Across the river the German antiaircraft guns sprang to life. The flak and ground fire were the most intense of any airborne operation of the war. One American veteran from the Normandy drop said there "was no comparison," while an experienced British officer said that "this drop made Arnhem look like a Sunday picnic."
Sergeant Valentin Klopsch, in command of a platoon of German engineers in a cow stable about ten kilometres north of Wesel, described the action from his point of view. First there was the air bombardment, then the artillery. "And now, listen," Klopsch said. "Coming from across the Rhine there was a roaring in the air. In waves aircraft were approaching at different heights. And then the paratroopers were jumping, the chutes were opening like mushrooms. It looked like lines of pearls loosening from the planes."
The Luftwaffe gunners went back to work, "but what a superiority of the enemy in weapons, in men, in equipment. The sky was full of paratroopers, and then new waves came in. And always the terrible roaring of the low-flying planes. All around us was turning like a whirl." The Americans attacked Klopsch's cowshed. His platoon fired until out of ammunition, when Klopsch put up a white flag. "And then the Americans approached, chewing gum, hair dressed like Cherokees, but Colts at the belt." He and the surviving members of his platoon were marched to a POW cage on a farm and ordered to sit. Decades later he recalled, "What a wonderful rest after all the bombardments and the terrible barrage."
The C-46s took a pounding from the flak. This was the first time they had been used to carry paratroopers. The plane had a door on each side of the fuselage, which permitted a fast exit for the troopers, but the fuel system was highly vulnerable to enemy fire. Fourteen of the seventy-two C-46s burst into flames as soon as they were hit. Eight others went down;
the paratroopers got out, but the crews did not.
For the gliders it was terrifying. The sky was full of air bursts; machine-gun bullets ripped through the canvas. The pilots-all lieutenants, most of them not yet eligible to vote-could not take evasive action. They fixed their eyes on the spot they had chosen to land and tried to block out everything else. Nearly all made crash landings amid heavy small-arms fire.
Private Wallace Thompson, a medic in the paratroopers, was assigned a jeep placed inside a glider, and rode in the jeep's driver's seat behind the pilots of a Waco. Through the flight he kept telling the pilots, Lieutenants John Heffner and Bruce Merryman, that he would much prefer to jump into combat. They ignored his complaints. As they crossed the river, the pilots told Thompson to start his engine so that as they landed, they could release the nose latches and he could drive out.
Over the target, a few metres above the ground, an 88 shell burst just behind Thompson's jeep. The concussion broke the latches of the nose section, which flipped up, throwing the pilots out. The blast cut the ropes that held the jeep, which leaped out of the glider, engine running, flying through the air, Thompson gripping the steering wheel with all his might. He made a perfect four-wheel landing and beat the glider to the ground, thus becoming the first man in history to solo in a jeep.
The glider crashed and tipped, ending rear end up. Lieutenants Merryman and Heffner survived their flying exit but were immediately hit by machine-gun bullets, Heffner in the hand and Merryman in the leg. They crawled into a ditch. Thompson drove over to them.
"What the hell happened?" he demanded, but just then a bullet creased his helmet. He scrambled out of the jeep and into the ditch, saying he'd just taken his last glider ride. Then he treated their wounds and drove Merryman and Heffner to an aid station.
Operation Varsity featured not only a flying jeep, it also provided a unique event in US Army Air Force history. At the aid station, Merryman and Heffner met the crew of a B-24 that had been shot down and successfully crash-landed. When the air force guys started to dash out of their burning plane, the first man was shot, so the rest came out with hands up. The Germans took them to the cellar of a farmhouse, gave them some Cognac, and held them "while the Germans decided who was winning. A little later the Germans realized they were losing and surrendered their weapons and selves to the bomber crew. The Germans were turned over to the airborne." This was perhaps the only time a bomber crew took German infantry prisoners.
Before the end of the day the airborne troops had all their objectives, and over the next couple of days the linkup with the infantry was complete. Twenty-first Army Group was over the Rhine.
BY THE FIRST week of spring 1945, Eisenhower's armies had done what he had been planning for since the beginning of the year_close to the Rhine along its length, with a major crossing north of Dusseldorf-and what he had dared to hope for, additional crossings by First Army in the centre and Third Army to the south. The time for exploitation had arrived. The Allied generals were as one in taking up the phrase Lieutenant Timmermann had used at the Remagen bridge-Get going!
The 90th Division, on Patton's left flank, headed east towards Hanau on the Main River. It crossed in assault boats on the night of March 28. Major John Cochran's battalion ran into a battalion of Hitler Youth officer candidates, teenage Germans who were at a roadblock in a village. As Cochran's men advanced, the German boys let go with their machine gun, killing one American. Cochran put some artillery fire on the roadblock and destroyed it. "One youth, perhaps aged 16, held up his hands," Cochran recalled. "I was very emotional over the loss of a good soldier and I grabbed the kid and took off my cartridge belt.
"I asked him if there were more like him in the town. He gave me a stare and said, 'I'd rather die than tell you anything.' I told him to pray, because he was going to die. I hit him across the face with my thick, heavy belt. I was about to strike him again when I was grabbed from behind by Chaplain Kerns. He said, 'Don't!' Then he took that crying child away. The Chaplain had intervened not only to save a life but to prevent me from committing a murder." From the crossing of the Rhine to the end of the war, every man who died, died needlessly. It was that feeling that almost turned Major Cochran into a murderer.
Hitler and the Nazis had poisoned the minds of the boys Germany was throwing into the battle. Captain F.W. Norris of the 90th Division ran into another roadblock. His company took some casualties, then blasted away, wounding many. "The most seriously wounded was a young SS sergeant who looked just like one of Hitler's supermen. He had led the attack. He was bleeding copiously and badly needed some plasma." One of Norris's medics started giving him a transfusion. The wounded German, who spoke excellent English, demanded to know if there was any Jewish blood in the plasma. The medic said damned if he knew, in the US people didn't make such a distinction. The German said if he couldn't have a guarantee that there was no Jewish blood he would refuse treatment.
Norris remembered: "In very positive terms I told him I really didn't care whether he lived or not, but if he did not take the plasma he would certainly die. He looked at me calmly and said, 'I would rather die than have any Jewish blood in me.'