Helms still doubted they were going to make it. He crawled back into the glider to call for help on the jeep’s radio. Whoever replied told him to get off the radio. Helms might have had a premonition—he was killed the next day.
• • •
In the same LZ, Bill Knickerbocker and his copilot ran from ditch to ditch trying to get off the LZ. Their plan required patience, since each crouching sprint attracted bursts of enemy fire. Near a farmhouse, Knickerbocker heard a shout from inside, “What’s that Goddamned kid doing out there?”
Americans were inside. Out front a young German boy had stripped down to his underwear and was herding cows into the barn. The boy’s logic was sound; neither side would mistake him for a threat. He successfully got his herd out of the crossfire and disappeared with them into the barn.
Knickerbocker waved his yellow signal scarf toward the house, wanting to be recognized as a friendly. A few seconds later a trooper in a second-floor window waved his scarf back in acknowledgment. As the two glider pilots zigzagged toward the farm, the front door opened for them while the troopers provided covering fire. The pilots tumbled in, out of breath, but safe.
• • •
Fifty-three gliders going into LZ N carried medical teams and equipment. Despite bullets chewing up dirt all around them, the medics went to work almost immediately. Jeeps fanned out to collect casualties and bring them back to surgical teams erecting the division aid station.
As the casualties arrived, medics divided them up by severity. In a process referred to as triage, the wounded were segregated into priority cases—with the more serious treated first. Those expected to die were made comfortable rather than operated on. It was a difficult decision, but the medical teams had to focus on saving those they could rather than try to perform miracles while others bled out. Evacuation to rear-area hospitals wasn’t expected for at least twenty to forty-eight hours, and the field teams stabilized their patients as best they could until such time as evacuation was feasible.
Many troopers would later accuse the Germans of intentionally targeting the medics, who had red crosses over large white circles painted on their helmets. Glider pilot Robert Staub later reported that “four medics in my glider were shot thru the head by deliberately aimed fire.” Medic Joe Leonardo had been machine-gunned in half. “His lower extremities were missing,” recalled one of his buddies.
Sergeant Paul Totten dashed out into the open fields multiple times to rescue the wounded. His actions attracted the attention of a determined German rifleman who singled him out. As Totten dragged a wounded trooper to cover, the rifleman shot him once and his patient twice. Totten managed to get them both to safety, where he treated the wounded man first—saving his life—then patched himself up before running back out to recover more casualties.
One ingenious medic had had enough: at pistol point he ordered a POW to sit on the hood of his jeep while he drove across the LZ collecting the wounded. He made several trips in this fashion, avoiding enemy fire each time.
The medical teams paid a heavy price for their bravery. Sixteen medics were killed and thirty-nine wounded. In spite of their condition, more than a dozen of the wounded medics refused to leave their station, continuing to attend casualties as they were brought in.
German POWs were put to work digging trenches to shelter the wounded from incoming fire. They also served as litter bearers, shuttling the casualties as needed.
11:45. Landing Zone S, Germany. Saturday, March 24, 1945.
Back on LZ S, the glider riders had struck out toward their objectives: the bridges over the Issel. Planners had numbered them for easy reference. Starting in Wesel and moving counterclockwise, the bridges over the canal were numbered 1 through 4 and were to be seized by the 2nd Battalion. Bridges 5 through 10—over the river—were to be taken by the 1st Battalion.
Members of George Company fought their way across the LZ, dodging gliders and bullets, to attack Bridges 1 and 2. Their destination was the far side of the canal, where they were to set up a perimeter and prevent any German attempts to occupy or blow up the bridges.
On the outskirts of Wesel, still 600 yards short of Bridge 1, the troopers went to ground in an open field. Squads of well-armed Germans had barricaded themselves in a cluster of industrial buildings bordering the railroad tracks, and they quickly pinned down the Americans. The buildings were little more than shells of heaped bricks, but the defenders made the most of the crumpled urban redoubt. Squads of glider riders scratched forward block by block to reach the bridge.
Two tanks clanked toward the bridge, trying to sweep the Americans off their objective. The rubble and splintered beams of Wesel were a tank hunter’s playground. Private Robert Geist let the first tank get within fifty feet before firing a high-explosive rocket from his bazooka into the metal monster. The round impacted with an orange flash and tremendous shock wave. Private William Paliwoda took out the second tank from close range as well. The enemy’s first counterattack ground to a halt.
• • •
Farther up the sixty-foot-wide canal, troopers of Fox Company assaulted Bridges 3 and 4. The company already had two coups to their credit that morning. Several of their gliders had landed under fire from a German 75mm howitzer positioned in front of an ornate two-story split-wing estate. The well-positioned howitzer had obliterated multiple gliders as they came to rest. But despite suffering casualties, two squads from Fox Company attacked the gun and swooped into the estate. It turned out to be a regimental command post, and the forty-five-member staff surrendered. The haul included an Oberst, the commanding officer himself. In a similar attack, another platoon from Fox Company sacked the headquarters of Artillerieregiment Elbe, again capturing the commander and his staff.
Within thirty minutes of landing, Fox Company had bagged two regimental command teams and vital intelligence, including maps marked with gun positions surrounding Wesel. As the 2nd Battalion’s after-action report later noted, the “consequent disorganization amongst the Germans was tremendous.”
By 11:45 Fox Company was back en route to their bridges. The large formations of troops cutting across the open terrain proved a tempting target for a German Mk V Panther tank. It opened fire with its 75mm main gun from 500 yards. Private Robert Weber unlimbered his bazooka for a Hail Mary—at that distance the tank would have been difficult to hit, let alone scratch. But with what was later described as a “miraculous hit,” the round either ignited ammunition carelessly stored on the tank’s exterior, or if some witnesses are to be believed, arched into an open hatch. What was not in dispute was the result: the tank “all but disintegrated,” bursting into flames and engulfing the trapped crew in an inferno.
After knocking out several German outposts at Bridges 3 and 4, Fox Company crossed the Issel Canal and captured the bridges intact. With heaving shovels and flying dirt, they dug defensive positions to fortify their perimeter on the far side.
An hour later, at a blocking position 800 yards northwest of Bridge 2, German infantry, led by two Panther tanks, attempted to storm through the glider riders’ flank. The situation was precarious. The glider riders’ anti-tank guns weren’t yet in position and they were on the verge of being overrun.
In a desperate “the ends justify the means” decision, the troopers prodded several of their POWs up onto the road at gunpoint, forming them into a human shield. The gambit paid off and the German attack stalled, allowing one of the anti-tank crews to wheel their 57mm gun into position.
The Panthers spotted them and cranked their turrets around for a shot. Shells shrieked back and forth; it was a race for the first hit. The troopers scored first, knocking out one of the forty-four-ton Panthers. They reloaded and ricocheted a round off the second tank. The Panther’s muzzle barked, and the round splattered into the anti-tank gun with a devastating crash, wounding all four of the crew.
The surviving tank and German infantry fell back, withdrawing toward Bridge 1, where George Company lay in wait. Heavy rifle fire
and the whoosh of a bazooka greeted the Panther as it approached. The rocket disabled the tank, scattering the remaining infantry, who were cut down by rifle fire as they fled.
• • •
Farther north along the river, elements of Able Company had taken control of Bridges 5 and 6 within fifteen minutes of landing. But they were having trouble keeping their perimeter secure. They’d clear a house only to have it later reoccupied by lone snipers. After chasing them out a few times, the troopers simply blasted away with bazookas to burn the houses down.
Gene Herrmann and Phil Snow were two of the first mortar troopers to arrive at Bridge 6. Gliders were still coming in, landing on both sides of the river. Together, the two troopers crawled up the levee to observe their target: a farmhouse already under attack across the Issel. They watched a trooper slink along the façade to throw a grenade through an octagonal window, which silenced the sporadic gunfire from within.
After a salvo of German artillery rounds crashed fifty feet short of the bridge, Herrmann and Snow sprinted across. They found that section of the Issel was only a foot deep due to a closed sluice on the other side of Bridge 5.
They got to their position, and Herrmann went to work laying out the firing points. By the time the others arrived with the heavy mortars, all was in order. One of Herrmann’s fellow troopers had had most of his teeth knocked out in his rough landing. The medics told him his injury wasn’t severe and sent him back to the line.
Frank Dillon’s platoon and the rest of Baker Company went into reserve, setting up positions back behind Bridges 6 and 7. The battalion occupied a shallow, two-and-a-half-mile front along the river. Baker Company would be on call as a quick reaction force in the event of a German breakout at Bridges 5 through 10. Dillon moved between his squads checking on the men and verifying the position of crew-served weapons and individual foxholes.
The troopers tasked with seizing Bridges 7 through 10 found them well protected by dug-in German infantry armed with prodigious numbers of machine guns and automatic weapons. Particularly stubborn defenders held Bridge 7, firing volley after volley of devastating mortar and artillery barrages.
• • •
By the time the B-24s started their supply run, the glider riders had a tenuous grip on Bridges 1 and 2. George Company was strung out and pinned down, and the status of their forward platoons was unknown. Attempts to reinforce Bridge 1 were stopped by lacerating machine gun and small arms fire. Bridges 3 through 6 had been secured, while those farther north remained heavily contested and in enemy hands.
CHAPTER 15
“I SHALL FEAR NO EVIL”
13:10. Drop Zone W, Germany. Saturday, March 24, 1945.
The formations of supply-carrying B-24s, aligning for the target run, had tightened up into nine-plane V of Vs as they passed east of Brussels. First Lieutenant Tom Shafer, flying B-24 Ole King Cole, followed his three-ship formation as they tucked in just behind and to the left of the lead flight. This was the seventeenth mission for Shafer’s crew; two days prior they’d dropped bombs on the German jet airfield at Giebelstadt, which unknown to them had been part of the plan to isolate VARSITY’s battlefields.
Montgomery’s smoke screen had drifted inland on the friendly side of the Rhine as well, bathing the landscape in monochromatic grays and making navigation—already a challenge at low level—even more difficult. Once the pilots were engulfed in the haze, their visibility was reduced to a mere half mile. Stress levels escalated when two high-tension electrical towers emerged out of the smoke.
Shafer had already been flying his ship below a hundred feet, so he reacted to the apparition by going under the power lines; other crews broke high right or left to go above them. The evasive maneuver jumbled the formation, and the pilots steered back into position as they bore down on the Rhine. The lead formations veered south to line up for their approach to DZ W, while behind them the last 120 Liberators peeled off to drop their cargo farther west for the British airborne troops.
As Ole King Cole crossed the Rhine at 150 mph, Shafer passed control to his copilot so he could snap a photograph of their bomber’s shadow skidding across the water. Below them signs of battle flickered past: Allied artillery positions, assault craft traversing the river, and a pontoon bridge under construction. Radio operator Darrell Reed’s brief amusement at seeing cattle stampeding away from the B-24s was replaced by the sobering sight of crashed gliders and dead paratroopers: “We saw the US Army in action. . . . Tanks, guns and all sorts of heavy equipment. . . . Saw homes and buildings, fields entirely burned and blown up.” Ground troops waved or raised their rifles in a jubilant salute.
Off their port wing, Ten Gun Dottie—flown by First Lieutenant Raymond Schultz, a flight school classmate of Shafer’s—nudged in closer for a tight drop pattern. On starboard, P-for-Peter did the same. Ready in the back, the crew waited for the signal to jettison supplies. Ole King Cole’s two waist gunners, Sergeant Thomas Paone and Staff Sergeant Horace Meacomes, traced static lines to ensure they were routed correctly. They’d have just twenty seconds to jettison the cargo within the boundaries of the supply drop point.
• • •
The Ruffians were supposed to have marked the drop point on DZ W with colored panels and red smoke. But unknown to the inbound B-24 pilots, the team of Ruffians assigned to the task had mis-dropped and were unable to get to the DZ in time. Fortunately the navigator in the lead aircraft recognized the DZ and salvoed the bomb bay supplies. The crew in back cursed and pushed out the bundles clustered around the open ball turret and escape hatch.
Taking his cue from the lead aircraft, Shafer raised Ole King Cole’s nose to slow its airspeed, and his copilot hit the bailout alarm to signal the crew. As the A-5 containers dropped from the bomb shackles, Staff Sergeant Edward Cassinari inched out onto the narrow catwalk spanning the open bomb bay to jettison the static lines. In the rear of the aircraft, the three gunners cut the retaining cords and dumped the supplies. Once all were clear, Shafer dropped the nose and increased power as the bomb bay doors rolled closed.
As the four-engine bombers roared past, paratroops watched and noted that some were too low, leaving the chutes insufficient time to open. To avoid the expected flak and small arms fire, many of the pilots had dropped below 300 feet, and some as low as a hundred, forcing them to climb as they approached the drop point. Not all made it back up to 300 feet in time. As a result some of the containers plummeted into the ground, bursting open on impact and littering the field with supplies.
As the first B-24s finished their run and banked right, they flew into a hornet’s nest of enemy small arms fire. The lead navigator later recalled, “The air was filled with an intense storm of 20mm cannon, machine gun and small weapons fire. From my position in the nose, I was sure that the tracers were going to cut my legs off.”
Shafer brought Ole King Cole back down to fifty feet, while his copilot surveyed the instrument panel for the slightest hint of trouble. Behind them stood their navigator, Second Lieutenant Bob Overstake, calling out obstacles. The rest of the crew were now merely observers as Shafer evaded the venomous ground fire. Tracer rounds crisscrossed up from all directions.
Ten Gun Dottie disappeared off their port wing, flaming into the ground like a comet, killing all nine of the crew instantly. The explosion’s huge ball of flame was so close that tail gunner Dick Howell felt the heat from inside Ole King Cole.
Holding into the turn, Shafer kept his bomber just off the wing of P-for-Peter, both ships hugging the ground at fifty feet. Suddenly anti-aircraft fire peppered Peter’s cockpit, slumping both pilots over the controls. From his vantage point Shafer watched helplessly as one of his bunkmates, navigator Eugene Golub, struggled to get out of Peter’s nose turret as the plane pitched into the ground. Just behind Ole King Cole, the bomber Silver Wolf, flown by Second Lieutenant Arthur Keith, raced through the crash’s enormous fireball. From Ole King Cole’s waist window, the last thing gunner Horace Meacomes saw of his friends was “f
our engines rolling across the field and through the hedgerows in balls of fire.” Burning debris spilled across the ground for nearly half a mile.
In a decision later hailed as lifesaving by his crew and reckless by his chain of command, Shafer cut his turn short. Keeping the plane low, he barreled along at treetop level, cutting through a section of burning forest, which subsequently required the removal of charred twigs from the engine cowlings.
Shafer later explained, “Because of ground fire and the loss of two planes that were flying near me, I decided I was too high to be comfortable. So I went down to less than fifty feet.” Egressing just above the rubble-strewn streets of Wesel, Meacomes admitted, “everybody was scared to death.” Though Shafer was threatened with a court-martial for breaking formation and flying too low, his crew adamantly defended his decision. Meacomes later wrote in his diary, “It is almost certain that if he had not done so, we would never have made the return across the Rhine.”
• • •
Behind them, a group of bombers had drifted too far out of position to make an accurate drop. Instead of jettisoning the supplies somewhere on the east bank of the Rhine as instructed, they circled for a second, more accurate pass.
With three bombers already downed by enemy fire, the remaining twenty-three made a wide turn to roar back over the DZ. They lost another aircraft, and a second flown by Captain John Hunter was mauled badly. Despite the severing of the aircraft’s elevator trim tabs and the freezing of its rudder, Hunter and his copilot wrestled the bomber back over the Channel to England for an emergency landing with three wounded aboard.
Nose gunner Jack Young remembered his crew’s ordeal: “Tracers flashed up from 20mm cannons. The first shots hit the aircraft to our right, blowing the number two engine completely off. They veered left 20 feet above in an almost vertical left bank and disappeared from view. The cannons next hit the lead aircraft, blew off the entire left fin and rudder . . .”
Four Hours of Fury Page 31
