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The 82nd Airborne Division’s share of the second lift amounted to 454 Waco CG4s towed by C-47s from the US 50th and 52nd Troop Carrier Wings; the latter’s contribution appears to have consisted of the 313th and 316th Troop Carrier Groups based at RAF Folkingham and RAF Cottesmore respectively. As Brigadier-General Gavin had taken in all his Division’s infantry component in the first lift, the bulk of the aircraft were carrying the Division’s artillery component, consisting of thirty-six 75mm Pack Howitzers and eight 57mm anti-tank guns, the former belonging to the 319th and 320th Glider Field Artillery Battalions and 456th Parachute Field Artillery Battalion, and the latter belonging to the confusingly labelled 80th Airborne Anti-Aircraft Battalion. The remaining CG4s were loaded with ammunition, transport for all three of the Division’s Parachute Infantry Regiments and elements of Division HQ, the 307th Airborne Engineer Battalion, the 307th Medical Company, the 40th Quartermaster Company and the 782nd Ordnance Company. In total the armada amounted to 1,899 men, 206 Jeeps and 123 trailers, in addition to the forty-four guns, and began taking off at approximately 11:00.88 At least four and possibly seven gliders dropped out of the glider stream before reaching the Continent. Two aborted but landed safely while still over England, one after the machine began to come apart and one after a ‘crazed’ passenger pulled the tow release, and the crews and passengers of two more were rescued after ditching in the North Sea.89 For many of the passengers in the CG4s there was initially something of a carnival atmosphere until the armada crossed the Dutch coast, although for Private First Class John McKenzie from the 456th Parachute Field Artillery Battalion the fun stopped almost immediately after take-off. As a paratrooper, Private McKenzie likely had reservations about travelling in a glider and these were doubtless exacerbated by flying without a qualified co-pilot due to a shortage of glider pilots: ‘I was seated in the co-pilot’s seat and could see everything through its wide Plexiglass front. Just after take-off, the pilot gave me a few additional quick lessons in how to land a glider in case he was killed or wounded. This though, terrified me even more than the threat of being hit myself.’ The experience of Corporal David Click from Battery B, 320th Glider Field Artillery Battalion, who was making his first glider flight, was probably more typical:
I was having the time of my life, watching the fighter plane escort, and looking at all of the ships in the English Channel. I didn’t sit in my seat or buckle my safety belt, like the veterans of the Normandy invasion did – that is, until we came over the coast of Holland. A German flak barge opened up on us with anti-aircraft fire. The first shell exploded near my glider and almost turned us over. I immediately knew what it was to be scared. I sat down, buckled up, and shut up. This war business had become quite serious.90
Although Corporal Click and his companions had no way of knowing it, the situation at their destination in Holland, the adjoining landing zones near Groesbeek, had moved beyond ‘quite serious’ through the actions of Generalleutnant Gerd Scherbening’s 406 z.b.V. Division. Attacking from out of the Reichswald forest at dawn, the Germans had advanced onto the northern LZ T from the east, recapturing and re-manning a number of light flak guns and overrunning the bulk of the defenders from Company D, 2nd Battalion 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment. The latter’s surviving Platoon under Lieutenant Robert L. Sickler was pinned down in an open beet field near Voxhill and was only saved from annihilation by the Battalion’s Assistant Supply Officer, Captain Kenneth L. Johnson, who marshalled his small supply detachment and Company D HQ personnel to lay down heavy fire on the attackers after radioing a warning to Regimental HQ. In the meantime the bulk of the 1st Battalion, 508th Regiment was force marching back from De Ploeg and the outskirts of Nijmegen at Colonel Lindquist’s orders, following Captain Johnson’s timely warning. Scherbening’s men had also pressed into LZ N from the south despite the 505th Regiment deploying its reserve company on Gavin’s orders while he scraped together men to plug the gap that had opened up in the Divisional perimeter between the 505th and 508th Regiments; as Captain Johnson put it in his post-war account of the action, ‘by noon it [the landing area] was principally occupied by the enemy.’91
Fortunately for the incoming glider lift, the tide was about to turn. The lead element of the 1st Battalion 508th Regiment, Captain Frank Schofield’s Company C, reached the woods along the northern edge of LZ T without incident where they were joined at or just after midday by the remainder of their Battalion. Despite the fatigue of carrying out an eight-mile forced march Lieutenant-Colonel Warren paused only to hold a brief orders group with his Company commanders before launching his attack onto the landing area with Companies B and C abreast, the latter on the right, followed by Battalion HQ and then his depleted Company A. The attack appears to have commenced shortly before 13:00 and involved the lead Companies pushing through thick woods and cutting gaps in a stout wire fence before emerging into the open and shaking out into formation.92 Initially, the advancing paratroopers were in dead ground but on crossing the crest they attracted a storm of German fire including the 20mm weapons at Voxhill, which caused a brief pause before the line pushed on either side of the farm.93 They were spotted equally swiftly by Lieutenant Sickler’s beleaguered platoon, who initially assumed they were German reinforcements and opened long-range fire until the newcomers were properly identified. The advancing troops from Company C subsequently returned the favour as they closed on the pinned Company D men, who lacked orange smoke grenades to advertise their identity. One of Sickler’s men was shot and the error was only recognised when Company C actually assaulted into the roadside position.94
The two Companies from the 1st Battalion swept systematically across the DZ, eliminating German positions or putting their occupants to flight. First-Sergeant Leonard L. Funk was especially prolific, leading a small group from Company C in knocking out four 20mm flak guns and three larger pieces, killing fifteen Germans in the process; Funk was awarded a Distinguished Service Cross for his action to join a Silver Star and Purple Heart he had earned in Normandy.95 Captain Schofield then had his 60mm mortar teams plaster the Germans occupying the bypassed farm buildings at Voxhill before carrying out a platoon attack, supported by another platoon from Company B led by Captain Woodrow W. Millsaps. The situation was complicated by the presence of some US medics and jump casualties from the previous day in one of the buildings, but the paratroopers persuaded over seventy Germans to surrender by detonating grenades and Gammon bombs against the outer walls of the German-occupied buildings. The fight for LZ T only cost the 1st Battalion of the 508th Regiment two to five dead and nine or ten wounded, with four of the latter coming from Colonel Warren’s HQ group, hit by 20mm fire while observing the fight from a rise. The 2nd Battalion’s Company D lost its 2nd Platoon in its entirety killed or captured and Lieutenant Sickler’s 3rd Platoon five dead and six wounded, in addition to the Company commander 1st Lieutenant MacVicar, who was wounded in the head. The missing 1st Platoon turned up in Groesbeek, after being cut off and attaching itself to elements of the 505th Regiment. The Germans lost an estimated fifty dead, 149 prisoners and sixteen 20mm guns.96
The German pressure on the southern sector of the Divisional perimeter meant that Colonel Ekman’s 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment had only managed to keep back a single, understrength Company as a reserve. This was Captain Anthony S. Stefanich’s Company C from the 1st Battalion, which had already detached its 3rd Platoon under Lieutenant Harold L. Gensemer to reinforce Company B at Riethorst; the latter was involved in repulsing a German attack there at 13:00.97 Despite the pressure, Ekman held Company C back until 13:30 before launching it in a do-or-die attack to clear LZ N before the arrival of the second lift gliders. As Ekman himself put it, ‘I carefully guarded against pre-commitment…with the pre-planned intention of launching a rapid initial attack which would disconcert the enemy and force him to fall back, with the attack so timed that the landing zones would be cleared.’98 Stefanich’s men swept across the LZ in line abreast, and
their bold action had the anticipated effect; as the Company Executive Officer Lieutenant Jack Tallerday recalled: ‘The C Company troopers were firing and the Germans were running away from us…It looked like a line of hunters in a rabbit drive and the Germans looked like rabbits running in no particular pattern.’99 The first gliders began to land while Company C was still clearing the landing zone, and one machine overflew Captain Stefanich’s command group before coming to rest near the southern edge of the LZ where German troops in the nearby fringes of the Reichswald forest immediately raked it with machine-gun fire. Stefanich immediately led a party under Lieutenant Gus Sanders forward to assist but was hit in the process and died a few minutes later, despite the best efforts of one of his medics, as Sanders looked helplessly on. The medic was reduced to tears at his failure to save him, and the loss was keenly felt across the unit.100 As Private Arthur ‘Dutch’ Schultz put it, ‘I felt like I lost an older brother…He was a born leader who led by example, not by virtue of rank. To the men of C Company, he was both our leader and our friend.’101 Command of Company C devolved to Captain Tallerday. In the meantime Company I of the 3rd Battalion 505th Regiment’s fight to hold the southern edge of the landing area reached a peak while the gliders were landing, with a reported eleven German tanks emerging from the Reichswald forest. However, the new threat receded in the face of pinpoint fire from the 376th Parachute Field Artillery Battalion’s 75mm Pack howitzers, which knocked out five vehicles and prompted the remainder to withdraw; Company I then launched a counter-attack that drove the remaining attackers back into the forest and permitted the paratroopers to reoccupy their original roadblock positions.102
The precise time the gliders began to arrive is unclear. According to Gavin the landing began at 14:00 and was complete by 14:30, but one source refers to the first glider casting off from its tug at ‘approximately 14:31’, and another to the landings beginning at ‘approximately 15:00’; as there was only a single formation of glider tugs the 14:00 timing tallies best with the take-off and flight times.103 Whenever they arrived, the landing did not run smoothly. Eleven gliders had already been obliged to cast off over Holland but well short of the landing area after they or their tugs were hit by anti-aircraft fire; the passengers of seven subsequently reached Allied territory with the assistance of Dutch civilians and members of the Dutch Resistance, six of them bringing all their equipment with them.104 Matters were compounded as the formation approached the landing area and ran into heavier than expected flak that brought down eight C-47s and damaged over a hundred more.105 Despite this the landings on the northern LZ N were largely accurate, with all but a handful of machines coming down within a mile-and-a-half of the landing zone. The experience of Captain Herman L. Alley from Battery A, 456th Parachute Field Artillery Battalion, who flew in the co-pilot’s seat in Glider No.58 towed by a C-47 from the 441st Troop Carrier Group, was likely typical after a whimsical false start. The glider’s pilot, 2nd Lieutenant Ned H. Yarter, cast off immediately after take-off from RAF Langar with a rudder malfunction. He repaired the malfunction with a pair of pliers and a coat hanger borrowed from some bemused military policeman, hooked up to the original tug and set down on LZ N with the remainder of Battery A. ‘German artillery was working over the landing zone as we landed. The glider landed at about seventy miles per hour, plowing through a potato field. The landing tore up the nose of the glider and the fabric ripped. I had a lapful of dirt and vegetables. The rough landing also caused the clamshell release mechanism to jam, and we couldn’t get my Jeep out. We got out of the glider quickly and took shelter until the artillery rounds moved away from us.’ The clamshell release proved jammed beyond repair and the nose of the CG4 had to be cut away with an axe taken from Alley’s Jeep.106
Things did not run so smoothly at LZ T, where only ninety gliders landed accurately, the remainder releasing either prematurely or late. Of the thirty-eight gliders carrying the 319th Glider Field Artillery Battalion’s Battery A that reached the approach to the landing area, only six actually came down on LZ T. Of the remainder, thirty cast off prematurely and landed under heavy fire from light flak five miles short of the LZ, one landed on DZ O to the west in the 504th Regiment’s area, and one overshot the landing area altogether and came down near German-occupied Wyler. Battery B had more success, although eight CG4s from the third serial, carrying seven officers and forty-two men, also overshot both LZs to come down in the vicinity of Wyler; only four men eventually made their way to US-held territory, with the rest being killed or captured. The 320th Glider Field Artillery Battalion fared even worse. Between twenty-four and thirty of the tugs from the ninth serial carrying Battery A released their charges early, obliging the gliders to land five miles south-east of LZ T. Despite this, only four artillerymen and nine glider pilots were missing and the remaining 160 artillerymen defended in place before making their way into the Divisional perimeter after dark, bringing twenty-two Glider Pilots, ten Jeeps and two 105mm howitzers with them. Of the forty gliders carrying Battery B only twenty-one landed on or near LZ T as planned. One cut loose for unknown reasons forty-five miles short, nine came down twelve miles south-east of the landing area and were never heard of again and a further nine overshot to land near Wyler, although all but two officers from the latter increment managed to fight their way into the Divisional perimeter, but without their vehicles and equipment.107
Despite all this the artillery units came through the landing fit to fight, recovering thirty of thirty-six howitzers and seventy-eight Jeeps from a total of 106. The 456th Parachute Field Artillery recovered ten of its twelve 75mm Pack howitzers and twenty-three of thirty-three Jeeps, the 319th Glider Field Artillery all twelve 75mm pieces and twenty-six out of thirty-four Jeeps. The 320th recovered eight of its twelve 105mm howitzers and twenty-nine of thirty-nine Jeeps. Battery D of the 80th Airborne Anti-aircraft Battalion fared best of all, recovering all eight of its 57mm anti-tank guns and eight out of nine Jeeps.108 In all, the lift brought in 1,600 men, 177 Jeeps, 106 trailers and 211 tons of supplies, at a cost of three dead and forty-two wounded from those that landed on or close to the landing area.109
The final increment of the 82nd Airborne Division’s second lift was scheduled to arrive twenty minutes after the glider landing, although one source refers to a thirty-minute delay. Between 130 and 135 B-24 heavy bombers from the 93rd, 446th, 448th and 489th Bombardment Groups had been pressed into service to drop 285 tons of assorted supplies onto the landing area, apparently utilising bomb bays and packs loaded inside the aircraft for despatch via waist and belly hatches. As the crews had no prior experience with such missions the approach flight was made at 1,500 feet, descending to 300 feet for the drop, although the volume of anti-aircraft fire on the approaches to and over the drop point appears to have come as an unpleasant surprise. Four B-24s were shot down and a further thirty-eight were damaged, and the flak was blamed for a widespread scattering of the supplies, with some bundles landing five miles astray. Not all supplies were delivered onto the glider landing area, and some of the scattering was very small-scale and hazardous to the recipients, as Captain Carl W. Kappel, the commander of Company H, the 3rd Battalion of the 504th Regiment recalled: ‘B-24 Bombers brought in resupply at DZ “O” at 16:20. Drops were at a very low altitude but poorly concentrated...In this resupply it so happened that boxes of rations, detached from parachutes, struck company and platoon CPs, burst open, and scattered rations all through the company area in true foxhole delivery.’110 Nonetheless, overall around eighty per cent of the supplies, equating to approximately 261 tons, were eventually recovered, although gathering the bundles in took a considerable time; this may explain why some participant accounts place the total nearer sixty per cent.111
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