Deliver Us From Darkness

by Ian Gardner

  Driel – October 26–November 27, 1944

  On October 23, 1st Lt Moose Mehosky reported to Col Sink, who had just relocated his regimental CP to the Christine Hermine School in Zetten.* Many local families had been sheltering in the school before the evacuation, but the only people living at the school when the 506th arrived were the headmaster, some of his administrative staff, and one of the teachers, Miss Mattie de Raadt. Tragically one week later, Miss de Raadt was critically injured by shellfire and died in hospital at Nijmegen on November 1.

  Capt Harwick welcomed Moose, who had recently been released from hospital, and informed him that Rudolph Bolte was dead and Bob Stroud was now in charge of his old platoon. The following night, two nine-man patrols were ordered across the river to assess the current enemy situation after Operation Pegasus. Before being posted to 1st Bn, Moose was asked to lead one of the patrols, from I Company, which included Harold Stedman, Jim Brown, Glenn Cosner, and Joe Madona.

  The idea was for the team to rendezvous with a local resistance guide at an appointed time and place near Wageningen, as Harold Stedman recalls: “During the incursion and much to our surprise, we heard music and followed the sound to a house on the edge of Wageningen, which was guarded by a single enemy soldier… After carefully surrounding the building, it soon became clear to us that a group of Kraut officers or maybe senior NCOs were inside having a party. The plan was for Madona to walk confidently towards the sentry and when challenged, deal with the guy, while the rest of us shot up the building and threw grenades through the windows. Joe got to within 20 feet before the sentry said anything and at that moment we shot the hell out of the house and everyone in it. Despite one of our guys being slightly wounded, we all made it back across the river in time for a tot of rum.”

  On Thursday October 26, the regiment was assigned to defend the northeastern sector of the Island at Driel. Two days later Col Sink handed over to the 501st and relocated his regimental CP to Landgoed Schoonderlogt, a complex of three beautifully appointed farmhouses, three-quarters of a mile northeast of Valburg.

  The largest house, owned by the Mom family, became Col Sink’s CP, while another became a headquarters for 2nd Bn. Close to Schoonderlogt were several batteries of 105mm guns, belonging to 321st GFA, ready and waiting to support the 506th PIR.

  At the beginning of November, 3rd Bn were being held in reserve at the tiny hamlet of Lienden, while the medical detachment was sent to nearby Valburg as Johnny Gibson recalls: “One of the local girls, Eve de Wort, lived across the street from the aid station and often helped with some of the basic nursing duties. She was a lovely-looking lady and her presence on the ward really broke up the monotony, especially for the patients.”

  Bob Harwick who had recently been promoted to major recalled: “Scattered around Lienden and Valburg were quite a few burnt-out British trucks and a wrecked café [Café Mientjes] that had a sign outside advertising Amstel Bieren. We were told that an Allied tank had ripped the side of the café clean off during the heavy fighting that took place around here in late September… The bar was still intact although it had become a desk for one of our supply guys and the dining area out back was now filled with hundreds of cases of rations.” In early October, the 501st PIR had discovered that the cellar was full of wine and consumed every last vessel during one particular hazy evening binge. At the time, the owners had fled the fighting, as Frans Mientjes recalls: “When my dad went back to the café to check on our property, he found that all our valuables had been stolen and 150 bottles of communion wine belonging to my uncle, who was a priest in Utrecht, had been consumed. The commander of the 501st, LtCol Ewell, charged the soldiers with being drunk and disorderly and ordered them to give back all the jewellery, which ironically was later stolen by the British in 1945.”

  The town of Valburg had remained relatively untouched by enemy action. However, the Heilige Jacobus de Meerdere (Holy Jacob the Superior) Catholic Church was badly damaged by artillery, after the British had established an OP in the tower on September 30.

  Wednesday November 1, 1944, was “All Saints’ Day” and the locals made their way along the mud-covered main road to give thanks at the church. Maj Harwick attended the service and recalled:

  The hum of prayers in Dutch sounded odd at the time, but the serious faces of the civilians and the candle gleam on the gilded altar gave proof of one international tie – a reverence to God, in this mad time of suffering and hardship. I sent my prayers out to my mom and dad, which was something that I’d done since Normandy. Any time we passed a church, time permitting, denomination immaterial, I would always offer a quick prayer home. My devotions were no longer words merely to be recited as part of some ephemeral thought. They became a heartfelt tie to my family in the hope that fate would somehow be kind to me. As the service ended and the congregation began to leave, my guys picked up their weapons, put on their helmets, and once again became soldiers.

  For some time, the enemy had been sending propaganda leaflets across the Rijn, packed into specially modified artillery shells. The projectiles gave off a peculiar sound as they exploded, alerting the men, who liked to collect the literature for souvenirs. At times, the rhetoric levelled at the division could be quite amusing as Bob Harwick recalls. “To have been really effective, the doctrine should have promised a ten-day leave or tour of Berlin with spending money, a big warm bed with clean sheets, beer and spirits, and the feminine touch. If the Krauts had gotten our people to believe that, then I would’ve had to post a dozen guards to prevent the men from swimming the river!”

  As a response, 1st Lt Alphonse Gion and M/Sgt Herman Coquelin from the regimental Interrogation Prisoner of War team (IPW) made a broadcast in German across the Arnhem-Elst railway embankment at Driel on the night of November 2. The embankment, called the Schuytgraaf by the Dutch, was over 50 feet high and marked the boundary at that time between 2nd Bn and the Germans, who were now holding the ground on the eastern side of the tracks. Earlier a patrol from F Company had sent 22 men across the mound, capturing two prisoners, who revealed much of the information used by the IPW team in the following broadcast:

  Calling all German troops, we know that you admit the cause is hopeless and that the war is definitely lost. Your continued resistance prolongs our heavy serial bombings of military targets in your cities and the unavoidable death to your families. You can see yourself the thousands of planes going every day into Germany. The German High Command fully realises that their safety depends on their ability to keep you firmly entrenched in your positions. Do they care if your families must suffer as long as they themselves are deeply sheltered in the earth? Most of you are classified “for limited service only,” you had been promised that you would only be employed to man fortresses because of your physical defects, and not used in the front lines. What happened to these promises?

  Every morning many of you go on sick call and doesn’t the medical officer send you away saying, “Don’t worry, we are going to be relieved soon?” But where is this relief going to come from? Ask your company commanders or Major Hohmann – they do not know themselves. You have two choices: these are (1) complete, eventual annihilation if you continue to resist the Allied cause, or (2) come into our lines and we promise you good treatment, cigarettes, and three full meals a day. If you continue your resistance you will always regret having caused unnecessary misery to your family and friends.

  Lay down your arms now and save yourself this regret. Now is the time to make the decision. It is much better for you and your family to lose small compensations and petty feelings of pride, rather than suffer death for yourself and families. Come into our lines now with your hands held high over your head. If possible hang a white cloth on the front of your blouse. If you do that our troops have been told not to fire at you. Now our shells will fall on your company and battalion CPs. Come now while your officers are deep in their holes. Your relief is here but come to us within the next hour.

  When the barrage from 321GFA b
egan at 2130hrs, a number of enemy troops tried to desert but were shot by their own NCOs. However, four soldiers did actually make it across the embankment, and revealed amongst other things, that they had been fighting for fear of the greater danger of not fighting.

  Bloody, muddy Island – life on the MLR

  All three battalions were deployed around Driel (where the 1st Polish Parachute Brigade had landed on September 21) on a regular basis with each rotation lasting four days. The first stint for 3/506 began at 2350hrs on November 3. The battalion was deployed into a wide area of farmland west of the imposing railroad embankment that led to the now demolished bridge, which had previously spanned the Neder Rijn near Oosterbeek and Arnhem. “We spent the daylight hours in the cellar of a farmhouse [De Laar – no longer in existence] about 500 yards west of the embankment,” recalls Hank DiCarlo:

  At night we ran contact patrols with the British 50th Infantry Division, now on our right flank to the south, situated in some empty houses. The Krauts had dug in along the top of the mound where they had sited a number of automatic weapons. The rest of the company was over to our left (north) down by the river, quite close to the jam factory northwest of Vogelenzang. Damn good thing too, because jam was the only thing that made the British biscuits we were eating remotely edible.

  Lieutenant Stroud paired up the guys that were left in 1 Ptn and sent them out every 90 minutes on the contact patrols, including Don Zahn and myself. The nights were cold and wet, and we regularly froze in our tracks when enemy flares burst overhead.

  On one occasion, because it was getting light, we stayed over with the Brits and watched their snipers pick off a couple of Krauts, after they had injudiciously exposed themselves against the skyline along the embankment.

  Ken Johnson recalls a similar incident but with a somewhat different outcome. “I spotted a German soldier standing in broad daylight on top of the railroad bank and, more for my own amusement than anything else, called for artillery. The Kraut was like a jack in a box darting from one foxhole to another as the shells began to explode around him. After the barrage, I took a look through my field glasses to survey the damage and watched the same soldier still moving about completely unharmed – it was the craziest thing.”

  Around this time Helen Briggs from the American Red Cross renewed contact with the 506th PIR: “I was now stationed in Paris and assigned to a hotel at the Gare de l’Est railway station, when I decided to restart the ‘Poop Sheet.’” The “Poop Sheet” was a monthly current affairs bulletin that Helen had originally produced back in the UK for the battalion. Thinking it would improve morale she mailed a copy to each platoon but seriously misjudged the opening article: “Rather naively I reported on a Red Cross detail that was stationed with me at the hotel, who had brought back some juicy fresh steaks while driving supplies inland from the beaches.” Helen never imagined that her battalion would be malnourished and for the most part living in foxholes full of freezing brackish water. The men were not impressed with the newsletter and half jokingly sent a letter back, thanking Briggsey for the wonderfully printed toilet paper!

  Despite the fact that most of the machine guns lost at Opheusden had now been replaced, the MG Platoon only had ten men left out of an original strength of 40. Lt Wedeking’s CP was located in a small abandoned farmhouse near the railway bridge, as he recalls: “By then most of the civilian inhabitants living in Driel and immediate vicinity had been evacuated to Valburg. Despite having fresh water from a hand pump at the CP, we still used purification tablets to make sure it was safe to drink. We supplemented our rations with vegetables dug from the farmhouse garden, while the surrounding orchards gave us a plentiful supply of semi-frozen pears and apples. Without proper infantry support, radio, or telephone as usual we felt totally isolated, although at one point I did have a British officer from the Royal Artillery attached to me as an observer.”

  One evening a British radio truck arrived at the farm and parked next to the house, which did not bode well for the platoon as Jim Melhus recalls: “The crew were making far too much noise and their light discipline was atrocious. We knew that the enemy would also be taking an interest so one of the guys went over and had a ‘polite’ talk to the crew who made a pathetic apology and drove off. As predicted, two minutes later, the German observers working from the church tower in Oosterbeek brought down an intense artillery barrage narrowly missing the CP.”

  “All of our MGs (Cal .30 M6) were located each night with listening posts to guard against enemy combat patrols,” recalls Bill Wedeking. “The guns were placed in position during the early hours of darkness to preclude enemy observation. Cover and camouflage discipline had to be maintained at all times, especially during the recent bad weather when the ground was more easily scarred.”

  On the last night of deployment, John Hermansky from the MG Ptn was severely wounded by random shellfire. Bill Wedeking was there at the time and recalls:

  I was leading a three-man patrol in column formation to position one of our machine guns and a listening post near the dijk down by the river. John was about 30 feet behind me, when an enemy shell landed just over on my right. Part of the blast was directed towards John, penetrating his chest and abdomen with shrapnel. Fortunately, the machine gun he was carrying absorbed most of the impact, which undoubtedly saved his life… Fumbling around in the darkness, we immediately dusted Hermansky’s wounds with sulpha powder and administered a shot of morphine. Although John was still able to walk, he was in a great deal of pain and losing a lot of blood. Back at the CP we bandaged his wounds properly and tried to make him as comfortable as possible. At first light we left the farm and slowly made our way toward the 506th area and sometime around 1100hrs, were challenged by troops from the Second Army.

  After a brief meeting with a British officer, the men were evacuated to the 101st divisional area at Slijk-Ewijk, from where Hermansky was taken to a medical facility in Nijmegen.* As Bill remembers: “Afterwards I was asked to report to Col Sink, who was disturbed that my platoon had been committed to such a foolish task, especially with the limited personnel we had at our disposal. Much to my surprise, Sink then decided to send us all to Brussels, for some much-needed rest and recuperation!” It seems that Wedeking was not the only person needing a break. A few days later, after leaving Bob Strayer in charge of the Regiment, Sink also headed to Brussels for three days’ leave.

  Due to the lack of serviceable communications equipment out on the line, Bob Webb took it upon himself to liberate four German switchboards and link them to an assortment of telephones he had acquired from Philips in Eindhoven.

  Each portable exchange was connected to a company via four totally separate W130 communication cables. The theory being that if three cables were damaged, there would always be one line still serviceable… We ended up with around 23 miles of cable and a telephone in virtually every foxhole. A system like this was almost unheard of, and for tactical reasons we rigged each phone so that the ringing tone was barely audible. Any trooper could buzz our main switchboard and we were able to patch him through to just about anyone in the battalion. This was extremely useful when the Germans sent over their recon patrols and the rifle companies were able to observe and report back via the network. Using this method we knew exactly where and when to intercept them.

  On November 7, Col Sink showed the system to Gen Taylor who was on a regimental visit with MajGen William Miley, from the newly formed 17th Airborne Division. Sink was more than enthusiastic about Webb’s handiwork and pointing at the switchboards respectfully asked Gen Taylor who he would like to talk to: “We have Bn HQ, Co HQs, Ptn HQs, and OPs, so come on, who do you want to talk to?” Thinking Sink was pulling his leg, Taylor sarcastically replied that none of electrical gadgets in front of him were on the regimental Table of Equipment. Sink just smiled and asked Webb to patch the general through to I Company (who were now down to fewer than 50 men). One of the sergeants answered the phone and was totally astonished to find that he was speaking d
irectly to the divisional commander!

  Two weeks later when the 2nd Bn Seaforth Highlanders (152nd Infantry Brigade) were about to take over, Webb contacted their Communications Officer, and was told in no uncertain terms that the “Jocks” would be using standard radio equipment: “It was sickening to think that after all the hard work we had put into creating the system, the British were just going to rip it out and throw it away.”

  After the visit, Col Sink and Maj Harwick went to Valburg, where they had been invited to dinner by the headmaster of the local Catholic school. Despite the circumstances, it would seem that Mr Bruil and his wife put on quite a spread as Bob Harwick fondly recalls:

  It was a magical evening, the like of which we hadn’t seen for a very long time. A perfectly set table with white cloth, napkins, silverware, and a first course of thick soup, pot roast, fresh string beans, potatoes, applesauce, and wine.

  We soon got to talking and the conversation began to center on what the Dutch really thought of the American soldiers. It was clear that we didn’t make the same impression on them that the British did. Rather surprisingly over the past few weeks I’d been asked several times, if we really were all gangsters! Up on the Island the people weren’t exactly hostile but compared to the British we were definitely not perceived as gentlemen. We both tried our best to make a positive impression and the following morning as a sign of goodwill, Col Sink assisted the Bruils by arranging to transport food and supplies to their relatives in Nijmegen.

  By November 9, 3rd Bn were replaced on the MLR by 1st Bn, and withdrawn to divisional reserve at Valburg. Unbelievably, as if there was anything left to steal, the Inspector General from SHAEF and 101st Assistant Commander, BrigGen Higgins, decided to inspect both 2nd (who were in reserve at Lienden) and 3rd Bn for “looted” goods.

  On Sunday November 12, Harwick’s men were sent to Nijmegen where they joined the 82nd Airborne Division for showers and recreation, which for the most part consisted of listening to the divisional band playing groovy dance numbers. In preparation for Paris, everyone wanted to practise their “snow job d’amour” on the few local women, who were most definitely not available or interested. One member of HQ Company, Pfc Dewy Rex decided to dress up as a woman and took over a room in a nearby building. One of Rex’s chums spread the word that a gorgeous girl was charging for sex and anyone who was interested should act quickly if they wanted a slice of the action. Of course each person who fell for the gag went away and told his buddies about the “girl” upstairs which perpetuated the joke for a good couple of hours before the bubble finally burst.