The Epic Struggle of the First Airborne Division
Praises Resupply Airmen

On Tuesday or Wednesday--I am not sure which--I saw three planes receive hits and catch fire, and the pilots, instead of saving themselves, calmly circled again, dropped their cargoes, and crashed in flames. I can find no words to express the admiration we have for those resupply men. Thinking of them, I feel a great pride at just being a member of the same Allied team. Now that the excitement of battle has faded away, it seems impossible to believe that men could have such devotion to their comrades, that they would endure such hell in an effort to take care of us. A Polish captain, a liaison officer between division headquarters and the 4th Landing Brigade, spoke the truth when he said, "There isn't a man flying resupply who doesn't deserve the VC."

Division's internal communications were a miracle. How the signal section kept their radios and their telephone lines in will probably never be known, but it was nothing less than miraculous. I do know that they suffered heavy casualties in doing so. The Arnhem operation was series of constant crises, and if communications had been knocked out for as much as 2 hours of the entire siege we should have been lost.

The medical corps, as usual, continued to go and get the wounded no matter how heavy the barrage. The Germans respected the Red Cross flag every time an evacuation party went out, but of course there were no Red Cross flags during the barrages. The medics simply went out after the wounded and took them in, shelling or no shelling.

The infantry absorbed everything--mortars, tanks, SP guns, machine guns, everything in the book, and kept coming up for more. The German artillery and armor were under command of SS troops and were sturdy. But the German infantry, except for its backbone of SS troops, was scared of the Red Caps and would not attack without the help of armor or SP guns. Four of us were once fired upon by machine guns one-half mile away. There was no chance of hitting us; it was just fright. Another time I heard a Spandau burst which lasted almost 30 seconds, and a man who fires a Spandau with as much as a 5-second burst is simply scared or he would not freeze the trigger that long. There was constant evidence that the attack had given Jerry the scare of his life. The amazing thing about the British infantry was that they carried on with the light-hearted abandon of a Sunday school class on the first spring picnic.

I would like to make a few suggestions based upon my own observation of the airborne operation:

1. There was apparently a lack of liaison between the air cooperation party and the air cooperation itself. Whether this was due to improper crystal frequencies, lack of aircraft, or some other cause I do not know. This should be taken care of well in advance of an operation. Lieutenant Geddes told me he received his frequencies the night before D-day. This should be definitely settled in time to install the crystals and fuses and test the radios.
2. All officers and enlisted men should be completely combat trained before being sent out on such missions.
3. Radio crews should be thoroughly trained. After our two radio men were hit, nobody knew the job. We borrowed a man from the British 1st Airborne Division, but he also was hit.
4. A layer of armor plating, easily removable for speedy maintenance, should surround the radio set.
5. A jump set might be the solution to a lot of radio trouble. Against this must be weighed the mobility of the present veep.

A point for all operations is this: an air cooperation party must know beforehand where the ground forces intend to set up their defenses, so that the most favorable site may be preselected. In the Arnhem case, there was no place inside the perimeter outside the range of enemy guns, but with a larger perimeter such a site might have been obtainable. I do not know whether this was prearranged with the air cooperation party, but I mention it because we of the radar party were not given this information and, had we gone in on D-day and set up as we planned, we would have been in enemy territory in a few hours.