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While the Guards Armoured Division was fighting its way along the seven miles to Valkenswaard, the US 101st Airborne Division was enjoying mixed fortunes in seizing its objectives. The most southerly, assigned to Major James L. LaPrade’s 1st Battalion 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, were three bridges over the Wilhelmina Canal near Son.43 The two smaller bridges had been demolished shortly before MARKET commenced, leaving just the main bridge carrying the highway south to Eindhoven. The 506th Regiment was not informed of the demolitions and the Regimental commander, Colonel Robert F. Sink, only became aware of them after landing in Holland.44 In the interests of speed Major LaPrade had dispensed with a formal post-jump reorganisation and despatched his men toward the objective in groups of fifteen to twenty as they arrived at the Battalion rally point and thus the entire 1st Battalion was on the move by 14:10, just forty-five minutes after the jump had commenced, and while the 506th Regiment’s 2nd and 3rd Battalions were still reorganising on DZ C. The plan was for LaPrade’s Battalion to move directly south through the Zonsche Forest that bounded the southern edge of the 101st Airborne Division’s main landing area to the Wilhelmina Canal, and then approach the bridges from the west. The remainder of the Regiment was to move east from the DZ and follow the Eindhoven road south through Son to link up with LaPrade’s men at the bridges.
The Zonsche Forest was about a mile wide at its eastern end and initially Captain Melvin C. Davis and Company A made good time leading the 1st Battalion through the trees. However, as the paratroopers approached the southern edge of the wood they came under fire from a German anti-aircraft emplacement on the north bank of the Wilhelmina Canal. The fire caused a number of casualties including Captain Davis, many of them due to the airburst effect of 88mm anti-aircraft shells detonating in the treetops. The US advance came to an abrupt halt and it took over an hour for Davis’ men to manoeuvre close enough to overrun the emplacement with a bayonet charge. The action cost Company A around a third of its strength, and after a hasty reorganisation Major LaPrade ordered Company B to take over as vanguard and press along the line of the canal toward the bridge.45 While all this was going on the remainder of the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment was moving upon Son from the north led by Lieutenant-Colonel Robert L. Strayer’s 2nd Battalion, accompanied by Colonel Sink and trailed by Lieutenant-Colonel Oliver M. Horton’s 3rd Battalion acting as Regimental reserve. The advance proceeded to the outskirts of Son, where an off-duty German soldier inadvertently pedalled into the lead scouts from Strayer’s Company D and while the town proved to be clear of German troops, moving through the streets took a considerable time. The US Official history attributes the delay to a lack of urgency based on the assumption that the swifter moving 1st Battalion would have already secured the objective.46 However, the real reason appears to have been that the entire civilian population of Son turned out en masse to greet their liberators, blocking the streets and pressing hugs, kisses, cigars, beer and fresh fruit on every paratrooper who came within reach. As a participant’s account drily noted, the 2nd Battalion’s officers ‘had a hard time keeping the men moving’.47
On reaching the southern outskirts of Son the 2nd Battalion came under fire from another German anti-aircraft position straddling the road leading to the bridge. This time the paratroopers were able to use buildings to screen their movement, and Private Thomas G. Lindsey from the 2nd Battalion’s HQ Company closed to within fifty yards and knocked out one 88mm gun with his Bazooka. The hit on the gun’s elevating mechanism killed one of the crew and the remainder were despatched as they tried to escape by Sergeant John F. Rice from Company D. Another gun on the opposite side of the road was also overrun, possibly by elements from Company E, which moved up in support.48 In all, the fight for the guns took around fifteen minutes, and as Companies D and E pushed on down the last few hundred yards toward the canal they came under small-arms fire from German troops occupying buildings on the south bank, just as elements of the 1st Battalion came into view moving along the canal bank from the right. The paratroopers were within fifty yards of the road bridge when the Germans detonated their demolition charges, dropping both spans into the Wilhelmina Canal. The commander of Company E, Captain Richard Winters, was only twenty-five yards short with his lead Platoon and narrowly avoided injury from falling debris; Lieutenant Sterling Horner found three German soldiers, possibly the demolition party, stunned but unhurt behind the stump of the north pillar. Undaunted, Major LaPrade immediately swam across the canal, accompanied by Lieutenant Millford F. Weller and Sergeant Donald B. Dunning, while some of his men stripped the doors from a nearby barn and manhandled them to the wrecked bridge with the assistance of First Sergeant Carwood Lipton and a party from the 2nd Battalion’s Company E. Corporal Gordon Carson, also from Company E, stripped naked despite German fire, performed a perfect racing dive and swam the canal to reach a small boat moored on the south bank, which was then used to ferry groups of paratroopers across to the canal. This small force proved sufficient to drive off the German rearguard and secure the south end of the bridge site. Colonel Sink, who had been trailing the 2nd Battalion with his Regimental HQ, arrived at this time, and it was also now that Sink learned that the two smaller bridges he had been ordered to secure had been demolished before MARKET commenced. Noting that the central pillar of the road bridge was intact, Sink ordered the attached company from the 326th Airborne Engineer Battalion to fabricate a footbridge as quickly as possible to allow the 506th Regiment to cross the canal and move on Eindhoven.49
Things ran a little more smoothly north of Son. While Colonel John H. Michaelis and the 502nd Parachute Infantry Regiment’s primary task was to protect the Division landing area and provide the Division reserve, his 1st Battalion under Lieutenant-Colonel Patrick Cassidy was tasked to secure St. Oedenrode, just over a mile north-east of the landing area and specifically the four bridges over the River Dommel in the town. After ascertaining that his Battalion had actually been dropped onto the wrong DZ and was thus two miles south of its intended position, Cassidy made his way to the Battalion assembly point, a crossroads 1,000 yards east of DZ A and after a hasty reorganisation set out for St. Oedenrode. Company C led the bulk of the 1st Battalion north along the Son-St. Oedenrode road, while Company B moved east to enter the town via a small footbridge. Company C was stalled by German small-arms fire soon after passing two Panzer IV tanks knocked out by fighter-bombers before the drop began, but Company B not only discovered a fifth road bridge across the Dommel they had not been briefed about, but also shot up a party of Germans moving to destroy it before they could lay their charges. The new bridge was secured intact after a firefight with a larger German covering force, while the remainder of the 1st Battalion pushed into St. Oedenrode proper and secured the original four Dommel crossings. After clearing a number of German rear-echelon troops from the town, Cassidy organised a defensive perimeter and despatched a patrol to make contact with Colonel Howard Johnson’s 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment, which was tasked to secure the bridges at Veghel, five miles to the north-east.50
Matters had followed a similar pattern for the 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment at Veghel.51 Lieutenant-Colonel Julian J. Ewell’s 3rd Battalion was on the move toward its objectives within forty-five minutes of landing, and rapidly secured the town of Eerde, just west of the landing area, and established a blocking position astride the Veghel–St. Oedenrode road just to the south, as planned, by 15:00. Lieutenant-Colonel Robert A. Ballard’s 2nd Battalion was equally fast off the mark, with the bulk of the Battalion advancing behind Lieutenant Richard G. Snodgrass’ Company D along the main road to secure the road bridges over the Zuid Willems Canal and River Aa, while Company E angled to the north-east to secure the railway bridge over the canal. All three crossings were secured in the face of light resistance by 15:15 and in the process the 2nd Battalion’s lead scouts ran into their opposite numbers from Lieutenant-Colonel Harry W. O. Kinnard’s 1st Battalion coming into the town from the east, af
ter being misdropped three miles downstream near Kameren. After learning his true location from excited Dutch civilians who flocked to the DZ, Kinnard had set off down the riverside road toward Veghel within an hour of landing, leaving a party of thirty-eight under Captain William G. Burd from HQ Company to gather in equipment and supply bundles and tend eight jump casualties; the party was to follow the remainder of the 1st Battalion as quickly as possible. Around thirty German rear echelon troops and some vehicles were captured going about routine business in the course of the advance, which was spearheaded by a number of paratroopers who commandeered bicycles and other vehicles on their own initiative. Once again the biggest problems came from crowds of enthusiastic Dutch civilians but 1st Battalion was on its two objectives by 16:00 and all the Regiment’s objectives were officially reported secured by 16:30.52
Besides securing the assigned bridges over the rivers Aa and Dommel and Zuid Willems and Wilhelmina canals, the 101st Airborne Division also went after an additional set of bridges that did not feature in the MARKET guidelines. These were the road and rail bridges five miles west of Son, at the eastern end of the Zonsche Forest and a mile or so south of Best. These bridges were presumably not included because they were not on 30 Corps’ direct route to Arnhem and having failed to interest British 2nd Army HQ in their capture, Major-General Taylor unilaterally added them to his Division’s list of objectives as an insurance against failure to secure the crossings at Son; it is unclear if the initiative was communicated to 30 Corps. In order to conserve manpower, the mission was originally assigned to a single platoon from Lieutenant-Colonel Robert G. Cole’s 3rd Battalion 502nd Parachute Infantry Regiment but at the latter’s request the force was increased to Captain Robert E. Jones’ Company H, reinforced with a .30 machine-gun section from HQ Company and a Platoon from the 326th Airborne Engineer Battalion. Jones left the landing area intending to bisect the Eindhoven–Best road 1,000 yards south of Best but lost direction in the outskirts of the Zonsche Forest and emerged only 400 yards from the town. The paratroopers immediately became entangled in an extended and costly fight with FlaK Abteilung 424 for a crossroads just east of Best and held their own until the arrival of a twelve-truck convoy of reinforcements from 59 Infanterie Division, which was regrouping at nearby Tilburg after escaping across the Scheldt Estuary.53 The remainder of the 3rd Battalion was ordered forward to assist Jones at 18:00.54
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Twelve miles further north the 82nd Airborne Division enjoyed similarly mixed fortunes in securing its objectives. The 2nd and 3rd Battalions of Colonel Reuben H. Tucker’s 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment, commanded by Majors Edward M. Wellems and Julian A. Cook respectively, were tasked to secure the 1,800-foot, nine-span bridge across the River Maas at Grave, at that time the longest bridge in Europe. Major Cook’s 3rd Battalion was also tasked to clear the area around the large Regimental DZ O between the River Maas and the Maas-Waal Canal, and had enjoyed an almost perfect jump. Company H, for example, suffered no jump injuries and lost just six wounded, four before jumping, and the centre man in the first stick landed within ten feet of the predicted spot.55 The 2nd Battalion’s Company E was supposed to be delivered onto a subsidiary DZ on the west bank of the River Maas to secure that end of the bridge, but ten of the eleven C-47s carrying Company E dropped their sticks up to 1,200 yards short of the DZ. The exception was Lieutenant John S. Thompson’s stick, which fortuitously landed around 600 yards from the western end of their objective after Thompson delayed jumping by a few seconds in order to avoid landing among buildings. Once safely on the ground Thompson quickly rallied his fifteen-strong band, despatched Corporal Hugh H. Parry to inform his Company commander of his intent and set out for the bridge using water-filled drainage ditches as cover from German fire from the outskirts of Grave and a 20mm anti-aircraft gun mounted in a tower near the bridge.
Thompson’s route first brought them into contact with a party of five Germans moving equipment of some kind from a small building toward the bridge. Fearing the party were preparing demolition charges, Thompson stealthily deployed his men before opening concentrated fire upon the unsuspecting Germans, killing four and wounding the fifth; subsequent examination of the bodies showed they had in fact been moving personal effects and equipment. Moving on, Thompson and his men were then approached from the rear by two German trucks moving at speed toward the bridge from Grave. One left the road and crashed after the driver was shot, scattering the unfortunate passengers. The other screeched to a stop and disgorged its load of troops, who promptly scattered and ran under the paratrooper’s fire. The flak tower was silenced by Private Robert McGraw, who crawled close enough to fire three Bazooka rockets into the gun platform atop it, two of which passed through a firing slit. His companions then scrambled into the tower to find two of the 20mm gun crew dead and a third wounded.56 After moving in to secure the west end of the bridge Thompson set his men to destroying any electrical equipment and cables that might have been linked to demolition charges and establishing a defensive perimeter to await the arrival of the rest of Company E. The time was approximately 13:45, less than an hour after Thompson had made his delayed exit from his C-47.57
The eastern end of the bridge appears to have been defended by another 20mm gun mounted in a tower or possibly atop the bridge superstructure, which might have wreaked considerable havoc on the paratroopers advancing from the main DZ. However, according to Captain T. Moffatt Burriss, commanding the 3rd Battalion’s Company I and in the forefront of the rush from the DZ, the Germans were simply overawed by the approach of large numbers of ‘crack American troops with a lethal reputation’ and chose to surrender, using a discarded undershirt as a makeshift white flag.58 This may well have been true, although the fact that the Germans had been taking fire from Lieutenant Thompson’s men using the 20mm gun captured at the other end of the bridge might also have had some bearing on the matter. Whatever the reason, by 14:30, just an hour and a quarter after the 504th Regiment had commenced its jump, the 1,800-foot Grave bridge had been captured intact, although it would be another hour before paratroopers from the 2nd Battalion crossed from the eastern end. The bridge was not officially declared secure until 17:00.59 German fire from the southern outskirts of Grave initially prevented the remainder of Company E moving up to reinforce Lieutenant Thompson, but once the juncture was achieved a roadblock was established to prevent German troops approaching from the south. The remainder of Major Wellems’ 2nd Battalion appears to have moved to the south bank of the River Maas to clear and secure Grave while Major Cook’s 3rd Battalion cleared the area between the River Maas and Maas-Waal Canal and set up a perimeter around the eastern end of the bridge.60 Company I was part of the latter, and Captain Burriss was approached by one of his men while digging in, who reported finding a ‘big lead cable’ at the bottom of his foxhole. Burriss identified the find as a major telephone line and, mindful of Standing Orders to disrupt communications wherever possible, ordered his men to cut it, which they did with the enthusiasm soldiers generally reserve for officially sanctioned vandalism. It was not the last Burriss was to hear of the matter.61
While all this was going on Major Willard E. Harrison’s 1st Battalion 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment was attempting to seize three of the four crossings over the Maas-Waal Canal to the east of DZ O, with a Company being despatched to secure each. No move was made at this time against the fourth and most northerly bridge, the combined road and rail affair at Honinghutie because Brigadier-General Gavin had decreed it a provisional objective to be seized in concert with the 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment from the east, dependent upon ‘the development of the fight once the landings were accomplished’.62 Given the distance from the DZ and that he had only three rifle Companies to draw upon Harrison was doubtless grateful for Gavin’s prioritising. In a rerun of events at Son, the bridges at Malden and Hatert were blown in the face of Harrison’s paratroopers as they closed in and both companies had to content themselves with securing both banks of
the crossing, which was done by nightfall. Captain Thomas B. Helgeson enjoyed better luck at the southern Molenhoek lock bridge. Initially held at bay by heavy fire from German troops positioned on a small island in the centre of the canal, three paratroopers managed to dash across to the east bank where they were joined by a party of seven using a commandeered rowing boat. Captain Helgeson’s men succeeded in keeping the Germans on the island pinned down while this little band examined the bridge; this revealed the structure to be fully rigged with demolition charges, which were rendered safe by the simple expedient of severing the electrical wiring. Why the charges were not detonated by the defenders remained a mystery. The Germans on the island were finally dealt with by a patrol from the 505th Regiment, which attacked across a footbridge linking it to the east bank at approximately 18:00. The road bridge was officially declared secure an hour-and-a-half later.63
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