Four Hours of Fury

by James M. Fenelon

  One of the quartermasters’ duties would be to set up the division’s collection point for the dead. The Graves Registration Collecting Point, as it was officially called, would be sited in the southern section of DZ W and close to the area designated for corralling POWs. If timely evacuation of the bodies wasn’t feasible, prisoners would dig the temporary graves.

  • • •

  At airfield A-40 near Chartres, Sergeant Thad Blanchard’s squad rode out to the flight line in the back of open cargo trucks. Each chalk had crowded into an olive-drab truck; twelve troopers sat on the folding benches along each side, with several others standing in between, holding on to whatever or whomever they could. Each trooper was fully kitted up: helmet, parachute, field equipment, and weapon.

  Jumping from the tailgate, Blanchard’s men made their way to the C-47 chalked “41.” A line of paratroopers waiting to jump was referred to as a “stick,” and each man was assigned a place in the stick order. There’d be no confusion; everyone knew his place.

  The troopers assigned to Chalk 41 split up to prepare the aircraft. With the help of the crew they removed the cargo door. The hinges on the trailing edge of the door were taped over with copious amounts of duct tape. Any offending protuberance perceived to be sharp enough to potentially fray a jumper’s static line as he went out the door was smothered by tape. Inside the cabin Blanchard inspected the installation of the steel-braided anchor line cable to which the parachute’s static lines would be attached, ensuring there were no frayed or broken strands.

  The men worked together to rig their five external equipment bundles under the plane. The canvas bundles were big and bulky and, at an average of 200 pounds, awkward to handle. Four of the five bundles contained 940 pounds of 60mm mortar rounds and ammunition for the belt-fed machine guns.

  Each bundle required a cargo parachute, which in the case of Chalk 41, were all red-canopied chutes. Colored, twenty-four-foot canopies were used to help identify the contents once on the DZ. The SOP required red and yellow be used for ammunition and explosives, green for signal gear, white for medical supplies, and blue for rations. Those were the standards, but sometimes the troopers had to use whatever color they had available.

  Raff’s Ruffians also packed up their allotment of M18 recoilless rifles. Following Miley’s plea, Airborne Army had managed to procure thirty of them for his division, and each regiment received ten. Troopers constructed wood crates for the recoilless rifles so they could be dropped as external loads; they were too big to jump with individually.

  Idle troopers loaded ammo belts and automatic-rifle magazines while others took a break to flip through their recently issued Pocket Guide to Germany. The forty-nine-page pamphlet, small enough to fit in the breast pocket, provided troops with an overview of the Nazis’ rise to power and some guidance that Mom back home would have agreed with: “Respect property rights, vandalism is inexcusable. . . . Unauthorized appropriation of food stores is contemptible and punishable by court martial.” It also contained sage advice: “Be on guard, stay vigilant . . . trust no one but your own kind . . . be fair, firm, aloof and aware.”

  Others studied their maps. Due to their potentially scattered landing patterns, paratroops required more maps than ground units, who went into battle with their leadership structure in place. Ideally, each trooper got a map. The advancing Allies’ demand for paper was such that maps were often printed on the reverse side of captured enemy stocks. Many troopers discovered German invasion maps of England on the back of their Allied invasion maps of Germany.

  • • •

  At the Ruffians’ other airfield, A-79, Staff Sergeant Bill Consolvo listened as his company commander, Captain Bill Miller, went over their plan one last time.

  Consolvo, a Normandy veteran, recalled, “I thought we were pretty well prepared as long as everything went as planned. . . . What made it interesting was the fact our portion of the sector contained historic old Diersfordt Castle, which we knew would be strongly defended.”

  Before dismissing his men, Miller held up a folded, worn American flag. Ensuring everyone could see it, he announced, “Before the sun goes down tomorrow night, this flag will fly on high over Diersfordt Castle!”

  The troops filed out and returned to their tents. Lying on his cot, Consolvo thought, Wouldn’t it be a thrill to run that flag up the pole tomorrow!

  • • •

  Sergeant John Chester and his crew at airfield A-80 muscled the crated components of their 75mm howitzer into the racks underneath their C-47. Their six bundles had the added complexity of being daisy-chained together—linked by canvas straps long enough not to interfere with the parachutes while ensuring they didn’t separate during descent.

  They used a forklift to load the door bundle, an unwieldy combination of the howitzer’s two big rubber wheels, the breech assembly, and ten rounds of high-explosive ammunition. Chester sent one of his crew over to the supply tent to procure what they called “broom handles”—thirty-inch dowel rods over which they could roll the 720-pound monster.

  Chester kept busy focusing on the task at hand, double- or triple-checking the little details. The big stuff was out of his control anyway, and focusing on specific tasks distracted him from dwelling on his chances of getting injured or killed. He repeated the mantra, There is a job to be done and I am going to do it! He suspected his fellow troopers felt the same: “They may have been a lot of things, but they weren’t cowards.”

  Even if they were scared, and certainly many were, they wouldn’t have given voice to it. In their 1945 study of combat stress, Drs. Grinker and Spiegel noted that paratroopers almost uniquely adopted an air of “belle indifférence” in the face of fear. The report described the culture that Miley’s early efforts to build esprit de corps had helped produce: “These men, who face the highest casualty rates and the most difficult situations in combat, have a group attitude which does not permit free expressions of anxiety and fear. In an atmosphere where everyone is tough, rough and ready for the worst, anxiety cannot be verbalized or socially accepted.”

  No one volunteered to be a paratrooper so he could serve with guys who wanted to talk about their feelings. Obviously, no topic was off-limits between close buddies—but as a group they wanted to fight alongside the best, and that meant those who concentrated on the job. Competence and trust were their most valued qualities. Discussions of fear and uncertainty were a waste of time and dangerous. No one wanted to go into combat alongside a doubter.

  • • •

  After spending the day preparing their equipment at airfield B-54, the Thirteeners of the 513th Parachute Infantry Regiment now turned to preparing for the next day’s jump. Borrowing a warrior tradition from Native Americans, they psyched themselves up by shaving one another’s heads, leaving a narrow tuft of hair in the style of a Mohawk.

  Life magazine photographer Robert Capa loved it, capturing the ritual with his ever-present camera. A lean paratrooper, with a lathered head and a cigar butt clamped in his teeth, obliged Capa by striking a dramatic pose while shaving his own Mohawk. A Signal Corps photographer caught another group of eleven troopers sitting one in front of another shaving one another’s heads with their razor-sharp fighting knives.

  Capa later wrote, “Before their battles, the old Huns and Greeks used to sacrifice white horses and other expensive animals. That afternoon, the U.S. airborne soldiers sacrificed most of their hair, shaving it off in Indian fashion.”

  Over in Able Company’s cluster of tents, Texan Lendy McDonald and Ben Scherer spent the evening with their comrades talking and playing cards. They were a tight group, having served together since May 1943—they’d fought leg tankers at Fort Benning; broiled under the merciless sun in North Carolina and Tennessee; braved U-boats while crossing the Atlantic; and to a man had almost frozen to death in the Ardennes. And of course they’d all lost buddies. Who better to jump into Germany with than someone who’d gone through all of that with you? The next day they’d be heading bac
k to a world where everything would be against them—the enemy, the weather, the very ground itself would try to resist them. But today they bonded with those willing to stand beside them. They were a fortunate bunch indeed.

  As the sun went down, a deep shade of purple consumed the sky, and Bud Hutton, a reporter for Stars and Stripes, stumbled on a curious ritual. A group of Thirteeners had tied one of their own to a fence post, started a fire at his feet, and with their rifles raised over their heads begun whooping and hopping in circles around him. With their Mohawks and emotion on display, Hutton later admitted, “You had to look pretty hard to be sure it was a mock dance.” Looking on with interest, Jim Coutts, the regimental commander, nodded to his executive officer and said, “They’re ready.”

  Later that evening the Thirteeners of Easy Company gathered in the mess tent to polish off a few beers. The twelve-ounce cans had to be punched open with a church key, and the contents were low on both taste and alcohol, but that didn’t bother the boisterous crowd. At one point Private First Class Stuart Stryker from Oregon jumped up on a table and declared that tomorrow “he was going all out and that he wouldn’t be coming back.” Whether it was the beer talking or a gift for prophecy, Stryker was right.

  • • •

  Helmut Steltermann and fellow OSS agent Robert Staub, along with Team Poissy, arrived at airfield A-58 under the cover of darkness after having navigated back roads from their safe house in Paris.

  Team Algonquin had split up that morning: Team Alsace, with their radios packed in a parachute container, left for airfield A-40 near Chartres, and Team Student proceeded to A-41. Steltermann’s team, wanting to avoid unwanted attention during their journey, had covered the hood of their Volkswagen with tarps and stuffed their German uniforms and weapons into duffel bags. A separate vehicle with an OSS colonel on board led the small convoy in case they were stopped by curious MPs. Captain Vinciguerra and wireless operator Leo Jungen, who’d arrived earlier to coordinate their arrival, met them at the gate and escorted them through security. Once onto the airfield, they drove down the flight line to the last glider, Chalk 80.

  Their two pilots had been waiting for them and after brief introductions helped the team properly secure the Volkswagen inside. When they were satisfied that everything was in order, the agents retired to their assigned tent for a few hours of rest.

  * * *

  It had been a busy day for the senior Allied commanders as well. Brereton was in Brussels settling into his forward HQ from which all of the air operations were being coordinated. Ridgway had moved farther forward and closer to the Rhine to establish his command post. To get a better view of tomorrow’s battleground he folded himself into a two-seater light observation plane for a reconnaissance flight along the river’s west bank. Cramped next to the pilot, Ridgway prayed that his Novocain treatment would prevent his back injury from flaring up again. The shot did the trick, and he completed his reconnaissance without incident. While Ridgway took care of last-minute details, his former boss, Omar Bradley, held a press briefing.

  Whereas American generals had more or less heaped their joint disdain on Field Marshal Montgomery, Bradley served as the British bête noire. He’d elicited the wrath of no less than Winston Churchill, who referred to him as a “sour faced bugger who would not listen.”

  Almost as if pulling a trick from Montgomery’s own playbook, Bradley issued a statement to the correspondents gathered at his 12 Army Group HQ: “Without benefit of aerial bombardment, ground smoke, artillery preparation and airborne assistance, the Third Army at 22:00 hours Thursday evening, March 22, crossed the Rhine River.”

  Patton, who’d launched a second American crossing some eighty miles downstream from Remagen, at Oppenheim, had egged Bradley to do it. Patton had implored him the night before, “Brad, all the world must know that the Third Army was able to cross before Monty in the north!”

  In his memoirs Bradley, recalling the final push into Germany, captured the prevailing American sentiment at the time: “Had Monty crashed the river on the run as Patton had done, he might have averted the momentous effort required in that heavily publicized crossing. Fourteen days of preparation had given the enemy sufficient time to dig in with artillery on the far shore.”

  He just couldn’t resist rubbing it in. The announcement, intended to needle Montgomery the day before his own crossing of the Rhine, clearly juxtaposed the Americans’ hasty crossing with the Brits’ more deliberate and yet-to-be-executed operation. By referencing four components of Montgomery’s plan, three of which were already in progress, and mentioning airborne troops, Bradley displayed a lapse in professional judgment and a flagrant breach of security.

  He wasn’t alone, though. If the Germans needed any more confirmation of the pending airdrop, they got it from no less than General Eisenhower himself. Later that same day, a commentator at Radio Luxembourg—the Allied propaganda station—read a proclamation addressed to the entirety of the German armed forces:

  The Supreme Commander of the Allied forces has come into possession of a secret order issued by the German High Command on October 18th, 1943, and supplemented by another order dated October 1944. This secret document orders the execution of Allied airborne soldiers.

  The Supreme Allied Commander therefore addresses to you the following strict warning:

  One: You may encounter large or small formations of Allied paratroopers or airborne troops in the course of the war at any time. These units may be dropped behind your lines.

  Two: You are expressly warned that these units are no “terrorists”—they are soldiers who are doing their military duty in accordance with their orders.

  Three: The execution of uniformed airborne troops and parachutists is therefore an offense against the recognized laws of warfare.

  Four: All persons—officers, soldiers, and civilians who have any part in the ordering or carrying out of the above-mentioned order issued by the German High Command will be severely called to account and punished according to military law.

  The same applies to any order which may meanwhile have been issued or may be issued in the future. The excuse of having “only carried out orders” will not be recognized.

  From Berlin, Reichsminister Joseph Goebbels radioed a broadcast directed at Germany as well, but with quite a different call to action:

  The terror raids have destroyed our cities in the West. Our starving women and children along the Rhine have taught us how to hate. The blood and the tears of our brutally beaten men, our despoiled wives and murdered children in those areas occupied by the Reds cry out for revenge. Those who are in Werwolf declare in this proclamation their firm, resolute decision; sealed with their oath, never to bow to the enemy, even though we suffer the most terrible conditions and have only limited resources. But to meet the foe with resistance, to defy him, despising bourgeois comfort and [we] shall face possible death with pride and we shall revenge any misdeed which he commits against our race by killing him. Every means is justified if it helps to damage the enemy.

  The Werwolf has its own courts of justice which decide the life or death of our enemy as well as of those traitors among our people. Our movement rises out of our people’s desire for freedom and is bound up with the honor of the German nation whose guardians we consider ourselves to be. If the enemy feels that we are easy game and that the German people can be driven like slaves; as he has driven the Rumanian, Bulgarian or Finnish people to deportation, to hard labour in the tundras of Russia or the coalmines of Britain or France, then let him know that in those areas of Germany from which the German Army has been forced back, there will arise an adversary with which he had not reckoned, but who will be more dangerous to him, who will fight without regard to so-called, old-fashioned, concepts and bourgeois methods of war, which our enemies adopt only when these are of advantage to them, but which they cynically reject if these bring no such advantage. Hate is our prayer. Revenge is our battle cry.

  As part of his total war stratagem Goe
bbels had revealed the existence of a Nazi guerilla army and encouraged the populace to join them in terrorizing and assassinating Allied soldiers as they advanced into Germany. Propaganda radio echoed the rallying cry, attempting to ignite a shadow resistance movement hungry to “drown the enemy in a sea of blood.”

  Goebbels had again demonstrated his adroitness for twisting reality. His Werwolf guerillas largely existed in his imagination, but the Allies didn’t know that. Instead they now believed they’d be the targets of fanatical hit-and-run attacks. Goebbels’ speech imprinted a more sinister structure on what up until then had seemed, and in reality were, isolated, emotional attacks by foolish civilians.

  Any GI unsure of how to react to being fired at by civilians would quickly get over his hesitation. Incoming bullets could kill regardless of who pulled the trigger, and the GIs would shoot back—with overwhelming firepower. All Goebbels had really accomplished was to turn German civilians into Allied targets.

  • • •

  Montgomery’s retort came a few hours later. At 20:00 his 21 Army Group instigated PLUNDER with an earth-shattering artillery barrage fired from over 3,400 howitzers. Described as “breathtakingly fearful but, at the same time, exhilarating,” the salvos would continually pound the far side of the Rhine with shells and rockets for the next thirteen hours. It was an unprecedented display of Allied might; in some cases the howitzers were so densely packed the gunners had aligned them wheel-to-wheel for over a hundred yards.

  An hour into the bombardment the first assault wave of Montgomery’s redcoats crossed the Rhine, released with the code words “Two if by sea.” Earlier that afternoon Montgomery had received confirmation from Brussels that Brereton had given formal approval for VARSITY. There’d be no postponement of the airdrop. His plan unfolding as designed, the field marshal went to bed at 22:00 as per his custom—it was just another day in a long war. Thirty minutes after he was tucked into his personal caravan, complete with a bathtub and a porcelain sink, a deep and steady droning cut through the cacophony of the artillery barrage. The RAF had arrived.