Four Hours of Fury

by James M. Fenelon

  The next night, after touring the Eiffel Tower, Napoleon’s Tomb, and the Arc de Triomphe, he ventured out to a show billed as the Olympian Follies. Having heard of the Folies Bergère, he decided to check out what might be a cheaper version of the world-famous revue. Weaving through the dim basement, the mâitre d’ led him to a small table with a good view of the stage.

  When Holden was asked what he wanted to drink, he glanced at nearby tables for clues. The other patrons appeared to be drinking either champagne or orange soda, so he opted for a soda. The waiter asked him for 110 francs—or $2.20—a steep price given that a Coke at the Post Exchange cost 5 cents.

  The cost of the soda was just the first surprise. The Iowa farm boy did a double take when the dancers took to the stage. Each woman’s costume consisted of an almost nonexistent rhinestone ensemble that circled the neck, ran down between her breasts, and tied into a wide belt resting high on her waist. The women completed their outfits with large white feather headbands and high heels.

  Holdren’s eyes grew even bigger when he spotted the lead starlet, who was wearing just a headband and sparkly shoes. Feeling obligated to stay for the whole show—given his soda investment—he ordered a glass of champagne and settled in. Holdren returned to camp the next day penniless but feeling considerably more worldly.

  As in Châlons, economic sanctions in Paris limited a soldier’s purchases to wine, beer, liquor, soft drinks, and costume jewelry. To ease inflation’s effect on the population, the rules required GIs to eat at designated service clubs and prohibited them from dining in restaurants. Allowing the well-paid troops to buy food on the local economy would have soon driven prices beyond the means of most Parisians.

  During his seventy-two-hour pass, John Chester learned the hard way that he shouldn’t question all Army regulations. Strolling down a boulevard, a sign for “American Style Hamburgers” caught his eye and proved too tempting. Having gone without a burger since leaving the States, he eagerly approached the sidewalk concession stand to place his order. The proprietor slid a plate of cold vegetables and bread through the small window, after Chester had handed over his money.

  Confused, Chester complained to the vendor, “I ordered a hamburger!”

  The man shrugged, pointed at the plate, and said, “American style hamburger.”

  Chester dumped the plate and its contents into the trash bin and stormed off.

  Another paratrooper, John Baines, had his brief sabbatical ruined by Axis Sally while sipping a beer in a small bistro. Her German propaganda program readily found an Allied audience willing to endure her often clumsy attempts to lower GIs’ morale in exchange for hearing popular American music.

  Sally got Baines’ full attention when he heard her say, “Welcome to the 17th Airborne Division! We know you’re going to jump over the Rhine River soon, and we want you to know we’ll be waiting to greet you!”

  He noticed everyone in the bar staring at his highly polished paratrooper boots and the 17th Airborne’s golden talon patch on his shoulder.

  Baines raised his glass toward the radio in the gesture of a toast, uttered a curse, and hoped the Berlin Bitch was wrong.

  CHAPTER 2

  THE SPARTAN

  On the road to Brussels, Belgium. Friday, February 9, 1945.

  General Matthew Ridgway, the Americans’ most experienced airborne commander, rattled down a narrow dirt road in the passenger seat of a mud-splattered, olive-drab jeep. Flanked on either side by the towering fir trees of the Ardennes Forest, he and several members of his staff were on their way to Brussels to plan what would be the war’s largest airdrop. It was a week before the troopers of the 17th Airborne would withdraw from the Battle of the Bulge’s blood-soaked front lines and head to Châlons, but events that would determine their future were already unfolding.

  Described as a Roman senator who lived like a Spartan hoplite, Matthew Bunker Ridgway was comfortable with every facet of battle: from carrying grenades and a bolt-action rifle to spearheading invasions as a division commander. His uncanny ability to recall names and his preference for getting information firsthand from as close to the front as possible made him popular with his troops, who, inspired by the two grenades he wore on his combat suspenders, nicknamed him “Old Iron Tits.”

  Commissioned as an officer in 1917, he had missed service in the First World War but spent the interwar years serving in China, Nicaragua, and the Philippines. In 1942 he took command of the 82nd Infantry Division, leading its transition into the Army’s first division-sized unit of parachute and glider troops.

  Ridgway literally jumped into his command of the 82nd. Wanting to be the first man in his new division to parachute out of a plane, he went to Fort Benning, Georgia, for a short familiarization course and one jump. He enjoyed the “beautiful feeling of serenity” during his descent but admitted his landing felt “like jumping off the top of a freight car, traveling at thirty-five miles an hour, onto a hard clay roadbed.” He then traveled to Ohio for a glider flight at Wright Field. It went well, but again the landing didn’t; he had to leap from the glider as it careened down the runway, escaping just before it crashed into a row of parked aircraft.

  At forty-seven, Ridgway, who suffered periodically from bouts of malaria and a debilitating back injury, had known he was putting himself at risk in his new career as a paratrooper. But in spite of his precarious introduction to airborne life and the real threat of permanent injury, he stuck with the 82nd and led the division through the invasions of Sicily, Italy, and France. Now at the age of fifty he commanded the XVIII Airborne Corps, which controlled the deployment of the US airborne divisions, including General Miley’s 17th.

  On his way to Brussels, Ridgway contemplated what senior Allied commanders had already determined, and the Nazis in the German High Command took for granted: an assault crossing of the Rhine River would be necessary to defeat Germany and end the war. Despite the Third Reich being up against the ropes, it was becoming increasingly clear that Hitler had no intention of throwing in the towel; his minions continued to give the Allies a bloody nose at every opportunity.

  While the Germans deliberated over the when and the where of the Rhine crossing, General Dwight Eisenhower, the Supreme Commander of all Allied expeditionary forces in Europe, decided the who would be British Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery. Montgomery in turn would determine the how, and few American generals were happy about that, least of all Ridgway. If his superiors thought he would welcome the opportunity to work with the British and help Montgomery attempt to cross the Rhine a second time, they were mistaken.

  • • •

  In August of 1944, after three months of fighting to gain a foothold in Normandy, the Allies had pushed forward into France. Advancing on a wide front, with British forces in the north and the Americans to their southeast, Allied armored units led a sweeping hook through the country, liberated Paris, and by September the British were in Belgium, poised to attack into Germany through the Netherlands.

  But there had been more than just the enemy to contend with. The more ground the Allies gained, the further they taxed their extended supply lines, constraining the potential of their advance and heightening inter-Allied competition for precious resources. Allied divisions were carnivorous in their consumption of “bullets, beans and batteries,” requiring almost 750 tons of daily supplies for a total of 20,000 tons a day across the entire front. The systematic destruction of the French rail system prior to the invasion forced supply convoys to rely on a network of dirt roads snaking out of Cherbourg to deliver the food, gas, ammunition, and medical supplies necessary to sustain the rolling offensive.

  Montgomery had a solution. Favoring his British forces with the lion’s share of supplies would allow them to punch a hole in the German defenses all the way to the Rhine River and simultaneously complete the liberation of Antwerp’s harbor. Eisenhower considered access to a second port an “indispensable prerequisite for the final drive into Germany.” Supplies flowing fro
m Antwerp would allow the Allies to move materiel to the front more quickly, which in turn meant a faster end to the war.

  Montgomery’s plan, code-named MARKET GARDEN, was considered ambitious by many and a calculated risk by all, but it provided appealing opportunities. The proponents reasoned that if the plan to storm into Germany through Holland went well, the Allies would bag a second harbor and the war might be over by Christmas. It did not go well.

  MARKET GARDEN kicked off on the morning of September 17, 1944, with the American 101st and 82nd Airborne dropping to seize bridges in the Dutch towns of Eindhoven and Nijmegen respectively. The British 1st Airborne Division had the most daring mission: landing on the far side of the Rhine to secure the Rhine bridge at Arnhem, seventy miles behind the German lines.

  The ground forces rumbled forward, led by the British Guards Armoured Division, intending to use the captured bridges to their advantage for the dash into Germany. The advance maintained its fragile timeline for forty-eight hours before German counterattacks and logistical problems unraveled the plan.

  Departing from airfields in England, the three airborne divisions needed more aircraft than could be mustered. Thus, delivery of the complete complement of airborne troops had to be divided across multiple serials, flying in over a multiday period. Unfortunately, an unforeseen weather front descended on England, bringing with it an impenetrable fog and low clouds that further delayed the schedule, forcing men and materiel to dribble in whenever a break in the weather permitted. Additionally, having to defend the landing zones for the arrival of their overdue reinforcements stalled the airborne troops from seizing their primary objectives in force.

  The interrupted timetable forced the British 1st Airborne to alter their plan. Immediately after landing, instead of a full regiment, a mere 500 paratroopers rushed to the bridge over five miles away. Only able to occupy the north side, they were soon surrounded by gray-clad Germans.

  By this point the Wehrmacht’s ranks included pressed-into-service clerks, trainees, and cadets—still, the Germans were successful in severing the Tommies into two groups. The cordon prevented all British attempts to break through to their men at the bridge. With the bulk of the British division still defending the drop zones—lingering there for the anticipated follow-on serials—the men holding the bridge were on their own. It became apparent to the dwindling group that reinforcement now depended on the Guards Armoured Division rather than their own division. But the British tanks were still miles away, encountering heavy resistance as they moved up a single Dutch highway. Hit-and-run ambushes slowed their advance, and waiting for burning vehicles to be towed off the narrow road further hampered momentum.

  After an epic feat of arms lasting five days longer than expected, all of the paratroopers at the Arnhem bridge had been killed or captured. The rest of the division, surrounded with its back to the Rhine, stealthily withdrew across the river on the night of September 25.

  This first attempt to cross the Rhine had cost the British 1st Airborne Division a staggering 1,485 men killed in action and an additional 6,525 missing or captured. Of the 11,920 men who landed on the east bank, fewer than 4,000 made their way back to Allied lines. During the same nine days of fighting—September 17 through 25—the 101st Airborne Division suffered 2,110 casualties and the 82nd lost 1,432 men. Both American divisions continued to fight in Holland, nearly doubling their losses in the following weeks.

  While the Allies seized Antwerp and had punched a narrow corridor to the Rhine, their brief hold on the far side of the river evaporated with the withdrawal of the 1st Airborne Division. Montgomery’s attempt to claim a “ninety percent success” fooled no one. At best, MARKET GARDEN provided an indecisive result. Ridgway, citing a lack of “vigorous command supervision,” viewed it as a British “failure to strike hard and boldly.”

  * * *

  The complexity of Montgomery’s newest plan to cross the Rhine River rivaled both the invasion of Normandy and of Holland. Similar to MARKET GARDEN, the goals were ambitious. This time the prime objective was to seize the Ruhr, Germany’s industrial region, which continued to belch out at a surprising rate the materiel necessary to wage the Nazis’ war. Cutting off the production of their factories and foundries would be another nail in the Third Reich’s coffin.

  But crossing the Rhine could not be taken for granted. Winding over 760 miles, the river is one of the longest in Europe. With an average width of 430 yards, it forms a natural and traditional obstacle to armies intending to force their way into Germany’s western frontier. The ancient fortifications built by the Romans as part of their occupation in AD 6, as well as the dozens of medieval castles dotted along both banks, provide mute testament to the historical importance of this imposing geographical barrier.

  Adopting Montgomery’s proposal would once again require that the British receive the majority of supplies, which incensed the American generals. They felt that the United States’ contribution to the war—almost two-thirds of men and materiel—warranted the lead role in Germany’s defeat. They advocated continuing to push forward on a wide front with both the British and the Americans attacking forward and cited the MARKET GARDEN debacle as evidence against another single-thrust campaign.

  Both plans had merits: a single-thrust focused Allied might, while a broad attack prevented the Germans from massing an effective defense and kept their reserve forces scattered.

  Montgomery argued that ignoring his strategy limited the combat potential in any one sector and kept the Allies competing for resources. Crossing the Rhine in the British sector favored a rapid breakout—once on the other side—and cutting off the Ruhr would be a devastating blow to the enemy. Farther south, where the American forces were advancing, there were fewer options. The mountainous terrain favored the German defenders and retarded a rapid breakout.

  Montgomery maintained that his plan stood the best chance of success. But to execute it he first had to get to the Rhine. To clear the Germans still holding out on the west side of the river he divided his plan of attack into three stages.

  The first two stages would get his divisions to the banks of the Rhine: Operation VERITABLE, with more than twelve divisions attacking southeast, and Operation GRENADE, led by US General Bill Simpson’s Ninth Army advancing northeast. The two attacks would end in a converging assault, known as a pincer movement or double envelopment, crushing the Germans between them. Simpson’s army, consisting of ten divisions of over 300,000 soldiers and 1,394 tanks, would be the only American ground forces participating in the offensive.

  After securing the west bank, which Montgomery estimated would take six to eight weeks, the third stage, code-named PLUNDER, would be a mammoth crossing of the Rhine in early April. During the subsequent sprint to the Ruhr, Montgomery’s forces would bypass the dense urban areas to avoid heavy casualties and instead swarm through the open terrain to surround and isolate the industrial sites.

  Attacking on a twenty-two-mile front, PLUNDER, which necessitated a naval admiral to oversee the flotillas of landing craft, would be the largest river crossing in military history. In support of his final stage of the plan, Montgomery wanted three airborne divisions of nearly 39,000 men to land on the German-held banks of the Rhine to seize vital terrain and secure a bridgehead for his advancing forces. Montgomery and his subordinate commander, Lieutenant General Miles Dempsey, whose British Second Army would spearhead PLUNDER, both stressed that the airborne landings were critical to their plan.

  Eisenhower, after spirited debate within Supreme Headquarters, approved PLUNDER and the supporting airborne mission, code-named VARSITY. Predictably, designating Montgomery to lead the primary push into Germany angered American officers who viewed the British field marshal as an overrated, plodding, political peacock keen for more than his fair share of the glory. The decision inspired one incredulous American general to conclude that Eisenhower was probably the best general the British had.

  • • •

  VARSITY, like all other
Allied operations, obtained its name from a list of available code words consisting of nouns and adjectives culled from an unabridged dictionary. Organizing the logistics for Montgomery’s airdrop would fall to specialists in the First Allied Airborne Army, a unique joint American-British command that reported directly to Eisenhower’s Supreme Headquarters. Airborne Army consolidated the expertise and logistical assets necessary for the increasingly complex choreography of dropping men into battle, which had grown from small battalion-sized operations in 1942 to the multi-division missions of Normandy and Holland. They managed the administration, rather than the direct operational control, of airborne divisions.

  Airborne Army was composed of two subordinate corps, divided along national lines: Ridgway’s American XVIII Airborne and the British I Airborne. After landing and seizing their objectives, the HQ ceded control of the airborne troops to the ground units whose advance they were supporting.

  The Airborne Army’s American commander was General Lewis H. Brereton, by all accounts a fastidious little man who often referred to himself in the third person. He carried a swagger stick and shamelessly courted the press corps. With a wide forehead and nose, he could, on demand, flash an equally wide smile for photographers. Almost as if embracing his reputation as a fop, he had his personal aircraft decorated with the moniker Debonair Duke.

  Brereton, one of the Army’s first military aviators, had earned his wings in 1913 and since then believed airpower alone could win wars. In 1942 he relished being assigned to command the Ninth Air Force, but allowed himself to be distracted by the glamour of its fighters and bombers, ignoring the mundane troop carrier squadrons under his command. Even with deficiencies noted after the July 1943 airdrops in Sicily, Brereton failed to procure the proper radar equipment for his troop carrier aircraft. He also failed to push night navigation training for pilots who needed air time to master that witches’ brew of inexact science and luck.