Descending from the Clouds

by Wurst, Spencer F. ; Wurst, Gayle;

  Maybe I did a good job as first sergeant, but I didn’t think so. I requested to be returned to the 3d Platoon as a squad leader, and the company commander honored our agreement. I’m still very proud that they asked me.

  Another important personal event occurred when my good friend Francisco and I were ordered to report to Colonel Vandervoort for an interview. Francisco was a sergeant in the 1st Platoon of Company F, a squad leader who later became a platoon sergeant. I called him the Red-Headed Reign of Terror, because he was always joking and playing tricks on other soldiers. He was a damn good combat sergeant. During our interview, the colonel said he had heard good reports about us, especially in combat situations, and we were candidates for field commissions to second lieutenant. The only qualification was that we keep up the good work. I don’t know why we were all that crazy about becoming lieutenants. Infantry platoon leaders had the highest casualty rate of anyone in the U.S. Army. But we felt mighty good about it.

  At Quorn, I got replacements in my squad, bringing it up to full strength and possibly one or two men over. Many senior commanders at both regimental and battalion level were often away planning new missions which were quickly canceled because the Allied armies moved so rapidly across Europe after they broke out of the Normandy peninsula. One of these, called Operation Linnet, got as far as the airfield. We were briefed on it down to the squad level, sealed in, and ready to be lifted out. The drop was to have been in Tournai, Belgium, and D-Day was set for September 3.

  Of all the jumps I prepared for, this gave me the worst case of pre-combat jitters I ever experienced. Those of us who had been in combat the longest felt we had the law of averages working against us. I had such a bad feeling about being killed or seriously wounded that I almost sank into deep depression. I didn’t sleep a wink the night before we were to leave. The casualties of “new” to “old” men were at a ratio of about three to one, I thought, but what the hell, the ranks of the older combat soldiers were still dropping. Luckily, the Allied ground armies overran the drop zones on September 2, and the operation was called off. We all breathed a big sigh of relief when they canceled that one.

  According to the regimental history, 186 members of the 505 gave their lives in Normandy. I could very easily have been one of them. After I had been shot at a few times, many things became second nature. Whenever we were moving, whether in an attack or approaching the front lines, whether in artillery, mortar, or small arms range, I kept my eyes open, continuously looking for signs of the enemy. This became automatic, as “natural” as looking both ways before crossing a street. With every step, I asked myself, “If I’m shot at now, where will I go? Where am I going to find cover?” To react quickly, you must prepare where you’re going to go, minute by minute, second by second.

  I knew a soldier cannot afford to become tired. Get a little wavy, and things catch up with you. Mental alertness and quick reaction time were two essentials that enabled soldiers to come back alive. I had seen its opposite, the thousand-yard stare in the eyes of soldiers—almost a trance. A soldier like this has been too long in combat. He will become one of the next casualties.

  I learned the tricks of the trade. When to dig. How deep to dig. Whenever I was placing my BAR and machine guns, I asked myself, “What can the guns cover here that they can’t cover over there?” In a defensive position, I always thought, “How the hell am I going to get out of here if I have to? What’s the safest and quickest way if I need to withdraw?” I always picked an alternate position from which to cover the same field of fire. I always thought about where I was going to move if I was attacked from the left, the left rear, the front, etc. Much of this is standard procedure, but being shot at really drums it into you. Only after you’ve been under fire do you really understand the importance of your training.

  I know for certain that thirteen Company F soldiers were killed in Normandy, and many times more were seriously wounded and never returned to duty. The stick dropped into Ste. Mère-Eglise accounted for many of these men. I have already named some of those we lost, but I shall name them again: Sergeant Ray, my friend, was killed in his parachute; Blankenship, a former member of my squad, was killed in his parachute; Byrant, Tlapa, Van Holsbeck, Lieutenant Cadish—all of these and more—never got out of their parachutes; Paris, a close friend and member of my squad, went missing in action and was later found with jump injuries; Corti, a BAR man in my squad, was wounded in action on the St. Sauveur-le-Vicomte bridge; and Lemieux, a rifleman in my squad, was killed in action trying to save my life. The memory of these men was sharp in my mind as I trained their replacements in my squad at Quorn.

  Chapter 20

  Market-Garden: The Combat Jump at Groesbeek and Entry into Nijmegen

  After many aborted plans for the 82d Airborne, the Holland mission, Operation Market-Garden, finally took place. The 1st Battalion, 505, and Division Headquarters went to Cottesmore, and the 2d and 3d Battalions, 505, and Regimental Headquarters moved to Folkingham Airfield, about twenty-five miles north. We were sealed in according to standard procedure. No one could leave without a personal guard. I don’t believe we were there more than a day or so. We were briefed on as much of the mission as was known.

  The objective of the airborne invasion was to seize key bridges and the major highway along a 65-mile corridor, to permit the British Army to advance rapidly from the Belgian border through Holland. The plan called for a bold move up through Nijmegen to Arnhem on the northern branch of the Rhine, where the Army was to capture the bridge and make a run into northern Germany. Airborne units were to seize the bridges along the corridor, opening the way for Montgomery’s ground force, Lt Gen Brian Horrocks’s XXX Corps, to push about 20,000 vehicles up the highway and on into Germany. Moving from the south, there was a gap of seven or so miles between the front lines and the 101st Airborne, which was responsible for keeping open fifteen miles of highway from Eindhoven through Veghel. They were to form a protective corridor, seize the bridges and main highway, keep supplies coming, and permit ground troops to race up and break through the German main line.

  The 82d was to drop to the north of the 101st; our division objective was to secure a ten-mile corridor from the Maas River to the Waal (Rhine) River, including the bridge at Grave and the half-mile long highway bridge at Nijmegen. Within the 82d, the 504 was the contact unit with the 505, but a second gap existed between the 504 and the 101st Airborne’s area. The final section, from Nijmegen north to the key bridge at Arnhem, where the British 1st Airborne was to drop, was another eleven-mile corridor. General Horrocks was expected to reach Arnhem in sixty hours, and there link up with and reinforce the airborne forces. By this time, the Polish 1st Independent Parachute Brigade under MajGen Stanislaw Sosabowski was also to have jumped into Arnhem, bringing in troops, supplies and ammunition by glider on September 18. The Poles were to drop on the south end of the bridge, and seize it if the British had not already done so.

  This was an ambitious plan whose success depended on timing, close coordination, and unabated good weather. I learned during the briefing that in Groesbeek, just outside Nijmegen, one could look over into the Reichswald, where a German armored unit had been reported. This constituted our main threat, because we were going to drop south of Groesbeek on DZs within artillery and mortar range of the Reichswald.

  We were told there was excellent intelligence in and around Nijmegen and Arnhem. Gavin and his staff expected a large armored counterattack from the part of the Reichswald facing the 505’s area. The 2d Battalion, 505, was designated regimental and division reserve, the sole reserve battalion for the entire division. The 505 was to move to what they called the “high ground” north-northwest of Groesbeek and take up a defensive position. The area of operations was so large that there were too few troops to form a solid line around it, so we were to hold selected pieces of terrain and bridges over the Waal–Maas Canal, which ran south of us going into the Waal River. Company A of the 1st Battalion had the mission of taking it. The 50
4 PIR was to our west, and the 508 PIR was to our east, towards the Waal and the Reichswald.

  September 17, 1944, fell on a Sunday. It was the first daylight airborne operation in the history of the European Theater of Operations. The Air Corps was also responsible for “flak suppression,” protection against anti-aircraft fire on the troop carrier command planes. The troop carriers, C-47s, were good planes, but they were slow and made good targets even for light anti-aircraft fire. Because we were going to fly over enemy territory for ninety miles in broad daylight, most of the IX Tactical Air Command, which contained fighters and the fighter-bombers, was designated to support the transport of the troops to the operation area and protect against enemy fighters.

  It was the greatest air armada in the history of warfare up to this time. It was said it took one and a half hours for the entire formation to fly past a given point. In all, there were nearly 20,000 troops, and 4,676 aircraft—transports, gliders, fighters, and bombers; 7,250 of these troops belonged to the 82d Airborne, which required 480 paratroop troop carriers and fifty gliders and tugs.4

  We took off at ten o’clock in the morning. It was such a huge operation that it took some time for the planes to get into the air. We had to form up and get into the right slot in the air stream, so as to arrive at our designated drop zones at the correct time. The planes took off at five- to twenty-five-second intervals, and flew over England in three parallel streams, which taken together measured ten miles wide.

  The weather was beautiful; it was a sunny day, observation was good, and it should have gone off without many hitches. To those of us sitting in the plane, everything seemed to be going just fine. Some of us old-timers thought the mission couldn’t be that bad, because the Air Corps was flying transport planes in formation in broad daylight so many miles behind the lines. At the time, I didn’t give this much thought.

  I was push-out, or last man in the jump. There were sixteen or more troopers in my plane, a heavy load for a C-47. I was worried that if someone got hung up in the door or jumped late, I would end up in western Germany. I was also apprehensive about the German armor we expected.

  We crossed the English Channel quite a bit north of the front lines. From the minute we crossed the coast, heading east, we were under anti-aircraft fire. Mostly it was 20mm and 37mm anti-aircraft weapons and machine gun fire, but as we looked out the windows, we saw our Air Corps fighters swarming all around the C-47s like a bunch of hawks guarding their young. We were flying so low I could see enemy soldiers looking up and firing their individual weapons at the armada.

  Usually we had ten to twenty minutes between standing up and the order to jump. On this occasion, our jumpmaster was smart enough to have us stood up, hooked up, and ready to go much earlier than usual because we were taking flak. Whenever we heard the bullets strike the plane, we glanced down the line to see if anyone had been hit. As push man, I had to go into the crew cabin in the front of the plane because there wasn’t room enough for all the heavily loaded troopers to stand up in the main part of the troop compartment. I looked out over the pilot’s shoulders and head to watch the approach of the drop zones. Planes were getting hit and going down in flames. Most of the pilots kept their formation. Otherwise, there would have been many fatalities as they flew through sticks of paratroopers who had jumped from preceding planes.

  General Gavin and part of his division headquarters planned to drop first with the 1st Battalion of the 505 PIR, followed by the 3d and 2d Battalions. About twenty-five miles from the DZs, they were surprised to see a serial of C-47s move in under them and drop a battalion of paratroopers from the 1st Battalion, 501, 101st Airborne Division. Gavin knew immediately there had been an error in navigation. As he got nearer to the drop zones, the 3d and 2d battalions were parallel to each other, instead of following in column as planned. The 2d Battalion element from the Troop Carrier Command got a quick change of orders, and we dropped on an improvised DZ to the east of Groesbeek. The two other battalions of the 505 landed on the correct drop zones.

  Just before we got the green light to jump, a burst of machine gun fire shot through the plane, and our number-four man slumped. I think he was hit in both legs. I became very apprehensive about having to go out late and ending up as sausage in the Reichswald. But the man went out. I don’t know how he did it, but when we got the light, he made it to the door and jumped. I forget that man’s name, but I am deeply indebted to him.

  Our stick made a good, fast jump and dropped in a nice, tight pattern. It being daylight, I could see the other paratroopers descending, and we all tried to stay away from each other in the air. The Germans were firing at planes and individual troopers as we floated down. Not long after my chute opened, I could see enemy soldiers on a light anti-aircraft gun or a machine gun, positioned only four or five hundred yards from where many of us were landing. There was a building nearby, and some of us came down through the roof. Personally, it was the best landing I ever made. I sank up over my ankles into a plowed field, and the earth acted as a cushion.

  Our first objective was to silence the anti-aircraft guns. I got my weapon ready, got out of my chute, and headed toward the source of enemy machine gun fire. As I approached the gun I had seen from the air, I discovered that someone had already taken it out, or else the gunners had surrendered. From the air, it appeared that the 1st and 3d Battalions of the 505 and one of the battalions of the 508 were almost within sight of where we dropped. You can imagine the effect it made on the Germans’ morale to see three or four parachute infantry battalions landing in such a close area. Colonel Vandervoort knew we were dropping on an improvised drop zone. He opened up the radio net and gave a new assembly point: the Molenberg Observatory, a large, German-built tower on the outskirts of Groesbeek.

  Our assembly was quick and successful. It was daylight and our leaders had a landmark visible to all the troops on the DZ. It took only thirty to forty minutes to get assembled and ready to move. It turned out very well that we dropped east of Groesbeek, while the 3d Battalion, whose mission it was to take the town, dropped to the south. This permitted both the 2d and 3d Battalions to move toward town, killing or capturing all the enemy in a pincer-like, two-battalion movement.

  After I assembled my squad and led it into the platoon and company assembly, we moved to the northern edge of Groesbeek, which wasn’t far off. We took German prisoners on the way, including some officers who had been driving down a hard-top road in a VW and gave up after a few shots. Along the way, my squad approached a building with a wall around it, and one of us jokingly directed the prisoners toward it. The Germans thought we were going to shoot them. We thought this was pretty funny, but as I look back, I realize it must have been terrifying for the prisoners. I hasten to say we didn’t shoot them.

  Going through the northern outskirts of Groesbeek, we were ecstatically cheered by the Dutch people. We didn’t take many casualties moving from our drop zone to our reserve defensive area. We may have lost one or two men in the entire company. There were no losses in the 3d Platoon.

  Our reserve area was on top of what they called Hill 81.8. Back home, Hill 81.8 would be nothing more than a gentle slope; but in Holland an elevation of nearly eighty-two meters is quite a rise. Our area ran northeast to southwest and was parallel to a railroad track, whose bed was a hundred fifty or two hundred yards down the slope. Although the battalion was in reserve, not much over half of Company F was in the reserve defensive position. We dug in and passed the rest of the day uneventfully, awaiting orders. We sent some small patrols out to our front, and some contact patrols with the 1st Platoon roadblock out on one of the hard-top roads, but there were no outstanding events until evening. There were quite a few jokes about having conquered the highest hill in Holland.

  Initially the enemy was far more disorganized than we were. We were dropping in the Germans’ rear areas and quickly cut them off from communications at higher headquarters. On our first day, a German field artillery unit or logistical support unit dro
ve right into the 1st Platoon’s roadblock and was taken prisoner or shot. The Germans had some horse-drawn vehicles that came through first, and the horses got killed in the shooting. It wasn’t long before the Dutch came out of their hiding places and asked if they could butcher the horses for food. They received permission, and the 1st Platoon got treated to a horsemeat dinner.

  About dusk, we were amazed to hear a locomotive coming from the direction of Nijmegen to our right. There were no other railroad tracks in the area, so we knew the train had to pass directly in front of us. No one, from the company or battalion level right on down to squad level, knew what to do. As a result, we did nothing. I don’t know why we didn’t shoot. Maybe it was because no one gave the order, or maybe everyone was just caught by surprise. That damn train came within two hundred yards of our position, passed safely right in front of us, wound its way into Groesbeek, and crossed into Germany.

  Shortly afterwards we all caught hell. Orders were sent down that no more trains would be allowed through. By this time it was getting dark, so we decided to mine the tracks. But all available mines had been allocated to the 1st and 3d Battalions for roadblocks. Inasmuch as we each carried at least a pound of plastic Composition C explosives in a gammon grenade, we decided to use the grenades. We had no way to detonate these explosives—no blasting caps, no fuses, no primer cord—and we weren’t sure we really wanted to destroy the tracks, so we used our Composition C as field-expedient mines, keeping our safety pins to the grenades after we had placed the gammons on the tracks. That way, if a train came, it would set the explosives off, but if none came along, we could reinsert the pins and remove the mines.