Pointing to the high ground on the other side, Abrams told his superiors, ''That is the shortest way home."
At 0800 the Shermans rumbled over the bridge and began blasting the Germans with cannon and machine guns. Infantry from the 80th Division crossed and joined the attack. By nightfall they had regained the position held the previous day.
But this was a different German army from the one that had pulled out of France so ignominiously. By that afternoon six German battalions were on the march towards Dieulouard. Over the next three nights the Americans held their ground, but they could not expand the bridgehead.
CAPTAIN Joseph Dawson, G Company, 16th Infantry, 1st Division, had been the first company commander to get his men up the bluff at Omaha on D-Day. By now he had been in battle for one hundred days. He was 31, son of a Waco, Texas, Baptist preacher. He had lost 25 pounds off his already thin six-foot-two-inch frame.
On September 14 Dawson led his company into the border town of Eilendorf, southeast of Aachen. Although it was inside the Siegfried Line, the fortifications were unoccupied. The town was on a ridge 300 metres high, 130 metres long, which gave it excellent observation to the east and north. Dawson's company was on the far side of a railroad embankment that divided the town, with access only through a tunnel under the railroad. Dawson had his men dig in and mount outposts. The expected German counterattack came after midnight and was repulsed.
In the morning Dawson looked east. He could see Germans moving up in the woods in one direction, in an orchard in another, and digging in. In the afternoon a shelling from artillery and mortars hit G Company, followed by a two-company attack. It was the Germans who were attacking, the Americans who were dug in. Dawson was short on ammunition, out of food. His supporting tanks were out of gasoline. If he was going to go anywhere, it would be to the rear. The US Army's days of all-out pursuit were over.
The weakened Allied thrust and stiffening German resistance forced the Allied high command to make some difficult choices. Up to September 10 or so, it had been a case of go-go-go, until you run out of gas- and then keep going forward on foot. Every commander, not just Patton, urged his men forward. But on a front that stretched from the Swiss border to the English Channel, dependent on ports now hundreds of kilometres to the rear, it just wasn't possible to continue to advance on a broad front.
So Patton said to Eisenhower. Stop Monty where he is, give me all the fuel coming into the Continent, and I'll be in Berlin before Thanksgiving. Monty said to Eisenhower, Stop Patton where he is, give me all the fuel coming into the Continent, and I'll be in Berlin before the end of October
The German army had not yet ended a retreat that had begun six weeks earlier and turned into a rout. Everything in the situation cried out for one last major effort to finish off the enemy. A narrow thrust to get over the Rhine would do it. Should it be by Montgomery, north of the Ardennes, or Patton, to the south?
Eisenhower had moved SHAEF headquarters to the Continent and taken control of the land battle. The decision was his to make. He told Montgomery to go ahead with Operation Market-Garden.
MARKET-GARDEN was Montgomery's idea, enthusiastically backed by Eisenhower. In addition to the irresistible impulse to keep attacking, Eisenhower had the German secret weapons in mind. On September 8 the first of the long-dreaded V-2 rockets hit London. They had been launched from Holland. The only way to stop them was to overrun the sites.
Montgomery's plan was to utilize the Airborne Army-the Allies' greatest unused asset-in a daring operation to cross the Lower Rhine in Holland. The plan called for the Guards Armoured Division to lead the way for the British Second Army across the Rhine, on a line from Eindhoven to Arnhem. The British tanks would move north, following a carpet laid down by American and British paratroopers, who would seize and hold the many bridges between the start line, in Belgium, and Arnhem.
The British 1st Airborne Division, reinforced by a brigade of Polish paratroopers, would jump into Holland at the far end of the line of advance, at Arnhem. The US 82nd Airborne would take Nijmegen. The US 101st Airborne's task was to jump north of Eindhoven, with the objective of capturing that town and its bridges.
It was a brilliant but complicated plan. Success would depend on almost split second timing, hard fighting, and luck, especially with the weather. If everything worked, the payoff would be British forces on the north German plain, with an open road to Berlin. It could well lead to a quick German collapse. But the operation was a roll of the dice, with the Allies putting all their chips into the bet.
SEPTEMBER 17 was a beautiful end-of-summer day, with a bright blue sky and no wind. No resident of the British Isles who was below the line of flight of the hundreds of C-47s carrying three divisions into combat ever forgot the sight. Nor did the paratroopers. Sergeant Dutch Schultz of the 82nd was jump master for his stick of eighteen paratroopers; he stood in the open door as his plane formed up and headed east. "In spite of my anxiety," he recalled, "it was exhilarating to see thousands of people on the ground waving to us as we flew over the British villages and towns." It was even more reassuring to see the fighter planes join the formation.
When the air armada got over Holland, Schultz could see a tranquil countryside. Cows grazed in the fields. There was some antiaircraft fire, but no breaking of formation by the pilots. The jump was a dream. A sunny midday, little opposition on the ground, ploughed fields that were "soft as a mattress."
General James Gavin led the way for the 82nd. His landing wasn't so soft; he hit a pavement and damaged his back. Some days later a doctor checked him out, looked Gavin in the eye. and said, "There is nothing wrong with your back." Five years later, at Walter Reed Hospital, Gavin was told that he had two broken discs.
Some veterans can't remember their division commanders' names because there were so many of them, or because they never saw them; others don't want to remember. But veterans of the 82nd get tongue-tied when I ask them how they feel about General Gavin, then burst into a torrent of words bold, courageous, fair, smart as hell, a man's man, trusted, beloved, a leader.
Gavin (USMA, 1929) was 37, the youngest general in the US Army since George Custer's day, a trusted and beloved division commander. His athletic grace and build combined with his boyish looks to earn him the affectionate nickname of Slim Jim. After landing in Holland, Dutch Schultz saw Gavin come down, struggle to his feet in obvious pain, sling his M-l, and move out. "From my perspective," Schultz wrote, "it was crucial to my development as a combat soldier seeing my Commanding General carrying his rifle right up on the front line. This concept of leadership was displayed by our regiment, battalion, and company grade officers so often that we normally expected this hands-on leadership from all our officers. It not only inspired us but saved many lives."
There were but a handful of enemy troops in the drop zone (DZ) area. Lieutenant James Coyle recalled, "1 saw a single German soldier on the spot where I thought I was going to land. I drew my .45 pistol and tried to get a shot at him but my parachute was oscillating. I was aiming at the sky as often as I was aiming at the ground. When I landed, the German was no more than fifteen feet away, running. Just as I was about to shoot him he threw away his rifle, then his helmet and I saw he was a kid of about seventeen years old, and completely panicked. He just ran past me without looking at me. I didn't have the heart to shoot him."