The company prepared to spend the night in Uden. The men who had been there were amazed when the men who had undergone the shelling in Veghel dug foxholes 4 feet deep; they had only dug 6 inches or so into the ground and let it go at that. The officers had billets in houses in Uden. Lieutenant Peacock of 1st platoon approached Webster’s foxhole and told him to come along. Webster climbed out, and they walked to Peacock’s billet above a liquor store on the village square.
“Take that broom and sweep this room out,” Peacock ordered.
“Yes, sir,” Webster replied, thinking to himself, What kind of a man is this? He decided, “I would rather starve to death as a bum in civilian life than be a private in the army.”
The Germans had lost Uden and Veghel, but they hardly had given up. On the evening of September 24, they attacked Hell’s Highway from the west, south of Veghel, and managed to drive a salient across it. Once again the road was cut.
It had to be reopened. Although the strategic objective of MARKET-GARDEN had been lost by now (on September 20 the Germans had retaken the bridge at Arnhem from Col. John Frost’s battalion of the British 1st Airborne Division, and the division as a whole had been thrown on the defensive and the Guards Armored Division had been halted on September 22 some 5 kilometers south of Arnhem), it was still critical to keep the road open. Tens of thousands of Allied troops were dependent on it totally for their supplies. The units north of Veghel included the U.S. 101st at Uden and the 82nd at Nijmegen, the British 1st Airborne north of the Lower Rhine, outside Arnhem, the Guards Armored and the 43rd Wessex Divisions, the Polish parachute regiment, and the British 4th Dorset and 2nd Household Cavalry regiments, all between Nijmegen and Arnhem. If the 101st could not regain control of the road and keep it open, what was already a major defeat would turn into an unmitigated disaster of catastrophic proportions.
General Taylor ordered Colonel Sink to eliminate the German salient south of Veghel. At 0030, September 25, Sink ordered his battalions to prepare to move out. At 0445 the 506th began marching, in a heavy rain, south from Uden toward Veghel. The order of march was 1st Battalion on the right, 3rd Battalion on the left, 2nd Battalion in reserve. At
about 0700 the weary men passed through Veghel. At 0830 the 1st and 3rd Battalions began the attack on the salient.
Initially the advance went well, but soon the German artillery and mortar fire thickened. German tanks, brand-new Tiger Royals with 88 mm guns, dug in along the road, added their own machine-gun and shell fire. They were supported by Colonel von der Heydte’s 6th Parachute Regiment, Easy’s old nemesis at Ste. Marie-du-Mont and Carentan. The concentration on the narrow front was murderous. About noon, the battalions were forced to halt and dig in.
Sink ordered Lieutenant Colonel Strayer to have 2nd Battalion make an end run, a flanking move to the left. It would be supported by British Sherman tanks. There was a wood of young pine trees along the left (east) side of the highway to provide a screen for the flanking movement. Company E led the way for the battalion.
Company E’s first attack in Holland had been to the south, toward Son and then Eindhoven. The second had been to the east, toward Nuenen. The third had been to the north, into Uden. Now it would be attacking to the west, thus completing the points of the compass. That is the way surrounded troops fight. That was the way the airborne had been trained to fight.
Nixon joined Winters to scout the terrain. They found a pathway on the edge of the woods that was solid and firm, providing traction for the tanks. Good enough so far, but the woods ran out 350 meters from the highway, giving way to open ground that provided no cover whatsoever for the final assault.
Winters put the company into formation: scouts out, two columns of men, spread out, no bunching up. They got halfway across the field when the Germans opened up with machine-gun fire. Everyone hit the ground.