by Ian Gardner
“The next morning one of the rifle companies reported a six-man enemy patrol in an adjacent field and asked for machine-gun support,” continues Rommel. “I went over and one of the non-coms asked me to open fire. I wasn’t going to waste my ammo on such a low-level threat, because we were down to less than 200 rounds for each gun. The sergeant begrudgingly blasted off a couple of shots from his M1, scattering the Krauts in all directions – it seemed to me at the time that we were fighting like a bunch of Indians in the Wild West.”
Reinforcements and relief
Technically the overall situation on October 6 had not been helped by the superb observation afforded to the enemy from positions across the river at the Grebbeberg and Wageningen. The fact that the Germans were still advancing when the joint Anglo-American attack began only added to the confusion. Luckily a squadron of RAF rocket-firing Typhoons happened to be overhead on a mission to destroy the ferry slipways on the Rijn at Maneswaard. Orders were received that if any potential targets could be marked with red smoke they would be neutralized by the fighter-bombers. The ensuing air strikes proved so successful that the Germans were forced away from the western edges of Opheusden.
After the windmill was virtually cut off, the casualties there were evacuated by jeep to Zetten via a back route. Soon afterwards it was decided to relieve 5th DCLI – which had lost 70 men killed and wounded – along with 1st Bn, and replace them both that evening with 3/327 GIR. Before returning to Slijk-Ewijk, Gen Taylor visited 5th DCLI to thank them personally for their efforts. Col Sink later went on to say: “These troops attacked on schedule with vigor and determination under the command of LtCol G. Taylor, in the face of withering enemy fire. Their courage and ability was an inspiration. The gallantry of the British officers and the men was outstanding and instilled in the men of the 506th PIR the highest regard for the fighting ability of the British Infantry.”
At around 0100hrs on Monday October 7, a battalion of enemy soldiers launched another attack along the railway lines between 3rd Bn and 3/327 GIR (who were now defending the area north of the station). The German force from II./IR 958 overran the positions along the tracks, forcing 3rd Bn to tactically withdraw in order to shorten the line and contain the assault.
Around 350 enemy soldiers broke through, and advanced north of the Linge Canal towards Hemmen. By first light 1st Bn were resting in an assembly area near Boelenham farm, when they spotted the force moving towards them. Fighting alongside 1st Bn was Frits van Schaik and members of the Dodewaard resistance, who played an important part in repulsing the attack. Over the next 30 minutes, nearly 100 Volksgrenadiers were killed and wounded in a nearby apple orchard, while 231 were taken prisoner.
Wim de Bosch witnessed the aftermath of the battle of the apple orchard and recalls:
On October 7, we cycled north from Hien to the dijk trying to reach Opheusden, but were turned around by the Americans at Blauw-Hekke farm [Blue Fence farm]. On the way back we passed another farm, De Ster [the Star], where a terrific battle had just taken place. As we were picking our way through the bodies lying scattered along the road (now called Gesperdensestraat), we could see many more in the ditches and a nearby field. The German infantry had been gathering in the orchard when they were obliterated by Allied artillery and mortar fire. Much to our amazement we watched as an American paratrooper nonchalantly prepared some food on a small stove no more than six feet away from the torso of a German soldier.
At around 0830hrs, elements of II./IR 958 were stopped south of the railway tracks by 3rd Bn and the glider infantry, who fortunately on this occasion had full mortar and artillery support.
By nightfall 1/327 GIR relieved 3rd Bn and 506th PIR’s involvement at Opheusden came to an abrupt end. Despite the lack of ammunition on October 6, Col Sink acknowledged the contribution made by the 321st GFA when he said: “The support provided during the three-day battle was efficient and the work of the forward observers superb. The fire missions were prompt and accurate to within 100 yards. LtCol Edward Carmichael and his entire regiment deserve the highest credit for a duty well performed.”
The 3rd Bn moved to an assembly area southeast of Zetten located around a large farm called De Fliert. During the clean-up operation, around 200 bodies (mainly German) were collected and buried in a temporary cemetery on the western side of Opheusden.
Frits van Schaik was now working full-time in the resistance and over the previous two days had acted as a guide to evacuate the civilian population from the town. “My group was based at Vink’s cider factory and after the battle worked alongside the British, who took over the signal house at the station. One of my jobs was to identify any enemy soldiers hiding among the refugees, trying to infiltrate the area. Any suspects were ordered to repeat the phrase ‘Misschien gaan wij morgen schaatsen in Scheveningen.’This was an old trick that we’d learned in 1940, which meant ‘Maybe we are going skating tomorrow in Scheveningen.’ Strangely the Germans could never say this sentence properly because the ‘Sch’ was almost impossible for them to pronounce.” Although the German Infanterie-Regiments 957, 958, and 959 suffered devastating losses during the three-day battle for Opheusden, they were not going to relinquish their foothold on the Island without further bloodshed.
* Station buildings were owned by the national network operator Nederlandse Spoorwegen, and numbered in ascending order along the line from east to west.
* An audible five-minute warning alerted the guard of an approaching train as it thundered over a series of electrical contacts located several miles away. The switches would trip a set of four alarm bells and red warning lights, located on either side of the crossing gates. It was the signalman’s duty to manually lower the barriers to block vehicular access across the tracks. Depending on the geography of the line, it was not uncommon for a signal worker to have responsibility for up to three sets of gates.
11
“Welcome to the meat grinder”
The battle of the Island – October 1944
After the hell of the previous few days, 3rd Bn was placed in regimental reserve around Zetten, along with 1st Bn. Over the following week, both units were debriefed and reorganized, given showers, and issued new clothing before catching up on some much-needed rest. But it was not long before military routine kicked in with inspections, continuation training, and a regular fitness program.
As the 101st Airborne Division began to establish its forces on the Island, the role of the resistance groups started to diminish. However, the Dutch irregulars still played a vital role in reconnaissance. The road bridge at Nijmegen was the only serviceable link between the Island and the Allied troops in the liberated areas south of the river Waal. It was vitally important for the enemy to try and cut the connection, denying the Allies a staging area from which to launch an attack across the Rijn.
The Germans did everything they could to destroy the bridge and on several occasions even used frogmen. In late September, a group of German underwater demolition men had been compromised while attempting to float mines towards the bridge using the strong currents in the Waal. On another occasion, a resistance group saw three frogmen surfacing close to one of the shipyards downstream from Nijmegen. When the resistance men shouted at the divers to come ashore they immediately submerged but it was not long before they reappeared on the surface due to lack of oxygen. Warning shots fired by the Dutchmen forced the divers to shore, where they were arrested and handed over to the military. Shortly afterwards, steel antisubmarine nets were hung across the river detering any further demolition attempts.
On October 9, Capt Harwick and the battalion staff moved to a new CP situated one mile southeast of Zetten, in a beautiful farmhouse called De Fliert. Next to the property was a huge four-story barn that conveniently shielded the house from direct enemy artillery.
Bob Harwick recalls his first impressions of the building. “When we moved in I was surprised to find a pile of clean towels still neatly stacked in a linen cupboard. The place was very luxurious
and we ate our meals on a beautiful antique walnut conference table in the front room.” Despite the apparent safety, Harwick slept on a bed of straw inside a large fireplace in the scullery at the back of the house. “For once my engineering degree actually came in useful, when I fashioned a ‘bedside’ lamp from a pair of old batteries, a length of wire and a bulb in a tin can. After carrying a panel from my parachute all the way from Eindhoven, I finally gave it to a local tailor, who transformed it into a scarf for my wife Eileen, whom I playfully called Pat.”
Before the Americans arrived, De Fliert’s owners, Dirk and Grietje den Hartog, had been harboring Max Nathan, a six-year-old Jewish boy from Arnhem. As cattle traders, the Den Hartogs were well aquainted with the Nathan family who ran a successful chain of butchery shops in the Veluwe. In 1941, the Nathans not only trusted the Den Hartogs with their son, but also their life’s savings of 1,000 guilders, knowing full well that one day they would be stripped of their assets by the Nazis and deported.* During the battle for Opheusden, most of the Den Hartog family fled across the Waal, leaving Dirk and his 17-year-old son Geurt to look after the farm.
Although the abandoned property occupied by Bobbie Rommel and the MG Ptn was not up to the same sumptuous standards as De Fliert, at least it still had an intact kitchen and sink: “As a mark of respect, I insisted that every pot and pan we used during our stay was washed up and neatly stacked on the draining board.”
Cpl John Hermansky had been wounded in Normandy and was now showing signs of battle fatigue. “Opheusden had clearly taken its toll on John,” continues Rommel.
One day when we were playing cards, an enemy shell exploded outside and a fragment of shrapnel flew through the window, bounced off the table and embedded itself in the wall just above our heads. Hermansky leapt to his feet and we found him in a terrible state, curled up under the stairs sobbing and shaking by the back door. Kneeling down, I placed my arms around him and tenderly whispered that everything would be OK. After a few moments John composed himself and returned to the game. Nobody said a word; we realized that he needed to let go and wished we could find the courage to do the same. I had no idea at the time it would take me another 50 years to come to terms with my own experience.
Hermansky was not the only person coming to terms with recent events as Ken Johnson from H Co 2 Ptn recounts: “Private Jose Tellez Jr went completely mad and began to scream before opening fire with his TSMG on members of our platoon. Luckily Tellez was wrestled to the ground and subdued before he could do any real harm. The poor guy was removed from active duty on a section eight [mentally unstable] and we never saw him again.”
The old timers learned that the enemy never fired one shell at a time as Bob Webb explains. “For instance, a mortar makes a ‘wump’ sound when fired and there would be a delay between the first (fired for effect) and the corrections that followed before the main barrage arrived. Another particularly horrible device was the Nebelwerfer or ‘Screaming Meemie’ as we named them. The Nebelwerfer was a rocket launcher that fired multiple projectiles high into the air giving off a terrifying noise. They would always take you by surprise and on some nights we’d get maybe 30 of these things launched at us. At times it was like being under siege.” The Germans also began to operate their new vengeance weapon, the V-2 rocket, one of which came down in a meadow along the banks of the river Waal at Wely. Webb continues, “We were puzzled when vivid orange zig-zag patterns started appearing in the sky. The phenomenon lasted for about six weeks and turned out to be the vapor trails from the new rockets, launched against London, illuminated by the sun in the stratosphere.”
On Saturday October 14, 2nd Bn was finally withdrawn from its positions along the Rijn and 3rd Bn assigned to replace them. At 1100hrs 3rd Bn occupied the dijk between Opheusden and Heteren, along with the regimental demolition platoon, while 2nd Bn (less 3 Ptn) moved into divisional reserve at Valburg.
Situated along the foreshore northeast of Opheusden were two factories that had been producing bricks since 1870. The battalion soon discovered that its new home was behind the main dijk, overlooking the brick factory at Wolfswaard. The higher ground on the Veluwe, especially near Heveadorp at Westerbouwing, provided the enemy with a commanding view across the Rijn, allowing them to target any daylight movement with devastating efficiency. Subsequently the area between the factory and the dijk, which was also the main line of resistance, became a “no man’s land” that could only be patrolled under cover of darkness. “That first night a haystack situated about a quarter of a mile away to our rear was hit by artillery and caught fire,” remembers Ken Johnson. “The Germans crossed the river and infiltrated behind our lines, using ditches that ran perpendicular to our positions. Camouflaged against the backdrop of the blaze the Germans got close enough to kill Cpl Gordon Laudick before we even realized they were there.”
Previously the Germans had dug a tunnel through the wall of the dijk and the battalion utilized the earthwork to gain safer access to the factory at Wolfswaard, where an OP had been established to monitor Wageningen as T/5 Teddy Dziepak (I Co 1 Ptn) recalls. “Squad leader Sgt Jimmy Sheeran, who returned to the company just before we jumped at Son, quickly became familiar with the set-up. One night Jim led me and five other guys up a steep flight of stairs to the second floor. As we reached the top it was pitch black and Jimmy said, ‘Now be careful fellas, there’s a narrow walkway about three feet wide with no safety rails, so put your hand on the shoulder of the man in front of you and follow me.’ We couldn’t see a thing and blindly shuffled along, terrified that if we stepped off the gantry, we would almost certainly fall headfirst to our deaths.” Sheeran led the men to a small room overlooking the river and settled them down on what he said was a pile of soft sand. At first light the men were not amused to discover that there was no walkway and they had just spent the night wallowing on a pile of blackened brick dust and were now covered from head to toe in soot!
Each OP team would spend three days at the factory observing any vehicle traffic or troop movement on the main road between Rhenen and Wageningen. On occasion the tedium was broken by a little ad hoc swimming practice as Hank DiCarlo recalls: “Some of our stronger guys would swim across the river at night to plant Hawkins mines along the road and in the morning we would take bets on what type of vehicle would be blown up first. The British Hawkins mine was the size of a large tobacco tin and made one heck of a bang when it exploded.”
Pvt First Class George McMillan (I Co 2 Ptn) was first on the scene when 16-year-old Willemien Taken was wounded. Willemien (Willy) had rowed across the river from Wageningen to look for her family and found three aunts sheltering in the factory at Wolfswaard. Many local families had chosen to seek refuge here from the shelling and were now living inside the large ovens built into the walls of the factory. Life soon became routine and often the Americans and the Dutch would share evening meals.
One afternoon, while pegging out washing, Willy was hit by a burst of enemy machine-gun fire. McMillan, Pvt Jim Collins, and Pvt John Jacobs stopped the bleeding and calmly administered first aid before contacting Dr Barney Ryan by radio for help and advice. Capt Ryan was still in Zetten at the Dorpschool, and did not think that the teenager’s wound was life-threatening so decided to wait until nightfall before evacuating her. In the meantime, it was McMillan’s job to look after Willy: “The doctor told George not to give me anything to drink but keep my lips wet with a damp sponge. As darkness fell, the doctor arrived with a four-man stretcher team, who carried me beyond the dijk to their waiting jeep. We stopped in Randwijk and hid from a passing German patrol. Subsequently, Dr Ryan decided it would be safer to spend the night in the cellar of a nearby farm, before proceeding to the hospital at Slijk-Ewijk the following morning.” At the time the facility at Slijk-Ewijk comprised three large tents and was operated by A Company, 50th Field Hospital, who had previously worked with the 506th in Veghel.
The 321st GFA were using a small office on the upper level of the second brick factory, two
miles further east, near Randwijk, as their observation post. A row of three windows, each about five feet in width, conveniently overlooked the northern riverbank, as forward observer William “Jay” Stone recounts: “One night my buddy and I were lying on a pile of old mattresses when we noticed a group of Germans in freshly dug foxholes. Each time one of them stuck his head above the ground we called in a barrage of mortar fire. This wasn’t an isolated incident and we never really understood why the Krauts seemed to have no clue that we were right there on top of them?” All the factories along this stretch of the river were important to the enemy and therefore were spared from direct artillery fire. The German commanders believed that they would one day recapture the Island and resume brick production in order to rebuild some of the more heavily bombed German cities.
In an attempt to keep warm as the weather worsened and winter rain began to set in, the men made small “tactical” fires from sand, lightly soaked with gasoline, as Harold Stedman recalls: “Our faces soon became coated in a thin layer of soot that made everyone’s teeth look pearly white.” Because rations were so poor, many of the men began to show signs of scurvy, due to a lack of vitamin C. The rations situation became so acute that Col Chase instructed Fred Bahlau to “acquire” a supply of fresh beef using any means possible, and the resourceful Bahlau came up with a simple but brilliant idea: “After dark we drove out into the fields towing a trailer, whereupon one of my guys would restrain a cow, while I struck the beast with a sledgehammer, square on the forehead. A third member of the team would then slit the animal’s throat as it fell onto its front legs, and before the poor creature had time to fully collapse, we quickly pushed it into the trailer and drove off – job done.”
But despite the cruel and demanding environment not everyone was so blasé about killing the local livestock. Harold Stedman was milking one of the cows grazing behind the MLR, when the Germans opened up with artillery. Harold ran for the nearest foxhole, dropping his helmet full of fresh milk, just as a shell exploded nearby, killing the cow he had been milking, or so he thought. “When things calmed down, I noticed the cow wasn’t dead, in fact the poor creature was the only animal out of a herd of maybe 30 to survive and was now desperately trying to stand. She was making such a pitiful sound that the only humane thing to do was shoot her. Afterwards, I cut the loins out of the carcass and divided them up among the guys for them to cook. The following morning, to my absolute horror, I discovered that the animal was still alive and had no choice but to shoot her again.”