Four Hours of Fury

by James M. Fenelon

  In the other marshaling camps, Miley’s troops were learning the details of their specific roles.

  Camp A-40, Chartres, France. Tuesday, March 20, 1945.

  Thad Blanchard’s squad, along with the rest of the 1st Battalion of the 507th Parachute Infantry Regiment—Raff’s Ruffians—traveled over 140 miles by train to get to camp A-40, located west of Paris, at Chartres. The regiment’s other two battalions staged out of airfield A-79 near Prosnes, just twelve miles due north of Châlons.

  Like newly arrived convicts, the GIs strolled along the seven-foot fence line in small groups inspecting its thoroughness and heckling the MPs outside the wire. Counterintelligence agents roamed the camp, keeping their eyes and ears open for lapses in security and randomly spot-checking troopers, patting them down for diaries, letters, and other sensitive documents.

  Overall, the troops were impressed with the camp. Here the mess tents had wood flooring and electric lighting. Some of the men made their stay even more luxurious by smuggling in bottles of champagne.

  The heat of the bright, sunny day brought out the dusty smell of the canvas tents. While waiting for their briefings, many of the troopers took advantage of the sports equipment and the pleasant weather to organize games of horseshoes, softball, football, and volleyball. Some troopers used their downtime to gamble, read, write letters, or just lie on a blanket and loaf in the sun. Outdoor speakers blared songs by Glenn Miller, the Mills Brothers, Tommy Dorsey, and other popular musicians. The occasional news broadcast kept the soldiers informed of current events.

  While some pined for distractions of the outside world, others got down to the task at hand. Clustered to the side of the sports fields, small groups of men whetted the blades of their fighting knives, shaving the hair off their arms to dramatically demonstrate their razor sharpness. Others, hoping to avoid getting that close to the enemy, meticulously cleaned tommy guns and loaded extra ammunition magazines. Some troops dragged their cots out into the sun to field strip and oil their rifles.

  One of Blanchard’s fellow paratroopers recalled, “Days before the operation we went to the marshaling area and were sealed in. . . . But we didn’t mind it because the process was much more like a religious knight fasting before an important ceremony. As a matter of fact, like monks we couldn’t afford to think of anything but what we had before us.”

  Contrary to the cavalier simplicity of his briefing to the British, Raff had a comprehensive plan for his combat team. He assigned each of his three infantry battalions a specific role in accomplishing the regiment’s mission to “liquidate the enemy” occupying the Diersfordt Forest.

  Raff’s regiment, divided into three serials of over forty planes each, were jumping into Drop Zone W—or more simply DZ W—an open area of farmland hugging the boundary of the forest. At their first briefing Thad Blanchard’s squad learned the Ruffians were slated to be in the vanguard of the invasion, jumping in first.

  After assembling on the western edge of the DZ, Blanchard’s 1st Battalion, commanded by Major Paul Smith, would form Raff’s reserve element. There they would wait for orders to either seize the wooded area to the northwest or assist one of the other two battalions who would be simultaneously seizing sectors of high ground to the north and southwest. The Ruffians also had an archaic objective in their area: a castle. Raff had noticed the small group of buildings surrounded by a moat when studying the mosaics of aerial photography and recognized its potential as an enemy strongpoint. He decided they needed to storm Diersfordt Castle.

  Blanchard’s squad studied maps and aerial photos of the DZ. They noted it was roughly egg-shaped: 2,000 yards long on its east-west axis and 1,500 yards wide. At just over a mile inland from the Rhine’s east bank, they’d be landing closest to the river, making them the first to greet the advancing British Tommies of Montgomery’s 21 Army Group—if all went according to plan.

  The DZ, essentially solid farmland, did however contain a number of obstacles: the forest’s fifty-foot trees bordered the north and west, with shallow drainage ditches and wire fences crisscrossing the open fields; along the northern boundary ran a single-track, narrow-gauge railroad line parallel to a main road. An embanked road also bisected the DZ. The squad noticed that the roads each had twenty-five- to thirty-foot telephone or power line poles running along both sides. No one wanted to get entangled in those.

  Huddled over aerial photographs, Blanchard and the other troopers could see enemy trenches dug along the road. They also recognized that the road could facilitate the rapid movement of German troops and tanks into their DZ.

  Blanchard reminded his men to pay attention to their flight path. Knowing the aircraft would pass over the DZ from west to east gave them a handy navigation reference. After landing, all they had to do was face the same direction as the departing aircraft and turn left. They’d then be facing north, the direction they needed to move to find the assembly point on the edge of the woods.

  • • •

  Dropping with the Ruffians in a fourth serial of forty-five planes would be the 464th Parachute Field Artillery Battalion, or “Branigan’s Bastards” as they’d dubbed themselves. Commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Edward Branigan, the Bastards were newcomers to both the division and the war itself. They’d joined the 17th in Châlons as part of the division’s reorganization, arriving just nine days before moving into their marshaling camp, A-80, at Mourmelon-le-Grand.

  During those nine days, Branigan thought Miley’s staff kept “coolly distant, and never really made us feel accepted.” He admitted it felt like being “the bastard son at the family reunion.” Ironically, Raff warmly welcomed the Bastards, despite their lack of combat experience.

  The two commanders viewed themselves as outsiders. Branigan, a thirty-six-year-old lieutenant colonel, had started his military service as a private in 1933 when he enlisted in the New York National Guard. A year later he earned his commission and then steadily rose through the ranks surrounded by West Pointers. Raff, in spite of his West Point pedigree, viewed most of his fellow officers as politicians rather than warriors, and he took pleasure in distancing himself from them. The two developed an immediate rapport.

  Camp B-54, Achiet, France. Tuesday, March 20, 1945.

  After departing Châlons on the evening of March 19 in staggered groups, the paratroopers of the 513th Parachute Infantry Regiment took seventeen hours to make their way to their marshaling camps.

  When they disembarked from the train, they were amused by the heavy-handed security: the station’s signs had been covered up. While it impressed the replacements, the old hands wondered if the Army realized it was more important the Germans remain oblivious to their location than that they themselves be kept in the dark.

  The paratroopers milled about in the dark smoking and waiting to board the cargo trucks for the final stretch of their journey. They didn’t know it at the time, but they were in the sleepy village of Bapaume, which had been leveled by German shells in the First World War. After an uneventful fifteen-minute ride, they arrived at the airfield designated B-54, near Achiet. Because they’d all be taking off from the same airfield in the larger-capacity C-46 Commandos, the regiment’s two marshaling camps were located next to each other.

  • • •

  The rank and file of the 513th PIR embraced the superstition of the unlucky number thirteen in their unit’s designation. While historians have never agreed on the origins of the cultural phobia, the paratroopers didn’t spend much time dwelling on it. As Private Harold Green recollected, “We were called the ‘Thirteeners’ and wore our parachute insignia on the opposite side of our cap than the others did. The day we were activated . . . we had 13 paratroopers jump from a plane numbered 13, at 1,300 feet at 1300 hours.”

  Legend has it that the first man to jump, Captain John Spears, carried a black cat out the door with him. The daredevil feline was incorporated into the regiment’s insignia, which featured a wide-eyed Disney-esque black cat with pants bloused into the tops of it
s jump boots. “Little Joi,” as the mascot was known, was portrayed in an aggressive pose, descending through the clouds under a black parachute canopy and wielding a bayonet-tipped rifle. The bayonet was covered in blood to eliminate any doubt about the cat’s ferocity. In another nod to superstition, a monstrous number 13 dominated the background. A favorite regimental pastime was a game called “Matching the thirteen in 513,” which consisted of downing thirteen beers in a single sitting.

  The thirty-six-year-old regimental commander, Colonel James Coutts, shared his men’s sense of humor. He was a 1932 graduate of West Point who, when asked about his academic achievements, joked, “I ranked 20th in my class . . . 20th from the bottom.” What he lacked in academic discipline, he made up for in physical pursuits. He ranked second in his class for horsemanship and excelled at boxing. Coutts volunteered for parachute duty in 1941 and enjoyed the demanding physical training. As a captain in Miley’s first parachute battalion, his name was one of those engraved on the first Prop Blast mug.

  • • •

  In the planning tent at camp B-54, First Lieutenant Ed Tommasino, a company commander in Coutts’ 2nd Battalion, shouted, “Issue the tissue, you’re wasting the tax payers’ money!” This was Tommasino’s way of telling his men they were expected to take notes.

  Tommasino became Dog Company’s second commanding officer after his predecessor had been killed in the Ardennes. He wouldn’t be their last.

  Among those with pencils poised was Private Curtis Gadd. Wiry, with a cocksure smile that revealed his fondness for mischief, Gadd had held a high-paying, draft-deferred job with Thompson Aircraft Products, a defense contractor. But after being asked, “Why ain’t you in the Army?” one too many times, he volunteered to enlist. After his induction he volunteered again to join the paratroops, motivated by the extra $50 a month, which would soften the blow of his pay cut.

  Undoubtedly Gadd’s commanding officers wished he’d stayed back in Ohio. In his first year of service the rise and fall of his rank reflected his boredom with garrison life: private, private first class, technical sergeant 5, technical sergeant 4, private, sergeant, private.

  It’s possible Gadd holds the Army’s record for the fastest double demotion. The same morning he was busted in rank from technical sergeant 5 to technical sergeant 4, he thought he’d get a laugh by attaching the new rank to his fatigues with laundry pins. He made it until lunch, when an officer spotted him in the chow line and busted him down to private. Trying to get rid of the troublemaker, his commanding officer “volunteered” Gadd for pathfinder training, hoping he’d wash out and be reassigned elsewhere; but no such luck. He made it.

  Gadd’s true character was revealed in combat, where he shined, earning a Silver Star for bravery, a Bronze Star, and two Purple Hearts.

  In the briefing tent Tommasino oriented the men to the map: the rough rectangle of the regiment’s drop zone, DZ X, was located two and a half miles northwest of Wesel. It was approximately 2,500 yards long by 1,000 yards wide with two distinct features: a series of ninety-foot-tall, T-shaped steel pylons supporting high-tension power lines cutting diagonally across the western section, and a double-track railroad—the Wesel/Hamminkeln line—running along the western boundary. Like all farmland in the area, the zone was littered with small fences and dirt roads. Several wooded areas, with trees ranging from thirty to seventy feet tall, dotted the terrain as well. Reconnaissance photography revealed enemy positions peppering the DZ.

  The lieutenant pointed to the railroad line and told the men that in the event they got lost, just head west until they ran into it.

  The Thirteeners would be flying twelve minutes behind the Ruffians and into the farthest point of the bridgehead. Once assembled, they were expected to clear their zone of enemy positions and establish their section of the northern perimeter along the Issel River. Gadd’s Dog Company and the rest of the 2nd Battalion would seize the high ground on their side of the Diersfordt Forest while the other two battalions occupied positions along the Issel and established roadblocks against potential enemy incursions from the north.

  In his written operations order, Colonel Coutts hinted at a possible shortage of body bags, reminding each battalion commander to bring mattress covers and safety pins, but he hoped they wouldn’t need them.

  The twenty-three-year-old Gadd “had absolutely no apprehension about the jump, just looked forward to it as a great exciting adventure.” He recalled that “morale among all of us appeared to be extremely upbeat.”

  Private Jerzy Spitzer, a twenty-two-year-old whose family had escaped the Nazi occupation of Poland, had more on his mind. Just before the operation he wrote to his father, “I am not afraid of anything, and I do not worry about myself. I am fighting and working for my ideals and believe that God will help me. My ideal is that all people are individuals and should be treated as such, regardless of their origin, understanding of God, and appearance. That is my faith, ideal, and religion. The goal of my life is to do whatever I can to spread that faith among people, so that finally everybody may recognize that truth and unite as citizens of the world and live together in friendship, so that the ideals of peace on earth, goodwill toward everyone, and brotherhood among men should be realism in life, thinking, and deeds of men.”

  The letter would arrive almost the same day as the notice informing the Spitzer family their son had died of wounds suffered in Germany.

  • • •

  Texan Lendy McDonald, a twenty-year-old staff sergeant, and his platoon spent hours each day studying maps to memorize the terrain, the location of their assembly area, and routes to their objectives. McDonald took his responsibilities as a platoon sergeant seriously, ensuring each of his squad leaders understood their assigned tasks. As members of Able Company in the 1st Battalion they were responsible for setting up roadblocks.

  To aid the troopers the regiment’s S-2 intelligence section constructed a twenty-foot terrain model. Terrain models—or more informally, sand tables—were large, shallow-framed wood boxes filled with dirt that could be shaped into hills and valleys to match the operational terrain. The scale was dictated by the string grid pattern over the table, held in place by evenly spaced nails along the frame. The pattern replicated the kilometer grid squares on the issued maps.

  Creative flourishes brought the sand table to life: ration boxes for buildings, sprinkled weeds for wooded areas, various colors of string for roads, streams, and railroad tracks. Other markers indicated assembly areas, objectives, and enemy positions. The tables gave troopers a three-dimensional interpretation of the terrain. When they were coupled with maps and aerial photographs, the men developed a mind’s eye view of the geographical features that would help orient them to the ground on which they’d be operating.

  On the second day in camp, someone from the intelligence section added to the table a note card with “2,200” written in red—the expected number of enemy troops on, or surrounding, DZ X.

  “There were only about 1,500 of us and this bit of news was alarming as hell,” recalled Sergeant Mac McKirgan.

  Perhaps the estimate was alarming, but McKirgan also noticed, “The increase in morale these days was truly amazing. These guys had really come to life. This type of operation was their forte. This was what they had been trained for and they were looking forward with gleeful anticipation.”

  With each visit to the planning tent McDonald and his platoon noted an increase in the number of dots indicating enemy anti-aircraft positions. Daily reconnaissance flights provided a mountain of material, and intelligence teams worked in twenty-four-hour rotating shifts to plot the new information. Estimates of enemy troop strength were continually revised. As the men studied their predicament via aerial photographs and the sand table, the regiment’s motto came to mind: “Sequitis bastatii.” Roughly translated, the Latin meant “Follow the son of a bitch.”

  As one trooper clarified, “It doesn’t mean to follow your leader. It means get after the bloody enemy. It means get
the Krauts whether a sergeant is in front of you or not.”

  Based on the growing number of enemy emplacements, McDonald and his men agreed that, upon landing, they wouldn’t have any trouble finding plenty of sons of bitches to go after.

  • • •

  VARSITY would be the first airborne mission of the war to be conducted in “enemy” versus “occupied” territory, and the implications weren’t lost on the troops. Each briefing generated new rumors. Wherever the men gathered to clean their weapons, pack supplies, or wait for chow, they shared the latest scuttlebutt.

  “The Germans are committed to hold or die.”

  “The Rhine River has never been crossed by an invading army since Napoleon.”

  “Old men, women and children have been trained to maim or poison us.”

  “Sharpened sticks have been set up to run us through as we land.”

  “Wide areas have been wired to detonate when the landings are made.”

  Some thought Hitler might finally resort to poison gas. Indeed, Supreme Headquarters sent down an official memo drawing attention to “the possibility that the Germans will employ gas as an extreme measure.”

  • • •

  Often coupled with swapping rumors was the inevitable debate about taking prisoners. Specifically, what to do with them: take or kill them?

  “We had direct orders,” said Private John Cobb, a replacement from New Jersey. “We weren’t allowed to shoot anybody that surrendered. . . . They just preached and preached to us. Don’t shoot nobody. Don’t shoot nobody.” However, several officers followed the official position with unofficial wisdom: “If you do, make sure you don’t do it out in the open.”