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Private Ed Joint
101st airborne division, Easy Company, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment. We were sent out to take a machine gun position. It was just before the battle of Foy ended. I was running up a hill and got hit by shrapnel in my right arm. I went flying up in the air, I didn't know at first what hit me. Somebody hollered for a medic. They put me on a stretcher and took me to a field hospital. They couldn't do nothing with it there, so they took me back and put me in a hospital in Paris. A medic said, You can go home now soldier, you ain't going to fight no more. But twenty days later I hitchhiked back to Company E to find them. They were just getting ready to go to Germany. What made me want to go back and fight? I don't know. They were my outfit, my friends.
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Road to the Rhine by Robert Taylor. As the Allied armies dashed across France after victory in Normandy, they remained reliant on one thing - supplies. With Cherbourg the only port in use, everything depended on trucks to deliver enough fuel, food and ammunition to keep the momentum going. But there was a problem. Too few trucks, and too few drivers. The invasion was in danger of stalling, and if it did, the Germans might just regain the initiative. Action was needed, and quickly. Montgomery argued that all resources be channeled into a single, powerful thrust into Germany, but Eisenhower disagreed. the Allies would advance on a broad front. But he did give Montgomery the First Allied Airborne Army to try and capture the major bridges in Holland on the road to the Rhine, ahead of the Allies advance. For the men of the 101st Airborne, the Screaming Eagles, their task was to seize the bridges at Eindhoven. The 82nd would do the same at Nijmegan, and the British 1st Airborne would capture the farthest bridge, at Arnhem. On the ground the British 30th Corps would advance northwards and link up with them, and, if successful, turn the German flank on the Rhine. On 17th September 1944 the plan was put into action, the 101st quickly securing all of its objectives, and the 82nd capturing one bridge. The British 1st Airborne fought its way into Arnhem and seized the bridge over the Rhine. Now all they had to do was hold out until the 30th Corps arrived. But 30th Corps was making slow progress, and although the men of the 101st and the 82nd held out until relieved, in Arnhem it was too late to save the British 1st Airborne. Battle-weary, without ammunition or supplies, only a few survivors escaped back across the Rhine. Of the 10,000 men who had landed, just 2,000 made it out. If the operation had succeeded the war in Europe might have been over by Christmas 1944. Instead, hostilities would continue through the bitter winter. |
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