"Another thing," he went on, rubbing his face. "I don't want to see any of you running around in Holland in wool-knit caps. General Taylor caught a 506th man wearing one of those hats in Normandy and gave me hell for it. Now, I don't want to catch hell, see, and I know you don't, so if you've got to wear a wool-knit cap, keep it under your helmet. And don't let General Taylor catch you with that helmet off.
"I know you men can do all right, so I don't have to talk about fighting. This is a good enough outfit to win a Presidential Citation in Normandy. Now, you old men look after the replacements, and we'll all get along fine."
Webster recorded that it was always a pleasure to listen to Sink, because he had a sensible, realistic, humorous approach to combat. General Taylor was his opposite,- in Webster's opinion Taylor had a "repellently optimistic, cheerleading attitude. Colonel Sink knew the men hated to fight. Up to the end of the war, General Taylor persisted in thinking that his boys were anxious to kill Germans. We preferred Colonel Sink."
On September 16 Private Strohl, who had been in the hospital since June 13, got a one-day pass from the doctors. He hitched a ride to Aldbourne, where he ran into Captain Sobel, who was ferrying baggage back to Membury. Sobel told Strohl that the company was about to go into action; Strohl said he wanted to join up and asked for a ride to the airdrome.
Sobel warned him, "You're going to be AWOL." Strohl responded that he did not think he would get into big trouble by choosing to go into combat with his company, so Sobel told him to hop in.
"It was a stupid thing to do," Strohl said four decades later. "I was as weak as a pussy cat." But he wasn't going to let his buddies go into action without him. He got himself equipped and climbed into a C-47.
Popeye Wynn, who had been shot in the butt helping to destroy the battery at Brecourt Manor on June 6, had been operated on and was recuperating in a hospital in Wales when he was told that if he was absent from his company for more than ninety days, when he was listed fit for combat, he would be assigned to a different outfit. Wynn wanted none of that. He persuaded a sergeant who was in charge of releasing the patients to send him back to Aldbourne with light-duty papers. He arrived on September 1, threw away the papers, and rejoined the 3rd platoon.
He was not fully recovered. During the flight to Holland, he stood up in the back of the stick, as he was too sore to sit. But he was there, where he wanted to be, going into combat with his buddies in Easy Company.
8 "HELL'S HIGHWAY" *
HOLLAND
September 17'-October 1,1944
It was a beautiful end-of-summer day in northwest Europe, with a bright blue sky and no wind. The Allied airborne attack came as a surprise to the Germans; there were no Luftwaffe planes to contest the air armada. Once over Holland, there was some antiaircraft fire, which intensified five minutes from the DZ, but there was no breaking of formation or evasive action by the pilots as there had been over Normandy.
Easy came down exactly where it was supposed to be. So did virtually all the companies in the division. The landing was soft, on freshly plowed fields, in the memory of the men of Easy the softest they ever experienced. Webster wrote his parents, "It was the most perfectly flat jump field I've ever seen. Basically, Holland is just a big, glorified jump field." The official history of the 101st declared that this was "the most successful landing that the Division had ever had, in either training or combat."1
1. Rapport and Northwood, Rendezvous with Destiny, 269.
The only problem Winters could recall was the need to get off the DZ as soon as possible to avoid getting hit by falling equipment and landing gliders. "It was just raining equipment," he said: "Helmets, guns, bundles." Malarkey remembered running off the field to the assembly area (marked by smoke grenades). He heard a crash overhead; two gliders had collided and came plummeting to earth. There was no German opposition on the ground; the company assembled quickly and set off toward its objective.
The objective was the bridge over the Wilhelmina Canal at Son. The route was over a north-south road that ran from Eindhoven to Veghel to Nijmegen to Arnhem. The road was part asphalt, part brick, wide enough for two automobiles to pass each other but a tight squeeze for two trucks. Like most roads in Holland, it was a meter or so above the surrounding fields, meaning that anything moving on it stood out against the horizon.
The road was the key to Operation MARKET-GARDEN. The task for the American airborne troops was to take control of the road and its many bridges to open a path for the British XXX Corps, with the Guards Armored Division in the van, to drive through to Arnhem and thus over the Lower Rhine River.
Easy landed about 30 kilometers behind the front line, some 15 kilometers north of Eindhoven. The 506th's initial objective was Son, then Eindhoven, which meant the initial march was south. The regiment moved out with 1st Battalion going through the field to the west of the road, 2nd Battalion down the road, 3rd Battalion in reserve. Second Battalion order of march was D Company leading, then E Company, Battalion HQ, and F Company following.
The column entered Son. The residents were drawn up on each side of the road, as for a parade. Unlike Normandy, where the French villagers mainly stayed out of sight, the Dutch were ecstatic to be liberated. The parish priest, Hussen of Son, handed out cigars. Orange flags, forbidden by the German occupiers, flew from the windows. People gave the passing paratroopers apples and other fruit. Bartenders opened their taps and handed out glasses of beer. Officers had a hard time keeping the men moving.
Emerging from Son, less than a kilometer from the bridge, the column was fired on by a German 88 and by a machine-gun, both shooting straight down the road. There were no casualties. D Company covered the right side of the road, E Company the left. They pushed forward, firing rifles and lobbing mortar shells, which silenced the opposition. But the Germans had done their job, delaying the advance long enough to complete their preparations for blowing the bridge.
When the lead American elements were 25 meters or less from the bridge, it blew in their faces. There was a hail of debris of wood and stone. Winters, with Nixon beside him, hit the ground, big pieces of timber and large rocks raining down around him. Winters thought to himself, What a hell of a way to die in combat!
Colonel Sink ordered 2nd Battalion to lay down a covering fire while 1st Battalion looked for a way to get over the canal. Cpl. Gordon Carson of Easy spotted a couple of waterlogged row-boats on the far side and decided on immediate action. He stripped stark naked, made a perfect racing dive into the water, swam across, and fetched a boat that carried some men from the first squad about halfway over the canal before it sank. Other men from 1st Battalion, more practical, took the doors off a nearby barn and with the help of Sergeant Lipton and several E Company men laid them across the bridge pilings. The German rear guard, its mission accomplished, withdrew. Engineers attached to the regiment improved the footbridge over the canal, but it was so weak that it could bear only a few men at a time. It took the battalion hours to get across.
It was getting dark. Sink got word that the Guards Armored Division had been held up by 88s a few kilometers south of Eindhoven, and he did not know the state of German defenses in the city. He ordered a halt for the night.
The platoon leaders posted outposts. Those not on duty slept in haystacks, woodsheds, whatever they could find. Privates Hoobler and Webster of Sergeant Rader's 2nd squad, 1st platoon, found a farmhouse. The Dutch farmer welcomed them. He led them through the barn, already occupied with regimental Headquarters Company ("You shoot 'em, we loot 'em" was its motto), who resented their presence. On to the kitchen, where the Dutchman gave them half a dozen Mason jars filled with preserved meat, peaches, and cherries. Hoobler gave him some cigarettes, and Webster handed him a D-ration chocolate bar. He sucked in the smoke greedily—the first decent cigarette he had enjoyed in five years—but saved the candy for his little boy, who had never tasted chocolate. Webster decided on the spot that he liked the Dutch much better than the British or French.