More Than Courage: Sicily, Naples-Foggia, Anzio, Rhineland, Ardennes-Alsace, Central Europe: The Combat History of the 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment in World War II

495 Pages·2008·10.552 MB·English

by  Phil Nordyke

MORE THAN
COUR AGE
SICILY, NAPLES–FOGGIA, ANZIO, RHINELAND,
ARDENNES–ALSACE, CENTRAL EUROPE
The Combat History of
The 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment
in World War II
Phil Nordyke
First published in 2008 by Zenith Press, an imprint of MBI Publishing Company,
400 1st Avenue North, Minneapolis, MN 55401 USA.
Copyright © 2008, 2010 by Phil Nordyke
All maps copyright © 2008, 2010 by Philip Schwartzberg, Meridian Mapping
Hardcover edition published in 2008. Digital edition 2010.
All rights reserved. With the exception of quoting brief passages for the purposes of
review, no part of this publication may be reproduced without prior written permission
from the Publisher.
Zenith Press titles are also available at discounts in bulk quantity for industrial or sales-
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Digital edition: 978-1-61673-970-6
Hardcover edition: 978-0-7603-3313-6
Designer: Chris Fayers
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Nordyke, Phil.
More than courage : Sicily, Naples-Foggia, Anzio, Rhineland, Ardennes-Alsace, Central
Europe : the combat history of the 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment in World War II /
by Phil Nordyke.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-7603-3313-6 (hbk.)
1. United States. Army. Parachute Infantry Regiment, 504th. 2. World War,
1939-1945--Campaigns--Western Front. 3. World War, 1939-1945--Campaigns--Italy. 4.
World War, 1939-1945--Regimental histories--United States. I. Title.
D769.348504th .N67 2008
940.54’1273--dc22
2008006488

Printed in the United States of America
Contents

Acknowledgments vii
Introduction 1
Chapter 1 “I’m Going To Be A Paratrooper” 3
Chapter 2 “Another Hellhole” 23
Chapter 3 “The Sky Was Full Of Tracers And Bursting Shells” 47
Chapter 4 “Retreat Hell! Send Me My 3rd Battalion!” 69
Chapter 5 “The Germans Were Always On The High Ground Looking
Down Our Throats” 101
Chapter 6 “Seems Like The Black-Hearted Devils Are Everywhere” 127
Chapter 7 “The Regiment Was Probably At The Peak Of
Its Fighting Efficiency” 159
Chapter 8 “Let’s Get Across The Bridge!” 188
Chapter 9 “Somebody Has Come Up With A Real Nightmare” 213
Chapter 10 “I Have Never Seen A More Gallant Action” 237
Chapter 11 “Our MOS Was Still, Kill Germans” 269
Chapter 12 “Far Worse Than Any Nightmare” 297
Chapter 13 “At Times A Person Did Not Care If He Lived Or Died” 324
Chapter 14 “No Amount Of Hardship Or Loss Could Affect Its Morale” 348
Chapter 15 “Big Six-Foot Jerries, In Waves Of Skirmish Lines As Far
As The Eye Could See” 381
Epilogue “No Braver, More Loyal, Or Better Fighting Men Ever Lived” 407
Notes 411
Bibliography 443
Index to Maps 453
Index 454

Acknowledgments
Many individuals contributed to making this book possible, and I am
deeply appreciative of their assistance. My wife, Nancy, spent long
hours with me at the National Archives, the 82nd Airborne Division
War Memorial Museum, the Donovan Research Library, and other archives,
finding information and veterans’ accounts.
My literary agent, Gayle Wurst of the Princeton International Agency for
the Arts, believed in the project from the beginning, as did Richard Kane, the
managing editor of Zenith Press. I appreciate their faith in me. I want to thank
Steve Gansen for shepherding this project through the editing process.
A number of archives contained valuable information that made this
book possible. I want to thank Doug McCabe, Curator of Manuscripts, Robert
E. & Jean R. Mahn Center for Archives and Special Collections, Vernon R.
Alden Library, Ohio University, Athens, Ohio, for providing the large volume
of materials and veterans’ accounts from the Cornelius Ryan Collection.
I want to extend my gratitude to Dr. John Duvall, Museums Chief, and
Betty Rucker, Collections Manager, who made available the vast wealth of
the Ridgway–Gavin Archives at the 82nd Airborne Division War Memorial
Museum at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.
I want to thank Ericka L. Loze, librarian at the Donovan Research Library
at Fort Benning, Georgia, who provided monographs of 504th Parachute
Infantry Regiment veterans from the library’s massive collection.
Several members of the staff at the National Archives helped me locate
many documents, combat and hospital interviews, and awards files used in the
book. The dedicated men and women of the National Archives do so much to
preserve the country’s historical documents, and they all deserve our thanks.
My thanks to Father G. Thuring and Frank van den Bergh with the Liber-
ation Museum in Groesbeek, the Netherlands, for freely sharing information
about Operation Market Garden.
I owe an enormous debt to Don Lassen and his Static Line publication for
so much of the contact information for the veterans I interviewed. My grati-
tude also goes to Jim Megellas and T. Moffatt Burriss, veterans of the World
War II 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment, whose great books about the regi-
ment served as inspiration for me to write this book.
vii
More Than Courage
This book would not have been possible without the first-person accounts
of the veterans of the 504th Regimental Combat Team. Many such veter-
ans, among them Fred Baldino, Charles Battisti, Edwin Bayley, Bill Bonning,
Reneau Breard, Charles Butler, Landon Chilcutt, Al Clark, Harry Corbin, Ed
Dodd, Ray Fary, Pat Fusaro, Roy Hanna, Leo Hart, Harold Herbert, Donald
Herndon, John Holabird, Tom Holliday, Mike Holmstock, Shelby Hord, Walter
Hughes, Francis Keefe, the Reverend Delbert Kuehl, Bill Leonard, Joseph
Lyons, Carl Mauro, Francis McLane, Louis Orvin, Ross Pippin, Edward Ryan,
Ed Sims, Harold Sullivan, James Ward, Obie Wickersham, and George Wil-
loughby, openly shared their accounts, their time, and vital information for
the book, for which I am profoundly grateful.
Numerous families and friends of the 504th Regimental Combat Team, as
well as other authors and historians, contributed additional veterans’ accounts
and information. I am deeply indebted to Dutch author and historian Jan
Bos for sharing the veterans’ accounts used in his superb book, Circle and
the Fields of Little America: The History of the 376th Parachute Field Artillery
Battalion of the 82nd Airborne Division during World War II. Mike Bigalke,
Bob Burns, Alex Kicovic, Jim McNamara, Steve Mrozek, Terry Poyser, Mrs.
Leonard Trimble, Peter Turnbull, Frank van Lunteren, Brandon Wiegand, and
Robert Wolfe contributed many of the veterans’ personal accounts, for which
I am extremely appreciative.
In some cases, I have made minor changes to the personal accounts to
correct grammatical and spelling errors, to put the action in chronological
order, to omit unnecessary information, and to create consistency in unit
designations, equipment, and other terminology. However, the first-person
accounts are always true to the veterans’ original words.
It is to all of the officers and men who served as the Devils in Baggy Pants
with the 504th Regimental Combat Team during World War II that this book
is dedicated.
viii
Introduction
The 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment and its supporting units, the 376th
Parachute Field Artillery Battalion, Battery C, 80th Airborne Antiaircraft
(Antitank) Battalion and Company C, 307th Airborne Engineer Battalion,
were one of the greatest fighting forces ever assembled. Its combat record is
spectacular. No American parachute regiment fought as many days or under as
many differing circumstances during World War II. It served 281 days in front-
line combat and made combat jumps at Sicily, Salerno, and Holland, fought in
the rugged mountains of Italy, made a beach landing at Anzio, endured brutal
winter combat in the Belgian Ardennes, and made assault crossings of the
Waal and Rhine Rivers. Units of the regiment were awarded four Presidential
Unit Citations for actions during the fighting at Salerno, Anzio, Holland, and
central Germany.
Lieutenant Edward F. Shaifer, Jr., believed several factors made the 504 a
legendary fighting force with a stellar combat record. “Its morale was unshak-
able and its experience broad. Few fighting teams with the same lengthy time
in action had participated in as much heavy fighting under such varied condi-
tions, and suffered as few casualties. Consistently, the unit had fought, often
cut off and surrounded, in some of the most critical spots of the war. And, often
outgunned by opposing artillery, it had met the best troops the Germans could
pit against it, surrendering not a foot of ground, defeating each in turn with
an average disproportionate casualty rate of ten to twenty percent to that of
the enemy, a truly remarkable record. . . . The members of this regiment were
exceptionally fine soldiers.”1
General James M. Gavin, who commanded the 505th Parachute Infantry
Regiment and later the 82nd Airborne Division during World War II, described
the 504’s commanding officer, Colonel Reuben H. Tucker, as “a tough, superb
combat leader . . . probably the best regimental combat commander of the war.”2
Other Allied units had tremendous respect for the regiment’s combat
prowess. The division intelligence section of the U.S. 3rd Infantry Division,
which fought alongside the 504 at Anzio, wrote the following: “On the beach-
head these parachutists have caused worry and wrinkled brows only in the
enemy camp. They have shown themselves particularly qualified at night
patrolling and on many occasions have tackled larger numbers of Krauts than
1
More Than Courage
they themselves had, usually to the Kraut’s disadvantage.
“Their motto is ‘Strike-Hold’ and to date, they have done all of that and
more.”3
The enemy feared the presence of the 504 paratroopers. A diary found on
the body of a German officer at Anzio read, “American parachutists—devils in
baggy pants—are less than one hundred meters from my outpost line. I can’t
sleep at night. They pop up from nowhere and we never know when or how
they will strike next. Seems like the black-hearted devils are everywhere.”4
The paratroopers of the 504 were some of the toughest, best, most aggres-
sive soldiers that America or any country has ever fielded. Despite fighting
against some of the best troops of the German Army—the Hermann Göring
Panzer Division and the 1st, 9th, and 10th SS Panzer Divisions—the regiment
never lost.
2
Chapter 1
“I’m Going To Be A Paratrooper”
The young men who volunteered for the airborne came from almost every
imaginable background and had many different reasons for volunteering.
Ross S. Carter, from Duffield, Virginia, was one of the few enlisted men
with a college degree. “Every level of society had its representation among us.
Senators’ sons rubbed shoulders with ex-cowboys. Steelworkers chummed
up with tough guys from city slums. Farm boys, millionaires’ spoiled brats,
white-collar men, factory workers, ex-convicts, jailbirds, and hoboes joined
for the thrill and adventure of parachute jumping. And so, the army’s largest
collection of adventurous men congregated in the parachute troops.
“The thing that distinguished us from most other soldiers was our willing-
ness to take chances and risks in a branch of the Army that provided a great,
new, almost unexplored frontier. In other days paratroopers would have been
the type to sail with Columbus, or the first to seek out the West and fight the
Indians.”1
One of the early volunteers for the airborne, Reuben H. Tucker III, exem-
plified that spirit. At the time Tucker said, “I have no definite reason for
joining up as a parachutist except that I like excitement and adventure and I
always like to participate in something new and different. You might say I like
to ‘pioneer.’ ”2
Tucker, called “Tommy” by his family, grew up in Ansonia, Connecti-
cut, one of six children in a working-class family. He was an avid athlete and
Boy Scout, and at age thirteen, courageously pulled his younger brother and
a friend from a frozen pond, for which he received an award from the Boy
Scouts. Tucker’s high school classmates nicknamed him Duke.
Upon graduating from high school in 1927, he worked as an apprentice to
his father in a brass mill for about a year. Tucker, whose ancestors on both sides
of his family had served in the military as far back as the Revolutionary War,
then decided to embark upon a military career and left to attend Millard’s West
Point Preparatory School in Washington, D.C. In 1929 he passed the entrance
3