After the Normandy campaign, we went back to our huts at Donnington Castle, and like the rest of the division, began the recuperation process. The wounded men were cared for in local hospitals and new were replacements were brought in to rebuild company strength. The men who had survived the fighting were moved around or promoted in an effort to make the most of their experiences. Overall life went back to the way it was before the invasion had begun, but as a result of their experiences, the attitudes of most of the invasion veterans were much different.
We continued our training as before, and on a couple of occasions we were formed up for new invasion missions. Each time, however, the missions were called off at the last minute. At least one was cancelled because General Patton was making such great progress with his armored troops that they overran our proposed objective before we could get there. We certainly didn’t mind.
Then about mid September we were formed up for another invasion. This time we were being attached to a British invasion plan that had been developed by General Bernard Montgomery. His plan was designed as a shortcut to end the war by Christmas. The plan was called Operation Market Garden.
Along with the American 82nd Airborne, the British 6th Airborne, and the Polish Parachute Brigade, the 101st would be dropping behind the German lines in The Netherlands. Our objective was to seize and secure a key highway so the British Armored Corps could invade and work it’s way up to the Northern German border. The thought was that this would put out troops much closer to the ultimate goal – Berlin.
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| WACO gliders on the pad at Aldermaston ready for Operation Market Garden |
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Once again I would be entering the battle in a glider. This time however, it would be the smaller American CG4-A WACO glider. D-Day for this invasion was to be on September 17th, but I was not scheduled to go in until the following day.
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I was assigned to glider #1 with the commander of the division artillery forces, General Anthony C. McAuliffe, his aides, and a couple of MP’s. General McAuliffe would become famous later in the war when he delivered his creative one word response to the German request to surrender the town of Bastogne, Belgium. There was also a newspaper correspondent on our glider.
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| General Anthony C. McAuliffe, the 101st Airborne Division Artillery commander, addresses the pilots and crews of the C-47's and the Waco gliders before they take off for their part in Operation Market Garden on September 18th, 1944 |
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Again we were placed in a secure marshalling area at Aldermaston airfield. The first portion of the company left for the invasion on September 17th. This time there was a US Army Signal Corp crew filming the troop muster and march to the planes. That footage is still available, but unfortunately I am not in it. In the film you can also see a couple of British radiomen who went in with our company. They were Corporals Harold Spence and Frederick Arthur Sellers. It was their job to coordinate communications between the 101st and the British 30th Corp column of tanks and vehicles coming up Hell's Highway as our division cleared the way. Unfortunately the glider Frederick was in crashed at Mariekerke. He was badly hurt and died at a hospital a short time later. The other six men on that glider all died immediately in the crash.
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| An image captured from the US Army Signal Corp footage. |
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| Another shot from the Signal Corp film footage. |
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There is also some Army Signal Corp movie footage of General McAuliffe and his aides boarding glider #1 the following day. Unfortunately I was not in that film either, even though I rode on that plane along with another radio operator from my company, Charles Lenzing.
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Just like the Normandy invasion, our flight to The Netherlands was uneventful, well almost. We actually hit a lot of anti-aircraft fire before reaching the landing zone. I do not believe our glider was actually stuck, but all the explosions in the air around us sure made for a bumpy ride. We eventually landed without incident, but I did find out later that the C-47 towing our glider had been hit and one of the engines caught fire. Fortunately the pilot Col. William Whittacre kept the plane in the air and on course.
It was a clear sunny day as we landed on LZ “W”. in the open fields south of St. Oedenrode and north of Son. This area was much larger and more open than what we had in Normandy. As soon as our glider stopped, the door was thrown open and General McAuliffe was out and on the move. A jeep showed up very quickly and ushered him away, although one of his aides stayed around for a while. The Generals aide was very airsick and I had to help him off to the side to sit down.
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I immediately located my company and was put to work at the command post that had been set up in the town of Son (pronounced Zon). Son had been captured the day before, as soon as our troops had landed. The division continued to attack towards it’s other objectives on the day I arrived. Those objectives were southern Dutch towns like Eindhoven, Veghel, Best, and others that were near the highway we were there to secure. However, our command post would stay in Son where we had set up the radios in an apple orchard.
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Again my job was to man the radio and deliver messages to the commanders of our division. I was not involved in the fighting out on the lines, but I did help to coordinate it through communication, that is except for the evening of September 19th. On that evening German tanks and infantry attacked the town of Son from the south side of the Wilhelmina Canal.
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| This map from the book Rendezvous With Destiny shows our landing zones and some of the other key towns of the area. |
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The Division command post was in a schoolhouse near where we had set up our radios and it took a direct hit from one of the tanks. Most of the infantry units were gone to other areas handling their assigned objectives. In a move of desperation, all able bodied men, including all but one radio operator, Gordon Gissenas, were quickly ushered out to form a line of defense and I was with them. As I took up my position in a foxhole, I noticed that even the glider pilots had been rushed to the line like regular infantry soldiers.
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We held off the enemy as best we could with the weapons we had. After about an hour General Taylor showed up with men from the first battalion of the 327th Glider Infantry Regiment. They brought with them a 57mm cannon they had borrowed from the 81st AAA battalion and fired it at the German tanks. A few British tanks were also called in. Thanks to the 327th the attack was soon warded off but we remained our defensive position for the night as a precaution.
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After the attack the 327th formed more organized defensive positions and a battalion of the 506th PIR were brought back to the area to dig in as well. Eventually a jeep showed up to return us to our posts and the next morning the Division command post was temporarily moved to the small town of Wolfswinkel north of Son. Later that afternoon it was moved into a more permanent location in St. Oedenrode.
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| Castle Henkenshage in Sint Oedenrode |
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| Courtyard of Castle Henkenshage |
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The new CP was actually moved into the small castle Henkenshage in St. Oedenrode, complete with a moat. I set up my radio in an abandoned German foxhole across the small road from the drawbridge at the front of the castle. General Taylor’s radioman, George Koskimaki also set up his radio in the ditch. It was a well fortified foxhole with a large mound of dirt protecting it’s top. George and I made the best of it and set up shop.
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Towards the end of September, having achieved it’s objectives in the south, most of the division moved up to the northern part of the Netherlands. We were needed there to support British units who had run into a lot of German resistance. The position our troops moved to was west of Arhnem (the British objective) around the towns of Opheusden, Heteran, Valburg and others. The area was a land mass partially surrounded by the Waal River on the south and the Neder Rijn (Lower Rhine) River on the north. The area was later dubbed “The Island” as a result of this geography.
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The 82nd Airborne Division had captured the town of Nijmegen and it’s crucial bridge on the highway, which we were calling “Hell’s Highway” by then. Early in October, our company was driven up to Nijmegen one afternoon and allowed to take hot showers provided by the Quartermaster Corps.
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| An aerial view of Nijmegen |
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After 63 days of intense fighting in the Netherlands, the 101st was finally relieved from the action. Towards the end of November, we began to leave the Netherlands by truck. We were driven to a place we had not been before, a former French artillery garrison outside the village of Mourmelon-le-Grand, France. Once we settled in at our new home in France we began to rebuild the division and started a training regime again. Passes were also gradually issued to everyone.
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At some point during this time I was given the opportunity to go on leave to the French Rivera. This was a trip that not many men got the opportunity to go on and I am not sure why I was one of the luck men who was selected. We were put on a plane and flown to the south of France away from all signs of battle. Unfortunately time went by very quickly and soon we were being flown back to the Mourmelon area.
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| Charles getting ready to leave for the French Riviera |
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| Charles on leave in the South of France |
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We thought we would be in France for the remainder of the winter, but we received an unpleasant surprise on December 17th when we were told of Hitlers attack in the Ardennes region of Belgium. Even though our division was not completely refitted, we were desperately needed. The situation in the Ardennes was serious and the only available units in reserve were the 101st and 82nd Airborne divisions.
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On December 18th we were told to grab our gear and get ready to move out. Large trucks that were normally used to haul airplanes rolled into camp. We were all piled in the back of these trucks and began the long cold ride into battle. This would later be called a “tailgate” jump since we traded our transport planes for trucks.
Late at night we arrived at a farm and were told to dismount the trucks and “dig in”. We had no idea where we were or where the enemy was. After working on our foxholes for about two hours, the commanding officers returned and told us to pack up because we would be moving locations. Division Signal Company moved into town and set up shop in the basement of a church near Belgian army barracks. We soon found out the name of the town was Bastogne.
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We later heard that the division hospital with all its medics had moved in to take over the location where we had been digging our foxholes earlier. Unfortunately that entire area was later overrun by the Germans. Most of the medical personnel were captured.
The weather was very cold in Bastogne, but was not so bad in the beginning. Unfortunately days later it snowed very heavily and the temperature became a real problem from then on, especially for the troops on the lines outside of town. For the signal company, it was business as usual handling communications for the division. We were also given guard duty assignments standing out in the cold protecting the headquarters.
The Germans eventually surrounded the town and cut off our supply routes. Then they proceeded with a long heavy campaign of bombing the city. One day we heard and felt a large crash next to our communications center. When we went to investigate, we discovered a large German shell had been shot through the roof and landed on the concrete floor in the room next door. Fortunately for us it did not explode.
The bombing and artillery barrages were horrible. Many soldiers and civilians died as a result. I remember watching the nuns from the local church standing in a circle and praying every day during the siege. The cold and lack of supplies also took its toll. Unfortunately due to the poor weather, even our air corps was not able to drop us supplies.
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| Charles Laden in Bastogne, December 1944 |
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Food became so scarce that we even shot some goats and cooked them. The defense of the city itself also became such and issue that almost every able bodied soldier was given a rifle and put in a position. This included cooks, clerks, medics, everyone. I was fortunate my job was so vital that I never had to pick up a rifle.
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Finally on December 23rd the weather cleared a bit. As soon as the ground was visible from the air, our planes filled the heavens. Transport planes dropped supplies and fighters attacked the enemy positions. Those of us who were stationed in the town itself were all given the task of going out into the surrounding fields to retrieve the supply bundles that had been dropped. While I was out there one time, I came across an Army Air Corp reconnaissance man with a table and maps set up in the field. His name was Captain Parker and he and our Lt. George Woldt were on the radio communicating with the planes and giving them information on enemy positions to attack.
As it turns out, our defense of that town while we were surrounded became a real thorn in the Germans side. The German offensive was bigger than we realized, and the media had given it the name “Battle of the Bulge” because of the shape position of the enemy lines made on a map.
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Details of our siege hit newspaper headlines around the world, and the effort to help us became a real priority. This was especially true after the acting commander of the 101st Airborne Division in Bastogne, General Anthony C. McAuliffe, replied to the German request for us to surrender with the single word "Nuts". This act confused the Germans at first because they were not sure what the response meant. Our troops sure knew the meaning though, and when word got around about how the General responded, it gave us a needed boost in our morale.
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| General Anthony C. McAuliffe in Bastogne, Belgium |
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General George Patton and his 3rd Army even changed the direction of their attack and headed our way to help break the encirclement. According to a division surgeon, Doc Ryan, a glider load of 10 to 12 volunteer nurses also came in to help us. On December 26th, the 37th Tank Battalion of Patton’s 3rd Army arrived near the town of Marvie and broke the German encirclement of our positions.
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| Click On The Eagle Patch For Page #3 |
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