Deliver Us From Darkness

by Ian Gardner

  Now a corporal, Bob Webb was only too happy to scrub away the dirt and grime of the last few weeks. “I spent the afternoon washing my stinking clothes, showering, and getting my boots halfway clean in readiness for an awards parade headed by Major General Brereton and Major General Ridgway.” During the ceremony 1/Sgt Fred Bahlau, S/Sgt Ralph Bennett, and S/Sgt Ben Hiner received their Silver Stars from Gen Brereton. Afterwards, Ralph witnessed the first appearance of the new German Me 262 jet fighter. “A number of our aircraft were chasing this one unidentified enemy plane, when it gave off a small puff of smoke and disappeared into the distance. After seeing the V-2s we began to wonder what else the Germans were capable of developing.”

  On November 21, 3rd Bn returned to the line for its last four-day rotation with a new commanding officer, Maj Lloyd Patch. Bob Harwick had replaced Patch as commander of 1st Bn, and his departure marked a turning point for the men, as Hank DiCarlo recalls:

  We knew we were being relieved in a few days by the Scottish, so the guys didn’t want to take any more silly chances. Night patrols became extremely unpopular and the bad weather only increased our desire to be elsewhere. Even the Germans seemed to be cutting back on their patrol activity, which did make us suspicious but pretty soon it would no longer be our problem. Over the last two weeks, the excessive rainfall had caused water levels along the Rijn to rise alarmingly, and the subsequent flooding forced the MLR at Driel to be withdrawn by almost 500 yards.

  There was a rumor that the enemy might take advantage of the flooding by demolishing part of dijk wall in their sector, and as a precautionary measure we were briefed on Operation Deluge, the army’s plan to evacuate all Allied troops to the higher ground.

  For Thanksgiving, Col Sink issued a heartfelt message to the regiment that read:

  You soldiers may wonder, from your environment of cold and rain, from your foxholes and your barns, what there is for which one should be thankful – let me name a few things. We should be thankful that we are Americans, and that when we finish the Germans and Japanese, we will have an America to which we will return, an America unchanged in ideals, undiminished in opportunity, and undamaged by the sweeping destruction of war.

  Those of us who have seen the bondage and suffering of the peoples of Europe should give thanks that our loved ones have been safe and free. We should be thankful for this splendid regiment. The success attained by it is a tribute to its ideals and our belief in its cause. With honor and gratitude to those of our comrades not by our side, we should be thankful that we are here to carry the torch for them and to do our job, with honor to them and credit to ourselves.

  These are some of the things for which we should be collectively thankful. Let each man add to this his personal blessings. With profound humility, should we offer our gratitude to the God of battles, let us, in giving thanks, resolve that the inspiration of the past is the light of our future. May each of you, on this day of Thanksgiving, consider well the thoughts mentioned above and take comfort from them.

  When Teddy Dziepak from I Company came out of the line he took off his boots and was horrified to see that his feet were purple and hideously swollen. “The following morning, because I couldn’t get my boots back on, I borrowed a pair of clogs and shuffled over to the first aid post, where they diagnosed me with trench foot. My condition was so acute that the medics evacuated me back to the UK, where I spent the next five weeks in hospital.”

  As the flooding grew more widespread, it became obvious that the population of Valburg and Andelst would have to be evacuated. For this the authorities created a secondary plan and codenamed it Operation Noah. In Valburg, during the morning of November 25, as the advance party from 506th Regimental HQ was moving into the vicarage belonging to the church of the Holy Jacobus, Operation Noah was in full swing. Hundreds of women and children were being sent across the Waal to reception centers in north Brabant. Seven-year-old Frans Mientjes was part of the exodus: “Shortly after arriving at the Philips factories in Eindhoven, my sister Annie and I were placed with the Friederich family, who lived in the Centrum district on Vondelstraat. The rest of my family were split up and sent to Netersel and Bladel.” Because of the intense overcrowding caused by the earlier evacuations from Dodewaard and Zetten, around 6,000 refugees living in Tilburg and Eindhoven had to be relocated to Geertruidenberg (NBr) and Aat (Ath) in Belgium.

  During the early hours of the morning of November 25, 3rd Bn handed over control of the 506th sector to 2nd Bn Seaforth Highlanders, from the 152nd Infantry Brigade. At long last, after 71 days of hell, the regiment was being sent to a rest camp in northeastern France, at Mourmelon-le-Grand near Reims. The 3rd Bn formed the rear echelon with RHQ and followed 24 hours later behind 1st Bn and 2nd Bn, as Hank DiCarlo recalled: “Because there was a security issue with the bridge at Nijmegen, we marched four miles to the Waal and crossed the river in motorboats, before being loaded onto British trucks and driven to Mourmelon. It was dull and drizzling with rain when we arrived at 1000hrs the following morning [November 28]. Our first impressions of Camp Chalons were not reassuring but we had dry billets and proper beds, which were immediately put to good use as we crawled in and slept, slept, slept.”

  * The school on Steenbeekstraat had previously been a home economics academy for young women and incorporated a Huishoud School (or Finishing School) for girls aged 12–14.

  * The next time Wedeking saw Hermansky was at Le Havre in July 1945, where the corporal was working as a military policeman at the gang plank of a US Liberty ship, loading men from the US 4th Infantry Division returning to the USA.

  14

  “Club Mocambo”

  Camp Chalons – November 28–December 20, 1944

  Situated outside of the garrison town of Mourmelon-le-Grand, Camp Chalons had been used by the French Army as a barracks and training area since 1857. The surrounding countryside still clearly showed the scars of the battle of the Marne 26 years previously. Adjoined to an airfield, the camp had been used by the Germans as a parachute school and tank depot.

  “A belated Thanksgiving dinner was held and shortly afterwards we received mail and our barracks bags,” recalls S/Sgt Ralph Bennett. “Once again the B bags had been torn open and all the souvenirs we’d collected from Normandy were gone. I later found out that the bags belonging to the officers were kept in a separate area and had remained untouched – RHIP, ‘rank has its privileges.’ There were new people arriving from the UK and as a platoon sergeant it was my job to get them assigned and squared away. We all thought, for us at least, that the war was over, so getting weapons into the artificer’s [armorer’s] for repairs and re-equipping the guys seemed pretty low on the list of priorities.” In most cases the battalions set up a training company to give replacements a week to ten days of orientation instruction. “Mourmelon gave us a chance to stop being ‘mud sloggers’ and start being soldiers again,” recalled Bob Webb. “Close-order drill, class ‘A’ uniforms, spit and polish, to be honest, for once it was a welcome change.” A handful of thrillseekers, like Pfc George McMillan from I Company, volunteered for Pathfinder duty and were sent to Chalgrove in Oxfordshire to begin their training.

  The camp became synonymous with reconstruction and cleaning as the men were expecting at least three months’ rest in their winter quarters. The first week was marked by incessant rain, which soon turned the ground around the camp into thick mud. In desperation, gravel was “borrowed” from local roads, and bricks recovered from ruined buildings to create proper company streets and sidewalks.

  The NCOs started on the business of housekeeping with enthusiasm, as Capt Jim Morton recalls. “We cleaned, scrubbed, and shined, and even employed an artist to make up some fancy signs. On the walls of the barracks the men painted scrolls bearing the names of our comrades who had fallen in Normandy and Holland. Athletic equipment was requisitioned and football and boxing teams were organized.” Everyone was looking forward to the football game scheduled in Reims for Christmas Day, between “the
Screaming Eagles” from the 502nd and “the Sky Train” representing the 506th.

  Miss Polly Baker from the American Red Cross arrived to open a new club, which was nothing compared to what 1/Sgt Fred Bahlau had in mind for the NCOs from HQ Company as he recalls. “I found a circular bar about 15 feet in diameter in a deserted Air Corps club and aquired a variety of fixtures such as mirrors and glasses. We then built a number of tables and chairs and ‘borrowed’ a few tins of gray and maroon paint from the airfield. With a yellow parachute draped from the ceiling and subdued lighting, ‘Club Mocambo’ became the smartest spot on the camp.” As a finishing touch the communications section kindly fashioned an electric sign, which Bahlau suspended over the entrance. With morale sagging, the club proved invaluable in rebuilding comradeship and esprit de corps amongst the NCOs. “Mocambo” became the only company NCO club in the division and was often frequented by guests from other units. On one occasion at the club, Darvin Lee (MG Ptn) bumped into Grady Collier and was able to present him with the Luger pistol taken from his younger brother’s body at Opheusden. Grady was a first sergeant in the US Army 9th Air Force and happened to be working at the airfield with the 826th Aviation Engineer Battalion.

  Despite the distractions of “Club Mocambo,” the only real topic of conversation on everyone’s lips was Paris. It was planned to send the regiment to the queen of European cities one company at a time, and it was not long before a 72-hour pass policy was introduced. But not everyone got to see Paris. Instead many received 48-hour passes to Reims or Mourmelon, which made Fayetteville in North Carolina look positively Presbyterian by comparison. “A few of the married soldiers, who included Maxwell Taylor, received 30-day passes back to the USA,” recalled Bob Webb. “I couldn’t imagine doing that and then having to come back to the European theater of operations!”

  Bob Webb and Jim Melhus were among the lucky ones who made it to Paris as Webb recalls: “I went with my buddy Sgt Bill Pershing, and stayed in a beautiful hotel and drank champagne. The American Red Cross arranged tea dances in the afternoon and I met a girl called Renée, who invited us to her home the following day for lunch. In the past her father had been a head waiter in England and spoke perfect English. He took a cork out of a bottle of cognac and threw it in the fireplace as a welcome gesture. We were on best behaviour as her family were so gracious.” Jim Melhus had a slightly different experience,

  I was paired up with Pvt John D. Figuerda, a recent replacement in the 81mm Mortar Platoon. We had so much back pay that I was able to afford a beautiful gold ring encrusted with rubies and diamonds! After arriving in Paris we headed to the red-light district at Place de Pigalle, where we came across two girls, about 14-years-old, being hit on by GIs. The girls were clearly a little out of their depth and needed help so we hired a horse-drawn carriage to take them home. One of the girls, Odette, lived across the other side of the river Seine, along Boulevard du Palais and we soon found out that her father didn’t like Americans, so we decided not to hang around.

  On Sunday 17 December, as most of the enlisted men were going on leave, many officers, like 1st Lt Clark Heggeness, were writing letters of condolence to families of the men who had been killed. However, the letter Heggeness wrote to Rudolph Bolte’s widow Erma was slightly different:

  My dear Mrs Bolte, I hope you have not lost confidence in me for not answering your letter sooner but in the rush of things in Holland, I misplaced your V-mail and just found it. I’m back in France now, it’s so wonderful being away from all that mud and shells and everything that goes with the front. Rudy was one of my best friends. He and I were room mates in England, and we went all through the Normandy campaign together.

  It takes a lot of fortitude for a man his age to volunteer for parachute duty and all the extra rigors of jumping. I always will take my hat off to him, going through everything all us young kids do. Mrs Bolte, we’ll always miss Rudy, when he died he left a gap in the ranks I know no other officer will be able to fill. We jumped near Eindhoven on Sunday afternoon, September 17. The next morning Rudy was crawling through a field, leading his platoon when he was killed. I wasn’t with him right at that time but about 300 yards away. Almost everyone cried when they found out, that’s how much everyone, men and officers alike, thought of him. I don’t know if Rudy told you or not but he was not supposed to make this jump.

  War seems so unjust and so many of the real guys “get it” and those who seem so ungodly always come through okay. Sometimes I wonder why they are not dead and guys like Rudy can’t live. Rudy thought the world of you and the girls. Whenever he had the chance he always first thought of buying the girls a souvenir of the place he happened to be. He always told me about your daughters, the things they did and how dearly they thought of him. He was truly a great guy and one of the finest friends I’ve ever had. I know it’s hard to realize he’s gone, how extremely difficult it is to accustom yourself to his last [letters]. I only hope that what he has written is some small comfort to you and the girls. If there’s anything I can do, please don’t hesitate to ask me.

  For the last couple of days, the news broacasters had been vaguely uneasy about a German threat in Belgium. In the early morning of December 18, word filtered down from regiment to prepare for the worst. On the Sunday before Christmas, while many were still on leave in Paris, the Germans broke through towards the port of Antwerp. Field Marshal Von Runstedt’s thrust into the Ardennes had begun and his Tiger tanks advanced over 60 miles in three days, jeopardizing the entire American front.

  Helen Briggs was in Paris at the time and recalls: “The MPs collected all the paratroopers who were on leave and held them at the Red Cross Club at Gare de l’Est, until they could get transportation to Reims.” Back at Camp Chalons, the regiment awoke early to discover that instead of prelimary rifle practise, it would be going back to the war. There was no briefing or preparation as Clark Heggeness recalls: “On December 19, we loaded onto enormous open trailer trucks outside the divisional headquarters bound for an unknown destination.” In the panic the men were woefully under-equipped and most did not even have enough ammunition to make up a basic M1 load.

  In the twilight of the afternoon, the 506th PIR rolled northeast across the battlefields of World War I and through the bitterly cold wooded hills of the Ardennes forest until finally on the morning of December 20, they detrucked in a small village close to the border with Luxembourg. Although the rumble of artillery could be heard in the distance most even then did not know where they were. It was a strange way to start an operation which would prove to be yet another courageous chapter in the history of the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment – the defense of Bastogne.

  Epilogue

  On December 3, 1944, under cover of darkness the enemy demolished a section of the main dijk about a mile behind the railroad bridge at Driel. The massive explosion ripped a 150 feet wide gap in the embankment and flooded the land east of the railway between Elden and Elst. Seeping through culverts and drainage ditches, the floodwater soon found its way across the Island, forcing the British and Canadian forces, and the few remaining civilians, to migrate along the river Waal towards Zetten and Dodewaard. However, the Germans had an unexpected surprise when the territory held by their own forces near Opheusden also became inundated with water.

  At the time, Frits van Schaik and his resistance group were based at Oosterhout, near Nijmegen, and he recalls: “Reinforced by members of the farming community, our job starting from Dodewaard was to gather and move as many animals as possible eastwards to Lent, which was not far from Nijmegen. Because of the extreme flooding, we were forced to herd the animals along the railway embankment that led directly into Lent from Valburg, a distance of about six miles.”

  Hemmen farmer Dick Bakker remembered: “Amazingly all our horses found their way back across the flooded areas to the farm, where we promptly tied them together and took them to Valburg. Soon afterwards, I was evacuated to Belgium and reunited with my family.” The evacuated livestock, n
ow numbering thousands, were moved to an enormous farm in Brabant where, five months later, many were slaughtered in order to feed starving cities such as Amsterdam and The Hague after they were liberated.

  In January 1945, while the 101st Airborne was still deployed around Bastogne, Zetten was virtually destroyed when the Germans counterattacked against the British on the Island. The vicious tank and infantry battle raged in the snow for several weeks until the Germans finally gave up and withdrew.

  Dirk van Tintelen, who had joined the Canadians after escaping from the Island, recalls: “It was a very emotional time for me, to be so closely involved in the liberation, especially in places like Rotterdam. On several occasions as we [were] liberating some of the coastal towns and cities, the girls would rush over thinking I was Canadian, only to be completely confused by the fact that I was actually Dutch!” The Germans finally capitulated on May 5, 1945, eight months after the 506th PIR first went into action on the Island. Ironically the surrender was signed in Wageningen at the Hotel de Werald.

  Zetten was the first village to be declared safe for the population to return to, as Jannie Arnoldussen recalls: