First to Jump (19 page)

The man in the carriage sat up in his seat, checking the horse's reins with an easy tug to halt several feet up the road. He stared at Faith across the lane, his features guarded.

Faith looked back at him. Filthy, unshaven, and stinking of sweat, he realized he was anything but a pleasant sight. But he'd hung on to the sheet of paper he'd been given with the collection of phonetic Dutch phrases on it, and figured there was no time like the present to see how useful it could be.

“
Goedendag
,”
he said. “
Ik ben een Amerikaanse soldaat.
My name . . .
mijn naam
 . . . is Charles Faith.
Kunt u me helpen?
”

And then he waited.

The farmer eyed him for a long moment. Then he nodded as if in response to his own silent question. He'd made his decision.

In broken English, he introduced himself as Fox Gust. Faith had wandered into his farm, in the village of Duinberg, he explained . . . and if he chose, he could come home to stay with his family. The British were pushing down from Antwerp, which had been liberated about two weeks earlier, and it was said they had been making fast progress. There was room for Faith to sleep in the basement of the farmhouse until they arrived and secured his village. The Gusts had food, and water, and civilian clothes he could wear while hidden there.

Faith didn't hesitate. With a broad smile, he climbed into the wagon beside Gust and extended a grubby hand. A minute later, the horse was clomping up the lane again, both men riding behind it with the late September sun on their shoulders.

The lieutenant would stay with the farmer about a week before Allied troops—Canadians and Scottish armored brigades, as it turned out—came rolling into the village aboard their jeeps and tanks. When Duinberg's liberation was officially declared, Farmer Gust and his brood would ride Faith into the village aboard the same wagon Gust had used to bring him home. There before the town hall, a traditional
harmoniemuziek
band in red vests and white-and-black trousers greeted him with an exultant fanfare, their woodwinds and horns blaring, their drums, cymbals, and bells clattering zestily away.

Lieutenant Faith would not jump again. But Joel Crouch's IX TCC Pathfinders had one final mission ahead of them—and the fortunes of the Allied campaign in Europe would hinge on its success.

6.

Operation Market Garden was several contradictory things at once. In its worst aspects, it was a strategic, tactical, and logistical blunder of terrible magnitude; in its best, a triumph of courage, persistence, determination, and sheer fighting skill for the two United States airborne divisions, who landed with near-pinpoint accuracy at the drop zones and landing zones established and protected by the IX TCC Pathfinders.

On September 22, five days after Pathfinders guided in the first massive paratrooper and glider drops, the German Army's 107th Panzer Brigade moved in from rear positions where they had camped based on prior intelligence, to cut Highway 69—Hell's Highway, as it came to be called—north of Veghel and south of Arnhem and Eindhoven. The successful armored thrust blocked vital supplies from reaching the 1st British Airborne Division and the Second Army's XXX Corps at the Arnhem crossings and, after inflicting heavy casualties, eventually led to their withdrawal. The bridge across the Rhine was never attained, and Montgomery's desired knockout blow never struck. Instead, his forces were left on the ropes to try and regroup.

The bloody turn of events at Veghel encapsulated the overall situation as it would develop. The 502nd PIR's taking of the village, the rousting of its German overseers, and the celebratory welcome the paratroopers received from of the Dutch populace was a triumphant, almost euphoric occasion. But within days Veghel was under siege by German armor and infantry, and while the 502's troops, with the aid of reinforcements, held on to repulse the attackers, the losses they took need never have been suffered.

There would be considerable debate about the reasons Market Garden was undertaken in the first place. Some would attribute it to overconfidence on the part of the Allies, and Montgomery in particular. Others would blame politics, at least in part. The combining of all Allied paratroop divisions in America and Europe into the First Allied Airborne Army had occurred at the order of SCAEF Eisenhower in early August, and it was argued that he'd felt pressure to launch a major airborne operation that would show America's elected leaders, eager to make rapid progress in the war, the capabilities of this pooled force.

Market did hasten the liberation of Holland and other parts of the Netherlands, and in that regard achieved a degree of success—although Allied forces advancing from the southwest were already well on their way to attaining that goal, and would have done so in relatively short order at a much lower cost in lives and material resources. But it is possible that the operation's real military payoff for the Allies, and specifically its airborne units, might have come months after it was aborted, and was therefore overlooked:

Whereas Normandy had been all disorder and confusion for the paratroopers of the 101st and 82nd Airborne Divisions, Holland showed them what they could do when their deployment was properly and accurately executed and their teams could assemble as planned. The broader mission might have failed, but they did everything that had been expected of them. And they knew it to a man.

Ultimately Market added a sense of unit cohesion to the U.S. airborne infantry's existing confidence as soldiers, and in doing so forged them into an improved fighting force. The men came out of Market Garden tougher, stronger, and more resilient than they'd been when they came in.

Two months later, in Bastogne, Belgium, when they had little besides those qualities to sustain them, it would make all the difference.

DECEMBER 20–27, 1944

I was the biggest goofball the Army ever saw. The Lord only had two places to put people, Heaven or Hell, and He was afraid to stick me in either one, figuring I'd goof it up.

—101st Airborne Pathfinder Jake McNiece

1.

After seventy-eight days of combat and a week of being absent without leave, Jake McNiece had returned to base camp in Mourmelon, France, feeling bone weary. He'd figured the AWOL had been a fair reward for all the killing of Germans he'd done in Market Garden, but the Army showed its disagreement by putting him under arrest in quarters the minute he got back. That meant he would be restricted to the barracks and have his pay docked and possibly find himself knocked down in rank for the third or fourth time.

Jake's pal Frank “Shorty” Milhan was in charge of quarters, the noncom who handled the administrative thisses and thats for the higher-ups during the overnight hours. He also played watchdog over the entrance to the barracks. Built by Napoleon in the 1850s, the stone huts were being used by the 101st after their return from the Netherlands. The division had lost about 40 percent of its men and was filling its ranks with replacements who'd made the place pretty crowded.

Mourmelon was a little town with about ten bars and maybe a dozen whorehouses, and McNiece had felt he deserved better than to have to wait in line behind some green recruits for the drinks and girls. So he had gone off to Paris a couple of days after Thanksgiving, bumming rides for about ninety miles on the A4 motorway.

He'd had a fine time there in Paris.

“Jake, how would you like to go to England?”

This was Shorty talking now. He'd followed McNiece from the gate and caught up with him the minute he dropped his gear bag onto his bunk.

McNiece looked at him. “Oh, is England where they're going to hang me?” McNiece said. “I don't like them French guillotines.”

“That's not exactly it, Jake,” Shorty said, and hesitated. “It's almost. They would like you to volunteer for parachute pathfinding service.”

Pathfinding service
. McNiece guessed this was the sincere thanks the Army was giving him for Holland. His demolition stick had jumped over the country with the rest of the Screaming Eagles on September 17 and drawn the initial mission of taking the three bridges at Eindhoven. The Germans had wired them to blow so the British troops could not advance toward Arnhem and cross the Rhine, and McNiece's team had successfully dismantled the explosives and held the bridges.

The German counterattack on the second day of Market Garden had been punishing. Four Messerschmitts had swooped in over the canal and bombed the bridges. The bombs had taken one of them out and killed or injured quite a few troopers. Then a few days later, McNiece and his group had been ordered up to Veghel to join the British troops who were holding the town after it had been taken by the 101st. The battered troopers had driven there in an abandoned enemy truck and encountered no resistance on the highway. But when they reached the market square in Veghel, they started taking small arms and mortar fire from all sides.

That had been a hard way to learn that the Nazis had recaptured the town from the Brits. Its buildings were infested with enemy soldiers, and the bloody, door-to-door fighting had been without letup until the Americans finally pushed the Germans out.

Things had gone on like that without letup through the end of October and into November. Then the demo-sabos had been on risky minefield-clearing duty right through Thanksgiving.

McNiece had lost all but four of his teammates in Holland. He was sick and tired of the Army. And he guessed the Army was sick and tired of him. From what he knew of Pathfinder duty, it was “like volunteering to kill yourself.”

Captain Gene Brown and Lieutenant Schrable Williams were the top dogs in McNiece's outfit, and though he got along with both of them, Williams had always had his back. Figuring Brown had given in to pressure from above to clean house of troublemakers, McNiece reported straight to his office.

“What happened to all those guys who volunteered for this Pathfinder bullshit in Holland?” he asked, saluting.

“They came back and unvolunteered,” Brown replied.

McNiece had a good idea why. In Holland, the troopers had seen it as a way to get pulled out of combat. But here in the heart of champagne country, watching new American movies once a week, they were no longer so eager to take a training that could plunge them right back into battle—on suicide missions, no less.

Except, McNiece told himself, maybe those guys hadn't thought it out well enough. Maybe there was something to the offer that would make it worthwhile. Something they hadn't seen at first blush.

Looking at him across his desk, Brown, perhaps unsure how to interpret his silence, was already sweetening the deal. “If you volunteer, you'll leave the Five-Oh-Six with a clean record,” he said. “And retain your rank.”

McNiece wasn't tempted by these inducements. He had never cared about his record, or how many chevrons he wore on his arm. Still, he wanted to consider the whole thing.

Promising Brown he'd have an answer in an hour, he left the office and mulled it all over. Hitler was almost cooked. The Americans and British controlled the air and sea and had liberated most of Western Europe. Meanwhile, the Soviet Army had rolled through the East and marched across the German border in October. What would lead to another massive paratrooper jump of the type that required Pathfinders?

McNiece examined the question up, down, and sideways in his mind and didn't see how they would be needed. The Army pencil pushers might see it differently, but he figured he would go ahead and accept the offer. It would be his ticket out of the war. Not only that, he'd spend its remaining months at Chalgrove eating good Air Force food instead of Army slop.

“Yeah, I'll go,” he told Brown back at his office. “I'm packing now.”

The captain looked pleased. And why not? thought McNiece. He was finally getting him out of his hair. He was also probably thinking he was as good as dead, but that was no longer Brown's problem.

For his part, McNiece was also happy. He'd already imagined himself making out with pretty, attention-starved Oxford University girls—call it postgraduate work—while their boyfriends were somewhere across the Channel taking on the Third Reich.

“One thing,” he said. “You've got to take me off arrest of quarters here. I want to go around and say good-bye to a bunch of these guys and thank them for the way they served.”

Brown didn't have a problem with it, just so long as McNiece was ready to leave in the morning. Then he got a look like the cat eyeing the goldfish bowl. “What about Majewski?” he asked. “Will Majewski go with you?”

McNiece stared at him. Max Majewski was one of the original members of the Filthy Thirteen. A big, blond-haired, blue-eyed lug that some guys thought was a little slow upstairs but who was smarter than most of them, and as steady a man as anyone McNiece had ever commanded.

Majewski had earned a combat award called the infantryman's badge back in Normandy but then had it taken away from him. How that happened was he'd gone on leave back in England and come back with a venereal disease, and their commanding officer had reprimanded him by quashing his receipt of the award.

Thinking it unfair punishment, Majewski had written a letter to a column in
Stars and Stripes
called the “B-Bag.” In infantryman's parlance, that was short for barracks bag. There was an expression that went “blow it out your b-bag” for when a soldier griped about one thing or another and his buddies felt he'd gone on long enough, and an editor had gotten the idea to use it as the title for his complaints column. If he felt a soldier's claim merited action, this editor would bring it to the attention of an appropriate party—and that party was often General Dwight D. Eisenhower.

As it turned out, Majewski's letter was one of those that had wound up in the SCAEF's hands, and from what McNiece had heard, Ike had gotten angry and personally given hell to the entire chain of command. “They really took a lot of heat for it,” he remembered, “from the top man down to the bottom man.” And they'd carried a grudge. In McNiece's view, the captain wouldn't have at all minded sending Majewski off on an assignment that would get him killed.

“Wait a minute,”he said. “I'm not encouraging Majewski or anyone else to go into Pathfinding service. That's your problem. You talk to him.”

Brown must not have wasted an instant doing it. A half hour later, McNiece was back at the barracks, appropriately enough packing his b-bag for the transfer to England when Majewski came in.

“Jake,” he said, looking at the bag, “what are you doing?”

“I'm packing my stuff.”

“I thought you were under arrest in quarters,” Majewski said. He seemed confused. “I didn't know you had privileges to travel.”

“Yeah, I have,” McNiece said. “There'll be a plane here in the morning to kick me out.”

“Well, Captain Brown called me in and said he'd like me to go with you,” Majewski said. “What made you decide this was a good move?”

McNiece explained why he figured there would no longer be any large paratrooper drops, and how going to the Pathfinder school would be a choice way to sit out the rest of the war. “I don't believe they'll ever be used again,” he concluded.

Majewski listened attentively. He'd been skeptical about the whole idea, but McNiece's take on it had him reconsidering his opinion. Jake had never steered him wrong, not since the day they'd met at Camp Toccoa.

“I think I'll go back down and talk to Captain Brown again,” Majewski said. “You've probably got this figured out right. I'm going too.”

McNiece hadn't wanted to influence him. “This is just what I believe,” he said. “It is not firsthand knowledge. I can't give you any guarantees.”

The private made it clear he didn't need any. He turned and left the barracks, gave his acceptance to Brown, and returned minutes later to start packing his own gear bag.

The barracks was a crowded place, and the men had ears, and not much to do at night besides keep them perked for the latest buzz. Even as McNiece and Majewski prepared for their morning flight, word that they'd volunteered for Pathfinder training had been racing through the grapevine.

As McNiece later recalled, Jack Agnew didn't bother discussing it with him before he marched out to Brown's office.

“Are McNiece and Majewski really going?” he asked.

“Yeah,” the captain replied.

Agnew only needed a minute to reach his decision.
Hell
, he thought.
Jake's not going without me.

A few minutes later, he returned to the barracks, told McNiece he was coming along, and got busy packing. Two more demo men, a “kid” named William Coad and John Dewey, decided to go along too.

They were gathered in McNiece's hut later that night when Lieutenant Williams came through the door. “What's the deal here?” he asked. “I'm losing half my demolition platoon!”

McNiece told him why they'd all shared in his decision. As Agnew would have said about “Little Willie,” he was a good officer because he
listened
to his men. Jake figured he deserved to hear it straight.

“It isn't foolproof,” McNiece concluded. “But it's almost. I don't think any one of us will ever jump again.”

Williams didn't take long to ponder the idea. He went back to Toccoa with the demos, had been through Normandy and Market Garden, and was tired of the war.

“If you guys are going, I'm going too!” he said, hurrying to put his name on the dotted line.

And so early the next morning, six men from the 1st Demolitions Section—including the last original members of the Filthy Thirteen and their lieutenant—left their billet in France on a C-47 transport with a group of other Pathfinder volunteers from the 101st Airborne. While it would not be the only planeload bound for RAF Chalgrove that day, it likely was carrying the happiest, most satisfied man among them.

Jake McNiece had boarded the plane thinking he'd not only matched the United States Army at its own game, but outplayed it, hands down.

What he didn't suspect was that the game was about to be drastically changed.

2.

Early night of December 8, 1944, Captain Frank L. Brown, commanding officer of the newly restructured Pathfinder Company, was in his office at RAF Chalgrove feeling dissatisfied, not to say unhappy, about some things of great importance to him. A short while ago, his fresh crop of eleven officers and eighty-nine men from the 101st Airborne Division had landed at his base for training as Pathfinders, having made the flight from Mourmelon aboard a small fleet of Joel Crouch's IX TCC transports. Their arrival had given him a lot to ponder.

Brown understood that, in one respect, he had every reason to be pleased. He'd been eager to secure replacements for the men who'd been either lost in Holland or had opted out of the group—a soldier's commitment to Pathfinder duty only extended to a particular jump, after which he could ask for reassignment to a different unit. The trainees, then, had been sent at his specific request, with a similar number of volunteers from the 82nd Airborne slated to arrive within four days, for a total of more than two hundred recruits.

From that perspective, the headquarters of the XVIII Airborne Corps was giving him exactly what he needed. But looking at it another way, Brown had no doubt that his request had come as a convenient opening for other officers down the line to rid themselves of their worst, most persistent nuisances and embarrassments.

In hindsight, he might have seen it coming. In mid-October, Major General Maxwell Taylor, the 101's appointed commander, had distributed a stern memorandum titled “PILLAGING AND PLUNDERING (LOOTING)” that he insisted be read by every current and future officer of the division. This had followed complaints from Dutch officers about incidents in and around the village of Heteren, which had been occupied by elements of the 501st PIR before they were relieved by the British.