Four Hours of Fury

The Untold Story of World War II's Largest Airborne Invasion and the Final Push into Nazi Germany

James M. Fenelon

• Publisher: Scribner
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781501179389
• eBook ISBN: 9781501179396
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

"Compellingly chronicles one of the least studied great episodes of World War II with power and authority…A riveting read" (Donald L. Miller, New York Times bestselling author of Masters of the Air ) about World War II's largest airborne operation—one that dropped 17, 000 Allied paratroopers deep into the heart of Nazi Germany. On the morning of March 24, 1945, more than two thousand Allied aircraft droned through a cloudless sky toward Germany. Escorted by swarms of darting fighters, the armada of transport planes carried 17, 000 troops to be dropped, via parachute and glider, on the far banks of the Rhine River. Four hours later, after what was the war's largest airdrop, all major objectives had been seized. The invasion smashed Germany's last line of defense and gutted Hitler's war machine; the war in Europe ended less than two months later. Four Hours of Fury follows the 17th Airborne Division as they prepare for Operation Varsity, a campaign that would rival Normandy in scale and become one of the most successful and important of the war. Even as the Third Reich began to implode, it was vital for Allied troops to have direct access into Germany to guarantee victory—the 17th Airborne secured that bridgehead over the River Rhine. And yet their story has until now been relegated to history's footnotes.In this viscerally exciting account, paratrooper-turned-historian James Fenelon "details every aspect of the American 17th Airborne Division's role in Operation Varsity...inspired" ( The Wall Street Journal ). Reminiscent of A Bridge Too Far and Masters of the Air, Four Hours of Fury does for the 17th Airborne what Band of Brothers did for the 101st. It is a captivating, action-packed tale of heroism and triumph spotlighting one of World War II's most under-chronicled and dangerous operations.

PART I

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DECEMBER 1944–MARCH 1945

CHAPTER 1

“WHERE IN THE HELL IS EVERYBODY AT?”

Northern France. Sunday, Christmas Eve, 1944.

Three months before they dropped into Germany, the troopers of the 17th Airborne entered combat for the first time in a manner entirely different from how they’d been trained. Without much warning, they’d been rushed to the front to set up blocking positions along the Meuse River on Christmas Eve 1944. Platoons of paratroopers, not fully aware of what was going on, found themselves digging foxholes in the Meuse-Argonne Cemetery, the final resting place for thousands of Americans killed in the previous world war. The men dug in and waited for orders, each contemplating the odds of becoming a permanent European resident himself. They were as ready as they could be, but like all unseasoned troops, most had no idea what they were about to endure.

Lynn Aas’ platoon stopped to dig their defensive positions in a field littered with frozen American and German corpses. The cold, dead faces of the enemy reminded the twenty-three-year-old rifleman of his German and Ukrainian neighbors back in North Dakota. As he stood there in the snow, a nagging unease took hold of him . . . he had no desire to kill these people.

But knowing the task ahead required resolve, he walked over to one of the bodies and forced himself to stare. In life, the young German had been tall and handsome. Feeling the need to build up his hate, Aas kicked the corpse. This is war, he thought. He is my enemy; I need to prove to myself that I can destroy him. In the coming days almost all of his fellow troopers would get an opportunity to ignite their hate too.

On December 16, Hitler had launched a massive surprise assault to recapture Antwerp, Belgium, and divide British and American forces. The desperate gamble, what would later be referred to as the Battle of the Bulge, caught senior Allied commanders flat-footed, and they scrambled to repulse the enemy’s advance as Wehrmacht troops streamed out of the dense Ardennes Forest, decimating green American troops all along the front. Chased by panzer tanks, entire battalions fled from their positions while Allied commanders desperately tried to stem the retreat. Chaos reigned for several days, and accurate information was in high demand but short supply; defenses appeared to be crumbling all along the front.

It was into this maelstrom that the 17th Airborne was sent to bolster the lines. The initial plan of dropping them into Belgium had to be scrapped due to high winds and thick cloud cover. Thus the men of the 17th, who had trained for two years to descend into battle by parachutes and gliders, entered combat for the first time by jumping from the tailgates of cargo trucks.

Joining the war in Europe after the venerable 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions had each been involved in significant fighting and earned distinguished records, the troopers of the 17th knew they had a reputation to live up to and were keen to prove themselves.

They got their chance when they were assigned to protect the flank of General George Patton’s counterattack out of Bastogne. They moved into the line for their first attack on the morning of January 3, 1945. Patton’s Third Army intelligence officers assured General William Miley, the 17th’s commander, that the enemy was fleeing before them; they would encounter only the delaying actions of small rearguard elements. Even so, Miley was concerned. His units were still assembling at their line of departure, his supporting artillery and anti-tank guns had yet to arrive, and timing prohibited even a cursory terrain study. Making matters worse, fog and snow significantly reduced visibility all along the front.

Miley’s troopers, naïvely trusting Third Army’s intelligence reports, left the line of departure in piecemeal fashion. It was their first mistake. Just as the forward elements began their advance, Oberst Otto-Ernst Remer’s Führer Begleit Brigade launched an unexpected counterattack. The brunt of the German force, led by Panther tanks and half-tracks filled with two battalions of crack panzer grenadier infantry, hit the unprepared Americans like a brick in the face, stunning them to a halt.

Confronted by the heavily armed and battle-hardened enemy formations, Miley struggled to keep his units moving in concert with Patton’s. In a fit of temper, Patton threatened to relieve Miley if he failed to keep his division on the move. Patton didn’t realize until later that Miley’s men had decisively engaged the enemy’s main attack. Despite the retreat of an attached tank-destroyer unit, for which its commander was later court-martialed, the men of the 17th fought the German vanguard to a standstill, preventing a breakthrough into Patton’s unprotected echelons from the rear.

On their second morning of combat, at 08:15, a battalion of Miley’s paratroopers left the shelter of the Bois de Fragette woods near Flamierge. They were well into an open field when the Germans unleashed waves of artillery, mortar, and small arms fire. Casualties mounted quickly as the men loped forward through blankets of snow, seeking shelter in a depression on the south side of a small highway.

At the attack’s height, two German tanks emerged through the dense fog like armored apparitions, clanking down the highway and firing into the exposed paratroopers. Corporal Isadore Jachman, known as Izzy to his friends, recognized the peril of the situation and sprinted from cover to salvage a dead comrade’s bazooka.

Recovering the weapon and a canvas satchel of rockets, Izzy loaded the crew-served weapon himself and headed toward the German armor. He hoisted the bazooka to his shoulder, squinted against the blowing snow, and aimed. The high-explosive warhead slammed into the lead panzer, but with little effect. The tank’s thick armor prevented serious damage, but the jarring detonation gave the crew pause and stalled their advance.

To get a better angle on the second tank, Izzy weaved forward through enemy fire, reloading on the move as he changed positions. The German commander of the trailing tank, witnessing the hesitation of the panzer in front of him, threw his machine into reverse and the two tanks crawled back to the protection of their lines. As Jachman pursued them, a burst of machine gun fire cut him down. The twenty-two-year-old corporal died moments after his comrades reached him.

Izzy’s actions disrupted the enemy attack and provided his unit with a vital respite to consolidate their scattered positions and reorganize their defense. Izzy’s parents, both German-born Jewish immigrants, would later receive their son’s posthumous Medal of Honor.

In the next twenty-four hours, bitter skirmishes erupted over every yard of contested ground, with the adversaries trading possession of the same villages or hilltops multiple times.

German grenadiers attacked and pushed the paratroopers out of Flamisoulle at noon only to cede it back to them a few hours later. The frozen ground made digging protective foxholes almost impossible. The next morning, a German counterattack led by fifteen Mark IV and Mark V panzers overran the American positions, forcing them to withdraw with heavy casualties. All along their lines the evicted troopers regrouped and launched their own counterattacks. Bayonet-wielding paratroopers retook the village of Monty near Mande-Saint-Étienne at the sharp end of cold steel—screaming and whooping as they charged into the German defenders, who retreated in terror.

While the main line of resistance fluctuated, the troopers absorbed the German advance and stubbornly defended their assigned sectors. Patton, learning of the attack’s ferocity, later acknowledged his best decision of the war might have been ordering the 17th to protect his flank. He was convinced that if they’d failed to hold their line, the German panzers would have wreaked havoc on his forces from the rear.

The division’s vigorous defense earned praise from one of Patton’s generals, Troy Middleton, who agreed, “The 17th saved the day.” However, he also criticized their aggressive spirit, which he believed bordered on “recklessness.” Another staff officer noted, “The 17th has suffered a bloody nose and in its first action lacks the élan of its airborne companions.”

The troopers disagreed—when confronted with enemy armor, the choice was simple: bold violence or retreat. “God, how green we are, but we are learning fast,” observed Colonel James R. Pierce, one of the division’s regimental commanders.

Green they were. The lessons of launching poorly coordinated and piecemeal attacks came at a staggering cost—519 men killed in action and almost 3,500 wounded. At least one battalion commander was replaced, and several others probably should have been.

In the middle of February, after forty-six days of combat, the 17th rotated out of the front in Luxembourg, ending what Miley later referred to as their “long nightmare.” The warming weather melted the snow, revealing a landscape dotted with rotting corpses, and an unbearable stench of decay followed the troops as they marched out of the splintered Ardennes Forest. Quartermaster troops piled the dead into the backs of trucks for transport and burial. The bodies, made stiff by freezing temperatures and rigor mortis, were difficult to stack and formed a macabre heap of twisted limbs with arms and legs jutting out at grotesque angles.

• • •

The weary men boarded a troop train for their journey out of Luxembourg and were soon rattling steadily toward France, watching as fields of patchy snow gave way to those of wildflowers. Heading west, their route took them through the Argonne Forest and Verdun, where long-abandoned trenches from World War I could still be seen.

They rode in wooden, four-wheeled French boxcars known as “forty-and-eights,” named for the stenciled emblem on the exterior indicating capacity for forty men or eight horses. Originally used as freight cars, the French pressed them into service during the First World War to transport men, horses, and equipment back and forth to the front. The men sat on the wooden floor or on their packs. Some chose to sit in the open door; others opted to scrounge enough straw from the floor for a makeshift pillow. They were used to fending for their own comfort, and the inevitable cattle jokes or mooing sounds had long since lost an amused audience.

The cadence of the train rocked some men to sleep, but many others fidgeted in discomfort. Having agonized through one of the coldest winters in Belgian history, enduring privation, snow, ice, frostbite, and the flu—not to mention German artillery and tanks—almost all of the troopers suffered from chronic diarrhea. As the forty-and-eights chugged away from the sights and sounds of the front lines, the men now struggled against attacks from within.

It didn’t take long for the GIs to note the lack of sanitary facilities on what they christened the Diarrhea Express. In some boxcars men used their bayonets to pry up floorboards to fashion a privy hole. But the shifting of the train frustrated accuracy and they abandoned that option. A riskier, but more effective, technique was put to the test: the men took turns standing backwards in the open door of the swaying boxcar, dropping their trousers and leaning back into a squatting position. To prevent their buddy from toppling overboard, two comrades held firmly onto his arms and shoulders.

Those who managed to scrounge a scrap of paper or handful of hay found wiping while dangling out the door required the dexterity of an acrobat. However, solid teamwork prevailed over the active motion of the train and the poor condition of the tracks. The troopers of the 17th didn’t lose a single man during the journey.

Laughing at the sight of bare bottoms continually appearing and disappearing along the line of boxcars, a company commander joked that the French farmers should thank his men for the free fertilizer.

Châlons-sur-Marne, France. Tuesday, February 13, 1945.

Disembarking at a small train station in the middle of the night, the men stretched their legs, grabbed their gear, and milled about until trucks arrived to complete the final leg of their journey. They’d arrived at Châlons-sur-Marne, a quiet town sixty-three miles northeast of Paris and home to the Cathédrale Saint-Étienne de Châlons, an imposing Roman Catholic monument consecrated in the twelfth century.

The division established its headquarters in the former barracks of a French cavalry unit, an impressive example of Second Empire architecture with mansard roofs and a high-walled parade ground. The Germans, during their recent occupation, had also used it as a temporary holding compound for American POWs. Now some of the 17th troopers were lucky to be billeted in the town itself, but most would reside in camps set up three or four miles out in the surrounding countryside.

One such tent city resident was Sergeant John Chester, whose camp was ten miles southwest of Châlons in the village of Soudron. After a long journey, he hopped from the back of the truck and plopped into a field of thick mud at a camp clearly still under construction. He squinted at the scene for a few seconds, deciding the quagmire and the camp’s condition didn’t matter—it was unquestionably superior to a foxhole in the snow.

Chester had first attempted to join the Army in 1938, on his eighteenth birthday, but his father refused to sign the enlistment papers. He had been raised on a Missouri farm during the Depression, and his parents had encouraged him to embrace a strong work ethic. Through this blending of circumstance and influence, Chester learned to accept the unavoidable in order to accomplish the necessary. As a teenager, he routinely rose at three o’clock in the morning to feed the animals and help his father bale hay, before starting his homework. With more chores in a day than there were hours, he often tackled tasks in a single-minded, pragmatic way.

For example, when picking up coal during the winter months, he found it more efficient to spend the night in the family truck parked outside the quarry gate so that he’d be first in line, rather than waste time waiting behind other...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Dedication
• Epigraph
• List of Diagrams and Maps
• Parachute Infantry Regiment (December 1944) Table of Organization
• Prologue
• Part I: December 1944–March 1945
• Part II: March 24, 1945
• Epilogue
• Photographs
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author
• Abbreviations
• Notes
• Selected Sources
• Index
• Copyright