101st Airborne: The Screaming Eagles at Normandy

336 Pages·2011·47.71 MB·English

by  Mark Bando

101ST AIRBORNE
THE SCREAMING EAGLES IN WORLD WAR II
MARK BANDO
Z P
ENITH RESS
In tribute to Maj. Richard D. Winters, one of many idealistic and brilliant troop
leaders of the 101st Airborne in World War II and a man who has become an icon,
symbolizing all the courageous warriors of the Screaming Eagle Division.
(Photo taken by Grant Berry, Veterans Day 2004, Media, Pennsylvania)
Acknowledgments

Searching long and hard for rare, unpublished photos has long been a significant
part of my World War II history research. I’ve always felt that a book’s photo
content should be relevant to the written text, should consist largely of images
the public hasn’t seen before, and should contribute something of unique value
to otherwise available historical publications. After my previous photo book for
Zenith Press (101st Airborne: The Screaming Eagles at Normandy), I was
surprised to discover that some readers still expect the oft-published and famous
images that can already be found in other books. Not wanting to disappoint
expectations, I sought a balance between “classic,” previously published 101st
Airborne photos and numerous “new,” never-before-published images.
Within these pages, you’ll find the well-known classics—including the
Ike/Strobel airfield photo, the image of Jim Flannigan holding a captured flag at
Marmion, and the brick pile surrounded and surmounted by Pathfinders at
Bastogne—mixed in with many remarkably clear and obscure photos, printed
from the original negatives made by John Reeder (506th), Don Hettrick (377th),
Frank Sheehan (101st Division Signal Co.), and many other World War II
survivors of the great 101st Airborne Division.
Several personal friends of mine who collect 101st Airborne photos
contributed images to this book. Among them: Paul Adamic, Kurt Barickman,
Grant Berry, Mike Bigalke, Jim Bigley, Bob Carter, Gary Dettore, Michel
deTrez, and Ron Tollison.
Nadine Wierzbowski-Field made a prodigious contribution of Signal Corps
photos to this project from her late father’s voluminous collection.
As always with my 101st books, I want to acknowledge the official
photographers of the division: Albert A. Krochka and Mike Musura, as well as
Joe “Gopher” Sloan, who took Krochka’s place as 501st photographer during
Bastogne until the war’s end. Captain Joseph Pangerl probably took as many
502nd photos as Mike Musura, and his contribution of numerous rare photos to
this book is plainly evident. Many other individuals contributed photos and are
acknowledged in the credit line of each photo. A number of veterans contributed
stories to this work, notably Glen Derber, Don Hettrick, Emmert Parmley, and
Lou Truax. Veterans who have mentored me across the decades and continue to
do so include Frank Anness, Fred Bahlau, Carl Beck, “Doc” Brinkley, Don
Burgett, Albert Hassenzahl, George Koskimaki, Dick Ladd, Jim Martin, Bob
Sechrist, and Don Zahn.
The Don F. Pratt Museum’s historians and Courtnay Weisberg-Johnson, Chip
Cifone, and Dudley Cone also contributed photos, obscure facts, and/or
historical documents. Marcel Zwaarts helped provide German unit identification.
Most of the maps and diagrams in this book were drawn by former USMC
mapmaker Tom Houlihan, while information regarding current landmarks near
Best and Sint Oedenrode, Holland, were provided by Dutch historian Jurgen
Swinkels.
My wonderful wife, Candace Ann, continues to be beyond helpful to me
when it comes to photo printing, setting up and transmitting computer files, and
proofreading both text and captions. She is a treasure and helps me in many
ways. As usual, my friends at the Livonia, Michigan, Kinkos store, Michael C.
Kenney and Thomas Malinky, have been helpful with photo duplication
throughout this project. Hite Photo in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, has also done
valuable work printing black and white images from vintage negatives.
Many new friends have come into my life in recent years to join ranks with
my older friends, each of them inspiring my writing efforts in their own way.
People such as Judy Andersen, Ryan Baker, Bill Barksdale, Joe Beyrle II, Tessa
deJong, John Fink, Brandon McMorries, Kristina McMorries, Charlie Newsome,
Mr. and Mrs. Jim Osborne, Mark Patterson, Bob Pesti, Mark Piszcatowski, Jake
Powers, Rich Riley, Jason Walcott, and Terry Webb. All these and many others,
including my jump brothers on the World War II ADT, have each touched my
life and inspired me in some significant way to keep writing. Thank you all for
your support and friendship, which is more valuable than material riches.
During research for this book, I logged my nine hundred eighty-eighth
interview with a World War II Screaming Eagle (my first took place in 1968). It
is sad to see the ranks of World War II veterans thinning at a rate of nearly a
thousand a day. But while we can, it is our privilege to pay tribute to these epic
warriors who boldly dropped from the sky into the midst of a formidable enemy.
They were indeed the vanguard of freedom in the greatest war of the twentieth
century. All the Screaming Eagles, living and dead, are our National Treasure. I
hope this pictorial tribute will do them justice.
—Mark Bando
Detroit, Michigan
January 2007
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1 TRAINING AND MANEUVERS
Chapter 2 ENGLAND BEFORE D-DAY
Chapter 3 NORMANDY, PART I: THE INVASION
Chapter 4 NORMANDY, PART II: THE PUSH INLAND
Chapter 5 ENGLAND, SUMMER 1944
Chapter 6 HOLLAND, PART I: LIBERATION OF THE CORRIDOR
Chapter 7 HOLLAND, PART II: THE ISLAND
Chapter 8 BASTOGNE
Chapter 9 ALSACE-LORRAINE
Chapter 10 BERCHTESGADEN AND THE END OF THE WAR
Appendix: SCREAMING EAGLES WORLD WAR II ARTIFACTS
Bibliography
Index
CHAPTER 1
TRAINING
AND
MANEUVERS
Benjamin Franklin predicted airborne warfare long ago, writing that “ten
thousand men descending from the clouds might not in many places do an
infinite deal of mischief, before a force could be brought together to repel them.”
Franklin’s eighteenth-century idea envisioned two men each in “five hundred
balloons” as a means of deployment long before airplanes or parachutes became
a reality. It was perhaps fitting that the first successful airplanes would be tested,
invented, and flown by this visionary founding father’s countrymen.
The very first use of parachute jumpers as soldiers was slated to involve U.S.
infantrymen of the 1st Division as early as 1918, but the armistice ending World
War I forestalled that proposed mission. American military parachutists would
eventually be deployed in combat when the 509th Parachute Battalion dropped
into North Africa in 1942.
In the interim years, parachuting had mostly been confined to amusement
rides at world’s fairs and stunt descents at air shows. Despite small-scale
experiments in the late 1920s, the U.S. military didn’t take another serious look
at the potential of deploying armed parachute forces until the Russians made
mass drops of paratroopers in the late 1920s, the U.S. military didn’t take
another serious look at the potential of deploying armed parachute forces until
the Russians made mass drops of paratroopers in the late 1930s.
The 502nd Parachute Infantry Regiment began in 1941 as a battalion. It was not upgraded to regimental
size until August 1942. When the 101st Airborne Division was activated, the 502nd became the original
parachute infantry regiment (PIR) of the division. In this battalion-era photo, new arrivals, mostly men
from Ohio, are being issued jumpsuits on June 20, 1941. Two of them, identified as Rigsby (fifth from
right) and John Q. Young (far right), later became members of Company G in the 502nd Regiment. Rigsby
was killed on a night patrol in Holland—soon after jumping there—in September 1944. Rigsby’s cousin,
Gene Baker, was a platoon sergeant in the same company. Acme Newspictures, Atlanta, GA H/502 PIR
marching at Ft. Bragg, North Carolina, in 1943. In the right foreground is their company commander,
Capt. Cecil L. Simmons, also known as “Big Cec.” Simmons had been a uniformed police officer in Grand
Rapids, Michigan, and a member of the Michigan National Guard before entering federal service. Also
recognizable in the photo are Sgt. Elden Dobbyn and Sgt. J. B. Cooper. The troopers have been issued M42
jumpsuits with white nametapes and are carrying old-style gas masks slung under their left arms. Newer
assault-type gas masks were issued for combat jumps into Normandy and Holland. Signal Corps via C. L.
Simmons
With war clouds gathering in Europe, the German army experimented with
paratroop forces prior to their invasion of Poland in late 1939. The Germans
demonstrated during their blitzkrieg in the west that airborne forces deployed in
small groups could seize key objectives such as bridges and even fortresses. The
invasion of Crete further demonstrated to the world—albeit at a costly price to
the German invaders—what airborne troops could do. The Americans and
British soon copied the German example with experimental, small-scale forces
of their own. A U.S. “parachute test platoon” was formed in 1940 and began