The airborne landings in Holland did not come as a complete surprise to the German high command, whose members knew that the Allies had large numbers of airborne forces to be committed. The Germans, however, had expected the airborne landings to be close to a coastal area for easy link-up with amphibious force operations. They were mildly shocked by the events of September 17, but they immediately saw the significance of the Rhine crossing in the north and each day took more extensive countermeasures.

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The airborne landings had been made in the sector of the First German Parachute Army, and that formidable force went into immediate action. On the second day an armored brigade and two Volksgrenadier divisions started for the corridor. The German strategy was to contain its base and cut the road as soon as possible.

The fourth day, Allied supplies were short and getting shorter. There was only a 30 percent recovery of the paradrop that day — no gas and only one meal for the troops. The fifth day was the same. Each trooper had jumped with one K and two D rations, which were already gone. Captured rations were used by those lucky enough to get them. No casualties were evacuated during the first three days because the roads were too crowded. On the morning of the fourth day, 30 ambulances and four 2 1/2-ton trucks took the division wounded through to the evac hospital in Belgium.

From the fourth day on, the 101st was aware that the Germans would attempt to cut the corridor, stop the flow of traffic and deal, at leisure, with the 82nd in Nijmegen and the British 1st in Arnhem. A battalion of the 82nd’s 504th Parachute Regiment, commanded by Major Julian A. Cook, had mounted four devastation attacks before raising the American flag on the north side of the Nijmegen bridge. The airborne divisions could not be everywhere. Some sections of road were completely unguarded. Tension mounted; when and where would the Germans strike?

On the sixth day of the operation we found out. The town of Veghel was to be the German objective because destruction of the bridges there would stop traffic for a long time. The Dutch underground had warned the Allied divisions that an eastern force of more than 400 vehicles was moving toward Veghel and a western force of five mobile guns was ready to strike. A ferocious battle developed in this area.

For the men of the 82nd in Nijmegen and the British 1st in Arnhem, cutting the road was like severing an artery. Food, ammunition and medical supplies all stopped arriving. The men of the 101st knew they had to open the road. That day saw a complete change in the disposition of the division, which began fighting along a solid front concentrating in St. Oedenrode and Veghel.

Down from the north came a stronger German force made up of three parachute battalions from the 1st and 6th Parachute regiments and a battalion from the Hermann Göring Division-all from the best of the Lufwaffe. The road was cut. During the night, the Americans attacked and reopened the road. It was cut again. Both sides were taking heavy casualties. The 101st fought the next two days trying to reopen the road.

My company fought beside the road from the ditches. There were times when German tanks passed us and did not know we were there. We would let them go unless we had a bazooka. Sometimes they were so close we could hear the Germans radio communications from inside the tanks. If German infantry was involved, it would be brought under fire immediately after passage of the tanks. If the tanks could locate our positions, it was tough on us, but they did not like to work without their infantry, so they would normally withdraw. (We put this experience to great use later in Bastogne.)

On October 3, my battalion was ordered forward to the town of Opheusden to take over a section of the front line from the British 43rd Division. By count, my battalion received the heaviest artillery barrages of the Holland campaign. I was in battalion headquarters in the center of town, and for 18 hours there was no respite from shelling. The 321st Field Artillery Battalion provided us support and fired 2,600 counter-battery rounds that day. The punishment was severe.

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