Some boats took direct hits, leaving nothing but flotsam. The flotilla came on. Only eleven boats made it to the far shore, but when they did, the paratroopers who had survived the ordeal had their blood up. They were not going to be denied.
“Nobody paused,” a British tank officer wrote. “Men got out and began running towards the embankment. My God what a courageous sight it was!”
Cook led the way. Captain Keep commented, “Many times I have seen troops who are driven to a fever pitch-troops who, for a brief interval of combat, are lifted out of themselves, fanatics rendered crazy by rage and the lust for killing, men who forget temporarily the meaning of fear. However, I have never witnessed this human metamorphosis so acutely displayed as on this day. The men were beside themselves. They continued to cross that field in spite of all the Kraut could do, cursing savagely, their guns spitting fire.”
In less than a half hour his men had reached the top of the highway embankment and driven the Germans out. The engineers, meanwhile, had paddled back to the west bank and returned with a second wave. Altogether it took six crossings to get Cook’s battalion over.
As those crossings were being made. Cook led the first wave in an assault on the bridges. His men came on fast. Meanwhile, Vandervoort’s people on the west side had finally overrun the park. The Germans scrambled frantically for the plungers to set off explosives on the bridges, but Cook’s men did what they had been trained to do-wherever they saw wires on the ground, they cut them. The German engineers hit the plungers, and nothing happened.
Cook’s men set up defensive positions at the bridges, facing east. As the British tanks with Vandervoort started across the highway bridge, their crews saw the Stars and Stripes go up on the other end. Of Cook’s men forty were killed, a hundred wounded, but he had the bridges. There were 267 German dead on the railroad bridge alone, plus many hundreds wounded and captured. It was one of the great feats of arms of World War II.
Darkness was descending. Arnhem was but eleven kilometres away. Frost’s battalion was still barely holding the eastern end of the bridge. But General Horrocks decided to set up defensive positions for the night. The Guards began to brew up their tea.
Cook’s men were enraged. They yelled and swore at the Brits, told them those were their countrymen in Arnhem and they needed help- now. Horrocks commented, “This operation of Cook’s was the best and most gallant attack I have ever seen carried out in my life. No wonder the leading paratroopers were furious that we did not push straight on for Arnhem. They felt they had risked their lives for nothing, but it was impossible, owing to the confusion which existed in Nijmegen, with houses burning and the British and US forces all mixed up.”
On September 21 the tanks moved out, only to be stopped halfway to Arnhem by two enemy battalions with tanks and 88s. There were Jabos overhead, but the radio sets in the RAF ground liaison car would not work. That afternoon the 9th SS Panzer Division overwhelmed Frost’s battalion. Some days later the survivors of 1st Airborne crossed the Rhine to safety. The division had gone into Arnhem 10,005 men strong. It came out with 2,163 live soldiers.
OVER THE next six months the front line in Holland hardly moved. For the 82nd and 101st that meant months of misery. They couldn’t move by day, because the Germans held the high ground to the east and had enough 88 shells to expend at a single soldier whenever one was visible.
The American airborne troops had been trained as a light infantry assault outfit, with the emphasis on quick movement, daring manoeuvres, and small-arms fire. Now they were involved in a static warfare that was reminiscent of World War I. And as in the Great War, the casualties were heaviest among the junior officers.
Stefanich gone, Cole gone, Wray gone, so many others gone. Reflecting on the losses, Dutch Schultz commented, “By the end in Holland, most of the officers trained by General Gavin had become battlefield casualties.” The pain of the loss of these good men was compounded by the knowledge that nothing had been gained. At the end of September, Patton’s Third Army was stuck; the supply crisis was worse than ever. Antwerp wasn’t open. And Market-Garden had failed. What would be the consequences?