Four Hours of Fury

by James M. Fenelon

  • • •

  On March 11, he and Staub reported to the OSS office in Paris, located on the once rollicking Avenue des Champs-Élysées. From there they were driven to a safe house in the suburb of Poissy on the edge of the Saint-Germain Forest. Private First Class David Doyle, assigned to the team in a support function, described the three-story timber-and-stucco château and its surrounding grounds as “palatial.”

  The other members of the group, divided into a headquarters element and the agent teams, were already there. In addition to Steltermann and Staub, the eight other agents were an international collection of Americans, Frenchmen, Belgians, and a former member of the Luxembourg resistance. Steltermann was happy to find fellow Specialist X First Class Leo Jungen assigned as a wireless operator for the headquarters element. The two had met during their naval training in Indianapolis. Jungen, a native German speaker from Iowa, had been recruited at the same time as Steltermann.

  Captain Stephen Vinciguerra commanded the sixteen-man detachment, collectively code-named Algonquin. Vinciguerra, a former stockbroker and native New Yorker, was well suited to lead the team. He’d served as an instructor for teams parachuting into occupied France and had jumped into Holland during MARKET GARDEN. There he served as a liaison officer furnishing American airborne troops with reports from OSS agents in the field. While in Holland he observed that the initial confusion of an airborne drop might be an ideal way to infiltrate agents into enemy territory. VARSITY provided the opportunity to validate his hypothesis.

  He’d spent the interim working with Ridgway’s corps during the battle in the Ardennes, where he infiltrated agents and recruited local informers and guides, as well as secured safe houses for future missions.

  • • •

  At the well-appointed manor Steltermann, Staub, and the others were briefed on their mission: they were going to be inserted into the battlefield during the chaos of the airborne landings to gather tactical intelligence for Ridgway’s XVIII Airborne Corps. Vinciguerra had divided Algonquin’s agents into four teams of two, all of which were to be equipped with radios. Their reports would be made immediately available to Ridgway’s intelligence team via Vinciguerra’s co-located field detachment. This allowed for quicker processing of agent reports to supplement information gathered from conventional patrols and prisoner interrogations.

  Steltermann and Staub, dubbed Team S&S, had the diciest mission: dressed as Wehrmacht soldiers, the pair were going across the Rhine in the back of a glider. For transportation they had a captured a Kübelwagen, the German equivalent of a jeep made by Volkswagen. It easily fit in the back of a glider, and OSS communication specialists had already rigged the four-door, open-top vehicle with modified long-range radios. They hoped to land on the edge of the LZ in order to quickly flee into the enemy lines.

  Team Poissy, consisting of the two Frenchmen, would be dressed and documented as foreign civilian workers. They were arriving in a separate glider headed into LZ S alongside Team S&S. The agents of Team Alsace, both of whom spoke German, planned to conduct their mission as a composite team: one in German uniform, the other in civilian clothes. Outfitted with standard US Army radios normally mounted on backpacks, both teams were jumping in with Raff’s Ruffians, with the thirty-pound SCR-300 radios concealed in civilian suitcases. These two teams planned to take advantage of the pandemonium, slip through German lines, and proceed to predetermined points to set up concealed observation posts and report back to Vinciguerra’s command element still on the DZ. They’d then mingle with the inevitable flow of retreating civilians and soldiers, reporting as they went for as long as they felt safe.

  Team Student, the two French-speaking Belgians, would also be disguised as foreign civilian workers. As the reserve team, their first priority would be to find a safe place on LZ N to hunker down, await orders, and stand by to pursue intelligence requests as the situation developed.

  The missions were a variation of what the OSS called “tourist” drops: shorter-duration assignments wherein the agent made his or her way back to friendly lines on foot after parachuting in as either a German soldier or a civilian. The agents were to make note of enemy troop movements, identifying insignia, depots, and anything else of interest. The risky technique allowed for the collection of intelligence in a sector to the front of advancing Allied army groups. The OSS had given up on infiltrating agents overland through the front line due to the inherent dangers coupled with the risks of minefields and growing enemy counterintelligence measures.

  But help from the OSS was frequently unwelcome. Conventional soldiers often viewed the OSS’ cloak-and-dagger work as unnecessarily dramatic and of questionable value. Because the organization was known for recruiting Ivy League talent and female spies, its detractors referred sardonically to it as “Oh So Social” or the “Office of Sexual Satisfaction.” Indeed, the OSS had already disappointed Brereton’s Airborne Army planners by being unable to provide local guides or any intelligence for the immediate vicinity of VARSITY. But Vinciguerra had formed a good working relationship with his counterparts on Ridgway’s staff. They’d initially viewed the attached OSS field detachment as a distraction, but in Holland and the Ardennes, Vinciguerra had worked diligently to add value and build relationships with the skeptics. His efforts paid off, and both the OSS and Ridgway’s XVIII Airborne Corps staff later complimented his contributions.

  • • •

  The agents had twelve days to prepare. While they worked, Steltermann and Staub practiced their German and sang Wehrmacht marching songs, including the anthem of the Nazi Party, the “Horst Wessel Song”—also known by its opening line, “Die Fahne hoch”—“Raise High the Flag.”

  The two knew their cover required absolute attention to detail. During the week, the intelligence section at Airborne Army again vetted their identification, verifying that their “assigned” German units were still in the Wesel area. Issued what captured German rations were available, they supplemented them with civilian provisions. The OSS could only procure two Wehrmacht maps of the area, and Allied photoreconnaissance stills and maps complemented the agent’s briefings. Like their airborne counterparts they spent a lot of time studying the terrain. They also memorized their ciphers and rehearsed radio procedures.

  They planned to conceal their German uniforms under olive-drab American mechanic coveralls, which they would wear when in the marshaling camp and during the flight. They tied down a tarp emblazoned with a large white star over the hood of their Kübelwagen. They would remove it once they were off the LZ and driving into the German lines, pretending to be frantically escaping the Allied landings. Both men practiced driving the Kübelwagen and familiarized themselves with its working components, including changing tires.

  Steltermann and Staub would carry captured German MP-40 submachine guns and pistols. Both operatives were already familiar with the enemy weapons.

  * * *

  On Tuesday, March 20, Ridgway sent a quick note to Bud Miley sequestered at camp A-80: “My present schedule may prevent seeing you before you leave. I know you and your 17th will do a splendid job, and give the German another lesson he will never forget. We will support you in every possible way. Good luck and God bless you. . . . Faithfully, M.B. Ridgway.”

  Undeniably, Ridgway’s schedule had been full. Not only had he been attending to VARSITY’s hundreds of operational details, but also to those of CHOKER II, the 13th Airborne’s new mission. After much haggling, Eisenhower had released the 13th Airborne from VARSITY to support Omar Bradley’s crossing of the Rhine at Worms.

  Ridgway had also been heavily engaged with VARSITY’s contingency planning. The expected “what if” scenarios had to be scrutinized and allowed for—the first “what if” being, what if foul weather grounded VARSITY’s aircraft? That eventuality could lead to only one airborne division being able to take off or, alternatively, neither taking off. The planners considered that while conditions might allow troop carrier units in France to fly, the opposite could
be true for the RAF in England, where inclement conditions and fog “so thick you could tack pin-up pictures to it” often curtailed flight operations.

  Ridgway advocated that both divisions depart from France to mitigate poor weather, but the limited number of airfields on the continent negated this option. Thus the RAF and 6th Airborne would stage and depart from fields on England’s east coast.

  Should the weather hamper either division, the delivery of a lone division into the combat zone would leave Ridgway with just a single option: seize all of the airborne objectives with the one division. It would require a monstrous improvisation of the plan, spread the division too thin to effectively hold all of the objectives against the assured German counterattack, and create the potential for a slaughter. Ridgway opposed this option vehemently and recommended VARSITY be canceled in its entirety should weather prevent one of his divisions from taking to the air.

  Brereton overruled him: in the event the weather “what if” became a reality, the operation would proceed as scheduled. To be disregarded by a senior officer with no experience leading men in ground combat must have been a bitter pill for Ridgway, who’d learned his lessons the hard way. He later wrote that a commander who “forgets that he is dealing with men’s lives, and through callousness or stupidity sacrifices them needlessly, is more butcher than battle leader. He is a fool and not a guiltless one.”

  Ideal weather conditions for the drop would be at least three miles of visibility, a ceiling over 1,500 feet, and winds on the landing zones less than twenty miles an hour. Additionally, Ridgway and the Air Force planners wanted forty-eight hours of clear weather before D-Day to conduct anti-flak operations and interdiction bombing at German airfields.

  As the Allied meteorologists noted, March in northwest Germany “is not a pleasant month.” They estimated that only half of the days between March 15 and April 15 would meet operational conditions, and they projected that planners could expect, at best, just two periods of uninterrupted good weather for three consecutive days.

  Montgomery believed VARSITY critical enough for his crossing that in February he’d agreed to postpone PLUNDER by up to five days should the Air Force be grounded.

  But shortly before D-Day he appeared to have a change of heart. Representatives from his 21 Army Group requested Brereton’s Airborne Army draft an alternate plan should the weather prevent VARSITY. PLUNDER would launch on schedule, and Montgomery now wanted the two divisions to drop twelve miles farther east, near Erle, within twenty-four hours of weather scrubbing VARSITY’s current plan.

  Brereton would rush an alternate plan, but only if the British complied with a forty-eight-hour window, not twenty-four, for anti-flak operations and re-briefing the airborne divisions. Montgomery agreed, while Ridgway begrudgingly accepted the two-day lead time, having requested three from Brereton.

  The alternate plan had problems. The drop area near Erle was barely large enough to accommodate two divisions, and dropping farther inland would put them beyond the range of friendly artillery, a prerequisite Ridgway had demanded of the British for VARSITY in the first place.

  Revising the flight plans was no simple matter either. The Air Force had just finalized the air routes to Wesel on March 20. The alternate drop near Erle, where the concentration of flak batteries was described as “a formidable issue,” required reworking the routes from scratch. Any delay of VARSITY created aviation-resourcing challenges for CHOKER II, which was already stretching the number of available aircraft.

  The planning materials for the Erle drop—maps and aerial photographs—were distributed to Miley’s intelligence officers in the marshaling camps, who tucked them away. No one would distract the troops with “what if’s” now; they had plenty of realities on which to focus.

  • • •

  General Ridgway visited the troops at one of the marshaling camps on the same day he’d written Miley the good luck note. Stepping into a baseball game as a pinch hitter, he immediately regretted his vigorous swing at a fastball as the sudden twist enflamed his old back injury. Ridgway waved off the next pitch and left the game as gracefully as possible.

  He summoned the corps surgeon to tape up his torso. “The pain was excruciating,” he later confessed. “I remember lying on a board in my room one evening, trying to sleep, for lying on a mattress on a saggy Army cot was agony. I was trying not to move a muscle, but even so, spasmodic and convulsive reflex actions of the muscles deep in my back sent such waves of pain shooting through me it was hard not to yell out loud.”

  He spent the next several nights trying to sleep on the board, his mind filled with apprehension that the injury, which had flared up multiple times during the war, would end his career. The injury may have influenced his decision to cross the Rhine via boat rather than parachute, a choice that would later generate criticism.

  • • •

  Gliders were an essential component of the Allied airborne capability, but also a continual pain point for the logisticians at Airborne Army. Comedian Bob Hope often joked about them in his USO show, telling the audience that “a glider pilot in Texas once asked me to fly with him. I told him I was not interested in his three-knot ship.

  “ ‘What do you mean, three-knot?’ he said. ‘They’re faster than three-knots.’

  “ ‘They’ll always be three-knot ships to me,’ I told him. ‘Not comfortable . . . not safe . . . and I’m not going.’ ”

  For Brereton’s planners there was a fourth knot, as in not having enough of them. The demands of supporting both VARSITY and CHOKER II, scheduled to launch within days of each other, taxed their ability to field the required 1,832 serviceable gliders.

  There were multiple reasons for the shortages, but the primary one was lack of foresight. While gliders weren’t considered expendable, operational landings often damaged them, and recovery required significant logistical effort. Additionally, the constant exposure of the gliders’ wood and fabric to rain and heavy storms destroyed many of the aircraft. The Airborne Army needed a steady supply of gliders to maintain its inevitably shrinking inventory, and the shortage reflected both the realities of getting them to Europe and poor asset management.

  • • •

  Gliders were a simple and cheap solution to a complex tactical and technical problem: landing an organized unit of troops in an area inaccessible by traditional aircraft, with weapons and equipment impractical to drop by parachute.

  The gliders’ lack of engines provided several advantages, not the least of which was a lower production cost. But more significant was the relatively low wing load, which gave them a higher glide ratio and thus a far lower landing speed. A low landing speed required less distance and therefore allowed the gliders to land in smaller fields.

  America’s combat glider, designated Cargo Glider 4A—or CG-4A—lacked any pretense of aerodynamic aesthetics. Its appearance was so awkward one pilot, upon seeing it for the first time, exclaimed, “It’s all right to fly a box car, but why fly it sideways?” Passengers didn’t care for the glider’s ungainly appearance either, often referring to it as a crate or a flying coffin.

  The pilot and copilot sat side by side in the snubbed nose of the glider, which was hinged across the top, lifting upward to facilitate the loading and unloading of cargo. Large Plexiglas windows riveted into the metal frame of the cockpit provided a wide arc of visibility. Under the nose, three parallel wooden skids allowed the pilot to bring the full weight of the glider to rest upon the front end and thus reduce the stopping distance on uneven terrain.

  To support heavy loads the cargo area had a heavy-duty, honeycombed plywood floor with a load-bearing capacity of 4,060 pounds. It was durable enough to sustain the wear and tear of loading and unloading jeeps, artillery, and small bulldozers. Removable wooden troop benches served as seating for thirteen combat-equipped men, and four small circular portholes on each side provided limited visibility for the curious. Personnel exits were located on each side of the fuselage.

 
However functional, the design contained critical flaws. The unique ability to load and unload cargo through the uplifted nose, originally hailed as a strongpoint, became the source of complaints after combat experience revealed that most gliders “ended up against fences, stone walls, or trees, thus making it almost impossible to remove the combat cargo.” The cockpit design also required the pilots to scramble back over their seats and into the main compartment, often over the cargo, to egress the glider after landing. A repeated—and repeatedly ignored—request from combat-savvy pilots called for the installation of escape panels in both sides of the nose or a redesign of the large windows to double as emergency exits.

  • • •

  Operation MARKET GARDEN had required using 90 percent of the Americans’ on-hand inventory of CG-4As. The Air Force Commander in Chief pressured Brereton to recover as many as possible. He wanted to avoid a repeat of the poor retrieval efforts in Normandy, where 97 percent of the gliders used in the invasion still sat rotting.

  Repair and recovery teams scoured the LZs in Holland for salvageable gliders. What they found was appalling: mangled cockpits, broken landing gear, sheared wings, and pilfered instrument panels. In many cases, fabric had been ripped off the fuselage in great chunks for foxhole covers. Troopers also cut out huge sections around the Army Air Force insignia to secure to the hoods of their jeeps so Allied aircraft overhead could identify them.

  Using small bulldozers, the mechanics towed the abandoned gliders into corners of the LZs and started field repairs. Using spare parts and components stripped from airframes too damaged to fly again, they cobbled together airworthy gliders. The recovery mission suffered a major setback when a storm swept through Holland, destroying over a hundred of the recovered gliders. Upon conclusion of the two-month effort, only 281 of the 2,000 gliders—barely 14 percent—had been retrieved.