for the dawn. But the Ger-
mans had plenty of powerful forces with which to counter-
attack. Unknown to or ignored by British intelligence, the
2nd SS Panzer Corps, battered in the Normandy fighting,
was refitting and recuperating in the woods and farms
around Arnhem and Nijmegen. Despite being understrength,
the corps, under Lt. Gen. Willi Bittrich, was a formidable
force that fielded a variety of tanks, armored cars, assault
guns, and mechanized infantry, all well trained and filled
with Nazi elitism.
The airborne assault had taken the corps by surprise, but as
usual the Germans had reacted swiftly, deploying 10th SS
Panzer Divisions guns, tanks, and troops to hold the Nijmegen
bridge to the south against the American 82nd Airborne and
using the smaller 9th SS Panzer Division to surround the British
A British 6-pounder antitank gun is shown in action during
Operation Market-Garden on September 20, 1944. At the
moment the photograph was snapped, the British gun crew
was engaging a German PzKpfw II B2 (f) tank.
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WORLD WAR II AIRBORNE BATTLES 101
paratroopers at Arnhem and Oosterbeek. Frost did not know
it, but his little force was quite cut off from the rest of the 1st
Airborne Division.
At dawn, the Germans began to counterattack from the east,
probing the British defenses with Mark III and Mark IV tanks,
which were easily beaten off. Lieutenant Arvian Llewellyn-
Jones described the action:
The gun spades [on the antitank gun] were not into the
pavement edge, nor firm against any strong barrier. The gun
was laid, the order to fire given, and when fired ran back 50
yards, injuring two of the crew. There was no visible damage
to the tank. It remained hidden in part of the gloom of the
underpass of the bridge. The gun was recovered with some dif-
ficulty. This time it was firmly wedged. The Battery Office
clerk, who had never fired a gun in his life, was sent out to
help man the gun. This time the tank under the bridge
advanced into full view and looked to be deploying its gun
straight at the 6-pounder. We fired first. The aim was true; the
tank was hit and it slewed and blocked the road.
The Germans found the fighting hard, too. Members of the
10th SS Panzer Divisions 21st Panzergrenadier Regiment were
sent into the attack, and one section commander, Alfred Rings-
dorf, described it as follows: This was a harder battle than any
I had fought in Russia. It was constant, close range, hand-to-
hand fighting. The English were everywhere. The streets for
the most part were narrow, sometimes not more than 15 feet
wide, and we fired at each other from only yards away. We
fought to gain inches, cleaning out one room after the other. It
was absolute hell!
The SS attacked again with truck-borne infantry, and Private
James Sims, a 19-year-old mortar crewman, saw the Germans
bail out of their shot-up vehicles. One terribly wounded Ger-
man soldier, shot through both legs, pulled himself hand over
hand toward his own lines. We watched his slow and painful
progress with horrified fascination, as he was the only creature
moving among a carpet of the dead. He pulled himself across
the road, and over the pavement, then he dragged his shattered
body inch by inch up a grass-covered incline leading to the
bridge road. Once he had cleared a slight parapet at the top of
the incline he would be back in his own lines. He must have
been in terrible pain but he conquered the incline through sheer
willpower. With a superhuman effort he heaved himself up to
clear the final obstacle. A rifle barked out next to me and I
watched in disbelief as the wounded German fell back, shot
through the head. To me it was little short of murder, but to
my companion, a Welshman, one of our best snipers, the Ger-
man was a legitimate target. When I protested he looked at me
as though I was simple.
The Germans sent in an ambulance with SS troopers hidden
inside. Tumbling out, firing their submachine guns from the
hip, their charge was annihilated near Frosts headquarters. I
suppose theyll send a hearse next, a British paratrooper com-
mented. The attacks were piecemeal and uncoordinated, but
that would change.
After that, there was a period of relative calm, and Frost called
it a time when I felt everything was going according to plan,
with no serious opposition yet and everything under control.
That changed in mid-morning. Between Arnhem and
Nijmegen was the 9th SS Panzer Divisions reconnaissance bat-
talion, a tough outfit equipped with 22 armored cars and half-
tracked armored personnel carriers. The boss was Captain Vik-
tor Graebner, who had just received the Knights Cross of the
Iron Cross the day before, for bravery in Normandy. He had led
his unit over the bridge before the British got there, on a sweep
down to the main road to Nijmegen. Finding that area clear, he
turned back to return over the bridge to reach his divisional
command post in Arnhem. He knew the British were on the
north end of the bridge, but whether he intended to mount an
attack or just dash through the British positions is not known.
Either way, Graebner was no fool, and he prepared for a
fight. He was a former Wehrmacht officer who had transferred
to the Waffen SS and was described as an impressive soldier,
the right man for the job. Dark, slightly built, and slim, he was
well liked and respected by his men. He had a reputation of
always being forward in combat and unafraid to expose him-
self when necessary in action.
His attack plan depended on blitzkrieg speed and shock, as
well as the firepower of his assault guns and armored cars,
some of which mounted 75mm guns. All had machine guns. It
was the highest concentration of armored vehicles in the 9th
SS Panzer Division.
At 9 AM, the SS men mounted their vehicles, wearing their
Waffenrock mottled camouflage uniforms. Surrounded by
Senior German officers gather for a briefing to respond to
the Allied offensive code-named Operation Market-Garden.
Left to right are Field Marshal Walter Model, Colonel General
Kurt Student, Major General of the Waffen SS Wilhelm Bit-
trich, Major Hans Peter Knaust, and Major General of the
Waffen SS Heinz Harmel.
Bundesarchiv
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WORLD WAR II AIRBORNE BATTLES 102
gray exhaust fumes, the battalion rum-
bled north up the two-lane road to the
bridge. They would dash 600 meters up
a ramp and across the 200-meter bridge
into the teeth of the British defenses.
Armored cars would lead the way, fol-
lowed by half-tracks jammed with SS
troops, roaring along at 20 to 25 miles
per hour. Behind them came sandbagged
trucks loaded with more infantry to mop
up the British defenses.
Graebner, leading the attack as usual,
in a captured British Humber armored
car, jabbed the air twice, and the column
was off, roaring like a Grand Prix start
according to historian Robert Kershaw.
British lookouts in the tops of the occu-
pied houses drew the officers attention to
the column of vehicles assembling on the
bridge approach.
The armored cars reached the summit of
the bridge, cannon and machine guns fir-
ing. They maneuvered their way around
burning trucks left from the previous
actions. The British held their fire, waiting
for clear shots. German tracers flew in all
directions. Two more armored cars rolled
across ... then three morethen the
British opened up with everything they had, blazing away with
Bren and Vickers machine guns, antitank guns, and PIAT anti-
tank weapons.
A leading armored car hit a British mine laid in the road,
and its wheel exploded skyward, flying into the air in slow
motion, halting the vehicle. British troops hurled grenades into
the open half-tracks, which set off a terrible carnage in the con-
fined spaces. Black smoke boiled up in the air as burning fuel
snaked across the road. Nearly every German vehicle was hit
by PIATs or antitank guns. Sergeant Cyril Robson fired solid-
shot shells at the parapet at the side of the bridge until he cut
a V-shaped section away and was then able to fire into the sides
of German vehicles passing the gap. It is believed that Rob-
sons gun did more damage than any other weapon.
German troops in the half-tracks found their way blocked
and themselves trapped under heavy small-arms fire. One early
victim was seen to be flung out on the roadway and literally
cut to pieces by a hail of fire. Some vehicles toppled over or
slewed off the embankment of the lower ramp, allowing the
airborne men in the buildings there to join in the killing.
Everybody seemed to be firing, even Major Freddie Gough,
commander of the British jeep reconnaissance squadron, who
blazed away with his jeeps Vickers machine guns. One of his
shots killed Captain Graebner. The only officer who was not
firing was Frost himself, who watched the battle and said later,
A commander ought not to be firing a weapon in the middle
of an action. His best weapon is a pair of binoculars.
Corporal Geoff Cockayne described the action: I had a Ger-
man Schmeisser and had a lot of fun with it. I shot at any Gerry
that moved. Several of their vehiclessix or seven started
burning. We didnt stay in the room we were in but came out
to fire, keeping moving, taking cover and firing from different
positions. The Germans had got out of their troop carriers
what was left of themand it became a proper infantry action.
I shot off nearly all my ammunition. To start with, I had been
letting rip, but then I became more careful; I knew there would
be no more. I wasnt firing at any German in particular, just fir-
ing at where I knew they were.
Resistance was greater than the Germans anticipated. Vehi-
cles came to a halt when driver and co-driver were killed.
Graebners attack began to disintegrate. SS Corporal Mauga,
crouching in his half-track, witnessed the setback, saying,
Suddenly all hell broke loose ahead of us. All around my vehi-
cle there were explosions and noise and I was right in the mid-
dle of this chaos.
With Graebner dead and the British firing heavily, German
morale and cohesion began to break. One driver shoved his
half-track into reverse and hit the vehicle behind him. The two
Imperial War Museum
On September 20, 1944, NCOs of the Glider Pilot Regiment search for German
snipers through the ruins of the ULO school in Oosterbeek, a town near Arnhem.
An empty supply container lies just outside the shattered doorway.
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WORLD WAR II AIRBORNE BATTLES 103
were jammed together and became tar-
gets for British gunfire. As the vehicles
burst into flames, the Germans tried to
get out but were massacred by the British.
For two hours the battle raged on. Two
German drivers were hit and their vehi-
cles zigzagged out of control, crashing
through the left barrier of the bridge and
plummeting to the street below in a
shower of cascading burning fuel, wreck-
age, and screaming men.
But the SS were determined. Crouching
beneath their wrecked vehicles, the troop-
ers struggled to form assault groups and
fight their way north. The British used
their radios to call in artillery fire from
the distant 1st Airborne Division, and
shells looped into the German wreckage,
adding to the carnage and din.
As noon approached, the Germans
realized the situation was hopeless and
began to withdraw on foot. Some leaped
from the bridge into the Rhine River,
unable to pass through blazing vehicles.
As the Germans withdrew, the sound of
gunfire was replaced by the wailing of a jammed horn on one
of the 12 knocked-out vehicles on the bridge, and the sound
of British paratroopers shouting their war cry, Whoa
Mohammed, which added insult to the German injury. The
British lost just 19 men.
Graebners defeat had a huge impact on the 9th SS Panzer
Division. They realized the British paratroopers would be
tougher customers than the enemies they usually fought and
often defeated. It would be suicide to attack across the bridge
again, 9th SS Panzer Division commander Colonel Walther
Harzer decided, and he would shift his momentum to the north
side of the bridge to dig the British out.
The Germans were not done yet. Their next attack was
against the eastern side of the perimeter held by Lieutenant Pat
Barnetts Brigade HQ Defense Platoon. Preceded by artillery
and mortar bombardment, the Germans sent in two tanks and
infantry under the bridge ramp. The British knocked out the
tanks and drove the infantry back.
The rest of the day saw further minor attacks and mortar
and artillery shelling of the British positions. Both sides real-
ized it would be a long siege. The British needed the bridge
it was the whole point of the operationand the Germans
needed it as well, to move troops and supplies to the defense
at Nijmegen.
That evening, Frost got word that his brigade commander,
Gerald Lathbury, was missing. Tony Hibbert asked Frost to
take over all the brigades elements at the Arnhem bridge.
Major Digby Tatham-Warter, who walked around the battle-
field displaying a rolled up umbrella, took over the battalion.
The airborne men dug in for their first full night at the bridge.
The houses on the western side of the perimeter had hardly
been attacked, so part of B Company was redeployed to the
eastern sector. A house near the bridge was deliberately set
afire to provide illumination for the bridge area, and B Com-
pany was ordered to send out a standing patrol to ensure that
no Germans tried to cross the bridge. Royal Engineers exam-
ined the underside of the structure to be sure the Germans
could not demolish it.
At 3 AM on the 19th, a German force apparently got lost and
stood by the school building manned by 3rd Battalions men,
talking nonchalantly. The British reacted at once. Lieutenant Len
Wright described the action as follows:
We all stood by with grenadeswe had plenty of those
and with all our weapons. Then Major Lewis shouted, Fire,
and the men in all the rooms facing that side threw grenades and
opened fire on the Germans. My clearest memory was of
Pongo Lewis running from one room to another, dropping
grenades and saying to me that he hadnt enjoyed himself so
much since the last time he had gone hunting. It lasted about a
quarter of an hour. There was nothing the Germans could do
except die or disappear. When it got light there were a lot of
bodies down there18 or 20 or perhaps more. Some were still
moving; one was severely wounded, a bad stomach wound with
his guts visible, probably by a grenade. Some of our men tried
On the second day of the fight for control of the town of Arnhem and its crucial
bridge, the British airborne troops holding the south end of the bridge were
already growing desperately short of food, medical supplies, and ammunition. Two
SS panzer divisions had moved to the Arnhem area to refit after being mauled in
Normandy, and the unfortunate British airborne troops had parachuted virtually
on top of the enemy.
Map 2014 Philip Schwartzberg, Meridian Mapping, Minneapolis, MN
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WORLD WAR II AIRBORNE BATTLES 104
to get him in, showing a Red Cross symbol, but they were shot
at and came back in, without being hit but unable to help the
Germans.
The British were holding on. But there was no help at hand.
The 9th SS Panzer Division and other German units had done
an effective job of blocking the rest of the 1st Airborne Divi-
sion from marching to 1st Parachute Brigades relief. Nor was
there any sign of the tanks of XXX Corps, the vanguard of the
ground element of Operation Market-Garden. As Tuesday
dawned over a smoky and battered Arnhem, the British para-
troopers at the bridge knew they had held out the two days
required. Where was the relief force?
The Polish Parachute Brigade was supposed to parachute in
that very day, dropping on the south side of the Arnhem bridge.
Frost readied a Bren carrier and two reconnaissance jeeps to
meet the Poles, but they did not appear. Their lift was post-
poned by fog in England.
Instead, the morning was relatively quiet, punctuated by
artillery, mortar fire, sniping, and infiltration. The Germans
were concentrating on stalling the British efforts to relieve 1st
Parachute Brigade on the bridge rather than on the bridge itself.
But by noon, three German tanks drove into the bridge
perimeter from the east, close to A Companys positions on
that side of the ramp. Their shelling of one of the A Company
positions forced the British to evacuate the house. Captain
Tony Frank and a soldier operated a PIAT and hit a German
tank. I hit it first time, right in the backside, Frank said later.
It didnt burn, but it didnt move again.
During the morning, the Germans requested a truce to ask
the British to consider surrender. To the orderly Teutonic mind,
the British were in a hopeless position with no chance of relief.
The emissary from the Germans was Lance Sergeant Stan Hal-
liwell of the First Parachute Squadron, Royal Engineers, who
had been captured earlier that morning while on a sortie tak-
ing ammunition to an exposed party of his unit. He described
the incident as follows:
They took me to a building where they seemed to have an
Operations Room. An officer who seemed to be a big noise
called me over. He inspected my pay-book; then he said, There
is going to be a truce and I want to send you with a message.
We trust you to be a gentleman and return. I told him I would.
The message was for Colonel Frosthe knew his nameand
I was to ask him to be under the bridge at 10:30 AM to discuss
a surrender.
I was taken outside and lined up with some Germans to
approach our lines. But our lot were firingthere was no
truceand the Germans opened up too. I ran across, shouting
at our chaps not to shoot me. Then I went to find Colonel
Frost, running from building to building in all the firing and
the smoke; that was the worst 10 minutes of my life. Colonel
Frost told me to tell them to go to hell, but I wasnt going to
go back just to tell them that and I stayed with our troops.
The big noise was Maj. Gen. Heinz Harmel, boss of the
10th SS Panzer Division, and his zone of operations included
the bridge and main road down to Nijmegen. He was ordered
to open the road as quickly as possible. He spoke fluent Eng-
lish, having toured England with his school football team
before the war.
After realizing that the British would not surrender, the Ger-
mans started exerting more pressure. Rather than mount costly
infantry attacks, the Germans decided to destroy the British
positions by artillery and tank shelling, using phosphorous
shells to set the buildings alight. The methodical bombardment
began and would continue until the end of the battle, gradu-
ally wearing down the British ability to resist.
Building after building was hit by German shells. Corporal
Horace Goodrich, at Brigade HQ, described a typical incident:
The enemy brought up a self-propelled gun to shell our build-
ing, and I happened to be manning a Bren gun in the right place
to engage it and the infantry who were standing round it. After
getting off two short bursts, I observed what had all the appear-
ance of a golden tennis ball at the mouth of the SP gun. The next
moment I was lying on my back covered in dust and debris. The
Imperial War Museum
Firing his Enfield No. 2 revolver at the Germans from the
window of the Hartenstein Hotel in Oosterbeek, headquar-
ters of the 1st Airborne Division, a British para has sighted
advancing Germans on September 23, 1944.
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WORLD WAR II AIRBORNE BATTLES 105
shell actually struck the wall at my feet. Having got the range,
they were able to fire at will until the top floor became tem-
porarily untenable.
That evening, the Germans rolled in massive Tiger tanks,
which packed 88mm guns and immensely heavy armor. They
crunched along the street between the Van Limburg Stirum
School and the nearby houses, shelling each house, spraying the
area with machine-gun fire. The British brought up their 6-
pounder antitank guns, but they were unsuccessful in stopping
the massive Tigers.
Private Kevin Heaney of the Royal Army Ordnance Corps
(RAOC) described one such shelling: A shell came whoosh-
ing through the open bedroom window and hit the back of the
house. The back wall became a pile of rubble, and the floor fell
in. One of the signalers, resting on a bed in the back bedroom,
came down with the floor and was trapped. He could not
move, as his back was broken. Sgt. Mick Walker, one of our
men, climbed down to give him a morphine injection. My pack
was in the back bedroom and I was disappointed when this was
lost; I had not touched the rations inside. We then took shel-
ter in the cellar and started hoping for the best. There was a
noise at the top of the stairs, and someone started to wave a
white handkerchief, but Mick Walker knocked this out of his
hand. It was probably only more rubble falling down.
The men evacuated the house and went to another nearby,
but this also had to be given up. As the shelling continued, the
British evacuated more houses.
The shelling did not cause more fatalities, but men were
wounded. Among them Father Egan, 2nd Battalions Catholic
padre; Major Tatham-Warter (twice); and Captain Tony Frank,
putting Lieutenant Grayburn in charge of what was left of A
Company. Lieutenant Harry Whittaker was hit while driving
a jeep hauling one of the 6-poundershe died the next day.
The British hung on with grim determination, but their abil-
ity to do so was beginning to slacken. They had lost three offi-
cers and 16 men in the last 24 hours and suffered between 100
and 150 wounded. The medical team was short of supplies.
Food and ammunition were also running desperately low.
Signalman George Lawson was sent to obtain more ammu-
nition and double-timed through the smoke and gunfire to Bat-
talion HQ. There he found Major Tatham-Warter. He was the
coolest chap I ever saw, walking about with his red beret, one
arm in a sling, with his umbrella hooked over it and his right
hand holding a revolver, directing operations, Lawson said.
He asked me what I wanted and, when I told him, he said,
Hurry up and get some and get back to your post, soldier;
there are snipers about.
Other Britons relied on their sense of humor to cope with the
situation. Signalman Harold Riley described such an incident:
We were all feeling pretty grim, when suddenly a 2nd Battal-
ion chap who had been crouching in a corner crawled on his
hands and knees towards a desk in the middle of the room. He
reached up and gingerly plucked a rather battered telephone
receiver from it. Speaking into it he said, Hello, operator. Give
me Whitehall 1212, a pause, then, Mr. Churchill? There are
some men outside annoying us. Maybe it sounds a little corny
now, but at the time it did relieve the tension somewhat.
As dusk fell, many houses were burning. Sapper Tom Car-
penter described the area around the bridge as becoming a sea
of flame. The roar and crackle of flaming buildings and danc-
Closing the ring around the trapped soldiers of Colonel John
Frosts 2nd Battalion, German soldiers rush past vehicles
that have temporarily halted on a street in Arnhem.
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WORLD WAR II AIRBORNE BATTLES 106
ing shadows cast by the flames was like
looking into Dantes inferno. Two of
the nearby church towers were on fire,
and one of their bells swung in the wind,
clanging irregularly. Frost wondered why
his men had yet to be relieved, either by
the 1st Airborne from the west or XXX
Corps from the south.
The night passed quietly, and dawn
arrived with a dull and damp drizzle. The
British were still holding 10 of their orig-
inal 18 houses in the perimeter, but it was
split into two parts divided by the ramp.
The Germans allowed stretcher bearers
to pass through in the open, but all other
movement was extremely dangerous.
Now there was no thought of tactics
or strategy. Frosts only effort was to
hold all positions until each building was
destroyed. The Germans were shelling
the British positions from all sides, with
tanks crunching into the perimeter. The
defenders needed help.
None was forthcoming. The 1st Air-
borne Division was now in a small,
thumb-shaped pocket in Oosterbeek,
based on the Rhine River, barely able to
hold on against German attacks, short
on supplies. Relief from the south
depended on the American 82nd Air-
borne finally taking the Nijmegen bridge,
but all efforts to do so had failed so far.
By now the British defenders were
exhausted from lack of sleep and food.
Roving German tanks and artillery
hammered the British. When exhausted
British troops from the Brigade Defense
Platoon heard tanks clanking nearby,
they thought it was XXX Corps at last
and rushed to the windows to greet
their liberators. It was actually a pair of
German tanks, and they shelled the
British position, wounding a lone Amer-
ican defender, communications officer
Lieutenant Harvey Todd, who fired at
the Germans with his Springfield auto-
matic carbine.
Next to get blasted was the Royal
Army Service Corps platoon, holding a
house hard by the Arnhem prison wall.
The Germans blew a hole in the wall to
enable them to shell the British. Driver
Jim Wild described it: The first shot hit
the corner of the roof. It didnt explode
there because the only resistance it had
was the slates on the roof, but it left a
hole nearly two yards across. The lads
underneath it were showered with
debris; I wouldnt like to repeat what
they said. The shell exploded against the
brickwork at the other end of the long
room. We were all down on the floor. A
lot of shrapnel was flying about, and I
think one man was killed and one
wounded. We decided to get out, down
to the ground floor, when the second
shell exploded against the front wall of
the room we had been in; we would all
have been killed if we had still been
there.
The two antitank guns were still in
action, but the German infantry were now
in positions from where they could fire
directly down on anyone who attempted
to man a gun. The 2nd Battalions 3-inch
mortars were the only weapons capable
of hitting back at the German artillery.
But the Germans still made mistakes
that enabled the tough paratroopers to
score some victories. Private Sidney
Elliott of B Company described one inci-
dent when a half-track halted outside his
house near the riverside: We heard the
rattle and clanking of a vehicle and, on
looking out of the window, we saw a
half-track with, I think, four Germans
aboard. We were by now extremely short
of ammo, but we had one Gammon
bomb left. This was immediately primed;
one of us tossed it and it landed in the
half-track. I can still see one of the bod-
ies as it seemed to rise into the air and
disappear into the river.
The Germans now launched a series of
infantry attacks with close tank support
from the east, hoping to reach the area
underneath the ramp. The last defense in
front of this area was a group of houses
held by Brigade HQ men, signalers, and
RAOC. Private Kevin Heaney, an RAOC
man, described the scene:
The atmosphere and tension grew
unbearable. We were expecting to be
attacked but uncertain from which
ABOVE: Captain Victor Graebner led an
ill-fated attempt by troops of the 9th
Panzer Division to dislodge British air-
borne soldiers from positions on the
north end of the Arnhem bridge and
paid with his life. Graebner had previ-
ously been awarded the Knights Cross;
however, the decoration may have
been added to this photo after his
death. BELOW: Rushing from the cover
of houses as they advance toward
British positions, German soldiers pro-
ceed to secure the town of Arnhem and
prevent its vital bridge across the
Lower Rhine from falling into Allied
hands.
Both: Bundesarchiv
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WORLD WAR II AIRBORNE BATTLES 107
direction this was going to come. The mood varied between
hope and despair, and the lack of news from the rest of the
division or progress by 30 Corps was bad for morale. A young
officer, a studious looking chap, gave us a pep talk, trying to
be a morale booster, saying how well our brigade had done in
North Africa and how our performance at Arnhem would go
down in history. But I had not been in North Africa and the
thought went through my mind, about fighting to the end,
not if I can help it, particularly as there was talk of leaving
the wounded behind.
The German intention was apparently to seize the small arch-
way over the road and blow that, denying the Arnhem bridge
to the advancing British armor to the south, without blowing
the massive structure itself. The Germans stormed in and
attempted to place explosive charges against the pillars while
British engineers counterattacked to stop them.
Lieutenant Jack Grayburn and some of his A Company men
accompanied a party of Royal Engineers, which dashed out
and removed fuses from the charges around the piers. It was
a nerve-wracking experience, according to Engineer Lieu-
tenant Donald Hindley, working a few feet away from a large
quantity of explosives which could be fired at any moment.
Grayburn was wounded but returned after being treated, one
arm in a sling and with a bandaged head.
Hindley recalled, It was obvious that the enemy would
quickly restore the fuses, and a second, heavier attack was
made to try to remove the charges themselves. However, the
enemy had by now moved up a tank to cover the work. We
were quickly mown down. Lieutenant Grayburn was killed
riddled with machine-gun fire. I escaped with flesh wounds in
my shoulder and face.
Grayburn earned the only Victoria Cross awarded at the Arn-
hem bridge battle. His body fell into the Rhine River but was
recovered in 1948 and buried in the Arnhem Oosterbeek War
Cemetery. His Victoria Cross is at the Parachute Regiments
headquarters in Aldershot.
At 1:30 PM, Lt. Col. Frost was crouched on top of a pile of rub-
ble talking with Major Crawley when a mortar bomb went off
and wounded both officers in the legs. Frost was finally out of
the battle, and Major Hibbert appointed Major Freddie Gough
of the Reconnaissance Squadron to command what was left of
the brigade. Frost agreed to the move, saying:
I was taken to the aid post. I was quite affected by the blast
as well as being wounded and I really wasnt able to control
things. Freddie came along, and I told him to carry onnot
that there were any orders much to give by then. That was the
very worst time, the most miserable time of my life. It is a pretty
desperate thing to see your battalion gradually carved to bits
around you. We were always hoping, right to the bitter end,
that the ground forces would arrive. As long as we were still
in place around the bridge, preventing the Germans from bring-
ing up anti-tank guns to engage the 30 Corps tanks, we were
doing our job. But it was only isolated groups by then, with no
proper control over the area.
At the same time Frost was wounded, the British lost one of
their most important positions, the Van Liburg Stirum School
building, halfway along the eastern side of the ramp embank-
ment. The Royal Engineers and 3rd Battalion men had held this
site with little heavier firepower than their rifles and a Bren
gun but were now overwhelmed. They were out of food and
water, low on ammunition, and had only 30 men unwounded.
This photograph of the Arnhem bridge was taken after
Colonel John Frosts airborne troops had been over-
whelmed and the surrounding buildings were razed or
cleared by German SS soldiers. The debris from the previ-
ous days fighting still litters the span across the Lower
Rhine although the road has been cleared.
Imperial War Museum
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WORLD WAR II AIRBORNE BATTLES 108
The Germans systematically began shelling the building, blast-
ing off its roof and top story. One shell set the roof ablaze, and
another burst where two officers, Major Pongo Lewis and
Lieutenant Wright, were taking their turn to rest. Wright was
so stunned that he had no memory of the next few hours.
What happened next was a subject of contentious accounts,
but the building was no longer tenable. The intention was to
evacuate, but supposedly Major Lewis called up from his mat-
tress, Time to put up the white flag. The second in com-
mand, Captain Chippy Robinson, asked if the fit men could at
least break out. Lewis said, Every man for himself, and
Robinson and Captain Eric Mackay dashed across the road
into the gardens of some houses to the east. Unfortunately,
they were taken prisoner, but Mackay eventually escaped and
reached England.
While some of the engineers bailed out to fight again, the
wounded could not leave. Some engineers did not like the
thought of abandoning the wounded and stayed behind. Major
Lewis sent a sapper to the top of the embankment with a white
towel tied to his rifle, but he was immediately struck in both legs
by a burst of machine-gun fire. He died of those wounds five
months later. The Germans cautiously moved in on the defense-
less school and found the wounded men and their caretakers
awaiting capture.
A German officer inspected the wounded, found one of them
hopeless, and shot him in the head with a pistol.
At the southern part of the perimeter, a considerable body of
men had gathered among the pillars under the ramp archway
nearest the river. These men had been burned out of their houses
and were sheltering where they could. The ubiquitous Major
Tatham-Warter turned up and ordered them to move to Brigade
HQs position, a 180-yard dash across fire-swept ground.
Sergeant George Lawson recalled, I heard the shout, Every
man for himself. A group of us made a dash for it. We had
to go through a mortar barrage first; thats where young
Waterston got hit. He was leaning against this wall. I thought
I should go back for him, but he was turning blue, and I car-
ried on. Several of the others were hit, too; I was hit in the face
by shrapnel. I now slung my rifle away because the bloody
thing was useless; it wasnt working properly. I took the bolt
out and threw it away. A group of us then tried to cross the
open road, but four or five of us were mown down by
machine-gun fire. I turned back and took refuge in one of the
burnt-out buildingshow long for, I dont know, but I was
forced to get up because my gas cape and my smock were
burning from the hot stone.
Now the defense was starting to disintegrate. Private Kevin
Heaney and six men were trapped in a hallway, the Germans
50 yards away. How about packing it in? Heaney asked his
colleagues, including a wounded man. One chap said, Im
easy; I dont think he was ready to surrender, though. I put my
hand inside my jacket, tore off my vest, gave it to the man near-
est the opening, and he waved what was, in effect, the white
flag, Heaney said. The Germans shouted for the British to
come out. When they did, the Germans opened up with
machine-gun fire, hitting the first four Britons.
I assumed the Germans who fired were themselves under
fire from our men. That was my charitable interpretation as
to why they fired, because they were very chivalrous gener-
ally, Heaney said. He and the wounded men got back into
the house and sat in the rubble, listening uneasily to mortar
fire. We were there for about two hours. I had my prayer
book open and was saying the Prayers for the Dying. Later on,
the Germans came in, rescuing the trapped men and taking
them prisoner, and this great big German came and took the
two of us also.
The defense was now squeezed into an area one-fifth of its
original position, holding 10 of their original 18 buildings.
The British troops were exhaustedwith no food and little
water, and most were still going on Benzedrine tablets. Two
German battle groups, backed by rocket artillery and Tiger
tanks, further pressured the British.
The Germans methodically demolished the British defenses,
using a pair of Tiger tanks that managed to nose their way
through the wreckage of Graebners vehicles across the Arnhem
bridge. Two further 88mm flak guns were set up on either side
of the southern approach to the bridge, delivering point-blank
fire. SS Section Commander Alfred Ringsdorf declared the only
way the British were going to get out was to be carried out
feet first.
SS Grenadier Private Horst Weber recalled the heavy artillery
barrage: Starting from the rooftops, buildings collapsed like
dolls houses. I did not see how anyone could live through the
inferno. I felt truly sorry for the British.
Another SS man, Rudolf Trapp, watched artillery firing point
blank down the Eusebius-Plein: An artillery piece was trun-
dled into our street from the Battalion Knaust behind us. This
was two or three days after the battle started. It was the biggest
gun Ive ever seen, and was manhandled up along the side of
the Rhine. The big problem with the gun was getting it into
action while under fire.
Trapp said, I covered it by shooting up the British positions
along the street with long protracted bursts from my machine
gun. The Knaust gun crew was with the first Wehrmacht
troops to enter the Arnhem battle. It opened fire on Major
Crawleys position, reducing a strongpoint to rubble with seven
or eight shots. After the barrage, Trapps men stormed the posi-
tion and found the occupants all dead, lying in slit trenches
and prepared positions.
Battle Group Knaust was commanded by Colonel Hans Peter
Knaust, a one-legged Eastern Front veteran, and this powerful
group fielded Panther and Tiger tanks. Two of them clanked
into action near Weber, who saw them hurling shells into each
house at close range. Weber recalled a corner building where
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WORLD WAR II AIRBORNE BATTLES 109
the roof fell in, the top two stories began to crumble and then,
like the skin peeling off a skeleton, the whole front wall fell into
the street revealing each floor on which the British were scram-
bling like mad. Dust and debris soon made it impossible to see
anything more. The din was awful, but even so above it all, we
could hear the wounded screaming.
The arrival of Knausts tanks tipped the battle for good.
Frosts men, immobilized by the superior weight of infantry
around them, were being systematically pummeled into sub-
mission by the heavy guns.
One of Knausts men, Lance Corporal Karl-Heinz Kracht, was
a loader on a Mark III tank. His machine rolled past the wrecks
of Graebners vehicles. Personally, I felt quite a bit of appre-
hension as our vehicles moved into Arnhem. I still had to over-
come the shock at the destruction and the corpses lying by the
roadside. Maybe we were to be the next victim of the British
antitank guns? This feeling was amplified when the company
lost its first tanks, he said.
Kracht and his tanks supported SS infantry winkling out
British paratroopers. By now the exhausted Britons were begin-
ning to surrender.
Kracht pulled out his Agfa Karat III camera and began to
take snaps of the periphery of the action around him, catching
panzergrenadiers going into action and buildings being
wrecked.
As far as we were concerned, this shooting lasted for two
days until nothing more stirred on the bridge, Kracht said
later. Panzergrenadiers, also suffering most of the casualties,
had to do the dirty work again. Even so we lost another tank.
All around the bridgehead was a nightmare of buildings
reduced to rubble, shot-up vehicles and guns, and corpsesof
friend and foe alike.
In such close fighting, collecting the wounded was becoming
a problem. SS machine-gunner Rudolf Trapp, being 19 and
agile, was assigned to do so. We were told to get some
wounded or dead SS men out of the enemy field of fire, he
said. To achieve this we got an armored half-track. Putting
down covering fire with two machine guns on it, we would
race down the street, open the rear door, pull our mates in,
and fire away as we sped back to cover. All the time we would
hope there would not be a stoppage on the machine gun
because the British fired very accurately. In one case they shot
a man in the heart straight through his military record book.
The British fought on with the courage of despair. Trapp was
ordered to use his half-track to crawl through the rubble and
make contact with troops coming in from the east. The route
they would have to take was dominated by a British anti-tank
gun. Trapp recalled, Bernd Schultze-Bernd was our driver, a
farmers son from Sendenhorst in Muensterland. He was one
of the three old company veterans. There were tears in his eyes.
He told our company commander that this was not going to
work. But an order is an order. To be on the safe side, the two
of us stuffed the pockets of our smocks with hand grenades and
ammunition for the .008 pistols. We raced past the crossroads
Imperial War Museum
Four British paratroopers move cautiously through the
rubble of a house in Oosterbeek, Sten guns at the ready.
When the British were forced out of Arnhem, some sol-
diers managed to escape the German noose and retreat to
the nearby town.
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WORLD WAR II AIRBORNE BATTLES 110
and got hit on the left, near Bernds drivers seat. The vehicle
came to a halt. Bernd was dead, a direct hit from the shell.
Trapp and his surviving pals bailed out of their half-track
and took shelter in a ruined cellar. As the British closed in on
them, they grenaded their way out and made their way to the
river bank. There they abandoned their uniforms and swam
through the murky water between moored boats, under rifle
fire, until they reached their own men.
Once back with their buddies, Trapp and his crew had their
wounds dressed, were issued uniforms from their dead com-
rades, and rejoined the fighting.
That afternoon, German tanks and troop convoys began
using the Arnhem bridge again. At the same time, the 82nd
Airborne made its legendary river crossing to take the
Nijmegen bridge. It was 6:30 PM before the first tanks of
Sergeant Peter Robinsons troop from the Grenadier Guards
rolled across the bridge. But the tanks needed to replenish
ammunition and fuel after earlier hard fighting in Nijmegen,
and the infantry battalion with which it normally worked was
still tied up fighting in Nijmegen as well. There would be no
XXX Corps drive north that evening. The defenders at Arn-
hem bridge were on their own.
At the bridge, Brigade HQ was on fire and many buildings
were full of wounded men. The two doctors told Frost that
evacuation of the wounded would require a truce, so some of
the German prisoners were sent out with white flags to arrange
this. It was quickly agreed, and the fighting stopped for nearly
two hours.
During the truce, Gough conferred with Frost on what to do
next. Frost was wounded and in a cellar, waking up from the
morphine he had taken. I told [Gough] to move. I gave him
my own belt with revolver and compass and we wished each
other luck. Down below where I lay it was pitch black and we
had to use our torches continuously.
Major Gough sent the able-bodied men from the building
northward into the town. Corporal Dennis Freebury was one
of them, and he recalled:
Major Gough, with his arm in a sling, and his silver hair, in
shirt sleevesa swashbuckling charactergave us a pep talk.
It was a bit like Hollywood. He said, I want you to go out, do
your best and see if you can get back to our own forcesand
just remember that you belong in the finest division in the
British Army. Nobody cheered or anything like that, but it
made one feel good.
Gough did not join these men but stayed with the 2nd Bat-
talion in their positions; the medical officers and their order-
lies became prisoners. The 280 wounded, including some Ger-
man prisoners, were taken with Dutch civilians who had been
sheltering in the building, and most of the wounded eventually
reached St. Eizabeth Hospital.
It was now after nightfall, but the blazing buildings made
the scene as light as day. A German officer wandered around
the 2nd Battalions slit trenches handing out cigarettes and
telling the Britons they did not stand a chance and should sur-
render. The British answered him with rude remarks.
The Germans took advantage of the two-hour truce to
advance their positions, and Major Tatham-Warter sent Cap-
tain Hoyer-Millar, who spoke some German, to protest. Hoyer-
Millar recalled: I found an officer in a long dark leather coat.
He spoke good English. I warned him that if his men contin-
ued, we might have to open fire. He, in turn, kept stressing
that there was no hope for us and that we should surrender. I
told him there was no chance of that and that we were confi-
dent our ground forces would soon be up to relieve us. I think
I must have introduced myself, or they got my name from
someone else, because when the action continued several hours
later I heard a rather uncanny, wheedling voice calling Cap-
tain Millar or Captain Mullerjust my name quite point-
less, because I made no reply.
The end was nearly at hand. The 120 men of Brigade HQ
group reached the meeting point at the convent school. Major
Hibbert recalled, We decided that, as we could no longer see
the bridge and had virtually no ammunition, we could be of
most use if we got back to the divisional perimeter and got
more ammunition. So we split up into sections of 10 men, each
under the command of an officer, to try to slip through the
enemy lines.
Meanwhile, the 2nd Battalion men went on fighting. Captain
Hoyer-Millar and his exhausted men were practically out of
ammunition but dug deep into their slit trenches to wait out
the shelling, hoping to at least disrupt incoming infantry
attacks.
There was undoubtedly bitterness and skepticism about the
performance of Montys ground forces, Hoyer-Millar later
said. But those of us who had taken part in the Primosole
bridge operation in Sicily recalled that, 24 hours overdue, the
first troop of Eighth Army tanks had finally reached us when
we were hanging on by our fingernails; might it not happen
again? I recall clearly how, during those final hours, one line of
A.H. Cloughs famous poem kept springing to mind: If hopes
were dupes, fears may be liars ... but deep down there was the
feeling, Theyve just written us off.
Major Tatham-Warter, limping, still clutching his umbrella,
decided that the remaining men should split into two parties,
one under himself, the other under Major Francis Tate, the
HQ Company commander, and hide for the night before reoc-
cupying the positions the next morning. But the Germans were
now all over the area, so the plan was scuppered. More scat-
tered fighting took place, and Major Tate was killed. The
remaining Britons tried to escape, but it was hopeless. Out of
ammunition, they became prisoners.
One group of British engineers fired off a last radio signal to
division headquarters, which astonished the Germans who
intercepted it: Out of ammunition. God Save the King.
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WORLD WAR II AIRBORNE BATTLES 111
Lieutenant Tony Ainslie recalled his party being trapped in
a house, with Germans outside calling on them to surrender.
Some of my group had already been hit, so I yelled back in
German, Dont shoot. There are wounded here. And we
walked across the street into captivity, he said. The first per-
son in authority we saw was an NCO. He was slightly cross-
eyed, his tunic was open, and he was wearing a blue-and-white
striped civilian shirt underneath. He said, Good evening. That
was a lovely battle, a really lovely battle. Have a cigar. We are
human too. So, after doing what we could for the wounded,
we all sat down, smoking foot-long cigars, and had a matey
chat about the events of the past few days.
They might have had a lot to talk about. The British para-
troopers standing at Arnhem bridge had fought to the limits of
their resistance. Of the men who started the fight, an estimated
10 officers and 71 men were killed or would die of their
wounds11 percent of the defenders. The use of the bridge
had been denied to the Germans for three critical days, and a
large portion of the 10th SS Panzer Division had been tied
down and suffered heavy casualties. The 1st Brigades sacrifice
enabled both the rest of 1st Airborne Division to hang on in
its Oosterbeek perimeter and the 82nd Airborne to take the
Nijmegen bridge, allowing the British to finally hook up with
the 1st Airborne Division and evacuate the survivors.
In the end, it was a defeat for the British, but it was one of
the valiant stands that they loved so wellan outnumbered
and outgunned force hanging on against overwhelming odds,
refusing to surrender. The 2nd Parachute Battalion and its
cohorts never actually surrendered as an organized body. Its
men were winkled out of their buildings in small groups, still
defiant. It was very much Britains Alamo.
John Frost was also down in a cellar when the Germans
overran his area. Both sides labored together to get the
wounded out and I saw the Germans were driving off in our
jeeps full of bandaged men, Frost recalled. The SS men were
very polite, but the bitterness I felt was unassuaged. No liv-
ing enemy had beaten us. The battalion was unbeaten yet, but
they could not have much chance with no ammunition, no
rest, and with no positions from which to fight. No body of
men could have fought more courageously and tenaciously
than the officers and men of the 1st Parachute Brigade at Arn-
hem bridge.

German soldiers administer first aid to wounded British

airborne troops after their capitulation in Arnhem. The
coordinated air and ground offensive of Operation Market-
Garden resulted in a costly failure even though some Allied
commanders believed it might end the war in Europe by
Christmas 1944.
Bundesarchiv
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112
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WORLD WAR II AIRBORNE BATTLES 113
By the beginning of September 1944, the Allied advance
toward Germany had been halted due to a lack of supplies,
particularly fuel. As General George Patton is alleged to have
said, My men can eat their belts, but my tanks have gotta
have gas! No major port east of the Seine River had been cap-
tured, the British supply lines stretched 500 km, all the way
back to Bayeux, and those of the Americans ran even farther,
600 km, through Paris to the Cotentin Peninsula.
In addition to the supply problem, there was at this point in
the campaign a serious argument between the Allied leaders
over whether to proceed on a broad front, with Field Marshal
Bernard Law Montgomerys 21st Army Group advancing in
the north toward the Ruhr and General Omar Bradleys 12th
Army Group moving at the same time in the south toward the
Saar, or in a single thrust by just one of the Army Groups.
The relative merits of each case have been set out clearly in the
many books describing the strategy of the European campaign.
On September 4, 1944, Supreme Allied Commander Dwight D.
Eisenhower issued a directive ordering Montgomerys Army
Group and two corps of the First U.S. Army to reach the sec-
tor of the Rhine covering the Ruhr and then seize the Ruhr. At
the same time, the Third U.S. Army and one corps of the First
U.S. Army were to occupy the sector of the Siegfried Line [West
Wall] covering the Saar and then seize Frankfurt.
This directive, while apparently giving Monty a green light,
presented him with a problem. Surprising though it may seem,
he had insufficient forces to exploit the German weaknesses on
his front. Of the 14 divisions and seven armored brigades in his
21st Army Group, only two armored divisions of XXX Corps
were ready to continue the advance. The six Canadian divisions
had been given the essential task of clearing Le Havre and the
Pas de Calais ports, XII Corps was committed to pushing the
German Fifteenth Army back to the Scheldt Estuary, and VIII
Corps was still immobilized back at the Seine owing to a lack
of transport.
Nevertheless, XXX Corps was told to push on, and on Sep-
tember 4, the 11th Armored Division captured Antwerp. Then,
late on September 10, an armored group secured a bridgehead
over the Albert Canal at Neerpelt, and the foothold required by
Monty for his single thrust toward the Ruhr was a reality.
Troopers of the U.S. 101st and 82nd Airborne Divisions fought with
distinction during the air-ground assault in the autumn of 1944.
BY MAJOR GENERAL MICHAEL REYNOLDS
LEFT: In his painting The Parachutist, artist Harvey Dunn
captures the moment when an American paratrooper leaps
from his transport aircraft. The U.S. jump into Holland dur-
ing Operation Market Garden was near perfect and carried
out in daylight.
U.S. Army Art
AMERICANS IN
MARKET-GARDEN
IN THE YEARS TO COME everyone will remember Arnhem, but no one will remember that two Amer-
ican divisions fought their hearts out in the Dutch canal country, wrote U.S. Air Force Lt. Gen. Lewis H.
Brereton, commander of the First Allied Airborne Army, shortly after Operation Market-Garden. Sadly, his
prediction proved all too accurate. Many books have been written about the fighting in the Arnhem area,
but few about the actions of the two American airborne divisions involved in this operation.
AB-US in Market Garden_Layout 1 10/14/14 12:22 PM Page 113
WORLD WAR II A1 RBORNE BATTLES 114
That same afternoon, Montgomery and Eisenhower met at
Brussels airfield. After an acrimonious opening discussion, dur-
ing which Ike had to remind Monty that he was a subordinate,
the supreme commander eventually approved the latters lat-
est plan. This envisaged the First Allied Airborne Army, Eisen-
howers only strategic reserve, securing crossings over the
Maas, Waal, and lower Rhine Rivers, and then British armor
advancing rapidly to outflank the West Wall and the Ruhr. The
plan had the added advantage that, if successful, it would cut
off all the Germans in western Holland, including the Fifteenth
Army. Monty gave the go-ahead for Operation Market-Gar-
den to be launched on September 17.
The First Allied Airborne Army was under the command of
General Brereton, formerly the commander of the U.S. Ninth
Air Force. His deputy was British Lt. Gen. Boy Browning,
and he had a mixed staff of Americans, British, and Poles.
Breretons army had two corps, one American and one British.
The XVIII U.S. Airborne Corps, under Lt. Gen. Matthew Ridg-
way, comprised the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions. The
82nd and 101st were battle-experienced divisions, the 82nd
having dropped and fought in Sicily and both having dropped
and fought in Normandy. The I British Airborne Corps, under
the command of the double-hatted General Browning, con-
sisted of the inexperienced 1st British Airborne Division and
the equally inexperienced 1st Polish Independent Parachute
Brigade Group.
The soldiers of the First Airborne Army were like coins burn-
ing in SHAEFs pocket. Since early July, most of them had been
on standby for a whole series of operations, none of which had
been launched, either because the ground troops had moved so
quickly that the proposed operation became redundant or
because the necessary aircraft were being used for aerial resup-
ply. It was, therefore, with relief and enthusiasm that Brereton
and his staff began their planning to employ three and one-third
airborne divisions, to be dropped in three different areas and,
hopefully, to be relieved within three days by the ground troops
of the British XXX Corps.
The aim of Operation Market-Garden was to capture and
hold the five major crossings over the canals and rivers lying
across the British Second Armys axis of advance between and
including the Dutch towns of Eindhoven and Arnhem. Com-
mand was vested in the British deputy commander of the First
Airborne Army, Lt. Gen. Boy Browning. The decision to
give him command was surprising for three reasons: First,
because 75 percent of the troops taking part in the operation
were to be American; second, because the U.S. Corps com-
mander, Ridgway, was far more experienced; and third,
because Brownings headquarters was basically a planning,
administrative, and training organization and certainly not a
command headquarters.
Inevitably, Brownings headquarters had no means of com-
municating with the two American divisions, and this meant
that U.S. manpower and equipment had to be added to it at
the last minute. In the event, Browning and his headquarters,
due to totally inadequate communications, played little part
in the forthcoming battle and wasted 38 gliders badly needed
by the 1st British Airborne Division to increase its first lift.
The basic plan was for the 101st Airborne Division to seize
the several bridges and defiles between Eindhoven and Grave.
The 82nd Airborne was to capture the Maas crossing at Grave,
Both: National Archives
LEFT: On October 18, 1944, German Field Marshal Walther Model visits a forward command post of a Volksgrenadier division
on the Western Front. RIGHT: Sometime after the withdrawal of airborne troops from Holland, Maj. Gen. Matthew Ridgway
(left), commander of the XVIII Airborne Corps, talks with newly promoted Maj. Gen. James M. Gavin.
AB-US in Market Garden_Layout 1 10/14/14 12:23 PM Page 114
WORLD WAR II AIRBORNE BATTLES 115
at least one of the four bridges over the
Maas-Waal Canal, and then, after secur-
ing the high ground between Nijmegen
and Groesbeek, to capture the vast Waal
road bridge in Nijmegen. At the same
time, Maj. Gen. Roy Urquharts 1st
British Airborne Division, later aided by
Maj. Gen. Stanislaus Sosabowskis 1st
Polish Independent Brigade Group, was
to capture the bridges over the lower
Rhine at Arnhem with sufficient bridge-
heads to facilitate the passage of XXX
Corps.
The XXX Corps Operation Instruc-
tion included the prophetic words, The
success of this operation depends largely
on speed of advance. Nevertheless, the
problems and dangers of sending a com-
plete corps of over 20,000 vehicles down
a narrow corridor on only one proper
road, across a series of six major canals
and waterways, to link up with an air-
borne bridgehead 100 km away were all
too obvious.
It will not have escaped the readers
notice that the extent of the missions
given to the American divisions was infi-
nitely greater than that given to the
British and Poles. The latter had to hold
on for a longer period, but at least their
operational area was limited in size. In
an attempt to deal with this problem, the
Americans reinforced each of their divi-
sions with an extra regiment, giving them
four rather than the normal three. Even
so, the sheer magnitude of their opera-
tional areas virtually guaranteed that the
Americans would have problems hold-
ing them until they were relieved.
The risks inherent in Operation Mar-
ket-Garden are well known. Put simply,
they were: (1) the weather, (2) insuffi-
cient aircraft and gliders to carry out all
the landings in one lift, and (3) carrying
out the assault in daylight. The air com-
mander for the operation, U.S. Maj. Gen.
Paul L. Williams, commander of IX Troop Carrier Command,
USAAF, decided, with Breretons support, that no more than
one lift should be flown each day.
This was due not only to the difficulties of navigating and
keeping formation in the predawn or post-dusk flights that
would have been necessary if two separate lifts had been
launched in a single autumn day, but also to there being insuf-
ficient ground staff to turn around and repair aircraft in the
time available. The effect of this decision was that three con-
secutive days of good flying weather would be needed to land
the whole force.
In the early afternoon of September 4, General Kurt Student,
The complex Market-Garden operational plan depended on the capture of several
key bridges over the Maas, Waal, and Lower Rhine Rivers in Holland and the swift
movement of the British XXX Corps up a narrow road to relieve the airborne
troops holding the spans.
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WORLD WAR II A1 RBORNE BATTLES 116
the head of the German parachute arm,
was telephoned in his Berlin office by
General Alfred Jodl, head of the High
Command Operations Staff, and told
that he was to command a new army to
be known as the First Parachute Army.
Its mission was to build and hold a new
defensive front on the line of the Albert
Canal in northern Belgium. He was then
told that General von Zangens Fifteenth
Army of over 80,000 men was isolated in
northeast Belgium and could escape only
by sea across the Scheldt Estuary.
Even if this were achieved, it would
take at least three weeks and heavy losses
were likely. Furthermore, the remnants
of the Seventh Army were being pushed
rapidly toward the Ardennes Forest, and
the only troops available to deploy into
the resulting 120 km gap along the
Albert Canal between Antwerp and
Maastricht were those of a division badly
depleted in the Normandy fighting and a
fortress division that had been guarding
the Dutch coastline.
Another division, composed of conva-
lescents and men who had been invalided out of the Army and
then brought back, was currently entraining at Aachen in Ger-
many and would be available in two or three days. Students
First Parachute Army was therefore to comprise all garrison,
training, and administrative troops already in Holland, the
divisions just mentioned, and a new force of some 30,000 Luft-
waffe personnel. The latter had been volunteered by Luftwaffe
chief Hermann Gring and consisted of six parachute regi-
ments in various stages of training or re-equipping, and some
10,000 Luftwaffe air and ground crew whose operations or
training had been curtailed because of fuel shortages.
By any standards, what followed was an incredible feat of
improvisation and organization. The precise details are com-
plicated. Suffice it to say that by September 13, General Stu-
dent had established a defensive line, albeit fragile, from the
mouth of the Scheldt to Maastricht behind which further bat-
tlegroups or Kampfgruppen (KGs) could be formed and
deployed. This line was manned by a mere 32 ad hoc battal-
ions, backed by 25 assault guns.
It was while this basic defense structure was being estab-
lished that, on September 8, the last elements of Willi Bittrichs
II SS Panzer Corps arrived in central Holland. This corps had
been badly mauled in the Normandy fighting and had been
sent to Holland to lick its wounds and be refitted. In fact, the
corps two divisions, the 9th SS Panzer Hohenstaufen and
10th SS Panzer Frundsberg, numbered little more than 6,000
to 7,000 men each at this time, of whom only about half were
combat troops. Nevertheless, the Hohenstaufen was to be
heavily involved in the Arnhem fighting and the Frundsberg
in the Nijmegen battle. From the point of view of this narra-
tive, it is important to note that by the time the Allies landed,
two Hohenstaufen panzergrenadier battalions and three bat-
teries of artillery had been transferred to the Frundsberg. One
of the grenadier battalions, SS Battalion Euling, named after
its commander, SS Captain Karl-Heinz Euling, was to play a
major role in the Nijmegen fighting.
Soon after his arrival in the Arnhem area, the Frundsberg
commander, SS captain Heinz Harmel, was ordered to provide
a strong KG as a reserve for the First Parachute Army. The KG
was named KG Heinke, after its commander SS Major Heinke.
It comprised two SS panzergrenadier battalions, companies
from the Frundsbergs reconnaissance and Pioneer battalions,
and an artillery battalion. Arriving south of Eindhoven on the
10th, Heinke took under command the Frundsbergs SS panz-
erjger battalion, with 21 Jagdpanzer IVs and a company of 12
40mm towed antitank guns, which was already in the area.
His KG would also play an important part in the forthcoming
fighting.
Field Marshal Walther Model, commander of Army Group
B and the overall commander in the area, set up his head-
quarters on September 15, just two days before the opening of
Market-Garden, in the Hartenstein Hotel in Oosterbeek, a
Wearing American flag armbands for easy identification by Dutch civilians, para-
troopers adjust packs and load up their C-47 before the flight to Holland.
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WORLD WAR II AIRBORNE BATTLES 117
mainly residential area of about 10,000 people a few kilome-
ters to the west of Arnhem. It was sheer coincidence that he
found himself less than 4 km from one of the main British land-
ing zones (LZs) and that the units of the Hohenstaufen and
Frundsberg Divisions were within 50 km of all the Allied LZs.
Operation Market-Garden began during the night of
September 16-17, with 200 RAF Lancaster heavy bombers and
23 Mosquito fighter-bombers attacking four airfields in the gen-
eral area of the proposed drop zones. Shortly after first light, 54
more Lancasters and five Mosquitoes attacked known flak posi-
tions while a further 85 Lancasters and 15 Mosquitoes pulver-
ized the German coastal batteries on Walcheren. Then, just
before the troop-carrying aircraft flew in, 816 U.S. B-17 heavy
bombers, escorted by 373 P-51 Mustang and P-47 Thunderbolt
fighters, attacked an additional 117 known flak positions on the
approaches to and near the LZs.
The airborne armada, protected by 919 fighter aircraft,
including Tempests, Spitfires, Mosquitoes, Thunderbolts,
Mustangs, and Lightnings, comprised 1,544 troop-carrying
aircraft and 478 gliders. Beginning at 1025 hours, they took
off over a period of 11/2 hours from 17 U.S. and nine British
bases in England.
Inevitably, reports of hundreds of Allied aircraft flying north-
east began to arrive at the various German headquarters, but
surprisingly few of the duty officers on this warm, sunny after-
noon appreciated their significance. One senior officer who
did was the commander of II SS Panzer Corps, SS Maj. Gen.
Bittrich. He received his first enemy situation report at 1330
hours (German time) and 10 minutes later issued a warning
order to both his divisions.
The Hohenstaufen was told to assemble its units for opera-
tions to secure Arnhem and its bridge and engage enemy air
landings to the west of the city. The Frundsberg was told to
assemble for an immediate move to Nijmegen, where it was to
occupy the bridges over the Waal and then advance to the
southern edge of the city. The Nijmegen sector and the 82nd
Airborne Divisions LZs became the immediate task of Military
District VI. This was an administrative command, totally
unsuited for controlling combat operations. Nevertheless, its
commander was promised additional troops in the form of a
complete parachute corps, which would be brought from
Cologne.
While the British were heavily engaged in the Arnhem area
20 km to the south, 7,277 paratroopers and 48 gliders of the
82nd Airborne Division, under the command of Brig. Gen.
James Gavin, had landed successfully. Lt. Col. Reuben Tuckers
504th Parachute Infantry Regiment, led by E Company of the
2nd Battalion, captured the vital bridge over the Maas at
Grave, while other troopers of the regiment secured another
over the Maas-Waal Canal. These actions were completed by
1930 hours.
This meant that as soon as the British armor arrived, it would
be able to advance straight toward Nijmegen. Meanwhile, the
505th and 508th Parachute Infantry Regiments, together with
Abandoned gliders litter a farm field near Grave, Holland as
American paratroopers float to earth on September 17, 1944.
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the divisional engineer battalion and an artillery battalion with
12 75mm howitzers, occupied the strategically vital ground
around and to the southeast of Groesbeek. Owing to the enor-
mity of the task, however, the majority of these defensive posi-
tions were little more than platoon-sized roadblocks.
The original orders to the 82nd Airborne specified that no
attempt be made to take the main Nijmegen road bridge until
the bridge over the Maas, at least one of those over Maas-
Waal Canal, and the high ground covering the approaches
from Germany at Groesbeek had been secured. Indeed, con-
trol of the Groesbeek feature was considered vital to the suc-
cess of the whole Grave-Nijmegen operation. Accordingly,
General Gavin had briefed Colonel Roy Lindquist, the com-
mander responsible for the Groesbeek area, that he should
only send a battalion against the Nijmegen road bridge if the
situation in the Groesbeek area was in hand, and then only
under the cover of darkness.
By 1800 hours the situation seemed favorable enough, and at
2200 hours the move toward the bridge began. Three compa-
nies from two separate battalions were committed, but the two
leading companies of the 508th ran into heavy opposition in the
area of the main traffic island in the city, and their advance
halted. The Nijmegen road bridge itself was defended by a
scratch force of about 750 men from various training and reserve
units in and around the city, cobbled together by a Colonel
Henke, the commander of a spare parachute training regimen-
tal headquartersanother perfect example of German initiative
and military competence. Henke also ensured that the 29 88mm
flak guns and some additional 20mm weapons, sited to protect
the road and rail bridges, were capable of firing in a ground-
support role.
The third component of Operation
Market-Garden, Maj. Gen. Maxwell
Taylors 101st Airborne Division, had
also been largely successful in fulfilling its
missions. Within a few hours, nearly
7,000 troopers of its three parachute reg-
iments had captured the towns of Veghel
and St. Oedenrode and all but one of the
bridges in the 25 km corridor between
Eindhoven and Veghel. This corridor
eventually became known to the Ameri-
cans as Hells Highway.
The only important bridge not to be cap-
tured was the one at Son (sometimes
spelled Zon) over the Wilhelmina Canal.
A KG from the Hermann Gring Training
Regiment had managed to hold on long
enough against part of Colonel Robert
Sinks 506th Parachute Infantry Regi-
ment for it to be blown at about 1600
hours. Nonetheless, during the night the
Americans swam or crossed the canal in small boats and over-
came the opposition. A makeshift wooden footbridge, based
on the remains of the original metal bridge, was then con-
structed by the airborne engineers, and soon after dawn the
men of the 506th were approaching Eindhoven, where they
were expecting to link up with the British armor coming up
from the south.
It will be remembered that Field Marshal Model had given
General Students First Parachute Army the task of dealing with
this airborne assault. Accordingly, three combat groups were
deployed: first, the leading elements of the very understrength
59th Infantry Division of the Fifteenth Army (some 3,000 men),
having escaped across the Scheldt, were ordered to detrain at
Tilburg, only 25 km northwest of Eindhoven, and advance
toward the Best sector of the Wilhelmina Canal. Second, two
scratch battalions of paratroopers from a training and rein-
forcement unit a similar distance north of Eindhoven were
ordered to advance toward the 101sts bridgeheads at St.
Oedenrode and Veghel. Third, Panzer Brigade 107, with a bat-
talion of Panther tanks, a panzergrenadier unit in SPWs
(armored personnel or weapons carriers), and a company each
of Sturmgeschtze (armored assault guns) and SPW-mounted
Pioneers, was diverted from the Aachen area. It was expected
to arrive in the area in just over 24 hours.
The first of these groups to see action was part of the 59th
Division, which, during the afternoon and night of the 17th,
thwarted H Company of the 506th Parachute Regiment in its
attempt to seize a bridge over the canal near Best.
What of the British advance toward Eindhoven? Although it
was supported by a massive artillery barrage and plenty of
close air support, the leading brigades of XXX Corps had been
U.S. gliderborne soldiers unload their wrecked aircraft after what amounted
to a controlled crash in a Dutch field during the opening hours of Operation
Market-Garden.
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ordered to halt at Valkenswaard after an
advance of only 12 km. This happened at
2200 hours on the grounds that the lead-
ing armored group had been fighting
hard and tanks require maintenance.
Incredibly, the advance was not to con-
tinue until 0700 hours the following
morning. One Guards officer later wrote:
We should never have stayed the night in
Valkenswaard but should have continued
to advance all night to Eindhoven and
beyond non-stop. It made no sense to
stop, bearing in mind the distance to be
covered to Arnhem and the river cross-
ings ahead.
The first German troops to make con-
tact with the force already protecting the
Waal bridges in Nijmegen, KG Henke,
were those of a Major Reinholds Frunds-
berg SS Panzergrenadier Battalion and a
party of Pioneers. The Pioneers immedi-
ately started preparing the massive road
and railway bridges for demolition, while
Henke briefed Reinhold on his defensive
layout. After being told that a scratch
force was already defending a line run-
ning approximately a kilometer south of
the Waal bridges and that two 20mm
and one 88mm flak gun were covering
the Waal railway bridge, Reinhold
decided to deploy his men on the north bank of the river imme-
diately adjacent to the bridges.
Next to arrive, at about midday, was Captain Eulings
Hohenstaufen SS panzergrenadier battalion which had been
attached to the Frundsberg. Reinhold gave orders that it was
to secure the immediate approaches to the road bridge and
placed the various Army and police detachments already man-
ning strongpoints in the area under Eulings command. The
latter set up his command post near the Valkhof, the citadel of
Nijmegen and the highest point in the city, not far from the
southern ramp of the bridge, while his men took up positions
covering all the approaches to the large traffic island near the
south end of the bridge.
This was the same traffic island where the leading companies
of the 508th had been halted the previous evening. Four Stur-
mgeschtze were also allocated to Euling. They had crossed
the Rhine at Pannerden where, since early that morning, the
Frundsberg Pioneers had constructed a ferry service. Mean-
while, on the north bank, Reinhold ensured that the 88mm
flak guns, already protecting the bridges from air attack, were
re-sited among the houses at the waters edge so that they could
engage with direct fire any vehicles attempting to cross. As fur-
ther Frundsberg units arrived, including a few Mk III and IV
tanks, they were incorporated into the overall defensive system
and used to strengthen KG Henke. Mines were laid and vari-
ous buildings, including factory chimneys and even church
towers, were demolished to create obstacles.
What of the Americans during this time? Brig. Gen. Gavin
knew full well that until the arrival of his second lift he did not
have the strength to hold the vital Groesbeek area and at the
same time mount a strong attack on the Nijmegen road bridge.
To compound his problems, the abortive attempt to take the
bridge the previous night had depleted his forces covering the
LZs and the approaches from the Reichswald. There were,
however, two factors in his favor. First, there were, and still
are, no roads or even reasonable tracks leading from the Reich-
swald toward the thickly wooded high ground at Groesbeek.
Second, the Maas-Waal Canal and waterways flowing into the
Waal just to the east of Nijmegen channeled any German attack
toward the Groesbeek ridge.
At 0630 hours on the morning of the 18th, the Germans
launched their long-awaited counterattack. In another amaz-
ing feat of inventiveness, organization, and military compe-
tence, they had assembled an ad hoc force of four battalions
Dutch children greet American paratroopers shortly after they landed near
Nijmegen on September 17. Additional aircraft are visible in the distance.
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WORLD WAR II A1 RBORNE BATTLES 120
armed with 24 mortars and 130 light and medium machine
guns, three artillery batteries, and even a few armored cars and
SPWs mounting flak guns. Totaling over 3,000 men, many of
whom had never received even basic infantry training, this
group, designated the 406th Division, was ordered to attack
and drive the Americans back across the Maas.
In view of the very thin American defenses, it was perhaps
not surprising that the German attacks made some progress
and parts of the LZs were overrun. With the expected fly-in not
due until 1300 hours, Gavin was forced to withdraw his men
from Nijmegen and throw in his last reservestwo companies
of the 307th Parachute Engineer Battalion. Even so, fighting
was still going on when the first of 450 Dakotas, towing 450
gliders, appeared overhead at 1400 hours. Bad weather in Eng-
land had delayed their take-off.
Although some casualties were suffered, the fly-in, which
included 18 howitzers and eight 57mm antitank guns, was
amazingly successful and caused panic among the Germans,
who fled. Ninety-seven close air support sorties were flown
during this action.
The Americans had suffered few casualties during the day,
but the German counterattack and the late arrival of his rein-
forcements had ended Gavins chances of mounting a proper
attack against the Nijmegen bridges. His best hope now was
a combined attack with the British armor, which he was told
was due to arrive at the Grave bridge at 0830 hours the fol-
lowing morning.
At 0700 hours on September 18, the British 5th Guards
Armored Brigade resumed its advance toward Aalst. The only
immediate opposition at this time was the depleted remnants
of a KG that had resisted the advance the previous day and one
or maybe two Jagdpanzer IVs operating on the eastern flank
of the Eindhoven road. Even so, with close air support unavail-
able during the first part of the day due to poor flying weather,
it took until midday for the leading British battle group to cover
the 5 km to Aalst.
Then, just to the north of the village, four 88mm guns were
encountered covering another waterway and the approach
road to Eindhoven. Armored cars managed to bypass this
opposition to the west, and in an attempt to exploit this oppor-
tunity the reserve battle group was told to follow up. However,
the weakness of the bridges in the area frustrated the advance
of the heavier tanks and it was a further six hours before the
leading elements of the division covered the last 2 km to Eind-
hoven and made contact with the U.S. 506th Parachute
Infantry Regiment already in the city.
Eindhoven itself was undefended, and one young Guards
officer later wrote: On the outskirts of Eindhoven we passed
our first American soldier standing at the side of the road and
holding the hand of a small child. He waved and shouted,
Great stuff, boys. More and more Americans appeared,
strolling round the town. It was surprising to see them in an
almost peacetime atmosphere. There were no barricades at
main roads, machine-gun posts, antitank guns, or other sta-
tic defences.
The British tanks reached the Wilhelmina Canal at Son at
2100 hours, and Royal Engineers arrived shortly afterward to
begin bridging the gap. Fortunately, a heavy German bomb-
ing attack on Eindhoven during the night did not interfere
with this work and by 0615 hours on September 19, a 40-ton
Bailey bridge was spanning the Wilhelmina and the tanks of
the Guards Armored Division were ready to continue their
advance.
In the meantime, a major battle had developed at Best where,
it will be recalled, men of Lt. Col. John Michaeliss 502nd, H
Company in particular, had been struggling to capture the bridge
over the Wilhelmina Canal. Unfortunately, elements of the 59th
Division of the Fifteenth Army proved too strong and at midday
on the 18th the bridge was blown. Moreover, the continuing
buildup of this division now began to pose a serious threat to the
101sts tenuous hold on Hells Highway.
The bad weather in England affected the fly-in of the
American follow-up troops. The IX Troop Carrier Command
launched a total of 445 aircraft and 385 gliders on the 19th,
of which 27 aircraft were lost and only 221 gliders reached
their LZs. The failure to launch 258 of their gliders, carrying
the 82nd Airborne Divisions 325th Glider Infantry Regiment,
was to end any hope Brig. Gen. Gavin might have had of cap-
turing either of the vital Nijmegen bridges on this day. Just as
bad, only 40 of the 265 tons of essential stores and ammuni-
tion destined for his division were recovered.
The British began their advance from Son at 0615
hours and at 1100 hours reached the Grave bridge, where their
commander was met by Lt. Gen. Boy Browning, the air-
borne corps commander, and Brig. Gen. Gavin. Browning said
he believed that a concerted rush could succeed in capturing the
Nijmegen road bridge and, after a short conference, it was
agreed that Gavin would place the 2nd Battalion of the 505th
under British command for this mission. As a quid pro quo, the
British gave Gavin a mixed battle group of tanks and infantry
to help him defend his vital 40 km perimeter facing the Reich-
swald. He said later, So far, we had been spared a German
armored attack, but now, with the availability of British armor,
we felt equal to anything that could happen.
The advance into Nijmegen by three combined columns
began at 1600 hours. The smallest group, made up of a British
infantry company and four tanks, was given the main post
office as its objective in the belief that it contained the demo-
lition control point for blowing the bridges. It was captured
without difficulty, but nothing was found.
Stronger, simultaneous attacks were launched against
the men of KG Euling defending the road bridge and KG Henke
at the rail bridge. The road bridge attack was carried out by the
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WORLD WAR II AIRBORNE BATTLES 121
2nd Battalion of the 505th, less a company, but with 12 British
tanks and a British infantry company attached. The attack
against the rail bridge was taken on by single British and Amer-
ican infantry companies and 12 British tanks. Neither was suc-
cessful. A German historian, Wilhelm Tieke, gives the German
version of what happened: Heavy fire burst from all the houses
and parks around the two bridges over the Waal against the
attackers. On the approaches to the railroad bridge, several Sher-
mans were knocked out by an 88mm. At the highway bridge
they did not get anywhere near as close. Twenty millimeter flak
hammered the length of the streets and two StuGs attacked from
well-concealed ambush positions and shot up several enemy
tanks. With the fall of darkness, the infantry attack was repulsed.
The American paratroopers and British tanks took positions for
the night 400m from the bridges.
A British liaison officer with the Americans in forward posi-
tions overlooking the bridge from its east side later wrote: The
plan had been to rush the bridge with the Grenadier Guards
Motor Battalion but this failed as German SS troops and others
were holding both ends of the bridge and the northern part of
the town in strength. The Grenadiers, together with the Amer-
icans, fought on all afternoon and after very bitter fighting
reached a roundabout just short of the bridge where they were
finally held up. These American troops are splendid types, brave
and cheerful, and seemingly indifferent to the worst.
Late in the day, the commander of XXX Corps, Lt. Gen.
Horrocks, came forward and met Gavin, Browning, and Maj.
Gen. Adair, commander of the Guards Armored Division. They
were all acutely aware that the attempts to take the bridges
had failed and that, with the Germans on both banks, their
men had little chance of capturing either intact. It seemed obvi-
ous that, rather than risk losing a bridge, the Germans would
demolish it. In fact, in the case of the road bridge, Field Mar-
shal Model had expressly forbidden such an act. He was deter-
mined to use it in a counteroffensive.
The Allied commanders were now facing a crisis. The British
force at Arnhem was in deep trouble, the 82nd Airborne Divi-
sions eastern perimeter was under heavy pressure, and the
extremely narrow XXX Corps corridor was under ground
attack from both flanks and intermittent air attack. In similar
circumstances, most commanders would have given up trying
to fight their way to the bridges through a built-up area and
would have carried out a river crossing on one of the flanks, fol-
lowed by a bridging operation. These were far from normal cir-
cumstances, however, and the time needed to mount and carry
out such complicated operations would have spelled annihila-
tion for the British at Arnhem.
As Gavin put it, If I did nothing more than pour infantry
and British armor into the battle at our end of the bridge, we
could be fighting there for days and Urquhart [commander of
the British paratroopers at Arnhem] would be lost. He there-
fore came up with a daring, but extremely risky, plan to attack
Almost obscured by a shower of earth created by a bursting
German 88mm shell, an American paratrooper rushes for
cover during Operation Market-Garden. While the British 1st
Airborne Division was decimated at Arnhem, the U.S. 82nd
and 101st Divisions suffered 20 percent casualties.
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both ends of the bridge at once.
Only 1,341 out of 2,310 troops and 40 percent of the
artillery pieces destined for the 101st got through on the 19th,
and many of the re-supply bundles landed among the Germans
in the Best sector. Maj. Gen. Maxwell Taylors problem of
defending his 25 km sector of the highway was now com-
pounded by shortages of ammunition, fuel, and even food.
The fighting at Best reached a crisis on this day. The 59th
Division was now posing a real threat, and early in the after-
noon Maj. Gen. Taylor decided he had to throw in more troops
to eliminate it. Supported by two battalions of Colonel Joseph
Harpers recently arrived 327th Glider Infantry Regiment and
a squadron of British tanks, he committed the 2nd and 3rd
Battalions of the 502nd Regiment. By evening the Germans
had broken and fled; more than 300 were killed and over 1,400
captured. As the fighting at Best ended, another German attack
developedthis time at Son, where General Taylor had his
headquarters. The new German thrust, by Panzer Brigade 107,
was aimed at seizing Son and cutting off the advance elements
of XXX Corps.
The 107th was a very powerful formation comprising a
panzer battalion with 36 Panthers and 11 Jagdpanzer IVs, a
full-strength panzergrenadier battalion with 116 SPWs and
eight 120mm mortars, and an SPW mounted Pioneer com-
pany. Its surprise attack, called a reconnaissance in force by
the Germans due to the difficult nature of the ground around
Son, began shortly after 1715 hours. It was very nearly suc-
cessful in that a few Panthers were able to take the newly con-
structed Bailey bridge over the canal under fire, but the situa-
tion was saved by the arrival of some of the glider infantrymen
and a single 57mm antitank gun. The latter, together with
bazooka fire, accounted for two Panthers, and as darkness fell
the Germans withdrew.
General Gavin described September 20, 1944, as a day
unprecedented in the divisions combat history. Each of the three
regiments fought a critical battle in its own area and won over
heavy odds. To the southeast of Nijmegen, the 505th (less a
battalion) and the 508th fought a desperate battle to hold off
German forces attacking from the direction of the Reichswald,
and in the city itself the third regiment played a decisive part in
the capture of the bridges over the Waal. General Browning wit-
nessed this latter event, together with General Horrocks of XXX
Corps, and is said to have exclaimed, I have never seen a more
gallant action.
The German attacks from the direction of the Reichswald
were launched by three KGs at around 0800 hours. By early
evening they had made considerable progress against the badly
overstretched Americans. They captured the villages of Wyler,
Beek, and Mook and at one stage threatened the only bridge
available to XXX Corps over the Maas-Waal Canal. The 82nd
had by this time suffered 150 killed and 600 wounded. Casu-
alties in the Mook battle alone were 20 killed, 54 wounded,
One of the largest bridges in Europe, the span at Nijmegen is
shown in an artists sketch after Operation Market-Garden.
The bridge across the Waal River was captured by troops of
the 82nd Airborne Division, but the advance toward Arnhem
bogged down in the face of heavy German resistance.
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WORLD WAR II AIRBORNE BATTLES 123
and seven missing. This critical situation was eventually
restored that night and the following morning by strong Amer-
ican counterattacks, those at Mook and Beek being supported
by elements of the attached British armored group.
Despite its obvious dangers, both Horrocks and the com-
mander of the Guards Armored Division readily gave their
approval to Gavins plan for the capture of the Nijmegen
bridges. It involved joint American/British attacks to secure the
southern ends of the rail and road bridges and most of the
504th Parachute Regiment crossing the river in assault boats
to the west of the railway bridge with the aim of securing the
northern bank. In the case of the road bridge, British tanks
were to make a dash across it in conjunction with the Ameri-
can attack. The dangers of the Germans blowing the bridge at
this point were obvious.
It took five hours, until 1330 hours, to clear the jumping-off
area for the final assault on the southern ends of the bridges and
the bank of the Waal from which the river crossing was to be
made. Further delays were then experienced in bringing for-
ward 32 British assault boats from the XXX Corps column. A
major cause of this delay was another extremely heavy Luft-
waffe raid on Eindhoven the previous night, which had blocked
roads and caused numerous civilian casualties.
Just before 1500 hours, following an air strike by eight
British Typhoons and a 15-minute artillery barrage, the boats,
each with 13 paratroopers and manned by men of C Company
of the 307th Airborne Engineeer Battalion, set off across the
400-meter-wide river. Major Julian Cooks 3rd Battalion of the
504th led the way, with Lt. Col. William Harrisons 1st Bat-
talion following, in a total of six waves. Major Edward
Willemss 2nd Battalion and 30 British tanks provided direct
fire support from the south bank near the power station, and
some one hundred American guns and mortars provided indi-
rect fire support. Smoke rounds were included in the fire plan
to provide some cover for the boats, but much of it blew away
before it could be effective.
The story of the incredibly gallant Waal River crossing and the
seizure of the north bank by the men of the 504th has been told
many times and portrayed vividly in the film A Bridge Too Far.
It is unnecessary to repeat it.
Meanwhile, the complementary assault against KG Euling at
the southern end of the road bridge was reaching its climax. By
early evening, despite a considerable number of casualties and
the loss of a Sherman, the attack by Lt. Col. Ben Vandervoorts
2nd Battalion and Lt. Col. Edward Goulburns 1st Grenadier
Guards, both supported by British Shermans, finally over-
whelmed the German defenders. As the Grenadier Guards His-
tory put it: All serious German resistance seemed to crack
a patrol from No. 4 Company [Grenadier Guards] moved down
to the bridge and, apart from a considerable number of shell-
shocked Germans, found it clear. It remained for the 2nd Bat-
talion [the Grenadier Guards Tank Battalion] to move over the
bridge. At 1830, a troop [platoon of four tanks], which had
been held in readiness by the round-about, edged forward along
the embankment, but it was still too light; they were met by
strong anti-tank fire and forced to withdraw.
By this time the valiant men of the 504th, despite suffering
134 casualties killed, wounded, or missing, had secured the
north end of the railway bridge and were continuing their
advance to the north and east. At 1900 hours, as they
approached the north end of the massive road bridge, the
troop of four Grenadier Guards Shermans was ordered to
advance again.
Despite the fading light, they came under fire from two
88mm guns on the far side, a Sturmgeschtze firing straight
down the bridge, and from men with hand-held antitank
weapons and machine guns on the structure itself. The two
rear tanks were hit but, against all expectations, the other two
succeeded in crossing and after knocking out the Stur-
mgeschtze, linked up with Lt. Cmdr. Reuben Tuckers para-
troopers about a kilometer up the road. The time was 1915
hours. Within an hour the Americans had eliminated the anti-
tank threat, and British engineers, more Shermans, four 17-
pounder antitank guns, and two companies of infantry had
reinforced the slender bridgehead.
With the remnants of the beleaguered 1st Airborne Division
at Arnhem, less than 18 km away to the north, the Americans
naturally expected the British armor to move rapidly to their
rescuebut nothing happened. Lt. Cmdr. Tucker was, under-
standably, furious. He is said to have told a Guards major,
Your boys are hurting up there at Arnhem. Youd better go.
There is even a report that one American company com-
mander was so angry about the failure to advance that he actu-
A British tank from 2nd Army passes by Germans killed dur-
ing the fight for the bridge at Nijmegan.
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ally threatened a British officer with his submachine gun, caus-
ing him to close the hatches on his Sherman. Certainly, Tucker
said to General Gavin the next morning, What in the hell are
they doing? Weve been in this position for over 12 hours and
all they seem to be doing is brewing tea. In view of the casu-
alties his regiment had suffered securing the north bank of the
Waal, his anger would seem to be justified.
A British Guards officer later wrote: Patrols of Americans,
wearing rubber-soled boots that made no sound, kept pass-
ing through us, alert and eager to engage the enemy. For our
part, we just sat in our positions all night. The situation in
Arnhem remained desperate. Yet the Guards Armoured Divi-
sion did nothing.
Sadly, it was true. It would be 18 hours before the advance was
resumed, and yet for five hours, from 1900 until midnight, there
was virtually nothing to stop an advance up the Elst-Arnhem
road. Once again, however, British caution ruled the day. The
plight of those in the Arnhem area seems to have taken second
place to worries about the XXX Corps corridor south of
Nijmegen. Or was it perhaps lethargy, military incompetence, or
an unwillingness to accept a few casualties for the good of the
majoritynot least the Dutch people north of the Waal?
Many excuses have been offered for the failure of the Guards
Armored Division to advance on the evening of September
20, but none of them is totally satisfactory.
One junior Irish Guards officer later wrote: I led my platoon
over the [Waal] bridge in the dark to take up a position astride
the road ahead. Again, we sat there all night, with no German
counter-attack. It was a moment when you would have
expected the commanders to order the Grenadiers [in Sher-
mans] to continue hell for leather to Arnhem, with the 3rd Bat-
talion Irish Guards riding on the tanks. Neither battalion was
otherwise seriously engaged all night.
The failure of Horrocks to order the advance to continue
hell for leather that evening, or of Adair to seize the initia-
tive and give the necessary orders, was to result in tragic events
on both sides of the lower Rhine.
Not surprisingly, the situation in front of the Nijmegen bridge-
head on the night of September 20 soon began to change and,
shortly after midnight, a new German defensive line, some 4
km north of the bridge, began to build. It was manned initially
by KG Reinhold, and by dawn the following day it had been
reinforced by 16 Mk IVs and Sturmgeschtze and a panzer-
grenadier battalion of the Frundsberg, newly arrived from the
Pannerden crossing.
In an episode almost as amazing as the American crossing of
the Waal, SS Captain Karl-Heinz Euling led the 60 or so sur-
vivors of his KG to safety that night. They fought on until
around 2225 hours in various locations near the bridge and
then managed to slip away, quite literally under the noses of
the British, to find rowing boats and join their Frundsberg com-
rades on the north side of the river. Euling was later awarded
the Knights Cross for his actions on this day.
General Taylors greatest concern was another attack by Ger-
man armor, and his worst fears were realized when Panzer
Brigade 107 attacked Son again early on the 20th. Panthers
soon controlled the bridge by fire, and it would almost cer-
tainly have fallen had not 10 British tanks belatedly responded
to an SOS dating from the crisis of the night before. The Ger-
mans found they were unable to close on the village due to the
canal, and after losing four Panthers to the British tanks they
withdrew. Nevertheless, it had been a close-run thing.
General Taylor had already decided that since he could not
maintain a static defense along the whole length of Hells High-
way, he would try to surprise and unbalance the enemy by lim-
ited offensive thrusts of his own. Accordingly, in the first of
these operations Lt. Col. Kinnardss battalion of the 501st
swept northwest from Veghel along the Willems Canal and
accounted for about 500 Germans, including 418 prisoners.
Between 0830 and 1130 hours on September 21, two
brigades of the long-awaited British 43rd Division, part of
XXX Corps, arrived in Nijmegen. In view of the situation in
the Arnhem sector, one would have expected them to con-
tinue to the north side of the Waal, but instead both remained
in the city. This was, however, clearly a blessing in disguise for
Gavins division. With the British assuming responsibility for
the city, the 82nd could focus its attention on its vulnerable
eastern flank.
Farther south, General Taylors tactic of carrying the
attack to the enemy saw two battalions of Lt. Col. Johnsons
501st Regiment and two battalions of Lt. Cmdr. Michaeliss
502nd attempt to envelop the Germans in the Schijndel area
between Veghel and St. Oedenrode. The operation began after
dark and was progressing well, but as shall be seen, it had to be
called off at 1430 hours the following day due to another all-out
German effort to cut Hells Highway.
The 101st, with help from British tanks, had so far successfully
defended Hells Highway, but its task was being prolonged by
the slow progress of the British on either flank. By the morning
of the 22nd, when a major German attack was launched in the
Veghel area, their VIII Corps was still southeast of Eindhoven
and their XII Corps around Best, 8 km west of Son. The Amer-
icans were so stretched that in places the front was quite lit-
erally the edges of the main Eindhoven-Nijmegen road and
defended only by the XXX Corps troops moving along it.
The failure of the flanking British corps to keep pace with
XXX Corps and thus relieve the pressure on the Americans
has been the subject of much postwar discussion. The bare
facts are that XII Corps was not ready to advance on Septem-
ber 17, and three days later had covered only 15 km to reach
the Turnhout-Eindhoven road, while VIII Corps, which did
not begin its advance until the 20th, took six days to reach the
Maas River, 25 km southeast of Nijmegen. Although no one
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WORLD WAR II AIRBORNE BATTLES 125
would question the bravery of the junior officers and soldiers
or the severity of the fighting, one has to question the motiva-
tion of some of their superiors and compare it with that of
their opponents. It is significant that, long after the war, Gen-
eral OConnor, the commander of VIII Corps, admitted that he
had been instructed not to press too hard on his flank!
The German attack in the Veghel area was launched at 0900
hours on the 22nd from both sides of Hells Highway. A KG
Huber, with three infantry battalions, an artillery battalion, a
flak battery, seven antitank guns, and four Jagdpanthers,
attacked from the west. Following up was a parachute regi-
ment, but it would not reach the battle area until the follow-
ing day. The heaviest assault came from the east and was
mounted by a KG Walther. This KG included the Panzer
Brigade 107, a Frundsberg panzergrenadier battalion, an
artillery battalion, and a flak battery, and KG Heinke. Panzer
Brigade 107 had already been in action two days previously at
Son, losing 10 percent of its armor in the process.
The 101st Airborne Division was inevitably too thinly spread
to resist a strong attack at a single point. Lt. Col. Robert Bal-
lards 2nd Battalion of the 501st was positioned in Veghel, but
the two other parachute battalions of the regiment were
already involved in the Schijndel area. Fortunately, members of
the Dutch Resistance had warned General Taylor of the Ger-
man buildup on both sides of the corridor, and this enabled him
to deploy some of his slender reserves: Lt. Col. Ray Allens bat-
talion of the 327th Glider Infantry Regiment, 150 men of
Colonel Sinks 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, and a bat-
talion of British tanks.
The German attacks were violent and, although not fully
coordinated, succeeded in cutting the road between Uden
and Veghel by 1330 hours. Panthers then turned south
toward Veghel, and shortly afterward KG Huber, advanc-
ing from the west, was able to bring fire to bear on the vital
bridge over the Willems Canal. The Americans, however,
were able to pull back the two battalions of the 501st from
the Schijndel area to support their comrades in Veghel, and
these battalions were able to engage and virtually annihilate
KG Huber from the rear.
Meanwhile, the arrival of a small reserve force heading for
Uden, supported by a squadron of British tanks and a battalion
of glider infantrymen from the main divisional LZ, halted the
move of the German tanks from the north and stabilized the sit-
uation. According to the U.S. Official History, the Americans
requested air support, but unfavorable weather denied any sub-
stantial assistance from that quarter. This statement is contra-
dicted by General Brereton, who claimed that 119 Typhoon sor-
ties were flown in support of the ground troops on this day. RAF
records show a total of 74 Typhoon sorties being flown: 66 in
the 101st Airborne sector where the alleged target was up to
100 tanks and eight in the Reichswald area.
By last light, the 101st was holding the Veghel area with eight
battalions of parachute and glider infantry and two companies
of British tanks, but this force was still not considered strong
enough to guarantee Hells Highway for the movement of the
XXX Corps units and supplies urgently needed north of
Nijmegen. Knowing that the Germans would intensify their
attacks during the night and the next day, Horrocks gave orders
A Sherman Firefly tank of the Irish Guards Group advances
past Shermans knocked out earlier during the opening
phase of Operation Market-Garden.
Imperial War Museum
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WORLD WAR II A1 RBORNE BATTLES 126
that a tank battalion and an infantry bat-
talion from the Guards Armored Division
in Nijmegen were to be sent back down
the corridor to help the Americans. They
received the order to move at 1230 hours
and, after brushing with German elements
south of Uden, went firm into the village as
darkness fell.
In the meantime, the commander of the
British Second Army, General Miles
Dempsey, in an indication of how seri-
ously he viewed the situation, placed the
101st Airborne Division under the British
VIII Corps and told the VIII Corps com-
mander to move one of his divisions to
Veghel.
By last light on September 23, the 82nd
had expanded its Nijmegen defensive
perimeter to an average depth of 7 km in
the east and 12 km in the southeast.
Although the Germans had been rein-
forced, the American paratroopers had
fought them to a standstill, and the
expanded American bridgehead between
the Maas and the Waal provided a much-
needed firm base for the further advance of the British VIII
Corps. It also provided greater protection for the vital Nijmegen
bridges. With the safe, if belated, arrival of the 325th Glider
Infantry Regiment on this day, Gavin could be justly proud of
his divisions achievements. His own performance had been
remarkable. He had been in constant pain from a suspected
broken back following his parachute landing on the 17th.
Farther south, in the 101st Divisions sector, the situation
was less stable. The balance of the Frundsbergs KG Heinke
SS panzergrenadiers and some panzerjgershad closed up to
KG Walther, as had a battalion of paratroopers. Thus rein-
forced, Walther resumed his attack on the Veghel sector of
Hells Highway. In conjunction with this attack from the east,
the 6th German Parachute Regiment, commanded by the
famous Baron von der Heydte, already exhausted after a 48-
hour approach march, was ordered to attack from the west
on basically the same axis as that taken by the ill-fated KG
Huber the previous day. Neither attack was successful.
By midday the paratroopers from the west had been halted
by their American counterparts and, at about the same time,
Walther, no longer able to ignore the steady advance of the
British VIII Corps to his left rear, decided to pull back. An
hour later the overall American commander in Veghel, Brig.
Gen. Anthony McAuliffe, sent two battalions, with British
tank support, north to clear the road, and by 1520 hours
his men had linked up with the British Guards units moving
south from Uden. After 24 hours, Hells Highway was open
again. German reports confirm that Panzer Brigade 107 lost
16 Panthers, 24 SPWs, and over 300 men in its struggle to
cut the highway.
A further Allied success on this day was the safe delivery by
glider of the remaining artillery and 3,000 men of the 101st
Airborne Division.
Von der Heydtes 6th German Parachute Regiment, with four
weak battalions and a few assault guns, attacked Veghel again
at 1000 hours. Heavy fighting between the rival paratroopers
followed, and while this was going on a KG Jungwirth, cob-
bled together from another infantry division, found an unde-
fended section of the highway, 6 km southwest of Veghel.
Within 24 hours of Hells Highway being reopened, it was cut
again. Despite heavy interdiction from American and British
guns, German paratroopers successfully reinforced KG Jung-
wirth during the night, and it soon became clear that much
stronger Allied forces would be needed to reopen the vital road
to Nijmegen.
At 0830 hours on Monday morning, a combined attack by
American and British forces was launched to clear the Ger-
mans off Hells Highway. The men of the 506th Parachute
Infantry Regiment advanced from the direction of Veghel,
while a reinforced battalion of the 502nd together with British
infantry moved up from St. Oedenrode. British tanks supported
both groups. Although they were surrounded on three sides,
the Germans held on and sensibly used their time to heavily
mine the whole area.
American airborne troops patrol the city of Nijmegen in the days following the
failed effort to reach Arnham. Men of the 82nd and 101st Divisions stayed an addi-
tional 6 weeks under Montgomerys command.
National Archives
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WORLD WAR II AIRBORNE BATTLES 127
Although the Germans eventually withdrew after dark that
evening, it took Allied engineers until 1400 hours the follow-
ing day to clear the mines and finally declare Hells Highway
safe for use. From now on, the Germans would have to resort
to artillery fire and aircraft to interdict the constant flow of
traffic. In this respect, a major attack by 40 German aircraft
took place against the Nijmegen road bridge on the 25th. One
bomb hit, but the bridge remained passable.
The withdrawal of the British and Polish survivors from the
Arnhem sector took place between 2140 hours on the 25th
and 0530 hours on September 26 in heavy rain. Nearly 2,300
men reached safety, including 160 Poles.
Operation Market-Garden was over. It had cost the Allies
over 16,000 soldiers and 248 airmen. Of nearly 12,000 British
and Poles committed in the Arnhem area, 1,446 British, includ-
ing 229 glider pilots, and 97 Poles were killed, and 6,414
British and 111 Poles, many of whom were wounded, became
prisoners. The British XXX Corps suffered 1,480 casualties,
and VIII and XII Corps lost 3,874 men between them.
A total of 29,628 American troops were delivered
into Holland by parachute or glider during Operation Mar-
ket-Garden. The 82nd Airborne Division lost 215 killed, 790
wounded, and 427 missing; the 101st suffered 315 killed,
1,248 wounded, and 547 missing; and 122 glider pilots were
lost, of whom 12 were killed. Precise details of German casu-
alties do not exist, but they probably totaled about 6,400.
With the war still in progress, it was inevitable that Market-
Garden would be presented to the British and American peo-
ple as a victory. Churchill described it as a decided victory,
and Montgomery claimed it was 90 percent successful since 90
percent of the ground specified in the operation order had been
taken. To this latter claim, Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands
is said to have replied, My country can never again afford the
luxury of a Montgomery success.
In reality, Market-Garden was a strategic failure. The West
Wall had not been outflanked, the British Second Army was
not positioned for an attack on the north flank of the Ruhr,
the German Fifteenth Army had not been cut off, and there
had been no collapse of German arms. The salient achieved
led nowhere and was to prove extremely costly in the com-
ing months.
The vast majority of those involved in Market-Garden, of
whatever nationality, displayed great bravery and earned the
respect of their adversaries. In the case of two of the major
participants, the Americans and Germans, their senior ground
commandersGavin, Taylor, Model, Bittrich, Harmel
(Frundsberg), and Harzer (Hohenstaufen)demonstrated out-
standing military competence. The same cannot be said of the
British. The seven most directly involvedMontgomery,
Dempsey, Browning, Horrocks, Adair, Urquhart (commander,
1st Parachute Division), and Thomas (commander, 43rd
Infantry Division)must bear responsibility for the failure of
the operation.
The aftermath for those who returned from Market-Garden
differed markedly, depending on their nationality. The British
survivors of the Arnhem operation were flown back to England
on September 30 and welcomed as heroes. In a surprisingly
generous move by Eisenhower and the American authorities,
the two U.S. Airborne Divisions were left under Montgomerys
command and stayed in the line in Holland for a further six
weeks. They suffered another 3,594 casualties, including 685
killed. Today, few Brits are aware of the contribution and sac-
rifice made by the Americans in Market-Garden. Horrocks,
however, was in no doubt when he wrote after the war: As
this difficult battle progressed I became more and more
impressed with the fighting qualities of the 82nd and 101st
U.S. Airborne Divisions. What impressed me so much about
them was their quickness into action. They were com-
manded by two outstanding men. Both were as unlike the
popular cartoon conception of the loud-voiced, boastful, cigar-
chewing American as it would be possible to imagine. They
were quiet, sensitive-looking men of great charm, with an
almost British passion for understatement. Under their
deceptively gentle exterior both Maxwell Taylor and Gavin
were very tough characters indeed. They had to be, because the
men they commanded were some of the toughest troops I have
ever come across in my life.
The Poles, after marching back to Nijmegen under occasional
mortar fire, spent the next 10 days on guard and patrol duties
there before being returned to England. Their commander, Maj.
Gen. Stanislas Sosabowski, was sacked on December 9,
undoubtedly at Montgomery and Brownings insistence. Not
surprisingly, two of his battalions went on what turned out to
be an unsuccessful hunger strike.
For the Dutch people, the aftermath of the fighting was to
be the most bitter and painful of all. Some 100,000 people had
been forced out of the Arnhem area. Their homes had been
destroyed and systematically looted by the Germans, who then
cut their rations to less than 500 calories a day in what became
known as the Hunger Winter.
In retaliation for their assistance to the Allies during Market-
Garden and a countrywide railway strike begun by Dutch work-
ers on September 17, the Germans stopped all inland shipping.
Without trains or barges it was impossible to move sufficient
food from the agricultural east to the towns and cities of the
west. It has been estimated that some 25,000 Dutch people died
of starvation that winter. As they died, they wondered why the
Allies did not continue their advance to free them.
The answer was simple. The Germans were too strong and
the ground too difficult. Any major advance would almost cer-
tainly have led to a level of destruction that would have resulted
in the flooding of most of the Netherlands. The Allies turned
instead toward the Rhine.

AB-US in Market Garden_Layout 1 10/14/14 12:27 PM Page 127

WORLD WAR II AIRBORNE BATTLES 128 All photos: National Archives
To help downed airmen, the U.S.
Army trained dogs to parachute
out of airplanes.
BY MICHAEL DOLAN AND KEVIN HYMEL
THE U.S. ARMY TRAINED DOGS FOR A NUMBER
of tasks during World War II. From checking for
mines to guarding prisoners of war, the dogs per-
formed admirably, but a few special dogs actually
earned jump wings. To solve the problem of pro-
viding assistance to downed airmen in isolated
locations, the Army, with the help of its Canadian
brothers, trained Siberian Huskies to jump from
planes and bring the fliers supplies, aiding them in
their treks to safety.
To prepare the dogs for their jump, soldiers would
take the animals, with full packs, on 75-mile hikes
to relax before their ordeal. Next, the dogs were
suited with parachutessometimes with two dogs
to a chuteand loaded aboard a transport plane.
The plane flew to a desired height and target zone
where the dogs were pushed out of the side door.
The parachute, on a static line, automatically
opened as the canines cleared the doorway. Once
on the ground, they could deliver supplies and aid
the stranded airman.
While the experiment was never applied to the
battlefield (Europe was too well populated and the
islands of the Pacific too small), it showed that the
Army would go to any lengths to facilitate the safe
return of its pilots.

CANINES
TO THE RESCUE
TOP: Two 100-pound Siberian Huskies await takeoff from a Canadian
airfield. A flight surgeon, with protective gear and mask, is responsible
for getting them out of the plane. BOTTOM: The Huskies are dropped
from a search and rescue plane. Their parachute is beginning to deploy.
AB-Airborne Canines_Layout 1 10/14/14 12:30 PM Page 128
WORLD WAR II AIRBORNE BATTLES 129
CLOCKWISE
FROM TOP LEFT:
Fido earns his
wings! Having
landed on all fours,
this dog is resisting
the pull of its para-
chute. In the back-
ground is a British
Lysander biplane
with Canadian
markings. The two
dogs waft to the
ground with their
supplies. To toughen
up the paratrooper
dogs, Army trainers
(these two are with
the 26th Infantry
Division) take them
on a 75-mile hike.
By the time they are
done, the dogs are
in fine fettle and
ready to jump.
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WORLD WAR II A1 RBORNE BATTLES 130
Operation Varsity, the parachute
and glider mission to breach the
Rhine in March 1945, was the Allies
biggestand finalairborne/glider
operation of the war.
T
HE JERK OF THE CANOPY OPENING WAS A REAS-
suring sensation. Not so reassuring was the storm of
small arms and artillery fire that roared up from the
ground. The troopers from the 513th Parachute Infantry
Regiment (PIR), 17th U.S. Airborne Division, had already been
shaken around in their aircraft by the buffeting of antiaircraft shells.
Along with their fellow troopers and airborne colleagues from the
British 6th Airborne Division, they had trained hard for this moment
and they were ready to do their job: to seize, clear, and secure Ger-
man-held positions east of the Rhine. It was Saturday, March 24,
1945, and Operation Varsity, the largest single lift in history, was
under way.
Varsity was the parachute and glider component of a larger oper-
ation known as Plunder, designed to breach the Rhine at Wesel and
complement two earlier American crossings of Germanys major
waterway.
The two divisions had only been out of the line for two months,
having suffered heavy casualties in the brutal and bitter conditions
of the Belgian Ardennes. They were, respectively, part of Maj. Gen.
Matthew B. Ridgways 18th U.S. Airborne Corps and Maj. Gen.
Richard S. Gales 1st British Airborne Corps, together forming the
First Allied Airborne Army.
THE
LAST
DROP
BY STEPHEN L. WRIGHT
Both: National Archives
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WORLD WAR II A1 RBORNE BATTLES 131
Parachutes fill the sky on March 24, 1945, in this image
taken during Operation Varsity by famed Life magazine com-
bat photographer Robert Capa, who jumped with the 507th
Parachute Infantry Regiment, 17th Airborne Division.
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WORLD WAR II A1 RBORNE BATTLES 132
The 6th had entered the Ardennes as a veteran outfit, hav-
ing fought throughout the Normandy Campaign under
Gale, its founding CO. An experienced paratrooper, Gale
had previously commanded the 1st Parachute Brigade dur-
ing the Normandy invasion.
The division would fly to Germany in its original format
of two parachute brigades, each of three battalions, and a
glider-borne airlanding brigade, again comprising three bat-
talions. Support was provided through artillery, medical,
signal, and engineer units. Maj. Gen. Eric Bols would be
Gales successor.
For the 17th, the Ardennes had been its baptism of fire.
Its CO, Maj. Gen. William Bud Miley, like his British
counterpart, was an experienced paratroop commander
who had followed the traditional route of Army service. In
1940, he was given command of the 501st Parachute Bat-
talion, thus becoming the first American officer to com-
mand a designated airborne unit. After time with his bat-
talion in Panama, he returned to the States in 1942 to take
charge of 503rd PIR.
Three months later he was promoted to command the 1st
Parachute Brigade. He served for a short time as assistant
commander of the 82nd Airborne Division before taking
command of the 17th. Following the losses in the Ardennes,
particularly in the 193rd Glider Infantry Regiment, which
was all but reduced to nothing, Miley instigated a new table
of organization and equipment.
Consequently, the division would field three combat
teams (two parachute and one glider) with support for the
6th. The other parachute regiment was the 507th PIR
which, until the Ardennes, was the only unit of the 17th to
have previously seen action.
The 9th U.S. Troop Carrier Command (TCC) provided
paratroop transport for both divisions and gliders for the
17th. On September 1, 1944, it was reassigned to the U.S.
Strategic Air Force, for administration control, and the First
Allied Airborne Army for operational control.
The Royal Air Forces 38 and 46 Groups were part of
that organizations Transport Command. Ordinarily, they
carried the 6ths paratroopers and towed the airlanding
gliders, but for this operation, the latter role would be the
task of the 9th TCC.
The Glider Pilot Regiment (GPR) would provide trans-
port for the Airlanding Brigade. Its members were all vol-
unteers from the many regiments and corps throughout the
British Army, and they had been trained to fly and to fight.
The regiments greatest loss to date had been in Holland
during Operation Market-Garden. Time was not available
to train new pilots, so RAF pilots were drafted in.
Ridgway was given operational command. He met Gen-
eral Miles Dempsey, C-in-C British Second Army, on Feb-
ruary 14 and was given a broad outline of the overall plan;
Gale was appointed his deputy.
Careful study of the photographic reconnaissance of the
area showed that suitable drop zones and landing zones were
available adjacent to the immediate objectives. In an attempt
to disperse the enemys attention and
fire, 10 zones were chosen, seven for
the 6th and three for the 17th.
The 6th Airborne would be required
to land on the northern edge of the
Schnepfenberg, a high feature topped
by the Diersfordter Wald, opposite the
point at which British XII Corps would
cross the Rhine on the outskirts of the
village of Hamminkeln and beside two
road bridges across the Issel Canal. The
parachute brigades would take care of
the first area. The Airlanding Brigade
(12th Devonshire Regiment) would
secure Hamminkeln and capture two
road bridges and one railway bridge.
In a repeat of the initial landing in Nor-
mandy, Company B of the 2nd Oxford-
shire & Buckinghamshire Light
Infantry and Company D of the 1st
Royal Ulster Rifles would execute a
coup de main landing on the bridges.
The town of Wesel and its environs
were the main objectives of the 17th.
Waco CG-4A gliders carrying troops of the 17th Airborne Division fly over Wesel,
Germany, in a new, double-tow formation the morning of March 24.
N
a
t
i
o
n
a
l

A
r
c
h
i
v
e
s
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WORLD WAR II A1 RBORNE BATTLES 133
The parachute regiments were to drop
to the south and east of the Schnepfen-
berg while the gliderborne elements
were to land to the north of Wesel.
Tasks included seizing a bridge over
the Issel, which ran along the eastern
edge of the landing area. While not a
particularly wide river, the Issels steep
banks were a natural tank trap. The
194th was also to protect the right
flank of the landing, and establish con-
tact with the British 1st Commando
Brigade, which was expected by then
to have captured and secured Wesel.
The 513th and artillery forward
observers would jump from the two-
door Curtiss C-46 Commando air-
craft, and its glider troops would be in
double-towed gliders. This technique
had been tried the previous year,
unsuccessfully, in Burma.
For the first time, glider troops
would be landing in unsecured zones.
For this reason the gliders were to exe-
cute tactical landings to confuse the
defenders about the direction from
which the main attack would come
and to enable troops to land as close as
possible to their objectives.
This latter innovation had, like sev-
eral other factors of the operation,
been influenced by the contents of a
captured German document, which
had come into the Allies possession in
December 1944. This was an appreci-
ation of the mistakes made in Opera-
tion Market (the airborne phase of
Market-Garden).
The document found fault with the
Allies failure to put down the maxi-
mum force possible on September 17;
slowness in building up forces, follow-
ing the first lift; keeping to the same
route in resupply missions and a con-
cern to overprotect the immediate
drop zone area rather than put pres-
sure on German forces. This latter fail-
ure allowed the Germans to concen-
trate troops and organize rapid
counterattacks.
Following their findings, the Ger-
mans put into place measures that
would seek out areas most likely to be
chosen for large-scale airborne land-
ings. Antiaircraft and mortar defenses
would be concentrated on these areas.
Air raid precautions would be
improved, and new mobile patrols,
trained for antiairborne defense and
capable of mobilization at 20 minutes
notice, would be created.
In all the reorganization, the 194th
Glider Infantry Regiment was still
short one company. Following a
request from Miley, Captain Charles
O. Gordon, glider operations officer
with the 435th Troop Carrier Group
(TCG), made an immediate decision
that his pilots could handle this assign-
ment based on his knowledge of their
previous combat experience and the
use of various weapons. They received
two weeks infantry training from the
194th.
As mentioned earlier, the GPR suf-
fered grievously during Operation
Market-Garden. With the ensuing air-
borne operation leaving too little time
to train new pilots from scratch, the
decision was made to bring in RAF
pilots. For some of these, their posting
to the GPR is remembered and
regarded as more by foul means than
fair. Be that as it may, they all played an
important role in the GPR at that time.
Following the push to the Rhine, the
TOP: C-47 Skytrain transport planes
release hundreds of Allied paratroop-
ers and their supplies over the Diers-
fordt area east of the Rhine River. This
picture was taken from a B-17 that was
shot down shortly thereafter. ABOVE:
Not all the sky soldiers landed safely. A
member of Colonel Edson D. Raffs
507th PIR, known as the Rufficans,
hangs from a tree near Wesel.
Imperial War Museum
National Archives
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WORLD WAR II A1 RBORNE BATTLES
134
Allies were faced with the remains of the German First Para-
chute Army, the 84th Infantry Division and its supporting
armor, and the 47th Panzer Corps with the 116th Panzer
and 15th Panzergrenadier Divisions. On March 10, the Ger-
man forces crossed the Rhine using a heavy rainstorm as
cover and blew the last bridge behind them. At this time,
the Allies estimated that the Germans had lost some 40,000
killed and over 50,000 captured.
The panzer divisions had also been badly mauled by the
intense assault of the combined Allied presence. Estimates
of the number of enemy troops occupying the crossing and
invasion area vary: 7,500-12,000 with 100-150 armored
fighting vehicles and their crews available in support. More
significantly, and proving that the Germans expected an air-
borne landing, approximately 800 antiaircraft guns were
noted in the week running up to the operation.
In overall command was Generaloberst Alfred Schlemm,
CO of First Parachute Army. Using what time he had,
Schlemm ensured that defensive works were constructed
to secure or cover all areas that could be used for water-
borne or airborne landings, height advantage, or speeding
movement through and beyond the defensive zone. Farm-
houses and suitable farm buildings were also turned into
strongpoints.
Understandably, as the operation drew closer security was
stepped up. So it seems rather odd, then, that a reconnais-
sance flight of tugs and gliders was sent along the planned
route for Varsity. The exercise, or Operation Token, as it
was officially known, was carried out without incident and,
of course, as secretly as possible.
Nevertheless, there was a widespread belief that the Ger-
mans were ready for the landings. The taunts of radio pro-
pagandist Axis Sally to the 17th Airborne were taken in
good stead. The joke among the troopers was: Axis Sally
knows we are coming, and we know she knows, but she
doesnt know when.
Final briefings took place on March 22 and 23. On the
24th, dawn was just breaking as the British and Canadian
troopers left for their respective airfields; in France, dawn
revealed the 17ths airfields as the spawning of a huge new
airborne invasion. With the time difference, the Americans
would be taking off as the Commonwealth contingent
passed overhead.
At 8:20 AM, artillery units of medium, heavy, and super-
heavy guns dug in on the west bank of the Rhine, began to
bombard the German positions in two phases; the second
was to end as the first transports passed overhead at 10 AM.
As it happened, the planes arrived six minutes early.
The German defenses were not subdued for long and
began a steady and accurate fire as the troop carriers
approached, crossed, and turned away from the zone.
Across the whole area stretched a smoke screen that rose
up to 2,500 feet; it was Montgomerys idea to cover his
river crossing with smoke, but it caused severe harassment
and problems for the airborne element.
The 513th was dropped a mile off the zone, where the
12th Devons gliders were headed. The C-46 of the execu-
tive officer, Lt. Col. Ward Ryan, was burning as he and his
stick hooked up; the men landed in the middle of a German
artillery command post. The regiments CO, Colonel Jim
Coutts, slipped out of his harness, walked through the
machine-gun fire, and began to attack before he had a bat-
talion. The misdrop was fortuitous for the Devons, as it
Paratroopers of Colonel James W. Coutts 513th PIR hug the
ground on Landing Zone P as others begin to dig slit
trenches along a roadway. A British-made Horsa glider is
visible in the distance.
Imperial War Museum
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WORLD WAR II A1 RBORNE BATTLES 135
meant their zone was cleared.
As Company E of the 513ths 2nd
Battalion was approaching a farm-
house, it came under fire. It was here
that the actions of Pfc. Stewart Stryker
led to his posthumous Medal of Honor.
With no regard for his own safety,
Stryker left cover and ran to the front
of a pinned-down platoon. He encour-
aged its members to follow him, which
they did. Stryker only covered a few
more yards before he was cut down,
dying as he fell. He had done enough,
though, and the house was taken.
For the 513ths comrades in the
507th, its 1st Battalion suffered a sim-
ilar fate, landing 2
1
/2 miles off zone.
The 507ths CO, Colonel Edson D.
Raff, quickly realized that the woods
were east and southeast, not north and
northwest. Soon, men came from var-
ious directions, and Raff assembled a
solid fighting force.
Enemy machine-gun and artillery fire
was coming from the village of Diers-
fordt and the nearby woods, and a bat-
tery of five 150mm guns was also fir-
ing. Raff detailed a party to capture the
guns, while he and the remaining
troopers engaged in clearing the woods
and taking the village.
About 11 AM, Raff and his men
were close to Diersfordt castle, an objective, when they met
up with another group from 1st Battalion led by Major Paul
Smith, whose group had landed closer to the village. With
the majority of the 1st Battalion now assembled, an imme-
diate assault was made on the castle.
Company A led the attack, but just as the remaining com-
panies were about to be committed, Company I from the
3rd Battalion arrived. Since the castle was an objective of
this battalion, Raff withdrew the 1st Battalion, less its lead
company, and ordered it to proceed in its primary role as
regimental reserve.
The 2nd and 3rd Battalions were dropped squarely on
their DZs and assembled quickly against heavy machine-
gun, small arms, and light artillery fire from enemy troops
dug in in the woods north and east of the zone. One of the
members of the battalion was also to be awarded a posthu-
mous Medal of Honor. Private George J. Peters single-
handedly attacked a machine-gun position that was pre-
venting his group from reaching its weapons.
Private First Class John Kormann was a member of the
517th Signal Company attached to the 507th; his glider
had received intense antiaircraft fire and had crashed into
a grove of trees. All the occupants were thrown out, and
upon coming to his senses Kormann found himself alone
with a lot of gunfire and mortar shells exploding close by.
He grabbed his gun and, keeping low, made for the woods,
where he found a trench running alongside a single-track
railroad. He left the woods and joined a group of para-
troopers in charging some farmhouses, from which the Ger-
mans had been shooting at them.
Bringing up the rear as they passed the last farmhouse,
Kormann heard noises coming from a cellar. Convinced
that some of the enemy was hiding there, he lifted the
slanted wooden cellar door cautiously and was about to
toss in a grenade when he remembered the letter he had
received from his mother the previous day. She sensed that
her son was going into battle. Son, I want you to be mer-
ciful, she wrote. Never forget that the young man you are
fighting has a mother who loves him and prays for him,
just as I love and pray for you.
Map 2012 Philip Schwartzberg, Meridian Mapping, Minneapolis, MN
Just as during the Normandy invasion, the Allied push toward and across the
Rhine between Emmerich and Wesel was spearheaded by U.S., British, and Cana-
dian parachute and glider forces.
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WORLD WAR II A1 RBORNE BATTLES 136
Infuriated, Kormann thought: Mother, what are you try-
ing to do, bring about my death? I am trained to kill or be
killed! Now, he was conscious of his mothers plea: Be
merciful! So, instead of throwing the grenade he shouted
in German for them to surrender and come out with their
hands up. There was silence. His second shout brought stir-
ring. The first to come up was an elderly grandmother. Then
another woman appeared, followed by four or five little
children. Finally, 14 women and children stood before him.
Kormann shuddered at the thought of what he might have
done and the burden it would have placed on his life had
he not received his mothers letter.
The 194th, with the 681st Glider Field Artillery Battalion
in support, was to seize and hold two bridges over the Issel,
clear its section of the landing area, defend the line of the
Issel River and Canal, and prevent enemy incursion from
the southwest.
In the first two serials, four gliders pulled out. Only 29
of the remaining 156 gliders reached the ground undam-
aged. In the third and fourth serials, 139 gliders arrived
but only 18 landed without being hit. The landings were
spread across the zone, and a good number of gliders
landed outside it.
Companies were assembled within an hour of landing,
and moving toward their objectives found a solid German
defense, although the enemys troops had no real idea where
the front line was. They simply attacked U.S. positions as
they came across them. Some of their machine guns were
overrun, but the American line held steady.
In the British sector, the paratroop and gliderborne bat-
talions also suffered from the intense and concentrated anti-
aircraft fire. The 3rd Parachute Brigades 8th Parachute Bat-
talion was first out, dropping into a wall of fire. Sergeant
Ted Eaglen had been wounded in the Ardennes and had
returned to his battalion just in time for Varsity. On his way
down from his burning C-47, he felt the draft of a shell as
it zoomed by. He landed on barbed wire and had a strug-
gle to get out of his parachuteall this while bullets were
hitting the barbed wire and whining past him. It seemed
endless. He couldnt believe that he was not being hit. Even-
tually, he got free and scuttled behind a tree, from which
vantage point he saw three Germans. Giving them a burst
from his Sten sub-machine gun, he saw them disappear.
Despite all the fury of the enemys welcome, Eaglens Com-
pany C and Company A quickly took their objectives. For
Company B it was more of a fight as a well dug-in enemy
hung onto a wooded area. The company commander, Major
John Kippen, led a ferocious charge through a trench; he
was killed in the ensuing hand-to-hand struggle, but the area
was taken along with several prisoners. The companys Anti-
tank Platoon also became caught up in a fierce firefight with
a German signals platoon, but the British troopers came out
the victors. They arrived at their rendezvous in a captured
three-ton truck, which came in very handy in the later gath-
ering of supplies from the gliders.
The brigades 1st Canadian Battalion CO, Lt. Col. Jevon
Jeff Nicklin, a former football star for the Winnipeg Blue
Bombers, had landed above a machine-gun position and
was shot and killed as he struggled to get free from his har-
ness. His second in command, Major Fraser Eadie, took
charge of the battalion. The units main objective was a
group of well-defended farm buildings. As with their British
Another Robert Capa photo, taken the morning of March 24,
shows a German SdKfz-251 halftrack, knocked out by an
American bazooka, burning near a small village.
National Archives
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WORLD WAR II A1 RBORNE BATTLES 137
mates, the Canadians fought in a determined fashion and
took buildings and prisoners.
The 316th TCG aircraft carrying the brigades 9th Bat-
talion received a tremendous amount of attention from the
German gunners. Of the 37th Squadrons 21 aircraft, 16
were hit by enemy fire.
One of the aircraft ended up, fully loaded, at Eindhovens
airfield in Holland. The parachute on one of the parapack
containers attached to the underside of the plane had blos-
somed underneath the door. Attempts to bring the container
on board were unsuccessful, and it was too dangerous for
the paratroopers to attempt to jump past it. The men were
later returned to the front by road.
Another aircraft, flown by the 45th Squadrons CO, Lt.
Col. Mars Lewis, was hit by antiaircraft fire as Lewis exe-
cuted a left turn from the drop zone. He held the plane
straight and level for a few seconds, but the rudder and ele-
vators were burning fiercely. The aircraft went into a div-
ing turn to the right; no parachutes were seen.
Again, as with their colleagues in the other two battal-
ions, the 9th Battalions troopers suffered mixed experi-
ences on the ground, some having to fight desperately to
overcome enemy positions, others having little difficulty.
Within 45 minutes of landing the battalion was almost at
full strength and by 1 PM it was dug in by company, A on
the Schnepfenberg, B across the main road to the south-
west, and C in woodland south of the road.
The quiet of their positions was broken by the arrival of
a German assault gun and infantry. The Company B clerk
stayed out on the road and slapped a Gammon sticky
bomb onto the vehicles engine cover. The vehicle stopped,
and a crewman was shot as he looked out to investigate.
The rest of the crew surrendered. The vehicle, still in run-
ning order, was taken over by the British and crewed by
two ex-tank drivers from the company and, with its Ger-
man markings covered over, became part of the battalions
transport for the next week or so.
In the 5th Parachute Brigade aerial formation, the pilot of
the aircraft carrying men of 13th Battalion, which included
Captain David Tibbs, the medical officer, had suggested
that the troopers jump when they saw the men from the
other planes jumping. As the red light came on, Tibbs could
see the broad glint of the Rhine below.
Looking out, he and his friend and fellow passenger
Sergeant Webster decided that they should not jump until
the aircraft had cleared the trees and crossed a line of elec-
tric pylons and power cables just beyond the forest. To the
mens horror, they saw that the other two planes in their
V were dropping their paratroops into the woods and
their own dispatcher was motioning the stick to go. Ironi-
cally, most of them landed safely but dropped directly in
front of a German machine gun, leaving only five survivors
out of 30 men.
The 5th Battalions mission was to clear and hold an area
bounded by roads, a stream, and a collection of buildings;
this it did with little opposition. Consequently, the battal-
ion was also dug in by 1 PM. The battalions trenches were
expertly dug by German prisoners, who seemed quite con-
tent with the work, having been told earlier by their supe-
riors that they would be shot by the British rather than
taken prisoner.
ABOVE: British glider troops of the Royal Ulster Rifles dig
in on the banks of the Issel River after landing. The RUR
were "old hands" at such operations, having successfully
knocked-out the Merville Battery in Normandy on D-Day.
Imperial War Museum
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WORLD WAR II A1 RBORNE BATTLES 138
Meanwhile, the 12th Battalions CO, Lt. Col. Ken Dar-
ling, had ensured that his men would jump as light as pos-
sible. Every other man carried a toggle rope, so no one had
any entrenching tools or grenades, and the only spare cloth-
ing carried were socks.
In addition, platoons were allocated to aircraft so that
members would land on their intended part of the DZ. Fly-
ing in the face of the enemy fire, the battalions transport
group CO, Colonel Howard Lyon, took his aircraft down
to about 450 feet before the green light came on. The rest
of the serial followed suit. Consequently, the battalion
spent little time in the descent and landed close together on
the zone.
Disaster struck as Lyon turned for the run back to the
river. A shell entered the cockpit, went through his foot,
and exited through his knee. Instinctively, he pushed out
everything that would make the aircraft climb, which it did.
One of the two navigators, Captain Bernard Coggins,
helped Lyon out of his seat just as another shell crashed
into the cockpit. Lyon took another wound in the leg, as did
Coggins, while the co-pilot, Captain Carl Persson, had part
of his hand taken off. All the crew managed to bail out and
were captured by the Germans. Luckily, the medical aid sta-
tion where they were taken was overrun by friendly troops
and they were freed.
All three companies had a fight to capture their objec-
tives. Company Bs objectivea group of buildingswas
so well defended that the buildings could only be taken one
by one. In Company A, Lieutenant Phil Burkinshaw also
attacked and captured a battery of 88mm guns.
While the 12th and 13th Battalions concentrated on cap-
turing the brigade objectives, the 7th Battalion was to land
at the northern edge of the drop zone. Its main tasks were
to defend the zone and to prevent enemy troops from reach-
ing the brigades objectives until the
other two battalions had consolidated
themselves. At such time, the 7th
would move into a reserve position.
Thanks to a well-considered drop
plan, the 7th Battalion landed in com-
panies; B and C established themselves
in their respective defensive areas and
began digging in. Initially things were
quiet. Over the next few hours, how-
ever, concerted enemy probing attacks
kept both units busy. Company B con-
tended with attacks of platoon size or
slightly larger, while Company C
fought off one determined attack,
which was at full company strength.
The glider landings were fraught
with difficulties. British war corre-
spondent Stanley Maxteds glider was one of 12 assigned to
the 716th Company, Royal Army Service Corps. Also on
board were Lance Corporal Michael Ham; two fellow wire-
less operators, a Major Oliver, a public relations officer, a
Bren carrier, and a radio trailer. Maxted planned to make
a live radio broadcast from the field, but things didnt work
out that way. The glider was hit by 20mm shells and
crashed close to the Hamminkeln railroad station. The car-
rier hurtled from the wreckage and Maxted was struck by
it. Pilots and occupants managed to get clear and eventu-
ally found their way to safety.
On the 3rd Parachute Brigades dropping zone, the 6th
Parachute Battalions CO, Lt. Col. George Hewetson, was
briefing his intelligence officer, Lieutenant John England.
Two sergeants were standing a few yards away. Suddenly,
with a terrific crash a glider came through the trees, and
Hewetson found himself lying under the wheel of a jeep.
The glider pilots were killed along with Lieutenant England
and the two sergeants.
The Oxfordshire & Buckinghamshire coup de main glid-
ers were met with blistering fire. The first glider was seen
to break apart; there were no survivors. In the second glider,
over half the occupants were killed or wounded. Glider
three came down hard but only because its pilots dived
earthward to avoid the fate of the others.
The fourth glider had the most remarkable fate of all. Hit
by an antiaircraft shell, its nose was sheared off and both
pilots killed. One of the passengers, Quartermaster Major
Aldworth, was also slightly injured but managed to get one
of the pilots out of his seat and occupied it himself. With
brief instructions from the towing planes co-pilot, Aldworth
managed to land the glider, helped by a ditch and a hedge.
With nothing more than bumps and bruises, the platoon
made its way to the railway station.
On the other bridge, the Royal Ulster
Rifles gliders fared in a similar man-
ner. One wing of the glider of the com-
pany commander, Major Dyball, dug a
trench as the aircraft slewed to a stop.
The pilots and front passengers went
out through the front of the glider and
were met by enemy fire. The trench
was welcome cover for them as they
scrambled toward it.
Dyballs radio operator was killed as
he left the glider, so the commander
had no way of contacting his other pla-
toons. He decided to head toward the
house that he had chosen as his HQ.
As he reached it, he found that 21 Pla-
toon had landed in good order and
had taken the house and several pris-
I
m
p
e
r
i
a
l

W
a
r

M
u
s
e
u
m
Canadian paratroopers man a position
at the edge of a forest shortly after
landing. The soldier in the foreground
is armed with a Bren gun.
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WORLD WAR II A1 RBORNE BATTLES 139
oners. On the other side of the bridge, 22 Platoon had also
had a fight against strong opposition but had captured the
bridge. Dyball set up a defense force with support from the
Ox & Bucks and glider pilots.
The main parties of both battalions and the men of the
12th Devons landed against similar opposition.
Squadron Sergeant Major Lawrence Buck Turnbulls
glider had a platoon of Ox & Bucks on board. As he cast
off from his tug and prepared for the landing, a C-47 cut
in front of him, and its trailing towrope began to wreak
havoc on the glider. First the starboard aileron was torn off,
then the lower part of the cockpit with the loss of the air
bottles (required for brakes and flaps), most of the instru-
ment panel, and half the control column. As the rope came
loose, the Horsa was virtually flipped upside down.
As if all this wasnt enough, the glider was also the focus
of antiaircraft batteries. Showing great calmness, Turnbull
managed to right the glider and land without crashing. For
his actions he was awarded Britains Conspicuous Gal-
lantry Medalthe only one to be awarded to a soldier dur-
ing the war.
The Ox & Bucks were near Hamminkeln railway station.
In the 10 minutes it took to land, the battalion lost half its
strength. For several hours some of the survivors played a
game of cat and mouse with German Mk. IV tanks, which
used stacks of timber as cover. Private battles erupted across
the compound and railroad tracks. But, despite all, the bat-
talions objectives were taken within the hour, and the com-
panies dug in.
In the Royal Ulster Rifles (RUR) sector, both the CO and
the adjutant had their gliders break up around them. The
adjutant, Captain Robert Rigby, took command and coor-
dinated the neutralizing of enemy strongpoints before orga-
nizing a march to the station and level crossing, which were
the RURs objectives.
In addition to the support from artillery on the west bank
of the Rhine, each division was also supported by its own
artillery units.
For the U.S. 17th, the 464th and 466th Parachute Field
Artillery Battalions supported the 507th PIR and 513th
PIR; their 75mm pack howitzers were dropped in para-
packs. For the 464th, three of its 12 guns were damaged,
but by noon 10 guns were in action. The 466th was
dropped on the correct zone and therefore left without
infantry support. Before setting up their guns, its members
took on an infantry role as they worked to suppress the
concentrated fire that swept their zone.
Luck, however, was on the units side as T/Sgt. Joseph
Flanagan landed beside a German 20mm gun. He captured
it and its crew, and the gun was later used to destroy
stronger emplacements. Yet, American losses were signifi-
cant; all the battery officers were either killed or wounded.
Through sheer grit and determination, the 466th contin-
ued to ready its guns and began firing.
The 194th GIR was supported by the 681st Glider Field
Artillery Battalion; its gunners were under steady fire as
they left their gliders and were forced to set up and fire
using the glider wings as cover. By 4 PM, 10 howitzers were
blazing away, and the battalion continued to give solid sup-
port through the rest of the day.
The 680th Glider Field Artillery Battalion had a general
support task and was to answer any specific calls from the
Imperial War Museum
A Firefly tank of the 15th Scottish Division supports Cana-
dian troops on March 24. The Firefly was an up-gunned
Sherman with a 17-pounder gun that was a deadly tank killer.
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WORLD WAR II A1 RBORNE BATTLES 140
513ths 3rd Battalion. Its gunners also
came under fire, and ammunition and
guns were lost as transport gliders
were hit and set on fire. During the
day, the battalion captured three bat-
teries and took 150 prisoners. For its
actions it received a Distinguished Unit
Citation.
The 155th Antiaircraft Battalion had
four batteries, two in support of the
parachute regiments, one in an anti-
tank role, and one under control of the
194th. Members of Battery C made
good use of their 75mm recoilless rifle.
In the British 6th Airborne, the air-
landing battalions had their own anti-
tank guns as part of their support companies, and these
were used in varying degrees throughout the day. In addi-
tion, the division had the 53rd (Worcestershire Yeomanry)
Airlanding Light Regiment RA (Royal Artillery) and the
2nd Airlanding Anti-Tank Regiment. Both units had mixed
days, losing men and guns in the landinga horrifying
example of the fury into which the units traveled.
For the second and last time in the war, light tanks were
taken directly to the battlefield. Eight of the mighty Hamil-
car gliders carried an American M-22 Locust tank and its
crew. Seven of the relatively light (eight tons) tanks, pur-
pose-built for airlanding operations, arrived on German
soil, and four reached the rendezvous point with a single
tank firing in support of the 12th Parachute Battalion. The
four occupied a section of high ground in the Devons sec-
tor and gave support during the rest of the day.
For medics on both sides, there was much work to be
done.
The 17ths 139th Airborne Engineer Battalions medical
personnel were carried in two gliders, one of which landed
right beside a defended house. The glider was carrying a
medical officer, a medic staff sergeant, a jeep and its driver,
and much of the battalions medical supplies. The 40 Ger-
man occupants of the house brought concentrated fire to
bear on the glider. A direct mortar hit destroyed the supplies
and the jeep and killed the driver; the other two men man-
aged to escape the burning wreckage. With limited equip-
ment, the battalion surgeon had an aid station up and run-
ning in no time.
As the 1st Canadian Parachute Battalion settled into its
defensive positions, one of its medics, Corporal George
Topham, was watching the attempts of two members of
224th Parachute Field Ambulance help a wounded man on
the drop zone. Under intense fire, the medics made a dash
for the casualty but were both killed.
Without hesitation, Topham raced out to the man.
Enemy fire continued to sweep the
zone, and Topham was shot through
the nose. Yet, even in severe pain, he
continued to give first aid. He then
hoisted the man on his shoulders and
carried him to cover. Topham refused
treatment and went back into the zone
to help more wounded. He also
refused to be evacuated and, such was
his determination, he was allowed to
continue on duty.
Sometime later, as he was returning
to his company, Topham came across
the mortar platoons Bren carrier,
which was burning fiercely. The pla-
toon, under Lieutenant G. Lynch, had
landed to the north of the LZ and it was during its attempt
to reach battalion HQ that its Bren carrier had suffered a
direct hit.
Enemy mortar fire was landing in the area, the carriers
own mortar ammunition was exploding from the vehicle,
and an officer was not allowing anyone to approach.
Topham didnt agree and ran to the carrier. In turn, he car-
ried the three occupants to safety. For his gallantry through-
out the day, Corporal Topham was awarded the Victoria
Cross, Britains highest military medal.
Despite all the damaged gliders, plenty of stretchers had
arrived intact. Private Lenton, attached to the 8th Parachute
Battalion, said he would go and get some. His section com-
mander, Staff Sergeant Walsby, said hed never make it back
alive. Undeterred, Lenton and his mate, Private Downey, ran
to the gliders. Not only did they make it there and back alive,
but they also rescued some wounded men who had been left
in the open. For this action, Downey was mentioned in dis-
patches and Lenton received the Military Medal.
Sometimes adversaries helped to aid wounded enemy sol-
diers. Captain David Tibbs, having landed safely, made his
way to the house he had selected as his field dressing sta-
tion. Settling into his work, he was surprised by the arrival
of a tall, distinguished-looking German officer and several
men. The officer saluted Tibbs, wished him a good morn-
ing and said, Why have you been so long? We have been
up all night waiting for you! He worked alongside Tibbs
for a while, but since there were few German casualties
coming in, soon left.
American Corporal Bill Tom arrived in the Wesel zone by
jeep. Tom had started his military career as a rifleman in the
194th GIR. By various twists he became a medic-at-large in
the Ardennes. When the 17th returned to France, Bill
remained with the 9th U.S. Army. On March 24, he had to
care for a wounded German soldier who was shot in the
head. The man was injured beyond the care of the field
Imperial War Museum National Archives
LEFT: Pfc. Stuart S. Stryker, Company
E, 513th PIR, was awarded the Medal
of Honor, posthumously. RIGHT: Lt.
Col. Jeff Nicklin was killed while com-
manding the 1st Canadian Parachute
Battalion.
AB-Varsity_Layout 1 10/14/14 12:34 PM Page 140
WORLD WAR II A1 RBORNE BATTLES 141
medics and was about to be moved to
a larger aid station.
Before that could happen, he died
and Bill Tom was ordered to move his
body to the morgue tent. It was now
midnight, and no flashlights were per-
mitted. With the help of a private, Tom
carried the body to the area where the
morgue tent was located, but in pain
from the mans weight he lost count of
the tents (he needed number eight).
He finally saw the one he thought
was the morgue tent. Entering, he
stepped on something hard and round
and fell down. The German was
thrown off the stretcher, landing heav-
ily and making a grunt. Tom and the
private took off like a shot. The tent
was, in fact, the kitchen supply tent
and the following morning Tom
received a real chewing out from the
cook sergeant for scaring his cooks
half to death by finding a body on
their potatoes.
The planned resupply drop arrived on schedule at 1 PM;
240 Consolidated B-24 Liberators from the Eighth Air
Forces 2nd Air Division each carried 2 tons, which had
been packed into 20 bundles, distributed in three locations:
12 in the bomb racks, five in and around the ball turret (the
turret itself had been removed), and three by the emergency
escape hatch in the tail. The vast majority of bundles were
fitted with parachutes. The planes came in at 100 feet, half
to DZ B (6th) and half to DZ W (17th). As with the trans-
ports, many did not escape German fire and headed for
home with flames streaming from their engines.
General Ridgway arrived on the east bank around 3 PM.
His first stop was Mileys HQ, where he received a brief
report on the day so far. Miley was still concerned that he
had yet to hear from Eric Bols at Kopenhof Farm.
As the light began to fade, Ridgway, Miley, and their
escort set off for Kopenhof. The convoys route ran through
the 194ths sector and then the 513ths.
Ridgway stopped to get a report from each commander.
At the 513ths HQ, he heard about the misdrop and the
ease with which the C-46s had caught fire. He later gave
instructions that the aircraft would never be used again to
carry paratroops. At Kopenhof, the party also met Gen-
eral Gale.
Ridgway and Miley left the farm about midnight. Fight-
ing was now under way nearby, and they ran into a Ger-
man patrol. As Ridgway was reloading, a grenade
exploded by one of the jeeps wheels, and he was hit in the
shoulder by a piece of shrapnel. The wheel absorbed some
of the fragments and undoubtedly saved his life. The Ger-
mans were soon driven off, and the party continued to
Mileys HQ.
Both divisions had mixed fortunes during the night. For
many men, it was a quiet one, but for the fighting pilots of
the 435th TCG it was anything but, as they came into con-
tact with German armor and infantry in a battle that would
later be known as The Battle of Burp Gun Corner.
The pilots were well dug in near some houses and a road
junction; about 11:30 PM, their listening post reported an
approaching enemy tank leading a force consisting of two
88mm self-propelled guns and two mobile 20mm guns with
over 200 supporting infantrymen. The pilots laid down a
solid field of fire, and a well-aimed shot from a bazooka
struck the tank and sent it fleeing back along the road, run-
ning over the 20mm guns as it went.
By 1:30 AM on the 25th, the enemy had had enough and
began to withdraw. The pilots did the same, strengthening
the line of defense with their colleagues from the 436th.
Throughout the 25th, the men of the two Allied divisions
continued to move deeper into Germany supported by the
troops who had crossed the river, meeting little resistance
and continuing to take prisoners.
Two days later, Miley gave the order, Advance to
Dorsten. This is a pursuit. The last drop was over. In less
than two months, Hitlers 12-year Third Reich would be
over, too.

A Churchill tank of the 6th Guards Tank Brigade carries paratroopers of the
American 17th Airborne Division through Dorsten, Germany, March 29.
Imperial War Museum
AB-Varsity_Layout 1 10/14/14 12:35 PM Page 141
AS THE NINE C-47s flew closer to the
drop zone, the lead plane descended to
an altitude of 400 feet. Lieutenant John
Ringler, the jump master in the lead
plane, stood in the doorway and saw the
open field that was to be used as the drop-
zone approach. Behind Ringlers plane
flew the remainder of his B Company, 1st
Battalion, 511th Parachute Infantry, 11th
Airborne Division paratroopers.
From his position in the open doorway,
Ringler saw white smoke from a smoke
grenade thrown by 11th Airborne recon-
naissance personnel on the drop zone.
Ringler immediately turned to his stick
of paratroopers behind him and yelled,
Close in the door. Within seconds, at
exactly 7 AM, the lead C-47 flew directly
over the drop zone and Ringler shouted,
Lets go, and jumped out the door.
Their attempt to liberate 2,000 prison-
ers of war was under way.
Following the Japanese sweep across
the Philippines in late 1941 and early 1942, thousands of U.S.
and Filipino military and civilian personnel were either shipped
to prison camps off the islands or were forced to face impris-
onment in one of the many POW camps on the islands.
It was not until January 1945, following a long and exhaus-
tive island-hopping campaign through the South Pacific, that
General Douglas MacArthurpersonally ordered to escape
the Japanese onslaughtwas ready to fulfill his promise to
return to and retake the Philippines.
Because much of MacArthurs long career had been spent in
the Philippines, he knew and had served with countless num-
bers of civilians and servicemen who were now being held in
Japanese internment camps. Following the Allied invasion,
MacArthur learned that Japanese guards had begun to increase
the level of abuse of prisoners throughout the islands.
MacArthur knew that the longer it took to rescue the inmates,
the more horror they would be forced to endure. Regardless of
the tough fighting his troops were experiencing, MacArthur
ordered special operations to be planned and conducted by
the Army in order to rescue theprisoners.
In his Reminiscences MacArthur says: There was no fixed
timetable [to reconquer Luzon]. I hoped to proceed as rapidly
as possible, especially as time was an element connected with
the release of our prisoners. I knew that many of these half-
starved and ill-treated people would die unless we rescued them
promptly.
During the weeks of late January and early February 1945,
rescue missions were conducted in many locations. One, which
was launched in late January, included members of the 6th
Ranger Battalion. These men freed some 500 prisoners at Pan-
WORLD WAR II AIRBORNE BATTLES 142
Thousands of prisoners were at risk outside
Manila when the 11th Airborne Division
staged a daring and coordinated assault to
bring them to freedom.
ANGELS TO
THE RESCUE
BY DONALD J. ROBERTS II
All photos: National Archives
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WORLD WAR II AIRBORNE BATTLES 143
In this painting by Rick Reeves, American
paratroopers advance through the jungle of
the Philippines, much like the raid on Los
Baos. OPPOSITE: Men of the 11th Airborne
board a plane for an impending jump.
AB-Los Banos Raid_Layout 1 10/14/14 12:37 PM Page 143
WORLD WAR II AIRBORNE BATTLES 144
gatian. Another rescue operation, led by the 8th Cavalry Reg-
iment of the 1st Cavalry Division, assaulted Santo Tomas Uni-
versity in Manila. There the soldiers were able to liberate more
than 3,700 prisoners. Later, on February 4, the 8th Cavalry
was able to free another 500 internees and nearly 800 Allied
POWs from the Old Bilibid Prison in Manila. The final rescue
operation planned during this time was to free the inmates at
Los Baos Internment Camp. The assignment was handed to
the 11th Airborne Division.
Los Baos prison was located on the campus of the College
of Agriculture of the University of the Philippines. The college
was located 25 miles south of Manila, deep behind enemy lines,
and along the southern shoreline of a huge inland lake, Laguna
de Bay. Orders for the liberation were sent to Maj. Gen. Joseph
Swing, commanding the 11th Airborne Division, on February
4, 1945. Because his men were fighting their way northward
toward Manila and were involved in some very heavy combat,
Swing immediately contacted Lt. Gen. Oscar Griswold, who
commanded the XIV Corps, which was conducting the major
offensive against Japanese positions in and around Manila.
Swing asked Griswold if the rescue mission could be post-
poned until the 11th Airborne Division accomplished its mis-
sion to help capture Manila. Griswold realized how difficult the
fighting had become and granted Swings request. However,
he instructed Swing to liberate the prisoners at Los Baos as
soon as it becomes possible for you to disengage a force of suf-
ficient size to carry out that mission.
Although Swing was granted a postponement on the libera-
tion mission, he instructed his G-2 (Intelligence), Lt. Col. Henry
J. Muller, to gather information about the camp. At the same
time, Swing ordered his G-3 (Operations), Colonel Douglas P.
Quandt, to begin planning how to reach the camp, defeat the
enemy guarding it, and evacuate all prisoners safely.
To obtain accurate information on the Los Baos camp,
Muller used a variety of resources to discover locations,
defenses, and weaknesses. He used information from the divi-
sion reconnaissance platoon, aerial photographs, guerrilla
units, and Filipino civilians.
Muller learned that the prison compound had two barbed-
wire perimeter fences, each six feet tall. Spaced along the fence
line were pillboxes and several guard towers. Each position
was manned by at least two guards armed with rifles and
machine guns. Filipino guerrillas reported that prisoners left the
camp every morning on work details that included finding fire-
wood or obtaining food in the town.
As Lt. Col. Muller gathered his intelligence, he was helped
by Major Jay D. Vanderpool, who had sneaked into Luzon in
the fall of 1944 from a submarine. Since that time he had orga-
nized, helped train, and helped to plan many guerrilla opera-
tions and attacks against the Japanese around Cavite, Batan-
gas, and areas west of Laguna de Bay. In fact, Vanderpool had
planned an attack on Los Baos in which only Filipino guer-
rillas would have been used. In the end, Vanderpool had
decided that to ensure the safety of all the prisoners in the
camp, such a mission would require a larger force.
Much of what Vanderpool had learned, however, went into
the planning of the operation. Then, just prior to the final plan-
ning stage, Muller and Vanderpool received very useful infor-
mation from a Los Baos escaped prisoner, Peter Miles. Miles
was one of many prisoners who would venture out from the
compound through weak spots in the camps containment mea-
sures to search for food to buy. The prisoners would then
return to Los Baos before first light and hopefully sneak back
into the camp undetected. It was on one of the food- search
escapades that Muller agreed to meet with Miles.
During the meeting, Miles was able to describe the interior
of the prison. Muller learned the movements and routines of
prisoners and guards. Miles described the general population
of the prison as roughly 2,100, plus individuals who were
either Protestant missionaries and their families; Catholic nuns
and priests; or doctors, engineers, and other professional peo-
ple, all with families. There were also a few hundred wives and
children of U.S. servicemen imprisoned at Los Baos. Miles
explained that there was one big question on the minds of all
inmates: Would their guards or other Japanese soldiers in the
area slaughter them rather than permit their liberation by the
advancing Americans?
Following the meeting with Peter Miles, Muller, Quandt,
Vanderpool, and the rest of the 11th Airborne Division plan-
ners began to finalize their plans. The mission would consist
of four phases, a separate unit from the division conducting
each phase.
Maj. Gen. Joseph Swing (on the right) conferring with Lt.
Gen. Robert Eichelberger of the 8th Army on February 3,
1945.
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WORLD WAR II AIRBORNE BATTLES 145
The first phase of the operation would be carried out by the
11th Airbornes Reconnaissance Platoon commanded by Lieu-
tenant George Skau, along with nearly 80 Filipino guerrillas.
Forty-eight hours before H-hour (the exact moment the mis-
sion would commence), the platoon would cross Laguna de
Bay in small native boats called bancas and hide out in the
vicinity of Los Baos until dark. Then these men would divide
into three groups. The platoon and the Filipino guerrillas
would secure a portion of beach east of the town, infiltrate as
close as possible to the guard towers and defensive bunker
emplacements, and secure a large field next to the compound
to be used as a parachute drop zone.
Phase two would be a parachute drop of Lieutenant John
Ringlers B Company, 1st Battalion, 511th Parachute Infantry.
Once Ringlers company was on the ground and assembled, the
men would assault the prison compound with elements of
Skaus recon platoon. The attack was meant to kill or capture
the guards and then prepare and assemble the inmates for
extraction to safety.
The third part of the plan involved a formation of 59
amphibious amtracs, each large enough to carry a platoon
of fully equipped soldiers. They would leave from Mamatid on
the west shore of Laguna de Bay. They were to set out in the
early hours of D-day and time their arrival on the shore at
Los Baos at exactly H-hour. At that time, C Company, 1st
Battalion, 511th Parachute Infantry would deploy from the
amtracs and set up roadblocks to prevent elements of the
Japanese 8th Division from launching a counterattack. A com-
pany of artillerymen from Battery D, 457th Parachute Field
Artillery Battalion would deploy from the amtracs as well.
Their mission was to establish and secure the beachhead east
of Los Baos. And A Company, 1st Battalion, 511th Parachute
Infantry would secure the area around the perimeter of the
prison.
The fourth phase of the operation included the 1st Battalion,
188th Glider Infantry, commanded by Lt. Col. Ernest La
Flamme. While the 1/511th attacked the prison compound,
the 1/188th was assigned the task of conducting a diversion-
ary attack to the west. La Flamme was ordered to advance his
glidermen across the San Juan River from Mamatid and move
toward Los Baos. The glider battalion had two objectives:
engage as many enemy troops as possible and, eventually, link
up with the paratroopers at the prison camp in the event they
had to fight their way out of Los Baos.
As the plan developed, Quandt outlined the mission to Major
Henry Burgess, who was commander of the 1st/511th Para-
chute Infantry, which was assigned the mission to liberate the
camp. As Burgess began to concentrate on the final prepara-
tions for the mission, he realized the tremendous obstacles
to be faced by his battalion and he worried, How could my
force of 412 paratroopers slip undetected deep into Japanese-
controlled territory, wipe out a large number of enemy guards
at the camp before they could kill the inmates, and bring back
to safety, 2,200 weak men, women, and children, many of
whom were unable to walk?
On February 20, General Swing believed that he finally had
The 8th Cavalry Regiment of the 1st Cavalry Division led a
rescue of prisoners held at Santo Tomas University in
Manila.
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WORLD WAR II AIRBORNE BATTLES 146
accomplished enough of his objectives in Manila to allow the
rescue mission to proceed. On the same day, Lieutenant John
M. Ringler was ordered to report to division headquarters at
Paranaque. Once there, he was briefed on the Los Baos mis-
sion and told that it would be his company making the para-
chute assault on the prison camp.
Division planners explained to Ringler that parachutes would
be flown in from Leyte the next day. During the jump briefing,
Ringler learned that Nichols Field, which had just recently been
captured, would be cleared, and planes would be readied for
the mission. Ringler was advised that just before B Companys
drop, the drop zone would be marked by guerrillas using white
smoke. The jump altitude would be 400 feet so the men would
not be exposed to enemy ground fire for any longer than was
necessary.
That night, Lieutenants Skau and Haggerty (who was an
engineer from the 127th Airborne Engineer Battalion) left
Paranaque to scout the Los Baos area. The two officers
crossed Laguna de Bay by banca on their way to Nanhaya, a
small village near the prison camp. Once there, they met with
two escaped inmates, Ben Edwards and Freddy Zervoulakos.
Both men agreed to escort Skau and Haggerty. Along with a
few guerrillas from Hunters 45th Regiment, the party moved
quickly but quietly toward Los Baos.
The first thing the young officers made sure of was that the
beach east of Los Baos was firm enough to support the col-
umn of amtracs as they rumbled onshore. They both decided
it was. Next, the party checked the wooden bridges to ensure
they were strong enough to support fully loaded amtracs.
Again, both officers agreed that the bridges were safe. The third
area Skau and Haggerty wanted to inspect was the drop zone
that Doug Quandt had picked from the maps of the Los Baos
area. After a careful analysis, Skau decided that the drop zone
was sufficient, even though there were power lines and rail-
road tracks bordering the field. The final location to be checked
was the camp itself.
The reconnaissance group stealthily moved from the drop
zone along the route Ringlers men would take to the camp
following their jump. They located the many guard towers
spaced around the perimeter and decided that Ringlers men
would be able to penetrate the camps defenses. As soon as the
men were satisfied they had learned all they could, the group
moved back to the beach. Within minutes, Skau and Haggerty
were back in their banca and returning to Paranaque.
The next day, February 21, the troops that were to partici-
pate in the rescue mission were pulled out of the line in Manila.
Division planners then decided that D-day for the mission
would be February 23, just two days away.
During the day of the 21st, Skau got a few hours sleep. After
dark, he moved his reconnaissance platoon to Mamatid and
met with the guerrillas, who came with bancas. They began
shoving off at 7 PM. Most of the force landed near Los Baos
in the early morning and moved into the jungle to hide. The
remainder of Skaus force came ashore after daylight and it,
too, disappeared into the jungle for the wait until the follow-
ing night.
The next day the other rescue units moved to their staging
areas. A and C Companies along with Battery D marched from
Manila to Mamatid. Once there, they prepared their equip-
ment and weapons for loading onto the amtracs. At 4 AM on
the 23rd, just three hours before H-hour, the paratroopers were
to load onto the amtracs for their trip across Laguna de Bay
to Los Baos.
Moving on the 22nd as well was La Flammes Glider
Infantry. This force, designated to conduct the diversionary
attack, moved to an area near Mamatid and prepared to
attack. They planned to maneuver down the road from
Mamatid to an area near the San Juan River and hopefully
draw many enemy troops away from the Los Baos area.
Ringlers B Company was pulled out of the line and trucked
to the newly liberated New Bilibid Prison. The paratroopers
were instructed to offload from the trucks, and all members of
B Company were assigned cells to sleep in during the night.
One member of B Company recalled: We could feel some-
thing in the air. And the rumors! Something big, something
important was coming up. What was it all about? And some
thanks for all the fighting we had been doing! We were being
put in a prison.
On the afternoon of the 22nd, Ringler joined his men at New
Bilibid Prison. He called his men together and explained what
the secret mission was. Ringler warned, Watch out in partic-
ular for the high-tension line bordering the drop zone.... If you
hit it, youre fried!
Loading back onto trucks, the paratroopers were moved to
Nichols Field, where they spent a restless night under the wings
of the planes.
At 3 AM on the 23rd, just four hours before the attack was
to begin, Skau began to move his men from their hiding places
in the jungle to their final positions for attack. He sent one
squad to the beach just east of Los Baos with instructions to
mark the beach approach with smoke grenades for the amtracs
at exactly 6:58. Another squad was sent to the selected drop
zone. At exactly 6:58 this squad was supposed to mark the
drop zone with smoke grenades for the approaching flight of
C-47s carrying John Ringlers paratroopers. The remainder of
Skaus platoon and guerrillas crawled through the jungle to
within range of the guard towers and pillboxes of the prison
compound. Once in place, the men prepared their weapons
and waited for H-hour, just a few hours away.
As Skaus men moved into position, Burgesss men began
strapping their gear on, checking weapons, and moving out to
their assigned amtracs. By 5:15, all amtracs were in the water
and under way. Using handheld compasses to guide them, the
force, in a column of threes, headed toward Los Baos.
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WORLD WAR II AIRBORNE BATTLES 147
By 5:30, the men of B Company were struggling into their
parachute harnesses and strapping on their equipment. At 6
oclock, nine C-47s started their engines and within 30 minutes
were airborne. The aircraft fell into three formations of three
planes, each formation in the shape of a V. For 40 minutes the
planes circled Nichols Field and then turned south. The jump
masters in each aircraft stood in the open doorways, and as the
planes flew across Laguna de Bay, they were able to look down
and see the amtracs churning away across the lake.
As the men of the 11th Airborne Division approached their
objective from different directions, none of them realized the
drama that had unfolded during the night. A P-61 Black
Widow night reconnaissance plane had returned from its mis-
sion to report a great number of trucks, all with headlights on,
moving in the direction of the Los Baos camp. Division plan-
ners were shocked. What did this mean? Did the Japanese learn
about the rescue and then decide to relocate all the prisoners
before the attack? Or were they sending in hundreds of rein-
forcements in order to defend the camp? General Swing was
notified immediately. He thought for only a few minutes. He
knew that he could recall everybody except Skaus men, who
would begin the attack at exactly 6:58nothing could stop
that. So he allowed the mission to proceed.
At 6:45, the Los Baos camp began to stir. Hundreds of pris-
oners began filing out of their barracks and lined up for a head
count. At the same time, most of the guards began their daily
routine of exercise. Witnessing all this were Skaus concealed
men.
Inside the C-47s, Ringlers men were checking their equip-
ment and parachute harnesses one last time as they stood wait-
ing to jump. Ringler, the jumpmaster in the lead aircraft, leaned
out the aircraft door and checked to see if all airplanes were
properly aligned for the drop. At precisely 6:58, Skaus men at
the drop zone popped white smoke grenades and threw them
onto the field. Ringler now looked for the drop zone. He saw
white smoke billowing up from the groundthe mission was
on.
Inside the prison camp the inmates heard and then saw the
low-flying aircraft approach. All of a sudden, parachutes began
filling the sky. James Bateman, a 20-year-old prisoner, remem-
bered: We all thought this would be the last day of our lives,
that we would all be executed. [Japanese guards had ordered
many of the prisoners to begin digging long trenches just out-
side the camp. Many inmates speculated that the trenches
would be used for mass burial sites.] The parachutes rained
out of the sky. At first we thought they were dropping food in
the camp. Then we realized they were American soldiers. We
yelled and screamed and danced with joy.
Just outside the camp, Skaus men remained hidden until they
saw the first parachute. Then they opened up on the guards
along the perimeter. For about 15 minutes, the reconnaissance
force assaulted pillboxes, bunkers, and guard towers. Knock-
ing out the main gate, Skaus men ran into the camp, killing any
Japanese guards they encountered.
By 7:15, Ringler had his men assembled and moving toward
American paratroopers near Manila in February 1945.
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WORLD WAR II AIRBORNE BATTLES 148
the camp. Within minutes they had killed many of the guards
who had tried to run away. As Ringlers men entered the com-
pound, they joined with Skaus group and began to hunt down
the remaining guards.
On Laguna de Bay, Burgesss amphibious column rumbled
ashore at exactly 7 AM, right on schedule. Burgess dispatched
C Company westward to establish a roadblock near the town
of Los Baos. A Company was sent to the east to set up another
blocking position. Then Captain Lou Burriss D Battery, 457th
Field Artillery was offloaded. Burris had been briefed only the
day before by General Farrell, the division artillery comman-
der. Farrell told Burris: This operation has been kept secret
because there are 10,000 Japanese troops within a two-and-a-
half-hour truck ride of the camp. Your job is to block them
with your battery. There is only one pass they can use through
the hills. Be able to cover that pass with all four of your how-
itzers at all times.
A short time after the guns were in place, they were firing
on machine-gun positions east of Los Baos. With all of
Burgesss men in place, the amtracs proceeded full speed, about
15 miles an hour, toward the prison camp.
Back at the camp, the fighting petered out after about 20
minutes. The 243 guards had either been killed or had man-
aged to run away. Not one of the 2,147 prisoners nor any
member of the attacking force had been wounded or killed.
The only casualty had been one of Ringlers men, who had
landed next to the railroad tracks during the jump and was
knocked unconscious when his head struck the track.
Following the attack, prisoners began cheering wildly and
greeted their liberators with hugs, kisses, and back-slapping as
the soldiers began to bring some order in the camp. One pris-
oner shouted, Thank God for the paratroopers. These are
the angels He sent to save us! Another prisoner, a Catholic
priest, began to pray, giving thanks for the liberators who had
arrived out of nowhere. Shortly, a paratrooper who came run-
ning by stopped and touched the priest. He said, Sorry, Father,
no time for prayers now. You gotta get packed so we can get
you the hell outta here before more Japs arrive.
As the soldiers tried to organize the huge mob of milling pris-
oners, Burgesss amtracs approached the camp. The driver in
the lead amtrac called to Burgess, The gates closed, what
should I do? Burgess yelled back, Crash through the damned
thing! The lead trac charged the gate and with a loud,
crashing sound broke through. All the other vehicles followed.
The column made its way to the basefield and adjoining
fields. There Burgess witnessed a scene of complete bedlam.
By this time the entire camp was in a state of total celebration.
The soldiers could not settle the milling, laughing, and wan-
dering crowds of prisoners and get them organized for load-
ing onto the amtracs.
At 7:45, John Ringler reported to Burgess. He said he and his
men had not been able to organize any prisoners into groups
to load onto the amtracs. There was too much confusion. He
then told Burgess that some of the guards barracks were on
fire and that it was causing many of the internees to move
ahead of the fire toward the assembled amtracs.
As the minutes ticked by, Burgess finally received word from
his blocking forces back near Laguna de Bay that there were
indications that large enemy forces might be making prepara-
tions to attack the rescuers.
Realizing that the burning barracks might be his salvation,
Burgess told Ringler to take some of his men to the upwind side
of the camp and begin torching as many barracks as possible.
Burgess thought that maybe the threat from fire would moti-
vate the prisoners to gather their belongings and begin load-
ing onto the amtracs. As soon as Ringler began burning the
barracks, the results were spectacular. The paratroopers
began to see the internees pour out of their living quarters
and into the loading area. Troops started clearing the barracks
in advance of the fire and began carrying out to the loading
area over 130 people who were too weak or too sick to walk.
Burgess was worried about the Tiger Division advancing on
the camp. He had the most seriously weakened prisoners
Filipino guerrilla groups were well organized and well armed
by late winter 1945 as compared to their earlier struggles.
They helped U.S. forces immensely in wresting back their
cities and villages from the Japanese.
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WORLD WAR II AIRBORNE BATTLES 149
loaded first. It was soon apparent that
the amtracs would have to make two
trips in order to evacuate all prisoners
and soldiers from the camp. The
strongest inmates were kept back in case
they had to fight their way out with the
troopers if the Japanese attacked.
By 10 oclock, the first load of evac-
uees was ready to move out. Burgess
ordered the drivers to get them to
Mamatid, discharge them, and return as
soon as possible. An hour later, the camp
was nearly deserted. The prisoners who
had been left behind began walking
toward the beachhead. A rear guard was
formed from Ringlers B Company and
Skaus Reconnaissance Platoon. There
were very few guerrillas remaining in
camp. When the attack had ended, most
of the Filipinos had disappeared back
into the jungle. It was assumed that they
had returned to their units. Burgess
recalled his security companies and
instructed them to provide flank security
for the march to the beach.
When Burgess, who was in the rear of
the procession, reached the shore, he
received alarming news. Lieutenant Tom
Mesereau, C Company commander,
reported to Burgess that he and his men
had shot up a Japanese detachment. The
bad news was that he believed a much larger force of enemy
troops was approaching. If the amtracs did not return soon,
some 1,200 civilians and paratroopers might be trapped and
wiped out.
By this time in the mission, the diversionary attack of the
1/188th had advanced to just west of Los Baos. Here the bat-
talion established a bridgehead next to the San Juan River and
effectively blocked the road leading to Los Baos. Two of the
glidermen in La Flammes battalion were killed in this attack.
During the next few anxious hours, as Burgesss force secured
the beachhead, Japanese mortar rounds were fired inside
Burgesss perimeter. At the same time, an occasional burst of
machine-gun fire kept the paratroopers pinned to the ground.
Finally, at around 1 oclock in the afternoon, the amtracs
appeared on the horizon and within minutes came motoring
ashore onto the beachhead.
Burgess began to hurry the remaining civilians onto the vehi-
cles as he gave the order to withdraw his men from the defen-
sive perimeter. As the defensive line grew steadily smaller,
Japanese fire grew bolder and stronger. By 3 oclock, enemy
fire on the beachhead increased to a dangerous level. As the last
few amtracs loaded up and departed, the paratroopers sus-
tained their first casualties. One trooper and one former pris-
oner each received minor injuries.
The Los Baos Prison raid was one of the finest missions of
its type in the war. Many of the methods utilized by Swings
Angels during the planning and execution of the mission are
still used in modern raiding techniques by todays special oper-
ations forces. The courage and daring of the men of the 11th
Airborne Division, without a doubt, spared the lives of over
two thousand men, women, and children held prisoner by the
Japanese.
Perhaps the most poignant memory of the mission was
voiced by Dr. Boosalis, an 11th Airborne combat surgeon who
participated in the rescue. Dr. Boosalis remembered the attitude
and fatigued features of the troopers as they departed from
Los Baos on the amtracs, each with orders to guard the freed
civilians from any more horrors of war. As each vehicle passed,
Boosalis saw in each paratrooper a quietude. Each man
appeared to be wrapped in his own thoughts, thoughts about
what had just occurred. The men were very quiet... no com-
plaints... no levity... just quiet.

American troops disembark an amtrack, one of the amphibious vehicles used in

the Los Baos raid.
AB-Los Banos Raid_Layout 1 10/14/14 12:39 PM Page 149
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