Heroes: the Army
"...At their home, Bill and his family watched as the gliders were towed overhead. "One of the tow lines dropped right over our house." From home, Bill said, the family watched as the gliders disappeared over the tree line, and could see the paratroopers jumping from the Dakotas, Stirlings and Whitleys to the drop zones about three miles distant..."
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Two Arnheim Survivors Meet
Meanl Guthrie met a former Netherlander in 2001 when he and his family were at the Welland Canal, Canada. Meanl has kept in touch with him and has shared his story. The man, Bill Boosport, had been a boy of 13 in Holland and watched the troops jump at Arnheim. Here are his experiences.
Bill Boosport's memories of the day the Allies bombed Arnheim haven't faded with the passing years. He was a child of barely 13, son of a railroad engineer, in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands of 1944.
He was wending a child's way home from church when Allied air forces began to blanket the countryside with high explosive bombs, in their prelude to an assault that the congregation had prayed would be the first stage of their liberation from five years of German occupation. There came a moment of eerie silence, a crescending drone beyond the horizon, and the bright sky blackened as if with swarms of giant locusts as the fighters and bombers and gliders and parachutists of the friendly invaders filled the sky.
The events of that day were intended to prevent the destruction of bridges over the Rhine, but Montgomery's military plan was not to see success. The day &emdash; Sept. 17, 1944 &emdash; was featured in the movie "A Bridge Too Far" but it wasn't until 1992 that Bill had an opportunity to view it from the German perspective &emdash; by way of film clips captured when the Germans capitulated in May 1945. In 1994 Bill met one of the Canadian airmen who had flown over his home that Sunday so long ago.
As Bill tells it "It was about a 20 minute walk from my home to the church. On this morning it took us an hour and a half to get home, as we scrambled for the ditches as the bombs dropped. If the planes released their bombs right over our heads, we didn't pay much attention. But when they started coming down toward us on an angle, we dove, laid on our backs in the ditch to watch.."
He said several of his schoolmates died from injuries from the "friendly" shrapnel of the bombs. When Bill and his brother finally arrived home they found everyone inside a makeshift bomb shelter - built of railroad ties with "about four feet of soil on top. We had spent many nights sleeping in our bomb shelter. The shelter would have protected us from shrapnel but it wouldn't have survived a direct hit. There were direct hits on some of the shelters."
At their home, Bill and his family watched as the gliders were towed overhead. "One of the tow lines dropped right over our house." From home, Bill said, the family watched as the gliders disappeared over the tree line, and could see the paratroopers jumping from the Dakotas, Stirlings and Whitleys to the drop zones about three miles distant. They were spared the view of what happened to the airborne troops.
Bill has seen a captured German film which showed the German infantry and Panzer divisions firing on the suspended Allied troops - like shooting ducks in an arcade - and the airborne troops desperately lobbing grenades downward at the enemy. It is not easy to find an accurate account of the casualties that fateful Sunday, but Bill cites statistics showing that only 1,500 of the 15,000 Allied troops at Arnheim and nearby Oosterbeek made it back to their own lines.
History records that the airborne troops captured the north end of the Arnheim bridge. Allied troops held their positions for three days and four nights awaiting the arrival of the Second Army. The end of the futile wait was recorded by Pvt. James Sims: "On the bridge we could hear the noise of tank engines and for a moment had hopes that it might be our relieving force, hopes that were shattered as we recognized the monstrous SS-manned Tiger tanks, which were trying to bulldoze their way past the still-burning enemy armor blocking the road.
Behind the Tigers we could dimly make out more German armor creeping forward under the steel umbrella provided by the girders of the bridge. Experience had made the Germans cautious, though by this time we had nothing with which to oppose them but hand grenades of one type or another. It seemed that we had had it. The great thrust of the Second Army to join up with us had failed. We felt bitter and betrayed."
Bill's elder brother, a Red Cross volunteer, may have been the only one of the family to witness the full scope of the carnage at Arnheim and Oosterbeek. "He was about 19 and had to dig out the wounded and the dead. He was very emotional, very upset when he came home."
Bill's father had to go into hiding. "We kids didn't know it, but Father had hidden railway tools under our chicken coop. (At this time) Prince Bernard, who still controlled Holland from England, had ordered that no one in Holland should do any work of any kind (during the assault.)
There came a knock on the door. It was the Army of Resistance (the Dutch underground) looking for the tools. They dug them out of the dirt in to coop and used them to take out one section of the railway that was carrying a troop train of Germans approaching Arnheim. The train was derailed and the SS came looking for my father. Mother told them that he had been captured and was in a concentration camp. I don't know if the German officer believed her, but us kids knew better."
Bill said his mother was able to make new shirts for the family, using silk parachutes that had been left at the drop zone.
Another Survivor
Bill recently met a man who had been only several hundred feet from him on Sept. 17, 1944. Norm Elliston was a wing officer in the 437 Squadron of the Royal Canadian Air Force stationed in England. Operation "Market Garden' was the order of the day, a plan to secure the bridges of the lower Rhine which the British Second Army would need to use in a sweep northward into Holland and further into the German heartland. Elliston, and the rest of the crew, were in Dakota Mark III aircraft towing a Horsa III gilder packed with men and equipment.
Elliston remembers: "The sky that day was a brilliant blue, and as we flew I could see aircraft all around us, our planes at one level and the Americans higher up. The Americans would head more southward once we reached the land to a different area in Holland while we were headed to Arnheim, but at that time we were all flying together.
"I was the radio officer on the aircraft, but since there was a strict radio blackout in effect, I was in the turret watching for signs of trouble. As we reached land, I saw what I already knew, that the bombers had been through clearing a path for us, trying to ensure that there weren't any German guns aimed at us that morning. Suddenly two planes at the front of the formation were hit by ground fire missed by the bombers.
"I had just begun praying that our fighter escorts had seen what I had just seen, because there was no way to contact them, when I saw two fighters dive down through the middle of the formation after the gun placement. From my vantage point I watched as the two planes dove straight down, firing their rockets at the unseen enemy. I saw the explosion of the rockets with the ground and perhaps the enemy's munitions, and then the return of the fighters back to their places in the formation.
"Overjoyed that those particular weapons would not be used against us that day, I watched as the two fighters waggled their wings signaling their success, and the waggling of other planes wings signaling their thanks for that protection. It was an incredible experience that I will always remember."
----- Two Arnheim Survivors
(Editor's note: Attempts were made throughout the text of the following story to place full names to the men listed in the story. For the most part, this is an educated guess and some names may very well be mistaken in their identy. The names were all taken from the division history book: With The 102d Infantry Division Through Germany, edited by Major Allen H. Mick. Using the text as a guide, associations with specific units were the basis for the name identifications. We are not attempting in any to rewrite the story. Any corrections are gladly welcomed.)
Interested in some background information?
Check out the related links below...United States Army, 102nd Infantry Division
History of the 102nd Infantry Division
Attack on Linnich, Flossdorf, Rurdorf - 29 Nov -- 4 Dec 1944
-
Gardelegen
War Crime
Gardelegen:
April 13, 1945:
Massacre
at the Isenschnibbe Barn
American Battle Monuments Commission: WWII Honor Roll
National World War II Memorial
The above story, "Two Arnheim Survivors Meet", by Mearl Guthrie & Bill Boosport, was originally published in the 102d Division "Ozark Notes", Vol. 54, No. 2, Jan/March. 2002, pp. 18 - 20.
The story is re-printed here on World War II Stories -- In Their Own Words with the kind permission of the 102d Infantry Division Association, Ms. Hope Emerich, Historian. Our sincerest THANKS for the 102d Infantry Division Association allowing us to share some of their stories.
We would also like to extend our sincere THANKS to Mr. Edward L. Souder, former historian of Co. F., 405th Regiment. His collection of stories of the "Kitchen Histories Project" series entitled, Those Damn Doggies in F, were responsible for bringing the stories of the men of the 102nd Division to the forefront.
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