by Ian Gardner
Pfc Walter Lukasavage (I Co 3 Ptn), was horrifically wounded when another tank opened fire as he was taking aim with his bazooka. “Luke was hit in the face and neck before he had a chance to fire,” continues Stedman. “For a moment, I thought that he wasn’t going to make it, as his head was a mess with blood pouring everywhere. I had a T-shirt that Jim Brown’s sister had sent me a week or two before the invasion. Taking the clean white shirt, I stuffed it into the gaping hole in Luke’s jaw before dragging him down a ditch to our medic, Bill Kidder.* After Luke was evacuated, one of our guys came up behind me, and boy had he ever hit the jackpot! The dead Kraut officer that I’d passed earlier had been loaded with money, a solid gold pocket-watch, a diamond ring, and a beautiful ivory-handled SS dagger.”
With 2nd Bn holding the highway northeast of Veghel, 3rd Bn was sent to cover their left flank. Soon after dawn on September 23, the Germans launched several small-scale attacks against defensive positions to the southeast and throughout the day enemy artillery rained down onto Veghel.
Bob Webb found himself sheltering from the shelling in the basement of a house with a smartly dressed man in his early 30s, who was cuddling a little girl.
I offered the child, who was about six years old, a D-bar and reassured her terrified father that everything was going to be OK. The guy wanted to show me something, and on the dusty floor was a leather case from which he produced a beautiful antique violin. It dawned on me that except for his daughter, the violin was probably the most precious thing he had left, which started me thinking about the true cost of war.
The risk of further collateral damage meant that we could no longer rely on close air support. Often when the Germans cut the road we would have to be resupplied by air. During these missions the German AAA would be used to good effect but more often than not their attacks against the highway were never properly consolidated.
Later in the afternoon, both 2nd and 3rd Bn pushed north about 2,000 yards towards Uden, to link up with a forward patrol from the Guards Armored Division. The British were unable to sweep any further south, and both battalions were redirected to Heuvel – a small village one mile southeast of Veghel – and established a defensive line facing east.
Over the next 48 hours, the enemy was able to deploy a much larger force comprising Fallschirmjager-Regiments 2 and 6, Infanterie-Regiment 1034, and Sicherung-Regiment 16 (Security Regiment 16), launching a series of probing attacks against the 501st, in an attempt to breach the highway around Koevering. D/502 and H/502 were sent into the settlement to intercept a small enemy force of two tanks and about 40 infantrymen. Although the Germans were denied Koevering, the 502nd could not prevent the highway from being cut a few hundred yards northwest of the village. At the same time, Jedburgh team Daniel II moved north to Veghel with Gen Taylor, and established contact with OD and the local KP. During this period over 400 German prisoners, who had been previously captured by 1/501 at Schijndel, were being contained at a factory building in the town. Due to a lack of available troops, Daniel II’s leader, Maj Wilson, was ordered to co-ordinate with the Veghel KP to supply guards for the prisoners.
The 506th were moved to Uden, along with 321st GFA and Battery “B,” 81st Antitank Bn, where 3rd Bn was tasked with defending an open area northwest of the town overlooking the Leigraaf Canal. Elements of the machine-gun platoon dug in on a small farm near the settlement of Bitswijk, near to the old maternity hospital on Vijfhuizerweg (Five House Road). Bill Wedeking positioned his three available guns with interlocking arcs, facing north towards the expected German threat. By late afternoon on September 24, enemy tanks, vehicles, and artillery were spotted moving southeast towards Koevering.
During the night Pfc Frank Cress, I Company, was killed by concussion from an enemy shell. The following morning before dawn, the regiment was sent back to Veghel, where the road had been severed near Sint Oedenrode as Bob Rommel recalls:
It was raining heavily as we dug our foxholes around the assembly area. In an attempt to stay dry we covered ourselves in a thick layer of straw. The next day, a German soldier nonchalantly strolled over to our position and surrendered. Compared to us (who looked like a bunch of raggedy asses) his uniform and mess kit were clean as a whistle. We accepted his surrender and then I ordered my guys to roll him on the ground until he was covered from head to toe in a thick layer of mud.
During a fluctuation in our front line, the battalion executive officer, 1st Lt Bob Pennell, was left behind in his foxhole, probably after falling asleep. We found his crumpled body at first light with two gunshot wounds to the head. Afterwards the unit moved out along a road passed dozens of burned-out trucks. One of the guys spotted a dead German wearing a gold wedding ring and cut off the man’s swollen finger to obtain it. Despite all that had happened over the last few days, I could never bring myself to be so barbaric.
Bob Dunning, an 81mm mortar man, was nearly killed during the first battle of Veghel and recalls: “We were surrounded in a culvert by German paratroopers when one of them attacked us with a machine pistol. A 9mm bullet entered my left knee and traveled along the femur before lodging in the ball joint of my hip. After being evacuated to the aid station near the church, my section leader, Sgt Joe Hunter arrived, shaking uncontrollably and demanding to be evacuated! Hunter was a rank-conscious bully who in my opinion ‘faked out.’” The German medic attending to Dunning also agreed that Hunter’s behaviour was disgraceful. “The Kraut orderly was confused as to where exactly I was wounded,” recalls Dunning, “Pointing to the injury, I noticed a long piece of stringy flesh poking out from my left leg. The guy took out my pocketknife, cut the skin away and gave me a shot of morphine before wishing me luck! Ultimately the bullet was too difficult for the doctors to remove and after several months in the hospital, I discharged myself and returned to the unit.”
That night near Koevering, two miles southwest of Veghel, the enemy strengthened its stranglehold on Hell’s Highway with more men, tanks (including captured British Shermans), and self-propelled guns. Around 1130hrs on September 25, 3rd Bn was sent into action.
Leading south down the highway, accompanied by half a squadron of tanks from 44th Royal Tank Regiment, 3rd Bn moved towards Koevering, followed by 1st Bn on their right flank. As 3rd Bn moved into the village, the leading elements came under well-directed artillery, tank and small-arms fire. I Company maneuvered around the enemy front line to the right, as the men from H Co 1 Ptn pushed forward hugging the ditches. Heavy bursts of machine-gun fire were coming from a large red brick farmhouse called Van Genugten farm, located alongside the main road, several hundred yards ahead. The platoon split into two assault groups. The first continued forward, while the second team, led by S/Sgt Frank Padisak, attempted to encircle the building from the west.
Padisak’s team left the highway opposite a neatly planted orchard, and proceeded along an unpaved road called Heikampenweg, which was partially lined by a row of tall poplar trees. The team headed due west for nearly 400 yards, until reaching a minor intersection with Wolvensteeg. West of the junction, on the northern side of the track, was another house, unoccupied at the time. One mile away to the southwest (right) the patrol could clearly see the Knoptoren church steeple at Sint Oedenrode. Approaching the junction, the men came under a hail of bullets from Van Genugten farm. Hank DiCarlo picks up the story: “Returning fire, we moved down a ditch on the left side of the track trying to get closer to the red brick house, which was only 300 yards away across an open field. Cpl John Purdie was in the lead, closely followed by Pfc Lloyd Carpenter, Cpl Johnny Hahn, and me. Just ahead, the ditch turned left through 90 degrees, onto Wolvensteeg towards the main highway. Purdie and Carpenter made the turn and Hahn had just reached it, when a tank came out from behind the house. We watched the Sherman, marked with British identification panels, as it slowly moved towards us along Wolvensteeg.”
A few moments earlier along the highway, Ken Johnson, Tom Fitzmaurice, and another soldier from 2 Ptn had noticed the same Sherman fro
m their position by the highway: “The tank, flying a black flag inset with a white skull and crossbones, trundled past and stopped about ten yards away,” recalls Johnson. “We were hiding in a ditch and thought for a moment that the crew had seen us. We nearly had a fit when the hatch opened and a German got out to take a leak!”
On the edge of the field, Hank DiCarlo and his friends were suspicious of the Sherman and displayed their orange flags to show that they were friendly:
The tank turned and opened fire with its machine guns before backing off a little. By that time, Purdie and Carpenter had reached the corner of the ditch and turned left towards the tank. The tank jockey knew he couldn’t hit the ditch, so he began firing high explosive into the trunks of the trees behind us. Hahn was just about to crawl around the corner when the first shell slammed in. One round struck a tree close to Johnny, just as he was trying to disperse some of our guys away from the line of fire. The blast hurled me out of the ditch and onto the gravel road. With no better place to go, I immediately jumped back in and crawled up to Johnny to check if he was OK. When he didn’t answer, I turned him over and he was dead, most likely killed by concussion, as there were no visible wounds on his body. Crawling around the corner of the ditch, I discovered that both Purdie and Carpenter had been hit by shrapnel and were beyond help and could never have known what hit them. At this point [1720hrs] a wide slow sweeping attack came in across our front from 2nd Bn who had been pulled out of reserve.
The attack on the German right flank, supported by British tanks, dislodged the troops occupying Van Genugten farm, and caused the renegade tank to withdraw. Elements of the British 50th Division, assisted by heavy tank support, began to advance from the direction of Sint Oedenrode along the highway with the 501st and the 502nd PIR. By nightfall, the enemy had been cleared from all but a very small area to the south and despite one or two further attempts, Hell’s Highway was never cut again.
“Don Zahn was lucky when he challenged the Sherman before it withdrew with only a TSMG and a couple of grenades,” recalls DiCarlo.
If 2nd Bn hadn’t chosen that exact moment to launch their counterattack, he may well have joined the list of fatal casualties we suffered that day. These men were not only my comrades, but they were my closest friends and I couldn’t make any sense out of what had just happened. Some losses hit you harder than others but three at once was next to unbearable. That night it poured with rain as we held the line facing west. In the darkness the day’s events replayed themselves over and over in my mind and I cried like a baby. Sometimes, I envied Don Zahn, who was one of the coolest guys under fire. All of us in the platoon agreed that when he received his battlefield commission and went to C Company, he earned it the old-fashioned way, by constantly putting his life on the line for his friends.
H Co 1 Ptn unit action, Koevering, September 25, 1944
The casualties from Koevering were recovered the following morning and buried with full military honors in the Divisional cemetery near Son. Before John Hahn’s body was removed, Don Zahn took a silver St Christopher medallion from around his friend’s neck as a keepsake. Bob Harwick saw fit to award Hahn a posthumous Silver Star for his selfless act of gallantry under fire. Four other members of H Company also died during this period – Cpl Jay Barr, Pfc John Hattenback, Pfc Trino Mendez, and Pvt Melvin Morse. Fred Bahlau helped to recover the dead:
We collected the bodies of Hahn, Purdie, and Carpenter and placed them together with Cpl Jay Barr and Lt Pennell who had also died the day before. Jay’s stomach had been torn wide open by German tank fire. I wanted to spend a moment alone with Jay and the other boys and sent my assistant, S/Sgt Billy Byrnes, ahead to a battalion meeting being held in a nearby ditch. Placing my hand on each man’s forehead, I said a little prayer as a kind of blessing. A few moments later a rifle shot came from the direction of the meeting. There was a heck of a commotion and I ran over to see what had happened – unbelievably, Billy Byrnes had just been shot in the chest and killed.
During the meeting, Andy Anderson, the commander of I Company, had inadvertently kicked over a loaded carbine. Anderson was devastated, but it had happened and there was nothing anyone could do about it. This one event really hit me hard, as it so easily could have been me. Along with another guy, I carried Billy’s body down this little dirt road, where I sat quietly with him for an hour or so, holding his hand and saying my goodbyes. He was such a fantastic friend and it all seemed such a damn waste.
Pvt Jim Mock (HQ Co), a 21-year-old from Meadow View, Virginia, was also killed on September 25. Mock’s body was not discovered until the end of October, when farmer Harry Vermeulen returned to his farm near Eerde, and noticed an American helmet on top of a grave in a field about 300 yards north of the Sint Oedenrode/Veghel road. As the civilian population had been evacuated during the fighting, it would seem that the Germans had buried Pvt Mock’s body.
By September 25, Daniel II’s mission with the 101st came to an end when the team was ordered to Brussels for a meeting with Prince Bernhard. By this time the KP were making every effort to co-operate with the Americans, and were now focused on suppressing discipline issues within the Dutch irregular forces. Before returning to the UK, Maj Wilson and Lt du Bois gave the Prince a personal report on their activities. Daniel II’s mission was not an overwhelming success, the inability to communicate with SFHQ and the fact that only two members of the team spoke Dutch were both serious setbacks, and unlike the other teams they did not have time to co-ordinate fully with resistance forces.
On September 26, after the two main battles at Veghel were over, the 506th PIR resumed its attack at Koevering, and by 0900hrs had driven the enemy north of Hell’s Highway and connected with the 501st. Two days earlier, the 506th seaborne echelon, comprising 90 officers and men, had arrived at Veghel, bringing with it much-needed transport. As part of a supply convoy from 506th Service Company led by Capt George Barton, 22 of the vehicles were forced off the highway and captured by the enemy. The drivers were rounded up and ordered to shelter in a roadside ditch as German artillery began destroying vehicles further ahead. At one point Barton and his men were left unattended as their guards were called away to help with the ongoing enemy attack. At this point Barton grasped the opportunity and led his troops back to the trucks and drove away to safety. As a result most of the vehicles were saved and the men awarded a commendation for their cool-headed bravery under fire. Ralph King from H Company was hit during the same barrage: “I had shrapnel lodged in my rifle and the right sleeve of my jacket was torn. That night as we withdrew and were digging in, I noticed that my wrist was badly swollen and covered in blood. I was sent to the aid station for treatment and along the way was constantly challenged by the new arrivals. On several occasions, I heard safety catches being clicked off before I’d even had a chance to utter the password. The medics tried unsuccessfully to remove a small piece of shrapnel from between the bones on my hand. The operation made matters worse and after a day or so they decided to evacuate me to a field hospital.”
British forces continued to attack towards the north, slowly squeezing out the 506th and the 502nd. The assault was followed by several RAF bombing raids against enemy forces situated in woodland either side of the canal, two miles northwest of Veghel. At 1300hrs, 3rd Bn returned to their original positions at Uden, while the rest of the division remained on the highway.
The next day, September 27, “G and I Company were sent back to Veghel,” recalls Joe Doughty:
As we were moving parallel with the highway we became pinned down by machine guns firing along a secondary road. At the time, I had two British tanks following the company and I went back to ask them to advance and take out the gun positions. They moved forward in tandem and the lead tank arrived very close to the machine gun that was holding us up. As the tank turned onto the secondary road, a self-propelled 88mm gun, hidden from our view, opened fire, disabling the tank and killing two of the crew. During the firefight that followed, as the second tank w
ithdrew, my wonderful runner, Pfc Alex Rapino, who had been with me since the States, was killed. After taking casualties all day, I’d had enough and got on the battalion net, telling Andy Anderson, who was on my right flank, “If you lay down a base of fire, I’ll knock out the machine guns.” Before we could take the conversation any further, Major Horton got on the phone and said, “Lieutenant Doughty – get off the damn net; you’re giving away vital information to the enemy!” We couldn’t believe Horton’s crass stupidity and as a consequence my company suffered even more casualties.
Cpl Harry Buxton (G Company) and Pvt John Kincaid (HQ Company) lost their lives in the sporadic fighting that continued throughout the day. Although over the last ten days the division had taken 3,511 prisoners, the enemy were by no means beaten. The battle of Hell’s Highway for the 506th PIR ended quietly at Uden, with the men believing that their job in the Netherlands was well and truly finished. But at the beginning of October, the 101st was both surprised and disappointed to learn that it would not be going to a rest camp in France. The announcement stated that they would now be moving forward to “the Island,” near Arnhem, 30 miles to the north – taking it over from the British XII Corps.
Ultimately, Gen Taylor regarded the assistance given to the 101st Airborne Division by the Dutch underground as crucial in the liberation of Eindhoven, Son, Sint Oedenrode, and Veghel:
Without this the fighting would have been costly in men and time. It was in the field of intelligence that these sturdy patriots did their greatest work. They brought us timely information of all German movements so that at no point was the 101st ever surprised by a hostile attack. The loyal support rendered to our troops created a feeling of friendship that will always remain fresh in the memory of our soldiers. Particularly those smaller detachments that came down in enemy-held territory. Our soldiers owed a debt of gratitude to the Dutch underground for their safety and well being during the hazardous days while awaiting the arrival of friendly units.