First to Jump

by Jerome Preisler

  I’d like a suite that will face east, and English-made tea that will be served to me in bed every morning, he wrote. A phonograph with any and all Strauss selections. For breakfast, a fried egg with the yolk pink and the white firm, coffee brewed in the room so I can smell it cooking. The family breakfast should be served in the suite so we don’t have to get dressed. No military title . . . “Mister” will be music to my ears. And there should be a large, grey-haired motherly maid for my daughter . . . a prodigious menu of such delicacies as filet mignon and lobster a la Newburg . . . a daily program of sightseeing, theatergoing and nightclubbing . . .

  Lillyman added several more items before ending his note with a provocative Can you do it? and then stuffing it into an envelope.

  When the Lillymans arrived in New York City a few weeks later, a smiling hotel concierge told them that “everything was set” and their stay would be on the house. They were installed in a lavish five-room suite—“The George Rex!” the hotel boasted—with “an ashes-of-roses carpet, a sunken bathtub, a telephone rigged only for outgoing calls, and a buffet full of liquor.”

  In addition, LIFE magazine would report, the family was greeted with a bouquet of fresh flowers every day of the week . . . and everyone from the concierge and desk clerks to the bellhops and waiters called Frank “Mister.” The periodical also mentioned that young Susan was so excited by the trip—and by suddenly having a personal maid at her service—that she forgot herself and ate her spinach.

  Worlds away from the hell of battle, Frank Lillyman was getting plenty of attention for his valor and, unsurprisingly, not minding it a bit.

  MARKET GARDEN

  SEPTEMBER 17–25, 1944

  Both fliers and airborne had been working as teams for almost six months, and nearly all were veterans of the Normandy drops. They knew their business and they knew each other.

  —From the official U.S. military history of the operation

  CHAPTER FOUR

  1.

  Word of the mission came down late for the Pathfinders. In fact, many were on weekend leave on Friday, September 15, only to have their escapades in the village watering hole cut short.

  Technician Fifth Grade Glenn E. Braddock of the 101st Airborne was among them. Just recently off his recuperation furlough after Normandy, where he had jumped from the number two plane of Frank Lillyman’s serial, the Kansas native had been having a “high old time” when he got the news.

  Braddock was a tough, resilient sort of guy, a Golden Gloves boxer who rolled with the punches wherever and whenever they struck their blows—and it was no wonder. When he was four years old, he and his older brother Harry had been dropped off at an orphanage in Topeka by parents they would never know. The brothers were eventually adopted by the Daharsh family, but when Mrs. Daharsh passed away at a young age, they’d found themselves back at the orphanage. Luckily, George Braddock, of Jewell County, needed hands to work on his farm and, mixing pragmatism and compassion toward a happy result, took them in and gave them his name.

  A hard worker and quick study, Glenn had picked up a varied grab bag of hobbies in his twenty-five years on earth. He played guitar, banjo, and harmonica in whatever spare time he could find, and liked to sing a bit too—country music, mostly, learning the songs he’d heard the Carter Family perform on Border Radio, the five-hundred-megawatt broadcast dynamo out of Texas. The boxing was something he’d taken up in high school; back in the orphanage, he’d had to defend himself against some of the bigger, tougher kids who’d given him trouble, and that meant learning how to fight. The sport gave him a way to channel his aggressions and apply the skills he acquired with focus, endurance, and precision. At Camp Pike in Little Rock, Arkansas, where he’d gotten his basic training, Glenn won the lightweight boxing championship and wore the belt till his transfer to Fort Benning. As a T/5 in Pathfinder school later on, he’d been trained in how to use the Eureka box.

  Operating the radar beacon was of course a serious responsibility. But Glenn Braddock held another job besides, a special role that set him apart from all others in the unit and showed the level of respect he’d earned from his peers and commanders alike.

  An outfit’s rigger was the soldier who packed and repaired the chutes. In the U.S. Army, his official motto was “I will be sure—always.” It made total sense. Every trooper who jumped from a plane was entrusting him with his life. And a rigger had to value each life as if it were his own.

  The job could be repetitive and mundane; perhaps for that reason, it required someone who was reliable, conscientious, and exactingly consistent, who above all else understood the words in his pledge that there could be “no compromise with perfection.”

  Braddock was honored to be that man for the 101’s Pathfinders. Before Normandy, he’d packed, inspected, and personally signed off on all their parachutes in the marshaling area at North Witham. On the September night he learned of their second mission, it was Tom Walton, another veteran of the D Minus One drop, who broke the news to him at a Nottingham pub, letting him know there would be more packing ahead.

  “We have to report back to base,” he said, raising his voice over the music and laughter around them. “We’ve been designated for another possible jump.”

  Braddock had looked at him over his beer, trying to gauge his seriousness. But Tom’s sober, earnest expression dispelled any thoughts that he might be pulling his leg.

  A short while later, Braddock was in a jeep returning to North Witham. The troopers that Walton had rounded up would stop there briefly before they headed off to their new marshaling area at RAF Chalgrove, in Oxfordshire, about sixty miles closer to London.

  The ride was a quiet one. They’d all experienced enough horror and destruction in Normandy for several lifetimes, and none would be gung-ho about heading into combat again. They had seen men killed and maimed, and some had barely escaped death or critical injury themselves. It had left irreversible marks on their souls.

  As they bumped along over the foggy English roads, Braddock found himself wondering if this would prove the latest in a string of false starts they’d had since returning from Normandy. He wasn’t alone among the men to hope for it, and with good reason. Just a month ago, a drop on Chartres, in northern France, to cut off German reinforcements had been scratched at the last minute, after Patton and his troops took control of the city. Two weeks later the Pathfinders had gotten their English currency exchanged for Belgian francs at the marshaling area, then been briefed about a jump near Tournai, a city hardly anyone had ever heard of. But a British armored division captured it in September, and the 101’s planes had again stayed on the ground.

  Ultimately, though, Braddock knew he had to push all that out of his mind. Whether his company returned to action wasn’t for him to decide. His job was to get their parachutes packed.

  At the marshaling area, he found things very different than they’d been before the D-Day jump, when the men had pretty well known what to expect. Yes, the invasion’s exact location had been kept secret till a couple of weeks before it happened. And, yes, most of the Pathfinders had only learned its scheduled date around when they were ready to deploy. But they’d understood for months that they would be at the vanguard of the assault, and had a good idea they would be landing behind the lines in Occupied France. It had given them a chance to mentally, emotionally, and physically prepare.

  Now they weren’t told anything about the mission, or given any hint where they would drop. While the paratroopers were again under quarters and area arrest, there would be no long wait under heavy lockdown, no barbed wire fences, no armed MPs except at the supply room and Glenn Braddock’s parachute shed. The little wooden structure would have some of the tightest security on base, with canine patrols constantly around except when he was inside working on the chutes.

  On arrival at Chalgrove, Braddock learned he’d have fewer than half as many to pack than in early June. Ju
st four sticks of 101st Pathfinders—each team consisting of an officer and nine enlisted men—had been moved to the marshaling area, compared to the eleven that had dropped into Normandy. It didn’t mean the assignment was going to be any harder or easier than the last, but it did lead some of the troopers to conjecture it would be a day jump, since that would probably require fewer personnel and lights.

  The men spent all day Saturday tossing guesses about the barracks. Most were friends from way back in paratroop school, and they did a lot of gabbing to relieve their anxiousness. Among them were the two scouts from Captain Frank Lillyman’s Normandy stick, Fred Wilhelm and Bluford Williams; John Zamanakos, the demolition man; and the medic Snuffy Smith, his ankle having mended well enough for him to return to active combat status. Private Ernest “Dutch” Stene, who’d been in Braddock’s stick in June, would be jumping again, as would his buddies Privates John Kleinfelder, Bill Mensch, and Corporal Roy Stephens.

  They were a close-knit group, though some members of the Normandy teams were no longer with them. Gus Mangoni was now with Regimental S-2, and Zamanakos missed him. Lillyman himself had been transferred to a regular company command. A number of others also had been shuffled to other units. But with the exception of a single private, the officers and men awaiting orders at Chalgrove were old hands who’d done it before, and that was no coincidence. Because of the short window of time available for their preparation and briefing, the brass had sought experienced troopers for the operation.

  That strongly declared preference had left the fresh replacements from the States out of the action despite being ready and able to contribute. The unit’s commanders had spent weeks finding out which ones could cut it as Pathfinders and weeding out those who couldn’t, forcing the entire company to repeat its specialized training course. The repetitive drills had irritated the old hands to no end. But their endless grousing about the “kids”—anyone who hadn’t seen combat was called a kid, although they were about the same average age as the seasoned veterans—were really surface ripples on a deeper well of loss over the men who’d been killed or seriously injured in France.

  No one felt this more than Braddock. He bundled their parachutes with his own two hands, inspecting the skin and ribs of the canopies, testing the links and lines, checking and rechecking the entire assemblies. Working late into Saturday night in his shed, carrying out his solitary responsibilities, he thought about the men whose chutes he wouldn’t be packing and grew quietly sad.

  Sunday morning came around fast for the Pathfinders. With few having gotten any sleep, they ate an early breakfast together in the mess. Steak and eggs, whole milk, fresh-baked bread . . . the hearty servings made them feel like they were being stuffed for the lion’s den. At eight-thirty, they were called into a briefing, which in a sense bore out that suspicion. Told to prepare for their drop, they were issued their chutes, weapons, and supplies, and then informed they would be given their flight plan and orders at the airstrip.

  Two hours later they were geared up and soaring over the English Channel. Their wait was over and so were the long hours of guessing. Like it or not, there had been no last-minute cancellation this time.

  Their destination was Holland, where they would again be the first behind enemy lines.

  2.

  Three hundred and thirty-five miles away as the crow flies, Dutch resistance cells in and around the coastal villages of Veghel and Sint-Oedenrode had also gotten their instructions handed out on a strictly need-to-know basis.

  Their superiors in the Landelijke Knok Ploeg, or Central Government Fighting Group, were perhaps even cagier than the big wheels of the 101st, and with good reason. The LKP’s six or seven hundred members had been engaged in gathering intelligence on their occupiers, demolishing rail, telephone, and telegraph lines, and assassinating German soldiers and collaborators since their homeland’s surrender to the Nazis in 1940. If they were caught as the result of any leaks or slipups, they would be killed as saboteurs, with the Germans exacting harsh retaliation against their family members, fellow townspeople, and anyone else believed to have lent them assistance. Their methods of reprisal ranged from sending suspects to prison, to deportation to concentration camps and merciless summary executions.

  In Nijmegen, two members of the LKP, Johannes J. van Gorkum and Piet J. Jeuke, were at their headquarters in a shop near the city’s main traffic circle when their commander, Sjef de Groot, contacted them over their backroom radio.

  They were told to bicycle out to the heath at the edge of the Zonsche Forest by the Wilhelmina Canal and then “be alert and ready to help and provide information if necessary.” Johannes was to identify himself as “Joe” and Piet as “Pete.”

  But to whom?

  There had been no mention of that. The two young men weren’t told who they were to meet or assist. They weren’t told why they were being sent to the field. In fact, they weren’t told anything about what was going on, except that de Groot and several others would be heading to a separate field north of their destination, outside the town of Eerde and southwest of Veghel. But they had their suspicions.

  On Saturday afternoon, droves of American and British war planes had flown in over the fields to bomb and strafe railroad tracks, roads, overpasses, and German barracks and fortified artillery positions throughout the area. People in the city and nearby villages had taken cover at the roar of the Lancasters, Stirlings, Halifaxes, and B-26 Marauders. There had been reports over the underground radio that some of those planes had been downed by antiaircraft fire, but the Germans had suffered the worst of it.

  Or perhaps that grievous distinction went to the Dutch people. The tiny village of Zeelst, outside Eindhoven, had been carpeted by Allied bombs probably meant for a nearby airfield. Dozens had been killed there and in other raids—men, women, and children. The carnage was beyond belief, and almost everyone held the German invaders responsible. They had grabbed civilian buildings for their military use. They had built bunkers and gun emplacements close to homes and business. They had put the people in harm’s way.

  The Dutch wanted their freedom. But they had already lost much to the war and knew it was still possible to lose more. As they had secretly listened to news over the BBC of the Allied victories in France and Belgium, it had made them wonder if their country was next to be liberated. Many swung between fear and hope that it would be.

  Johannes and Piet, barely into their twenties, knew those emotions could quite easily coexist in one’s heart. As members of the LKP, they had placed their lives and the life of everyone they loved in jeopardy. But they had chosen not to accept their occupiers and in fact to take an active role against them. Pedaling out to the field that beautiful Sunday morning, the warm sunlight on their necks, they could sense something major was about to happen and brimmed with excitement over the possibility.

  The nearby Wilhelmina Canal was above Highway 69, a narrow, two-lane asphalt-and-brick road running from Eindhoven to Arnhem. An important strategic corridor from a military perspective, it stretched from north to south above the surrounding fields, with four bridges branching off its shoulders to span canals and rivers on either side. If the Allies took the road and those bridges, they would be able to cross the Rhine into Germany and establish open lines of supply behind them.

  Perhaps that was their plan, perhaps it wasn’t. But the Germans had been observed digging foxholes near the bridges, which said a great deal about what they believed. Cycling out to Zonsche heath, the young freedom fighters could not help but feel they were on their way to welcome their American or British liberators. Why else would they have been told to become Joe and Pete?

  It would not be long before they found out. They were speeding along on their cycles, Johannes a few yards behind Piet, when the sky began to throb with the sound of approaching aircraft. Within seconds, the noise grew deafening around them. Glancing up into the sunlight, they saw a German Messerschmitt tear
through the air overhead, a British fighter in close pursuit. The planes were flying so low their markings were perfectly clear.

  Then another plane appeared over the wide, flat horizon. This one wasn’t a fighter, but a large transport. Awestruck, they saw a small handful men drop from its side as it passed over the Zonsche field, their parachutes blossoming open against the pale blue sky.

  Scouts, Johannes thought. They were scouts.

  Piet shot forward on his bicycle, leaning over the handlebars, streaking toward the heath where the paratroopers were coming down. Behind him, Johannes pumped his legs breathlessly but couldn’t keep pace. With a quick glance over his shoulder, he realized he was riding past a field that belonged to a local farmer named Sanders, then saw him there watching and jumped off his seat.

  Leaving the cycle with Farmer Sanders, he raced madly along the road to catch up with his comrade.

  3.

  Flying in serials of two, the four C-47 Dakotas of the IX Troop Carrier Command had taken wing with their sticks of Pathfinders at about ten-forty in the morning. The rest of the transports were scheduled to begin leaving England an hour later and continue their departures over the next four days. These flights would convey thirty thousand Allied paratroopers and glider-borne soldiers to the Netherlands, launching the largest airborne operation ever attempted.

  Conceived by British field marshal Sir Bernard Montgomery, the plan was to bring a swift end to the war by having his infantry divisions cross the Rhine River at Arnhem and make a concentrated thrust into the heart of the Third Reich. It had originally met with resistance from SCAEF Eisenhower and General Omar Bradley, the commander of America’s ground forces in Europe. After Normandy, they had arrived at a strategy of creating a broad front along the entire length of the Rhine, an overwhelming military force that would close in on the enemy’s flanks like pincers as it advanced through German territory. Montgomery had vehemently differed with them. In his opinion, the invasion of France had left Hitler “weak on his pins,” and it was time for a knockout punch. His stated objective was the industrial Ruhr Valley, but he was hoping to create a momentum that pushed straight on to Berlin.