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 are acknowledged, affirmed and commemorated.
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Posted on 02/10/2003 5:34:28 AM PST by SAMWolf
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are acknowledged, affirmed and commemorated.
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Crossing the Waal Waal River Crossing by the 3rd Battalion,  This scene depicts the daylight Waal River Crossing in canvas boats propelled by paddles on September 20, 1944, by the Third Battalion of the 504th Parachute Regiment of the 82nd Airborne Division, straight into the teeth of German machine guns and artillery. This is one of the most famous assaults in modern military history. The 504th sustained over 50% casualties (approximately 25% casualties crossing the canal and another 25% casualties taking the northern end of the Waal River Bridge). To add perspective to this heroic action, it is interesting to note that the Light Brigade at Balaclava sustained 40% casualties, and General George Pickett's Division at Gettysburg sustained 60% casualties in its charge against Union forces at Cemetery Ridge. The difference between the 504th's action and those of the Light Brigade and Pickett's Division is that the 504th accomplished its mission despite taking similar horrific casualties. In his book, A Bridge Too Far, author Cornelius Ryan cites sources who describe this action as "...a second Omaha Beach landing." (A Bridge Too Far - Page 92) The 504th undertook this mission in broad daylight because the Commanding General of the 82nd Airborne Division, General James Gavin, was operating under orders to advance as fast as possible to open the way for British 30th Armored Corps, under the command of British General Sir Brian Horrocks, to move up the road to Arnhem and relieve British and Polish airborne units that had been fighting there for several days. When General Gavin ordered this daylight crossing, minutes and hours counted. General Gavin knew this mission was going to be extremely difficult and gave the 504th's commanding officer, Colonel Reuben Tucker and the commander of the Third Battalion - designated to make the crossing - Major Julian Cook, a list of "proven combat leaders" from other 82nd units that he could augment to the 504th to help him lead his men across the canal. Lieutenant Joseph Brennan of the 505th Parachute Regiment was one of the officers who joined Cook's battalion for the crossing. In recounting his story of the crossing, Captain Brennan said they wanted to get across the 400 yards of open water as fast as humanly possible and those without paddles used their rifle stocks as paddles. One of the troopers in his boat, all too aware of his slim chances of surviving and probably not thinking straight, began paddling furiously with his rifle barrel.  The Waal River Bridge, in the Dutch city of Nijmegen, just a few miles south of Arnhem, was the last critical bridge on the road to Arnhem where British and Polish airborne units were desperately fighting in an attempt to hold the Arnhem Bridge over the Rhine River (the ultimate objective of Operation Market Garden) against vastly numerically superior SS forces. The American 101st Airborne Division in the region of Eindoven, Holland, and the American 82nd Airborne Division in the region of Nijmegen, Holland, had both accomplished their missions of capturing critical bridges thus securing the road up which the British 30th Corps was to advance to Arnhem. Following the successful capture of the Waal River Bridge by the 504th by what was then past sunset, commanders of the 30th Corps waiting in Nijmegen at the southern end of the bridge informed General Gavin that they planned to send the armored column across the captured bridge when infantry and more gasoline and other supplies caught up with them, most likely in the morning. One account of this decision was that they had been ordered not to advance at that time by the Allied Command with British Lieutenant General Frederich "Boy" Browning holding overall command of Operation Market Garden. An oral history account by Lieutenant Thomas Pitt, one of the survivors of the crossing, cites the 30th Corps commanders present as saying they would not move their armor at night. This version was corroborated by Captain Joseph Brennan who also made the crossing. This decision was and still is a source of controversy. There were many factors to consider including intelligence reports indicating that the Germans had massed forces on either side of the eleven-mile road between Nijmegen and Arnhem and were waiting for the armored column to proceed with the intention of pinching them off and crushing them.  This turn of events did not sit well with General Gavin and the 504th which, had they known this information in advance, could have made the crossing that night and sustained far fewer casualties. The 504th had sustained 134 killed, wounded and missing, more than half its strength. (Cornelius Ryan - A Bridge Too Far - page 476) Of the 10,000 British and Polish airborne forces parachuted into Arnhem, and left stranded by the armored ground forces that halted at Nijmegen, only 2,000 were able to escape and rejoin Allied forces.
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Tuesday October 10, 1944
By B. J. McQuaid
Times Foreign Correspondent
With American 82nd Airborne Division, Nijmegen, Holland.
One of a party of war correspondents who came from France to study this northern extremity of the western front, I had the honor of crossing the river Rhine (*read Waal) and looking back on the historic Nijmegen bridge. The clean, undamaged beauty of the single central span, the longest of its kind in all Europe, almost made me forget that we were under fire, and military traffic was incessantly streaming over.
Our guide, Lt. Douglas Gray, North Stonington, Conn., pointed out for us the steep bank up which our paratroopers had stormed from their assault boats to drive the Germans out of their dug-in machinegun nests at point of bayonet. Several hundred yards downstream we saw the great Nijmegen railroad bridge which the paratroopers also captured intact. S.Sgt. David Rosenkrantz, Los Angeles, Cal., told us the story of the scene presented on that railroad bridge during the first hours after the assault boat crossing in which he was a participant.
Rosenkrantz, with a machine gun squad, was in position at the northern end of the bridge when suddenly a whole battalion of German infantry, unaware that the crossing had been made and intent on escaping back toward Germany, started across in marching formation, three abreast. The small band of paratroopers, outnumbered more than 10 to one, waited until the bridge was clogged with Germans from end to end and then, revealing their commanding position, called on the advance foe to surrender. Instead, the Germans began throwing hand grenades.
The Paratroopers sent forward a prisoner they had captured, who agreed to convey the surrender request to his countrymen. The Germans shot him dead as he advanced. This was too much. The paratroopers opened up with machine guns, automatic rifles and bazookas. For the next few minutes the bridge was presented a fantastic spectacle, with the Germans hopelessly trapped withering fire but nonetheless trying to fight back. They took cover behind steel girders and even managed to wriggle up into the superstructure from which they fell like flies into the river.
At dawn the next day dead men hung from girders and blood dripped from steel beams. Paratroopers, walking out onto the bridge counted 267 and carried off scores of wounded. "It was typical of what went on during the battle of Nijmegen Bridge," Rosenkrantz said. "Nijmegen did not last as long as Sicily, Salerno and Anzio, but it was tougher, and bloodier while it lasted."
Everyone in this division has full statistics on the Nijmegen Bridge. Every GI in the outfit takes time to inform you that it was the first bridge across the Rhine that any allied troops secured. They are indignant at news accounts which fail to explain that the river at this point - which the Dutch call the Waal- is actually the lower and major confluence of the Rhine itself.
To men of the 82nd it is never the Waal, it is the Rhine, and they are the ones who got across it, let no historian forget that. And Lt.Col.Robert H.Wiencke, Glencoe, Ill., reminds you that it is four lanes wide and can carry any load an army can subject it to. Judging by the amount of fuss the Germans are putting up to deprive us of this gain, the men's view must be correct. They bang away with artillery all day and all night.
They send over wave after wave of dive-bombers, low, high and medium-level bombers. The British have magnificent anti-aircraft defenses here now. The fireworks display beats anything we have seen since the night attacks on our shipping off the Normandy invasion beachheads.
Found on website at: http://www.nijmegenweb.myweb.nl
In Memory of Staff Sergeant David "Rosie" Rosenkrantz
82nd Airborne Division
504th Parachute Infantry Regiment
3rd Battalion
H Company
Born: Los Angeles, CA, October 31, 1916
MIA: Holland, September 28, 1944
Incredible bravery in necessary action only delayed by Neville Chamberlain at Munich 1938.
Let the French and Germans and the rest of the whirling gerbils of appeasement reap what they shamefully sow.
3rd Battalion, 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment
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