Four Hours of Fury

by James M. Fenelon

  Over 200 bombers roared over Wesel and dropped payload after payload, pummeling the town for the second time in twenty-four hours. (They’d dropped 1,090 tons of explosives on the town the previous evening.) Reporter Howard K. Smith, witnessing the second raid, said, “It was the single most terrifying spectacle I have ever seen. The entire town was smothered in red and yellow flame, and smoke billowed thousands of yards up in the sky.”

  Lurking in the shadows of the Rhine’s west bank, and occasionally illuminated by the flames from the far side, stood Tommies, Canucks, and Yanks gazing at the spectacle of shellfire and madness, bitterly hoping that by dawn every German on the other side would be dead.

  Airfield A-40, Chartres, France. After midnight.

  “Are you awake?”

  Sergeant Thad Blanchard wanted to pretend that he wasn’t, but instead rolled over on his cot to face Private Harry Pinson, a twenty-three-year-old replacement who’d joined his squad in Châlons.

  Blanchard had heard the uncertain tone before and knew what was coming next.

  “Sergeant, I’m not coming through this,” said Pinson.

  Blanchard tried to convince him otherwise, but Pinson remained unsettled by his premonition of death. Blanchard asked if he should go get the chaplain. Pinson shook his head no and asked Blanchard to pray with him.

  While Pinson quietly cried in the dark, Blanchard prayed aloud for both of them and suppressed his desire to run screaming from the tent. Blanchard, quietly consoling Pinson, looked down the row of cots and wondered how many of his sleeping men would still be alive the same time tomorrow.

  PART II

  * * *

  MARCH 24, 1945

  CHAPTER 11

  “GOOD HUNTING”

  Allied Glider Airfields, France. Saturday morning, March 24, 1945.

  It was still dark when the sergeants began waking their men: “Okay, off and on. Chow in ten minutes. Fallout, column of twos.” Sitting up in their cots, the troopers blinked the sleep from their eyes. For those who’d managed to grab some shuteye the wakeup call came too early; for those who hadn’t, it was the end of a long anxious night. Most had slept in their combat uniforms to stave off the cold and save time.

  Under the clear night sky they gathered in front of their tents—smoking and waiting. Up above, a nearly full moon hovered over the horizon as if waiting to witness the day’s spectacle.

  At the mess tents the cooks had outdone themselves. There were fresh eggs. Fresh eggs! None of the usual blue-green instant stuff. There was steak too! And thick slices of fresh bread with plenty of butter. For dessert there was apple pie and ice cream. Hot coffee with a slice of apple pie and ice cream? Any hope the mission would be scrubbed vanished.

  Jokes about consuming their last meal wore out quickly. But some, like Sergeant Ted Velikoff, found they didn’t have much of an appetite. “I couldn’t eat much of my eggs for some reason and threw them away,” Velikoff said. “Fresh eggs is something you don’t get much of over here.” Medic Joseph Moscar, on the other hand, relished his: “The best part of it was we could take all that we wanted and I had six of them. I was thinking that this might be my last one so I ate all that I could.”

  Opinions varied on the merits of a full stomach. Many troopers believed eating helped ease the dizzying side effects of the motion-sickness pills during their flight. The contrarians preferred to keep an empty stomach until the hard part of the day was done.

  After breakfast the troopers returned to their tents to don their equipment. Everyone wore combat boots and the same field uniform: olive-drab cotton-sateen trousers with the Airborne’s signature oversized canvas cargo pockets on each thigh. The pockets bulged with grenades, rations, or extra socks. The field jacket, the same Olive Drab No. 7 color as the trousers, was worn over a button-up flannel shirt or wool sweater, and had another four pockets, each stuffed with personal items such as gloves, Army-issued ID card, cigarettes, silk escape maps, candy bars, chewing gum, and squares of toilet paper. Personal items often included photographs of loved ones, a rosary, a pocket Bible, or a lucky rabbit’s foot.

  Most troopers strapped a fighting knife to the outside of their right leg, below the knee, making it readily accessible. Over the coat each GI wore his webbed equipment or cartridge belt and suspenders. What a trooper attached to his belt varied widely, but ubiquitous items included a metal canteen in its canvas cover and a folding field shovel. Additionally, a man might attach his bayonet, or even a machete, multiple ammunition pouches, a compass, wire cutters, an additional first-aid kit, or a pistol. The suspenders, necessary to support the weight, were a popular place for clipping one or two grenades. Riflemen draped themselves with additional bandoleers of ammunition.

  Each man also had a musette bag—a small canvas backpack stuffed with extra socks, underwear (optional), rations, an aluminum mess kit, a small towel, shaving articles, a toothbrush, a rifle cleaning kit, a rain poncho, a sweater, or maybe some extra ammunition.

  Around every man’s neck dangled his two metal dog tags. Stamped into each were his name, serial number, and blood type. Troopers could also include their religious preference if desired. The savvy taped theirs together to eliminate the clanking. If a man was killed, one tag was to remain with the body and the other was to be collected for reporting. Contrary to popular myth, the tag left with the body wasn’t to be wedged between the dead man’s teeth.

  Last was the steel helmet, covered with a camouflage net to which each trooper had tied his parachutist’s first-aid packet.

  • • •

  At airfield A-55 Frank Dillon’s platoon sergeant called the men to attention and ordered, “Right, face! Forward, march!” The sergeant followed the commands immediately with “Route step, march!” Route step kept the men in formation but allowed them to walk to their own cadence and carry their weapons however they wanted; there was no need for “Left, right, left” parade drill this morning.

  Silhouetted against the predawn horizon were long columns of armed platoons walking the mile and a half out to the flight line. Rifles were slung over shoulders, along with plenty of Thompson submachine guns, carbines, and M3 grease guns. Some carried the heftier Browning Automatic Rifles or .30-caliber belt-fed machine guns balanced on one shoulder. A few troopers carried bazookas.

  All the men in Dillon’s platoon also carried a wool blanket, a common practice among the glider riders. Placed on top of the glider’s hollow wood troop benches, the folded blanket provided comfort and several precious inches of layered protection from flak.

  As the platoons walked to their assigned gliders, the rising sun chased away the dim gray light of dawn and played off the silent rows of dew-covered aircraft. The formations came to a halt in front of their gliders for a final formality: roll call. The troopers’ long shadows spiked across the grass as they stood waiting for their names to be called. With all accounted for, the sergeants ordered them to “Fall out.”

  The pilots received a last-minute briefing at the control tower before they headed out to the flight line. At the gliders, they found troopers sprawled on the grass, napping, smoking, chewing tobacco, or horsing around. Some had scrawled names on the side of their crate with chalk—monikers such as “Purple Shaft No. 2,” “Is this trip necessary?” and “The Towed Target.” Some added their hometowns—“Chattanooga,” “Texas Rebels,” “Brooklyn Bums”—or the names of wives or lovers—“Mabelle,” “Josie,” “Lady Hellen,” and “Ruth-less.” Some scurrilous soul scribbled “suicide” in small, tight letters on the engine cowling of a tug transport.

  Many of the glider pilots now had to play catch-up. By the time they’d emerged from the previous night’s briefing it had been well after dark. The intrepid had climbed over loads with flashlights and made adjustments with their copilots. Others had rousted their passengers to make corrections earlier that morning. As a pilot noted, “There was little margin for error in the loading of a CG-4A; a shift of as little as four inches in the position of a jeep or
a cannon would send the glider and its cargo into a dive from which there could be no recovery.”

  The pilots climbed into their cockpits for final inspections. From the interior it looked like they were sitting in a metal cage, surrounded by a web of exposed pulleys and cables that originated in the cockpit and snaked their way back to control the aircraft’s spoilers, flaps, rudder, and ailerons. The pilots ensured that the nose locks had been engaged, verified that the instruments functioned, and checked for a solid feel of the brakes. Copilots helped test the controls for responsiveness and freedom of movement.

  Glider rider Frank O’Rourke eyed his pilot, noting that he “looked like a typical glider pilot. Wearing a wool knit cap, an old flight jacket and dress shoes, he was not outfitted for combat. His appearance was so casual that it gave me a sense of security to be in his hands.” O’Rourke found the copilot, a reluctant “volunteer” power pilot, “not so inspiring. . . . He looked nervous.”

  O’Rourke’s chalk had agreed that if their pilots got hit on the way in it would be up to their lieutenant, Herman Clausen, to land their crate. Everyone liked Clausen, but they had little faith in the infantry officer’s ability to master the fundamentals of flight in an emergency. Still, they agreed Clausen was their best Plan B.

  Frank Dillon, over at Chalk 155—now christened Just One More Time—noticed his men easing the tension by cracking jokes or horseplay. “There was no outside sign of fear. It was strange to think of fear on such a peaceful, sunny spring day in France with the fighting many hundreds of miles away.”

  Farther up the flight line, Flight Officer George Buckley and his copilot introduced themselves to the men of Chalk 86. Buckley assumed his passengers were all combat GIs who’d fought in the Ardennes. One of the troopers informed him, however, that most of them were replacements who’d just arrived in France a few days ago and that they all sure hoped Buckley knew what he was doing. Buckley assured the private that both he and his copilot had flown into Normandy and Holland; they expected today’s mission would be a “piece of cake.” Buckley later admitted, “Little did I know that this was going to be the toughest mission for the Glider Pilots to date.”

  Lieutenant Zane Winters also readied his glider at A-55. Winters, as one of the “volunteer” power pilots, had been paired with Smokey Ellington, a veteran glider pilot, who warned him against traveling light. Winters heeded the advice—but now he felt like a “walking ammo dump.” He carried a .45 automatic pistol with several spare magazines, a carbine with 200 rounds, a satchel of grenades, and an additional 200 rounds of ammo for Ellington’s M3 grease gun.

  Ellington, after confirming Winters could actually fly a glider, tasked the novice with piloting up until they cut off from the tug, at which point Ellington would take over to land. Winters agreed “100%” with Ellington’s plan.

  • • •

  Field Marshal Montgomery had dictated a few words of encouragement to be read to all the troops before departure. In part they read, “Having crossed the Rhine, we will crack about in the plains of Northern Germany, chasing the enemy from pillar to post. The swifter and the more energetic our action the sooner the war will be over, and that is what we desire, to get on with the job and finish off the German war as soon as possible.”

  The message closed with “Over the Rhine, then, let us go. And good hunting to you all on the other side.” The men paused to listen; if they were inspired by Montgomery’s sporty metaphors, few showed it. Such bravado from someone not going in with them meant little.

  By 07:00 the sounds of engines coughing to life engulfed the airfield. With a belch of exhaust, first the left propeller and then the right burst into full rotation. The cacophony of seventy-two C-47s warming their engines filled what had been a quiet morning with the racket of angry buzz saws. It was time to load. Before climbing into his glider, one flight officer passed around a flask of Cognac for each passenger to take a good luck slug.

  The eleven troopers riding with Dillon in Just One More Time filed in, stepping around the 600 pounds of equipment, including twelve 60mm mortar shells, secured to the floor. Each trooper positioned his folded blanket on the wooden bench before taking his seat. They’d heard, but didn’t bother confirming, that the pilots had steel plates under their seats; weight restrictions made such luxuries for passengers impracticable anyway. Dillon loaded last so he could sit as far forward as possible; a view out of the cockpit would help keep him oriented during their run into the LZ. As the platoon leader he wanted to know exactly where they were landing.

  The ground crew had staged the gliders for double tow, positioning them at forty-five-degree angles in the direction of flight on each side of the runway so the C-47 tugs could line up and taxi head-to-tail down the middle. Under the supervision of the line chief, crews began the complex orchestration of getting the armada into the air.

  Inspectors ensured towropes were properly S-rolled in front of the gliders, while two-man crews took turns hoisting each other onto the nose to secure the towline and give the pilots a thumbs-up before disappearing from view. Maintaining the takeoff tempo of a double-tow combo every sixty seconds meant moving quickly and efficiently.

  Dillon, hearing the engines change pitch, leaned into the cockpit, watching from behind the pilots as their tug edged forward, taking up the slack of the S-rolled towrope. All eyes turned to the signalman off to the left of the runway. Tug pilots, unable to see behind them, especially relied on his signal to know when the slack had been taken out of the towropes. As the ropes became taut, the signalman flashed his panel down the runway in a rapid chopping motion—“cleared for takeoff.”

  Straining under the weight of two gliders, the twin Pratt & Whitney engines whined to full throttle. The initial jolt nosed the glider down onto its front skids as they were dragged down the runway. The pilot trimmed the glider back onto its wheels, and as they hit a speed of about seventy-five miles an hour, he pulled back on the controls to get them off the ground.

  Dillon looked to his right, watching as the second CG-4A on double tow took to the air as well. Settling into his seat, he reminded his men not to unfasten their seatbelts until they landed. They’d strapped themselves in for the same reason they strapped down their equipment: turbulence and the potential of a violent landing. Dillon wanted to avoid any needless injuries before they got into the fight.

  Behind them hundreds of additional gliders took to the sky, laboriously circling their way up to altitude and sliding into place in the growing invasion armada.

  Not all takeoffs went smoothly. Lumbering down the runway, Franklin Dentz noticed the glider next to his was already airborne while his continued scraping along on the wood skids. Even the C-47 had taken off. Realizing what was happening, Dentz and several others unbuckled and scrambled to the rear. The shift in weight sent the tail down and the nose up, creating lift and allowing the pilot to pull up just in time to clear the hedge at the end of the runway.

  Pilot Bill Knickerbocker, waiting his turn to take off, pondered the towrope laid out on the ground in front of his glider and daydreamed about nylon. Manufactured by DuPont, the towropes were just one reason why ladies’ stockings had become a rare commodity during the war. Nylon’s strength and elasticity for stretching a third of its length without snapping made it perfect for towropes. In 1944, National Geographic reported that a single 350-foot towrope was equivalent to 1,620 pairs of ladies’ stockings. Knickerbocker contemplated the same number of women, holding hands in their stockings, linking his glider to the tug.

  Allied Parachute Airfields, France. Saturday morning, March 24, 1945.

  Just after sunrise at airfield A-40, Thad Blanchard and the stick of Chalk 41 arrived at their aircraft; the aircrew weren’t there yet. The mood was relaxed but organized. A small group of troopers stepped to the side for a game of craps, throwing more than rolling the dice across the grass airstrip.

  When time came to chute up, they divided into pairs for the intricate ritual of donning their parachut
es. What ordinarily would have been a straightforward process was now complicated by having to route the harnesses around or over canteens, shovels, weapons, medical aid bags, maps cases, and demolition kitbags. During the chute’s opening shock, a misrouted strap could damage equipment or injure the jumper. Special care was taken when tightening the leg straps; no one wanted to ride a pinched testicle on the way down.

  It often took a buddy, if not two, to help a trooper into his chute as he struggled to get the chest buckle closed over all of his equipment. The last item snapped into place was the chest-mounted reserve parachute.

  Once each trooper was kitted up, a jumpmaster inspected him and made any necessary adjustments. Each aircraft had a designated jumpmaster: an officer or sergeant who’d received specialized training. The jumpmasters were responsible for the stick—inspecting their chutes and controlling their actions during the flight. The final inspection ensured the jumper had properly secured his equipment and that none of it would interfere with the chute’s deployment. The last point of the inspection verified that the static line was properly stowed; if misrouted it could prevent a chute from opening and leave a jumper dangling from the aircraft.

  Complicating the process was the special equipment Raff insisted his men carry on the jump. Raff had made Blanchard and several other squad leaders jump with the thirty-one-pound machine gun on their last training drop, to prove it could be done. Now Blanchard’s squad rigged up Rexford Bass with a chest-mounted satchel for his belt-fed machine gun, clipping it to each shoulder of his parachute harness. It was awkward and so long that it dragged the ground as Bass waddled toward the plane. Glenn Lawson strapped on a British leg bag to carry the squad’s light mortar. The bag, attached to his right leg, allowed heavier equipment—like the 60mm mortar or its ammunition—to be jumped rather than dropped in an equipment bundle. Lawson would release it after his main chute opened, lowering the equipment on a twenty-foot suspension line to dangle below him during descent.