Will Irwin - Abundance of Valor: Resistance, Survival, and Liberation: 1944-45

One powerful full-blooded thrust across the Rhine and into the heart of Germany, backed by the whole of the resources of the Allied Armies, would be likely to achieve decisive results.

Field Marshal Sir Bernard Law Montgomery

I think we might be going a bridge too far.

Lieutenant General Sir Frederick A. M. Browning

Not in vain may be the pride of those who have survived, the epitaph of those who fell.

Sir Winston S. Churchill, on Operation Market-Garden

O n the evening of Monday, September 11, 1944, three men strapped on parachutes and climbed aboard a snub-nosed British Stirling, a specially modified four-engine bomber, at a secret airfield in England. Months of rigorous training and painstaking preparation had brought the men to this point. In recent days, they had endured detailed briefings in London, outlining their mission of arming and training the Dutch underground, even last-minute guidance and a personal farewell from Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands royal family.

Bernhard, a German by birth, had married the Dutch princess Juliana in 1937, and although the German national anthem and the Horst Wessel had been sung at the wedding reception, Bernhard held a fervent hatred for the Nazis. When the royal family had fled the Netherlands at the time of the German invasion, he had prudently seen to his familys safe removal to Canada before returning to London to head the Dutch resistance movement.

Days of nervous anticipation followed for the parachutists as their mission first was postponed because of high winds, then was aborted two days later after their plane reached Holland and survived heavy German flak, only to have the pilot turn back when he failed to locate the drop area.

The men made themselves as comfortable as possible in the planes long, slender interior. At ten that night, the Stirling roared down the runway, the four huge Bristol engines on the short wings straining to lift the enormous plane from the runway, then leveling to a steady drone as the bomber headed toward the English Channel. The men tried to relax as the flight continued over the water. Before long, the plane crossed the Dutch coast over the fishing town of IJmuiden, northwest of Amsterdam, and encountered light flak but was not hit.

At twenty minutes past midnight, twenty-nine-year-old Major Henk Brinkgreve, wearing the brown uniform of the Royal Netherlands Army, dropped through the opening in the floor of the Stirling. As eager as the other two members of the team were to get their mission under way, Brinkgreves fervor was more personal, more emotional; he was returning to his homeland for the first time since the 1940 German invasion. The Dutch officer was quickly followed by Sergeant John Austin, the teams British radio operator. Last to leave the plane was Major John Olmsted, an infantry officer from the United States Army who had come to be called Pappy by the others because of the year or two of age he had on them.

The three men were unaware that nearly all of the agents previously dropped into the Netherlands by Britains Special Operations Executivemore than fifty men since 1941had been captured and imprisoned or executed by the Germans. Recent operations had been more successful, but no one could be sure what awaited the three men now approaching Dutch soil.

The reception committeemembers of the underground gathered to meet the team at the drop zone and help remove the parachutists and their accompanying supplies from the area as quickly as possible to avoid detection or capture by the Germanshad extinguished the lights marking the drop zone as soon as the three parachutists had jumped. Brinkgreve and Olmsted had anticipated this unwelcome action, having been briefed that this reception committee was receiving its first drop. The inexperienced resistance fighters were unaware that special operations planes typically required two passes over the small drop zones to deliver both the parachutists and the cargo of twelve man-size cylindrical containers packed with weapons, ammunition, explosives, and other gear that accompanied most special forces teams deploying behind enemy lines. Because of this, Brinkgreve and Olmsted had persuaded the aircrew to reverse the normal procedure, dropping the parachutists on the first pass and the long steel containers on the second.

As the three men drifted toward the farmland of eastern Holland, near the town of Wierden and less than six miles from the German border, they spotted a truck convoy not far away. With the nearest Allied ground forces still more than a hundred miles to the southwest, the convoy was certainly German.

Brinkgreve hit the soft pasture turf, collapsing and rolling to one side, leaped to his feet, freed himself from his parachute harness, and quickly located the reception committee chief. He informed the resistance man that the Stirling would be circling for another pass over the field to drop the twelve metal containers. The lights, the major explained, needed to be turned on again at once for the pilot to find the drop zone on the second pass.

Not far away, Major Olmsted and the radio operator gathered up their parachutes. Sergeant Austins carbine had caught on the edge of the opening as he exited the plane, jarring the weapon from his grasp and causing it to become tangled in his parachute. He had somehow managed to descend safely but had landed within only a few feet of Olmsted.

Major Olmsted set out in search of Major Brinkgreve while the radio operator buried their parachutes. The American had not gone far when a shadowy form approached him in the dark. As the figure drew nearer, Olmsted could just make out what appeared to be a German uniform. He drew his forty-five-caliber automatic and cocked the hammer, ready to shoot the intruder.

But the stranger suddenly said, Hallo, pal.

Startled at first by the strange greeting, Olmsted challenged the man for the planned recognition signal and then relaxed when the man gave the correct response. Olmsted lowered the pistol, easing the hammer forward with his thumb, and returned the weapon to its holster. The uniform that had appeared to Olmsted to be German was, in fact, that of a Dutch constabulary force, or gendarmerie, called the Marechaussee. The policeman, in this case, was also an active member of the underground.

Olmsted followed the policeman to a spot where Brinkgreve and the reception committee chief were awaiting the container drop. Along the way, the two men were joined by another man, a Dutchman who had been trained in Great Britain to organize resistance groups in the Netherlands. He and his radio operator had parachuted into the Veluwe region, to the south, nearly two weeks earlier, but they had lost all of their equipment on the jump. The two had since made their way northward into the province called Overijssel (the ij is pronounced like the English word eye).

Brinkgreve had successfully gotten the reception committee to relight the drop zone by the time Olmsted and the two Dutchmen found him. Soon the Stirling could be heard approaching the field on its second pass. As the lumbering, roaring shadow soared overhead, less than eight hundred feet above the men, twelve parachutes opened, one after the other, blossoming against the night sky. The drop was a good one, and in a matter of seconds the containers thudded to the ground.