The advantage seemed to be with the Allies, who when not grounded by days of extraordinarily bad weather could deliver soldiers and supplies by parachute and glider. The Luftwaffe tried to intervene but was held off by swarms of fighter planes. Defending transports, however, diverted Jabos from overwhelming attacks against ground targets of the kind they had experienced in Normandy. This allowed Model to maneuver forces to cut the corridor. He moved them by foot, bicycle, horse, rail, boat, truck—anything that could move— wherever he could, preventing British armor from reaching Arnhem before he wiped out the Red Devils. Any German in uniform or who could fit in one was Model's soldier: Luftwaffe ground crews, naval cadets, NCO academy students; even customs agents, Dutch Nazis, and convalescents closed in on the corridor like filings to a bar magnet. They were winnowed by gales of ground fire but sufficiently occupied the 101st and 82nd so that regular Wehrmacht units could concentrate and find openings into Hell's Highway.
Model's deputy, Kurt Student, a Fallschirmjager general, understood the 101st's difficulties. Obviously American artillery that had dominated battlefields in Normandy could not be centralized enough to provide coverage all around the division's perimeter in the Netherlands. He had an additional advantage: a glider had been shot down near his headquarters. Smoldering in the wreckage was a set of plans for how the 101st was to accomplish its mission, so Student had as clear a picture of Market-Garden as Taylor did.
Student's first panzer raid nearly killed Taylor in his CP at Zon. Tiger tanks rolled south, and orange bunting began to disappear in Eindhoven. By September 20, intelligence from the Dutch underground was not so helpful now that the Germans were in constant motion. Even with best guesses about Student's likely objectives, Taylor could not position a reserve force where it could respond to any threatened area. And his reserve was reduced to the division musical band because all four of his regiments were fully engaged and scattered. Never would the Screaming Eagles have to march so far to fight so much.
Urged on by Model, Student struck at Veghel, a small town just north of a significant canal. If the bridge was recaptured or destroyed, the Garden column would halt. Recognizing a major threat, Taylor rushed the entire 506th twenty-two miles north to Uden; Sink and Second Battalion reached Uden, but before the rest of the regiment arrived, panzers attacked from the east and Fallschirmjagers from the west, squarely cutting the corridor. They were dislodged after a brawl of twenty-four hours. Prisoners were taken on both sides. Colonel Sink and Colonel von der Heydte, commanding the 6th Parachute Regiment, wryly realized that they were up against each other as they had been in Normandy, so hereafter there would be a heavyweight fight. The ground was flat, silhouettes high, trees and barns prized for observation. Both regiments were good at this sort of whirligig warfare, circling in and around each other while British armor on the corridor awaited the outcome.
“Jumpin' Joe,” Camp Mackall, North Carolina, 1943. As an expert parachutist, he should have had his legs together. (Joe Beyrle)
Joe in front of his tar-paper barracks (built by the Civilian Conservation Corps) at Camp Toccoa, Georgia, 1942. (Joe Beyrle)
Top deck of the HMS Samaria as it crossed the Atlantic in September 1943. (U.S. Army)
Joe's cohort in I Company, England, 1944. His best buddies, Orv Vanderpool (top, second from left) and Jack Bray (bottom, second from left), were killed in the same plane on D Night. Two others in this group also died during the war. (Joe Beyrle)
Sergeant Barron Duber, I Company's master scrounger of illicit fish, game, and brandy. (Joe Beyrle)
Currahees, faces blackened with charcoal, about to take off on D Night. Draped over his reserve chute, the trooper on the right has a coiled rope to help him descend if he lands in a tree. (U.S. Army)
The church in St. Come-du-Mont where Joe landed on D Night. He slid down the long pitch (center left) into the small cemetery. The top of the steeple, used by Germans for observation and antiaircraft fire, was subsequently destroyed by American shelling. (Joe Beyrle)
Highway 13 in St. Come-du-Mont, where Joe flung grenades at a group of Germans on D Day. (Joe Beyrle)
Paratroopers advancing in Normandy. (U.S. Army)
Exhausted Screaming Eagles take a break by a hedgerow on D+2. (Jack Schaffer)
Joe with JoAnne, his wife, at the monument in Normandy where he was “buried” in 1944. (Joe Beyrle)
The obituary photo of Joe that appeared in the Muskegon Chronicle, September 1944. (Muskegon Chronicle)
A Nazi propaganda photo that humiliated American POWs in Paris, July 1944. Joe is second from the right.
The Germans' mug shot of Joe, with his kriege number, when he was first registered at Stalag XII-A.
Typical items in an American Red Cross parcel for POWs. (American Red Cross)
A kriege barters with a German guard. This remarkable picture was taken by Angelo Spinelli, a captured combat photographer who was able to smuggle a camera into Stalag III-B. (Angelo Spinelli)
Ed Albers in 1943. (Ed Albers)
In England, apprehensive Screaming Eagles listen to a briefing for Operation Market-Garden. (U.S. Army)
At a departure airfield for the Market-Garden jump, troopers get a last-minute briefing on what to expect. Censors scratched out Screaming Eagles shoulder patches. (U.S. Army)
Currahees board a C-47 to jump into the Netherlands for Market-Garden. (U.S. Army)
Charlie Eckman (right), who was wounded seventeen times, spars with Denver Madden, who was killed during Market-Garden. (Charlie Eckman)
American wounded in a makeshift aid station, Bastogne, Belgium. (U.S. Army)
The cold, the ruins, the dead of Bastogne. (U.S. Army)
Currahees, upon liberating the Landsberg concentration camp, approach some of the victims. (U.S. Army)
Russian soldiers receiving mail from home, an event that Joe never witnessed and that was probably staged for this photo. The soldier on the right holds a submachine gun like the one issued to Joe. (Novosti)
Waffen SS troops, exhausted from fighting the Red Army. (Imperial War Museum)
Russian troops during house-to-house fighting in Kustrin on the Oder River. The soldier on the left has a flamethrower. (Novosti)
Saint Joseph's convent in Warsaw, where Joe took refuge in 1945. He took this photo in 1989, and found the statue of Saint Joseph still pockmarked from World War II. (Joe Beyrle)
The basement of the convent, where the sisters treated his many wounds. (Joe Beyrle)
Joe with two Polish sisters in 1989. (Joe Beyrle)
Liberated krieges, April 1945. (U.S. Army)
I Ex-krieges of the 101st | Airborne were served i chow in April 1945 at | Fort Sheridan, Illinois, . by German POWs, some I of whom had SS tattoos. The result was an international melee in which several Germans were killed with steak knives and cafeteria trays. Joe is the third man from the right. (Daily News)
Joe embraced by his parents in Muskegon, May 1945. (Muskegon Chronicle)
Joe (left) and brother Bill with their mother, shortly after V-E Day. Bill unwittingly covered Joe for two clandestine jumps into France. (Joe Beyrle)
Joe in a convalescent hospital in the summer of 1945. Recuperation from his wartime traumas was erratic. (Joe Beyrle)
Joe in Normandy for the thirtieth anniversary of D Day. (Joe Beyrle)
In the White House Rose Garden, Joe presents Russian president Boris Yeltsin with a D Night cricket. (JoAnne Beyrle)
The Beyrle family, 1994. Seated, left to right: Kathy, Victoria, Jocelyn, Caroline, John, Alison, and Amanda Schugars. Standing, left to right: Christopher, Joe II, Joe III, Joe, JoAnne, Eric Schugars, Julie Schugars, and Jack Schugars. (James F. Keating, Reflections Studio)
As the bushwhacking swirled, after five hours of marching to Veghel, Albers's platoon was in a low crawl through waterlogged meadows, their objective a farmhouse with an overlook of Hell's Highway. He tried the door. It was locked, with no sound from inside except pigs squalling, a good sign to Dziepak: eithe
r no one was home, or the Dutch were still there because krauts would have turned those pigs into brat-wurst. Kick in the door, ordered Lieutenant Green, a nonorig-inal.* Dziepak was right, his squad doubly happy because great blocks of aging cheese hung in the kitchen.
There was little time for gorging. From the second floor Green could see burning skeletons of British vehicles. Growling from the west came six German half-tracks. Two disgorged troops then turned south on the road, weaving between wrecks. Green reported this on the radio, while a platoon of'Fallschirm-jagers warily advanced to check out the farmhouse. Green had bad news: no artillery was available; it's just us and them. Dziepak smiled as he set up a machine gun and a surprise for the approaching Germans. He identified the leader, pointed him out to the best marksman in the squad, a rookie who started to lean his rifle on the windowsill before Dziepak jerked him back.
Germans noticed the movement and went to ground as Dziepak's machine gun followed them with fire. Shell casings spurted and rattled around the upstairs room, soon faintly gray with gunsmoke. Outnumbered by the attackers, his squad had protection and a height advantage in the farmhouse, so the firefight devolved into a standoff. Ammo then became Green's main concern. The nearest resupply was a half mile away. “If you ain't got a kraut in your sights, don't shoot,” Dziepak announced, as if his men needed the reminder.
German bullets had been ineffective, but now their mortars ranged in. A scream, and a fragment was buried in Green's thigh. He had to be evacuated and more ammo brought up. The farmhouse fortress kept the Fallschirmjagers at bay while Albers, Dziepak, and Green went out the back door but were spotted. All hit the dirt, the wounded lieutenant dragged by his arms till they finally reached a shallow irrigation ditch.
Behind them the firefight intensified, and by wounding Green the Germans had taken out three men, a situation that caused Dziepak to rejoin his embattled squad. By himself Albers would have to drag Green back the rest of the way. Dziepak's rump disappeared in the grass. Albers looked at Green to explain, but the lieutenant's face was pale and distorted as a Halloween mask. A heavy man, heavy and strong, Green wrapped his arms around Albers's waist while with a swimming motion Albers slowly pulled him across the next field.
Green's arms weakened, and his leg became so bloated that it rose like some grotesque balloon. At a dip in the field Albers loosed the tourniquet, let blood flow till Green blanched silver-white, then retightened it. Albers wallowed on with Green draped on his back. They formed a profile so high that a bullet singed Green just as they reached a drainage ditch. Both men collapsed, one at the end of his strength, the other near the end of his life.
Like angels two medics appeared. While one gave Green first aid, the second dodged away under fire to return with a litter under each arm, assuming both blood-soaked infantrymen had been gravely wounded. Green went off on a litter, out of the war, never to return. After checking Albers, the medics, needed elsewhere, scurried off. He loaded himself with bandoliers and a machine-gun belt. He had crawled back to safety; now he would have to sprint back into danger. Bullets kicked up around him during the chest-heaving run. He burst into the farmhouse as his squad came down the stairs equally winded as incoming mortars exploded on the roof. Thatch ignited and timbers crashed while Dziepak distributed the ammo Albers had delivered. (“Why didn't ya get some grenades, Ed?”) Before the Germans completely surrounded the house, Dziepak's squad shot their way out, herding pigs as they retreated.
THUS ENDED A SUCCESSFUL German snip of the corridor, one to be reversed in a matter of hours, but too late for the Red Devils who expired around Arnhem, still waiting for Montgomery's tanks. Between the Waal and the Rhine, Screaming Eagles were now deployed on a large wedge of land they called the Island, where many of their grimmest Dutch memories were imprinted during seventy-two days, an American record for continuous contact with the Germans.
Albers remembers the Island as a dreary wetland, so sunken that dikes ringed it to hold off two rivers. Across the Rhine the Germans had observation posts overlooking every movement. “So they just plunked us all the time with artillery. That's how General Taylor got hit in the butt. The worst part was trying to keep dry. Dig a foxhole and it filled with water before you put down the shovel. We lost more guys to trench foot than enemy fire. Sort of like World War I.”
The 101st's losses from all causes had been crippling since September 17. Sink was the last regimental commander to have jumped in Normandy. The other two had been either killed or permanently evacuated with wounds. The 506th had lost a third of its officers and a quarter of the enlisted men. Al-bers's rifle squad had but one rifleman, him. There were plenty of mortars but no one left to load and fire them. No Airborne replacements; Ike's priority was for leg infantrymen, as his manpower pipeline from the States was running dry.
“I remember what the British we relieved said about the Island,” Albers says:” ‘Quiet as a bloomin’ churchyard, mate. The only thing you'll die from is boredom.” For a while that was right. My squad had an OP in a jam factory near Dode-waard. We ate jam, sweetened our coffee with it till we were sick of jam and just used it for trades. Arnhem Annie was the krauts' propaganda broadcaster. Her favorite saying was, ‘You can listen to our music but you can't dance in our streets.’ She'd play good swing and in between tunes ask us to come on over and surrender. We'd be treated well. Just bring a toothbrush, overcoat, blanket, and sit out the rest of the war.
“Some nights we'd paddle across the river in little rubber boats. One of these patrols left a toothbrush, overcoat, and blanket on the kraut side, with a note that they'd tried to surrender to Annie but she wasn't around. They also mentioned how much fun it would be to make contact with her, and offered a standing invitation for her to cross the river. Just wave panties instead of a white flag.”
In the foggy predawn of October 5 the Germans paddled across themselves, a full regiment swarming over the dikes. The surprise attack was preceded by the heaviest enemy artillery concentration that even Dziepak had ever experienced. Incoming flew over like flocks of birds. The jam factory had been zeroed in on. Civilians were huddled under big skylights that shattered into thousands of shards, cutting faces as if there had been a huge knife fight.
“There were lots of puddles from the drizzle,” Albers remembers. “I watched them turn red from the civilians' blood till Dziepak jacked me up. ‘Get on the machine gun!’ I started feeding in belts. The krauts were coming out of the fog—no targets till they were big enough to hear. They came on like Pickett's charge, but we were on the second floor where they couldn't get at us. Every burst seemed to take down a half dozen. As soon as the shell casings stopped bouncing, you could hear more krauts screaming and moaning out there. Dziepak was worried that when the fog lifted they could swing around the factory and we'd be cut off, same as almost happened at the farmhouse back at Veghel. What, me worry? That was the squad leader's job to worry. What we were doing was holding them off. Someone said every kraut we kill here we won't have to kill in Germany.”
When the fog lifted, Second Battalion counterattacked in a scene from nineteenth-century war when foes stood, rushed and fired at one another without cover. That didn't last long on the Island. Infantry on both sides grabbed mud when artillery found them. A windmill became crucial, a place from where artillery could be directed. Neither side could hold the windmill.
Albers changed machine-gun barrels as they began to glow red. Darkness set in with both sides blazing away extravagantly and insatiably devouring ammo as fast as it could be brought up. To develop a more thickly defended line, I Company was ordered to withdraw a thousand yards from the jam factory. Dziepak's squad nearly revolted. They had ruled from their roost and would not likely get another nearly as strong.
“We were saying, geez, we're slaughtering 'em. Why pull back?”
Because Sink wanted a free-fire zone for Jabos to trample on German reinforcements. Thus deprived of nourishment, the Germans' attack withered. As the Currahee yearbook related,
“[It had been] the hottest action this side of hell…. Dusk settled its dark cloak, but the savage battle went on lit by fires from gutted houses…. The next morning was still as the krauts left their dead and dying among ruined buildings and lying along a railroad track. Our price was heavy, theirs ruinous.”
Albers recalls, “After that we finally were pulled off the Island. The next night in Nijmegen we were taking our first shower in weeks when what looked like a meteorite in reverse took off from across the Rhine. What the hell was that? Next day another launched, a long white streamer like skywriting. Those were the first V-2 missiles headed for England.
“So, when we left, Arnhem Annie was bragging how Hitler's secret weapons were going to change the war. We didn't know, didn't worry either, and celebrated leaving by throwing grenades into our old water-filled foxholes and cheering the fountains. Don't know what the Brits who relieved us thought about that. Maybe that we were as tired of the war as they were.
“We knew what the Dutch thought about us as we trucked on Hell's Highway for the last time. When they saw the Screaming Eagle on our shoulders they came out as they had in Eindhoven, hundreds of them, just as full of joy as the first time. They kept yelling, ‘Seventeen September! Seventeen September!’”*
The destination of the 101st was Camp Mourmelon, a former artillery garrison twenty miles from Eisenhower's headquarters at Reims. Since Caesar's time Mourmelon had been a military encampment and battlefield, still pocked by craters and scored with crumbling trenches from World War I. Most recently it had been a tank depot for the Germans, who left the barracks in graffitied tatters.
Behind Hitler's Lines Page 21