They took off again for the tanks, caught up, and Gordon pulled himself onto the back of one. But Strohl was dead beat. He put his hand up; Gordon grabbed it as Strohl passed out. Gordon hauled him aboard and got him secured.
Randleman, who had been in the van, got hit in the shoulder and cut off from his squad. He ducked into a barn. A German soldier came running in behind him. Randleman bayoneted the man, killed him, and covered his body with hay. Then he covered himself up with hay and hid out.
Once in town, men found shelter in buildings that they used as cover to move around and set up some semblance of a return fire. Easy managed to hold up the Germans but was unable to force them back. Sgt. Chuck Grant got hit, among many others. Pvt. Robert Van Klinken was killed by a machine-gun burst when he tried to run forward with a bazooka. Pvt. James Miller, a nineteen-year-old replacement, was killed when a hand grenade went off on his kidneys.
Pvt. Ray Cobb had the shakes. Webster heard Sergeant Martin comforting him "the way a mother talks to a dream-frightened child: 'That's all right, Cobb, don't worry, we're not going back out there. Just relax, Cobb, take it easy.' "
Martin went over to a Cromwell, hiding behind a building. He pointed out the church steeple and asked the commander to take it out, as the Germans were using it as an observation post.
"So sorry, old man, we can't do it," the commander replied. "We have orders not to destroy too much property. Friendly country, you know."
The Germans kept pressing. Their aim was to get through to the highway leading from Eindhoven to Nijmegen—"Hell's Highway," as the 101st named it—and cut it. But they could not get through Nuenen.
Winters had decided to withdraw under the cover of darkness, but before giving ground he wanted a prisoner for interrogation. He called for volunteers for a patrol. No one volunteered. "Sergeant Toye," he called out. "Yes, sir, I'm here." "I need two volunteers."
Toye selected Cpl. James Campbell and a private and set out. They were tripping over British and American bodies as they made their way to a nearby wood. A German soldier fired at them. Toye told his men to stay put. He crept into the woods, went around the German, got behind him, and gently placed his bayonet against the man's back. The soldier gave Toye no trouble. Pushing the German ahead of him, Toye returned through the woods and delivered his prisoner.
The company retreated to Tongelre. Winters noticed that the Dutch people who had been cheering them in the morning, were closing their shutters, taking down the orange flags, looking sad and depressed, expecting the Germans to reoccupy Eindhoven. "We too were feeling badly," Winters remarked. "We were limping back to town."
After getting his men settled down and fed, Winters went to battalion HQ. He found Lieutenant Colonel Strayer and his staff laughing it up, eating a hearty supper, in a jovial mood. Strayer saw Winters, turned, and with a big smile asked, "How did it go today, Winters?"
Tight-lipped, Winters replied, "I had fifteen casualties today and took a hell of a licking." The conversation in the room came to an abrupt stop.
Easy got one break that day. The company bedded down in Tongelre, so it watched, rather than endured, a seventy-plane Luftwaffe bombing mission against the British supply column in Eindhoven. As the Allies had no antiaircraft guns in the city, the Germans were able to drop bright yellow marker flares and then make run after run, dropping their bombs. The city was severely damaged. Over 800 inhabitants were wounded, 227 killed.
The next morning, Strayer moved his other two companies into Nuenen. They found Sergeant Randleman holding the fort.
The German tanks had moved out, to the northwest, toward Son. Company E set up close-in defenses around Eindhoven and stayed there two days.
On the morning of September 11, Winters got orders to mount his men on trucks. The 506th was moving to Uden, on Hell's Highway, to defend the town against a Panzer attack that the Dutch underground warned was coming from Helmond. Regimental HQ Company, with Lt. Col. Charles Chase (the 506th Regimental X.O.) in command, accompanied Easy and three British tanks in an advance party. There were only enough trucks for the 100 or so men of HQ Company plus a platoon of Easy. Winters, Lieutenant Welsh, and Captain Nixon joined the convoy.
The trucks got through Veghel and into Uden without encountering resistance. Winters and Nixon climbed to the top of the church steeple to have a look. When they got to the belfry, the first thing they saw was German tanks cutting the highway between Veghel and Uden. Then Winters spotted a patrol coming toward Uden. He ran down the stairs, gathered the platoon, and said, "Men, there's nothing to get excited about. The situation is normal; we are surrounded." He organized an attack, moved out to meet the German patrol, and hit it hard, driving it back. Colonel Chase told Winters to set up a defense. Easy, with help from HQ Company, set up roadblocks on all roads leading into Uden.
Winters told Sergeant Lipton to take every man he could find, regardless of unit, and put him into the line. Lipton saw two British soldiers walking by. He grabbed one by the shoulder and ordered, "You two come with me."
The man looked Lipton up and down calmly and said, "Sergeant, is that the way you address officers in the American army?" Lipton took a closer look and saw that on his British combat uniform was the insignia of a major. "No, sir," he stammered. "I'm sorry." The major gave him a bit of a half-smile as he walked away.
The Germans did not come on. Had they realized that there were fewer than 130 men in Uden and only three tanks, they surely would have overrun the town, but evidently Winters' quick counterattack against their lead patrol convinced them that Uden was held in strength. Whatever the reason, they shifted the focus of their attack from Uden to Veghel.
Winters and Nixon climbed to the belfry again. They had a clear view to Veghel, 6 kilometers south. "It was fascinating," Winters recalled, "sitting behind the German lines, watching tanks approach Veghel, German air force strafing, a terrific exchange of firepower." The members of Easy who were in Veghel remember it as pure hell, the most intense shelling they had ever experienced.
It was a desperate battle, the biggest the 506th had yet experienced. It was also critical. "The enemy's cutting the road did not mean simply his walking across a piece of asphalt," the history of the division points out. "That road was loaded with British transport vehicles of every type. Cutting the road meant fire and destruction for the vehicles that were caught. It meant clogging the road for its entire length with vehicles that suddenly had nowhere to go. For the men at Nijmegen and Arnhem, cutting the road was like severing an artery. The stuff of life—food, ammunition, medical supplies, no longer came north."2
2. Rapport and Northwood, Rendezvous with Destiny, 359.
Webster was in Veghel. When the German artillery began to come in, he took shelter in a cellar with a half-dozen Easy men, plus some Dutch civilians. "It was a very depressing atmosphere," he wrote, "listening to the civilians moan, shriek, sing hymns, and say their prayers."
Pvt. Don Hoobler was with the 3rd squad, 1st platoon, hiding in a gateway. He decided to have some fun with Pvt. Farris Rice, so he whistled a perfect imitation of an incoming shell. Rice fell flat on his face. That put Hoobler in stitches: "Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Boy, sure sucked you in on that one!"
"Goddamn you, Hoobler, that's bad on a guy."
BzzYoo... BAM! A real shell came in. Hoobler stopped laughing.
Colonel Sink came roaring up in a jeep, jumped out, and began barking orders right and left. He got the men of Easy, and those of D and F Companies, to establish a perimeter defense with orders to shoot at anything moving.