Four Hours of Fury

by James M. Fenelon

  • • •

  Over at the 466th Parachute Field Artillery Battalion’s camp, John Chester took notice of the reorganization. His battalion, having operated with twelve howitzers since the previous June, added three more. But something about the new arrivals’ attitude bothered him. Perhaps he picked up on their hesitation. None had fired a howitzer in over a year due to serving as scouts in the division’s reconnaissance platoon. They needed practice, but there were no artillery ranges near Châlons. Seeing that their training lacked the appropriate sense of urgency, Chester suspected the new men would be more of a liability than an asset.

  As his crew had learned, living up to Chester’s standards required maximum effort. The results, however, were hard to argue with: five of the battery’s gunners and three of the section chiefs had been promoted up from his section. But they did get a small break from their rigorous routine when Chester attended a short combat leadership course.

  In spite of his recognized leadership abilities and being “the best gunner in the battalion” (in his own opinion), Chester didn’t consider himself “the military type” nor did he plan to turn his service into a career.

  After returning from the leadership course, he approached his commanding officer, Captain Charles Duree, to share the results of his soul-searching and resign his position as section chief.

  “You’re doing a fine job and that’s why you’re wearing stripes now,” the captain told him, hesitant to accept Chester’s self-demotion.

  Chester replied that he appreciated the compliment but felt that “a career type soldier should be giving the commands that might get some of the troops killed.”

  Duree reluctantly agreed, telling Chester, “You’re my choice but if you want out, we’ll respect your wishes. Who is qualified to take your place?”

  Chester nominated Ralph Foulk, a former section chief whom the previous commanding officer had busted in rank.

  “Who will be the gunner?” asked Duree.

  Chester replied, “That’s me, as long as there is no command authority involved.”

  It did not take long before Chester regretted his decision. Having led his crew through the Battle of the Bulge, he now had a more refined appreciation for leadership and noticed that “Sergeant Foulk was rather hesitant when it came to the making of even minor decisions. He nearly always felt the need of checking with higher authority first.”

  That kind of indecisiveness could sure get people killed, thought Chester. And not just “people,” they were “his boys,” with whom he’d trained and fought for the last two years.

  After watching Sergeant Foulk in action, or inaction, it dawned on Chester that “being a career military man does not mean you will be good at command decisions. On the other hand, being a civilian type doesn’t mean you can’t make proper military decisions if need be.” But it was too late now.

  • • •

  In neighboring camps, shouts of “GO, GO, GO!” could be heard as parachutists used mock aircraft doors to practice their exit drills. Made of wood and constructed to the same dimensions as a C-47’s rear door, the mock-ups helped retrain the muscle memory originally honed at jump school. The men spent hours lining up, left arms raised to guide imaginary static lines, and, following the orders of their jumpmaster, shuffling to the mock door and launching themselves out in the prescribed body position. Snapping into a tight posture and bent slightly at the waist with chin tucked into the chest reduced the possibility of tumbling during the chute’s deployment. Combat equipment made exiting in the correct position more difficult, but a poor exit could result in suspension lines fatally entangling the jumper.

  As the men jumped, they yelled out their count, “One thousand! Two thousand! Three thousand!” and hit the ground a few feet below the door before the final “Four thousand!”

  Instructors reminded them that on an actual jump, if they didn’t feel the opening shock of their chute by 4,000, they had the rest of their lives to deploy their reserve.

  When bored with mock-door drills, they stacked crates into “three-foot towers” from which they leapt to practice their PLFs—parachute landing falls. Executing a proper PLF prevented snapped ankles or broken legs by dispersing the impact with the ground across the jumper’s body. With feet and knees together, jumpers were taught to roll in the direction of the parachute’s drift. Upon the soles of his feet hitting the ground, the jumper curved his body into the roll using the balls of his feet, his calf, buttocks, and push-up muscles to absorb the impact. Those out of practice usually found a textbook execution impossible, and with the grace of a falling sack of potatoes, most only narrowly avoided a “feet, knees, face” landing.

  The refresher training culminated with the troops trucking out to airfields twenty-five miles outside Châlons where the Air Force provided aircraft for both glider flights and parachute drops. The training also benefited the aircrews that had spent the last several months focused on supply runs rather than airborne operations.

  * * *

  On Thursday, February 14, Ridgway met with Montgomery’s Second Army commander Miles Dempsey, the orchestrator of PLUNDER’s execution. Widely regarded by his peers as a humble man, Dempsey preferred to wage his war quietly and readily surrendered the spotlight to his boss, Montgomery, who took more naturally to basking in its glow. But those in high places recognized Dempsey’s talents and unpretentious contributions. During a visit to the front in 1944, King George VI knighted him for his many wartime accomplishments—a rare battlefield honor that was last recorded to have taken place at Agincourt in 1415.

  Ridgway was surprised to find that Dempsey, who was not present at the original planning conference, had developed his own VARSITY plan. Dempsey, either ignorant of or disregarding the previously agreed-upon objectives, wanted one of Ridgway’s divisions to seize the town of Wesel—an industrial community of almost 25,000 inhabitants and an important Wehrmacht communications hub. The second division would link up with Dempsey’s troops crossing the Rhine, while the third airborne division occupied the high ground east of Wesel.

  It was uncharacteristically naïve of Dempsey to task an airborne division with attacking Wesel; they lacked the tanks and heavy artillery required for such an urban assault, which meant the defenders had all the advantages. Knowing senior commanders often wanted to appear “imaginative and bold in their thinking,” Ridgway was used to them reaching for the “magic key” of an airdrop. He’d been fending off misguided proposals that ignored the tactical realities and limitations of airborne troops since the invasion of Sicily in 1943.

  After patiently listening to Dempsey defend his decisions by elaborating on his previous assault experience in Sicily, Italy, and Normandy, Ridgway said he’d be “completely frank” in his assessment.

  He told Dempsey that he seemed to be approaching the landings “purely as a map problem” and “that no consideration appeared to have been given to two fundamental factors, namely, the practicability of the drop area between the city and the hill mass, and the nature of hostile defenses.”

  Ridgway, looking over the map, acknowledged that the plan for the second and third divisions was conceptually sound. However, recollecting a previous study of the area, he reminded Dempsey that his proposed landing zones east of Wesel were “adequate for a maximum of one division,” not three.

  Ridgway concluded by suggesting that Dempsey develop an alternate plan, “because it seemed very likely that the one he proposed would not be practical.”

  Dempsey preferred to wait for Ridgway’s formal assessment before making any modifications. Ridgway agreed to have conclusions ready in four days.

  The next morning Ridgway informed Brereton that Dempsey’s current plans for VARSITY were unsuitable. Ridgway considered sending airborne troops, without armor support, to attack a fortified town, an exercise of “useless slaughter.” In his experience, “the hard decisions are not the ones you make in the heat of battle. Far harder to make are those involved in speaking your m
ind about some hare-brained scheme, which proposes to commit troops to action under conditions where failure is almost certain, and the only results will be the needless sacrifice of priceless lives.”

  • • •

  The Americans, and Brereton in particular, considered Dempsey to have a better understanding of airborne forces than other British ground commanders. Yet Dempsey’s plan baffled the Americans and they closed ranks against it.

  The impasse escalated. Four days later, with the planning process floundering, Eisenhower’s deputy, General Bedell Smith, attempted to arbitrate the matter between Brereton’s chief of staff, Floyd Parks, and Montgomery’s diplomatic and well-respected chief of staff, Brigadier General Sir Francis de Guingand.

  Smith opened by scolding Parks for “putting the cart before the horse.” Before he would agree to involve Eisenhower, Smith recommended Dempsey be given the opportunity to modify his plan—a victory for the planners at Airborne Army. Smith made it clear he knew Ridgway wasn’t a “British man,” but he’d be expected to find common ground on a mutually acceptable plan, just as he had in the past and despite initially resisting their proposals.

  Parks, spreading out prepared map sketches, turned the conversation to the disagreement over the location of drop zones. De Guingand advocated Dempsey’s preference to drop east of Wesel, as opposed to the northwest as originally agreed. Responding to Parks’ protests over the concentration of German anti-aircraft batteries, de Guingand assured him that air support could sufficiently neutralize the defenses to a point where they “would not cause undue damage.”

  Parks reminded de Guingand of his own comments made just fifteen minutes earlier when he had shared recent findings that the number of enemy anti-aircraft positions destroyed by Allied aircraft were “insignificant and but a fraction of the percentage claimed by pilots.”

  Feasibility of suppressing enemy air defenses aside, Parks pointed out that the undulating terrain east of Wesel hindered glider landings and the distance forced a longer march to the objectives. The British tacticians should have recalled the poor decision from MARKET GARDEN, where the distance between the drop zones and 1st Airborne’s objective had factored greatly into their failure.

  “The ideal airborne landing is to land directly on the objective,” an American commander later elaborated. “It is in general far better to take landing losses and land on the objective than to have to fight after landing in order to reach the objective.”

  The need for glider-friendly terrain weighed equally with the need for proximity, and the Airborne Army’s Ground Information Team had armed Parks well. Staffed with experts in photo reconnaissance and interpretation, they specialized in identifying areas suitable for landings and noting hazards of unique concern to parachutists and glider pilots: ditches, fences, power lines, and trees. Poorly chosen landing zones in Burma the previous year had resulted in an Allied glider mission suffering 11 percent casualties and significant equipment losses before the enemy even fired a single shot.

  Parks, supporting Ridgway’s position, refused to yield; de Guingand reiterated Montgomery’s conviction that crossing the Rhine absolutely required airborne support. The committee adjourned after Smith concluded that Dempsey and de Guingand would have to reformulate their plan. Brereton’s staff had done their job, ensuring that their specialized units were deployed in a manner suitable to their capabilities and limitations.

  Simultaneous with the ground planning, debates about the logistical challenges of transporting two divisions over the Rhine were occurring at Airborne Army’s Maisons-Laffitte HQ in Paris. The initial planning focused on lifting the 17th and 6th Airborne, with planners recognizing that if a third division was used, it would drop later.

  MARKET GARDEN had shown that making up for aircraft shortages by flying multiple, round-trip serials could be unreliable. VARSITY needed over 3,000 aircraft to drop the full complement of British and American parachutists and gliders in a single lift. The planners realized that they were over 700 planes short. The deficiency raised the question: Should they just transport one full division or parts of both? They decided to defer the decision until it could be determined how many serviceable aircraft could be scraped together.

  * * *

  The troops were largely oblivious to the arguing and logistical gymnastics taking place echelons above them. Even so, they began picking up clues that an operation would shortly be under way.

  One evening as Frank Dillon and his men ate chow and took a break from training, he noticed fresh paint concealing the unit identification marking on one of the company jeeps. No one was supposed to know it yet, but now Dillon did: the division was preparing to move without being identified.

  CHAPTER 4

  DELIBERATE AND DISCIPLINED

  West of the Rhine River. Early March 1945.

  As the 17th Airborne Division refitted in France, Montgomery’s plan to clear the west banks of the Rhine unfolded in what Eisenhower later described as “a bitter slugging match in which the enemy had to be forced back yard by yard.” The double envelopment of operations VERITABLE and GRENADE slowly pushed the Germans back toward the Rhine. VERITABLE had commenced on February 8, with the British and Canadians attacking from their northern sector with five infantry divisions of over 50,000 men. Fifteen days later the US Ninth Army launched GRENADE, swinging out from the American sector to form the southern pincer of Montgomery’s attack. When the operations were successfully concluded, the Allies would be well positioned to cross the Rhine. But they had to get there first.

  * * *

  Marshaling the opposing forces in Western Europe was Generalfeldmarschall Gerd von Rundstedt, the German Commander in Chief West, who held this post for the second time. His small gray Hitler-esque mustache and deep jowls pulled the corners of his mouth into an omnipresent scowl, complementing his Prussian bearing. The sixty-nine-year-old field marshal, whose family traced their military service back to Frederick the Great, had retired in 1938, been reappointed in ’39, dismissed by Hitler for perceived failures in Russia in ’41, and recalled in ’42 only to be dismissed again by the Führer after failing to stop the Normandy invasion. In September 1944 Hitler called upon him once more to resume his post just prior to the Allies launching MARKET GARDEN.

  Driven backwards since the Ardennes campaign, Rundstedt’s ground strength of eighty divisions appeared to be a force greater than what the Allies had arrayed against him. But by the spring of 1945 the German Army was a tiger on paper only. Declawed by fighting simultaneously on multiple fronts for nearly four years, Rundstedt could muster a capable defense, but little else.

  He knew the undermanned and poorly equipped divisions at his disposal had suffered irreplaceable losses. However, while the Allies enjoyed an advantage of roughly ten to one in tanks, more than three to one in aircraft, and over two to one in troops, Rundstedt planned to exact heavy casualties on the attackers. His commanders would lead a dogged defense for every yard of ground, blunting and delaying the approaching Allies by any means at their disposal. Germany had started two world wars but had yet to experience any ground fighting on its soil; Rundstedt knew firsthand what carnage would be unleashed if the enemy’s grinding momentum crossed into the Fatherland.

  As Montgomery’s divisions closed on the Rhine, they encountered the fixed defensive line of Germany’s West-Stellung. This in-depth defensive perimeter consisted of anti-tank ditches, layers of mutually supportive concrete gun emplacements, and a myriad of engineering obstacles. Constructed by more than 40,000 forced laborers, the miles of fortifications were integrated into the original defensive line known as the Westwall, which had been built between 1936 and 1940.

  Hitler, with an unshakable faith in his own unique genius to fathom the front line situation from Berlin, wanted all of Germany’s might concentrated on stalling the Allied advance. This was critical. He was convinced that with enough time he could either reverse the course of the war or cause such a crippling number of Allied casualties that th
ey would agree to a negotiated conclusion. His certainty of victory deluded the naïve and inspired the zealots into believing that prolonging the war could salvage the Third Reich.

  To gain that time, Hitler demanded a hold at all costs strategy—a maxim he’d been hammering into the Wehrmacht since 1941. There would be no abandoning defensive positions for more favorable ground—ever.

  Hitler’s willingness to disregard the fundamentals of defense for what he viewed as the bigger political picture didn’t permeate down to his tactical commanders, many of whom were well-trained and experienced combat leaders capable of managing their dwindling assets with deadly competence. Contrary to Hitler’s belief that fortified positions discouraged aggression, his underlings knew falling back to more advantageous terrain was often tactically sound. Nevertheless, facing enemy guns was one thing, disobeying the Führer was another matter. Thus field commanders fought desperate battles of attrition, splintering any hope of keeping their units intact as effective fighting forces.

  As they were pressed farther into Germany, commanders requested permission to partially withdraw some of their forces over the Rhine. They wanted to take advantage of the river as a natural obstacle and establish an in-depth defensive line along the far bank, from which they believed they could stop the Allies. Their requests were met with consistent and unequivocal rejection. “My generals only look behind them,” Hitler often lamented.

  In the first week of March, Montgomery’s pincer attack converged at the German town of Geldern, located just sixteen miles from the Rhine. The Wehrmacht had put up a stubborn defense, inflicting over 20,000 Allied casualties, but at a staggering cost: an estimated 20,000 killed and more than 50,000 of their own captured.

  The Allies continued rolling the Germans up along the banks of the Rhine. To the south the Americans were advancing through Luxembourg on their way to Remagen. At Geldern, Rundstedt’s forces still on the western side of the river, with their backs to the Rhine, were encircled on three sides by the uniting of Montgomery’s armies. The holdouts formed a half-moon defensive perimeter. A wide arc—roughly thirty miles long—ran from Xanten in the north, southwest to Geldern, and then southeast back to the Rhine at Duisburg. Centered on the town of Wesel, located on the east bank, the “Wesel Pocket” stretched sixteen miles deep from its apex near Geldern to the Rhine.