The Blitzkrieg Defense: The Battle of Mook

Part 4 - The Push

In the final installment of “The Blitzkrieg Defense,” the men of the 325th prosecute the attack south of Mook, the Netherlands. We will soon be back to our essays covering the incubation of the airborne division—so stay tuned. If you haven’t checked out the previous segments of “The Blitzkrieg Defense,” we have you covered:

As the appointed hour for the attack neared, C Company was still trying to consolidate. The attached heavy machine gun platoon was still digging gun emplacements from which they could offer a good base of fire.

In the minutes before twilight, the men crossed the line of departure. Crossing that imaginary, metaphysical divide was anti-climatic. Silence reigned. Because surprise was so important, Colonel Charles Billingslea ordered that no artillery preparation be fired.

A sliver of sun was beginning to inch over the horizon. Fog began beset the floodplain, and as the sun broke the fog formed thicker and thicker. It was like walking in a cloud. Visibility was zero; so much so that units could not keep in contact. But it was a blessing which the men counted on and the staff had planned around, as most mornings the river fueled this thick fog. It concealed the attackers. By the time the fog lifted, they hoped to be right on top of the Germans.

According to Leonard O’Brian, Company C seemed to be late in launching, likely owing to delays in consolidating.

It was still dark and everyone was out on the road [running along the base of Finger Ridge] getting assembled. Our squad came by and we got in with them. It was the first I’d seen them in a week.

It was pretty foggy as we jumped off across an open field with one squad in a column behind the other. When we hooked up with the First Platoon, we were to do a right flank and move forward in a skirmish line. Our objective was the dike beyond Rhethorst a mile away. We stalled around, strung out across an open field waiting for the order to move forward. Owing to the dense fog, the Krauts as yet were not aware of our coming. They soon got wise, however, and a barrage of 88’s came in about fifty yards behind us. The attack got underway.

The plan seemed to be working. In Captain Ward’s estimation, it appeared the Germans had no idea they were attacking. “Silence prevailed!” he wrote. However, the men were moving slower than expected due to visibility and general exhaustion. They were still approximately 600 yards from the dike, which was the first major land feature that would provide them cover. They hoped to get to this location before detection by the Germans. “Suddenly,” Captain Ward wrote, “at 0930 the fog lifted, as if a light had been suddenly switched on in a darkened room. Everything on the battlefield stood out in bold relief. The attacking force, advancing in an upright position, were as statues on the ground.”

Massive salvos of German artillery boomed out of the Reichswald Forest and tore into the earth around the men of B and C Companies. It was, in Lieutenant Colonel Sanford’s estimation, the heaviest concentration of artillery they had ever experienced. Grazing machine gun fire zipped and snapped, lacing the field. The first burst killed Lieutenant Naylor, B Company’s commander, his forward artillery observer and Lieutenant Willis Utecht, the leader of 1st Platoon. “The men of B Company had no chance to escape the devastating fire,” Captain Ward wrote. “There was a mad rush in all directions.”

Leonard O’Brian recounted:

We dashed through a swamp that was deeper than we thought and everyone came out soaked and with jammed rifles. I saw a stream of tracers going into the First Platoon and steadily traversed our way. We hugged the ground and edged forward with the tracers zipping over us. I was up to the first group of farm buildings and it was already getting daylight. Sgt. Richardson fired a rifle grenade at a machine gun nest and we all started firing to beat hell with everyone running and yelling. I carried a piece of a fencepost to slam my bolt open when it jammed. Sgt. Berry yelled for Farmer to come up with the [Browning Automatic Rifle]. He came a running with the BAR at his hip spraying the hedgerow with hot lead. The first bunch of Jerries came out with their hands behind their heads. There were five of them, one a wounded officer.

Charley Small yelled to [Anthony] Olivieri to give him a hand grenade to heave in a hole where some Krauts were still resisting. Olivieri was pretty excited and being confused, he pulled the pin from the grenade and tossed it to Charley. It exploded and wounded Charley pretty bad. Sandy had been hit too with a bullet through the arms and back. The prisoners carried Charley back.

We pushed through the buildings with our artillery pounding barrage after barrage right ahead of us. McGuire’s rifle wouldn’t work so he took mine and kept me covered while I took his apart and fixed it.

From the top of Finger Ridge, Lieutenant Colonel Sanford observed the German fire lacing across the floodplain. He was sick: running a high fever and was weak from exhaustion. Because of its commanding view of the sunken floodplain below, Sanford had moved to Finger Ridge just prior to the attack to help direct the artillery. He had 72 guns laying in wait behind him—it was more artillery than he had ever welded, and in this instance he used the guns liberally. He immediately called for a 10 minute concentration. “It seemed as if the very earth was being pulverized by the high explosive ammunition,” Captain Ward recalled. There was no ration on shells to support the attack, and Sanford operated under the idea that if cost in human lives could be avoided by digging the German out of the earth with massed artillery, it was his preferred action.

From his perch, Lieutenant Colonel Sanford attempted in vein to contact anyone in B Company. Sanford sent an officer to try and find them, and was informed that nobody was there. He had the British artillery lay a wall of steel in front of their last known location.

At about 11 A.M., the situation was becoming tense. There were no reserves on which to call, so Lieutenant Colonel Sanford left his observation post and went down into the floodplain to try and locate and personally organize B Company. He found the survivors widely dispersed and reluctant to move when called to. Only 40 men could be found. The wounded lay exposed crying for help.

Meanwhile, the advance of Company C continued. Leonard O’Brian recalled that his platoon had the Germans on the run in front of them.

We had to stop for we were getting too far ahead of the First Platoon which was pinned down over on our right. I was sent up to the top of a hill in a cornfield between us and the First Platoon to keep contact. I had a good view and could see our men sneaking up one hedgerow and the Jerries crawling down another. However, some Jerry whom I couldn’t see had me spotted. He sent a couple rounds whizzing past my ear. I crawled around in the corn to get out of his gunsights but he still had a bead on me and sent a couple more rounds just skimming me. About then the others at the bottom of the hill realized I was in a hot spot and yelled for me to come back down if I could. I jumped up and took off down the hill running with old Jerry shooting right at my heels in one last desperate attempt to get me, but I made it O.K.

We decided to hold it up ’til the First Platoon caught up to us. [Ray] Larson and I got in a hole which was recently vacated by the Krauts, and we proceeded to feast on black bread and honey that they left behind. I tried to break off a piece of bread but it was too tough. Larson finally succeeded breaking a loaf over his knee. A machine gun burst skimmed the top of the hole and made us keep our heads down. Larson said he saw [Alva] Sparks laying back there with a bullet through the head. Sgt. Sungale (who had just married an English girl the week before), Lt. Smith and Lt. Chevaris had also been killed.

As O’Brian and Larson rested in the hole, it was around noon. The battlefield quieted into a lull as both sides licked their wounds. The air observer reported the roads deep in German territory were lined with ambulances. The glidermen were still 300 yards away from the dike and there were no reserves to push the attack home. Colonel Charles Billingslea, Sanford’s boss, came to see the situation for himself. The tall, soft-spoken southerner was gravely concerned when he was told that a gap of 400 yards existed between B Company and the 3rd Battalion. Because of the bare terrain, this was surely known to the Germans, and the threat of a counterattack through this gap was alarming. Colonel Billingslea made the bold decision to commit the remainder of his regiment, the 2nd Battalion, into this gap come nightfall.

In the lull, O’Brian and Larson’s platoon attempted to close the distance on the dike.

We had one more group of houses to take before we reached the dike. Our squad led with [Jeremiah] McGuire first and I was right behind him. Mac and I always stuck together. We reached the houses and were right in the midst of them. As yet a shot had not been fired but soon all hell broke loose. A barrage of artillery sent us scampering for cover. The houses were full of Jerries and they all started firing on us from all sides. Larsen, Nick, [Lieutenant] Disney, and Mac ran inside one house. I got behind the first house with Eddy Barry. Mac captured five Heinies that were hiding in the basement.

The rest of the company was moving up to help us and I saw a British tank moving up the road which made me feel glad. I spotted a sniper in an upstairs window of a house over by the road. I trained my sights on the window and waited until he fired again and then I fired. I don’t know whether I got him but he never fired any more after that.

Just then, Mac came staggering backwards around the corner muttering, “My God, my God.” A sniper and a mortar round had hit him simultaneously. I ran over and dragged him to safety and cut his pack off with my bayonet. I was really mad then. Barry and I carried him back to the hole where Captain [Wayne] Pierce and the company aidmen were. He was still conscious and talking the same as always trying to explain where the sniper was.

We went back to the house and were standing in front of a wooden door when a Kraut inside fired out though the door right between us. The powder blast made Eddy’s eyes sting. We got around to the other side of the house and I was going to set it afire but no one had any dry matches. Jones gave me a few matches but I used them up and still didn’t get a fire going.

Captain Pierce sent word up for us to move back and he would have the tank blast the house down. However, Nick, [Amadeo] Surian and Larson were trapped in the other end of the house with the five prisoners and couldn’t get back. The Krauts, in the other end of the house, were throwing grenades in at them and firing through the door at them so they gathered the five prisoners around them for a shield. Tony Olivieri tried to get to them but he got a few feet from the door and suddenly pitched forward on his face and died instantly with a bullet through his neck.

Late in the afternoon, some 20 men from B Company, whom had fled during the opening salvos which killed Lieutenant Naylor, were rounded up at the battalion command post in Mook. It was a busy village. The ammunition supply point was operating through hand-carried means. Also in the village was the 1st Battalion aid station, operated by Captain Samuel Bassett. In Normandy he had become an experienced combat surgeon; and on the plains of Mook, Captain Bassett was again providing care for a considerable number of casualties. He had the second—and last—man die in his aid station while he was preforming an amputation of the right arm just above the elbow. If he had whole blood instead of plasma, he felt he could have saved him.

Just after nightfall, the men of the 2nd Battalion began to move through Mook towards the 400 yard gap in the line. Max Bach remembered that after passing through the village “a terrific shelling greats us and we jump into one of the ditches dug by the Jerries. I see one of the fellows further up jump right on top of a German anti-personnel mine. There is not enough left of him to burry in a mess kit.” By 11:00 P.M., there was a solid front. Colonel Billingslea ordered the 1st Battalion to try and take the last 300 yards under darkness through infiltration following a 96-gun artillery salvo.

Before they could jump off, at 11:30 P.M., the Germans made a counterstroke of their own and attacked where the gap had been before the 2nd Battalion filled it. On the seam of Company B, the Germans penetrated the line 100 yards deep. Lieutenant Colonel Sanford directed his 96-gun artillery salvo on the Germans, arresting them until some 2nd Battalion men could mop up. Crisis was narrowly averted. “The regiment could not assume the defensive,” Captain Robert Ward explained. “Any penetration of our lines would give the enemy free access to our rear areas. No reserve was available to stem the advance of another counterattack. C Company and B Company were progressing rapidly toward their objective [through infiltration in small groups]. It appeared that the enemy was withdrawing in the Reichswald, and that the counterattack was to shield the withdrawal. It was a weird, eerie night. A thick ground haze had settled over the ground to a height of about four feet. To add to the effect, the artillery concentration had set fire to the houses within the towns to the front. It was a fascinating, unbelievable sight to watch men advancing with only their head showing, outlined against the background of the flames. The fog concealed the features of the men from the shoulders down to the ground, giving the appearance of bodiless heads bouncing in the fog. It was enough to make your spine tingle.”

Throughout the day, the 3rd Battalion made steady progress routing the Germans out of entrenched machine gun positions. By evening, they had secured the first phase line following a concerted effort to route some stubborn Germans out of a hedgerow. They netted 8 prisoners and many German dead. They decided to pause until nightfall, as the raised road by the hedgerow (the first phase line) gave them some semblance of a defendable position, and at 9:30 P.M., they pushed forward to the outskirts of Middelaar, a small hamlet consisting of a strung out line of homes. They were halted due to disorganization and German fire, as the homes were held by the Germans. The battalion formed in an “L” shape with F Company facing north towards Middelaar and E Company facing east looking down the plain. “That evening we were held up for awhile and noticed some Germans coming toward us,” Robert Eschbaugh of E Company remembered. “We had a man that could speak German. He talked them in close then we opened fire. The last man got in a hole and would not give up. Three of us went after him with tommy guns, and when we got him he was a sergeant with several papers on him. He must have had forty some bullet holes in him but he was still alive.”

Backdropped by the tail of a glider, members of the 3rd Squad, 3rd Platoon, Company F pose for the camera in May 1945. Kneeling, L-R: Charles Vance (Platoon Sergeant), Boggess, Neto, Gilliznd. Sanding: Baca, Gallagher, Moyer, Martin, Rock.

After 3:00 A.M., the rest of the night passed quietly. Lieutenant Colonel Sanford’s men had stolen that last 300 yards from right underneath the German’s nose and was on top of the objective. The whole regiment focused on making a hasty defense and resupplying ammunition. On the morning of October 3, Richard Park was sent back to the ammunition supply point in Mook.

Another G.I. and I were ordered to go back into Mook and bring some ammunition forward. The engineers were using mine detectors to try to locate land mines along the country road we used.

On the outskirts of Mook we met a lieutenant with a jeep and trailer loaded with ammunition. We told him we were to carry ammunition forward to the front lines. He asked if the road was cleared of mines. I told him, “Sir, they were working on this when we left up there.” He said, “I will take this ammo forward myself,” and started off with the jeep and trailer. About three or four minutes later he hit a mine and everything was blown into the air. We were following and were the first to reach him. A few minutes later a medical jeep came by and we loaded him on the jeep. He looked like a bulldozer had run over him. I believe every bone in his body was broken. Later I asked the medic jeep driver about him and he said the lieutenant was dead when we loaded him on the jeep.

A sergeant told us to take a litter (stretcher) and carry it forward with ammunition. We loaded and started but the Germans must have seen us for 88’s started hitting close by. I dove into the nearest foxhole I could see until the shelling stopped. When I looked out, I could not find the G.I. who was helping me. The sergeant got another G.I. to help me and although we were shelled all the way to the front lines, we made it with the ammo.

On the way back I noticed the rifle the lieutenant had in the jeep when he was blown up was sticking upright with its bayonet in the ground. Since my rifle was muddy from crawling through some mud that morning, I switched M-1 rifles. I had missed the issue of K-rations the night before so I picked up the boxes the lieutenant did not need anymore.

Later, I was sent with another G.I. and a litter to a company to bring out a wounded sergeant. When we got there we were told that they had already got the sergeant out. Then they told us that they had a German Luftwaffe officer with a broken leg. We were told to take off our cartridge belts, hand grenades, put down our rifles and take this German officer back to the German lines with a white flag. We were starting to comply but just before we picked up the German officer, a major came up and asked what was going on. After he was told, he said… none of my men are going over to the German lines. I sure thought good of that major after that!

At the 1st Battalion Command Post, British officers began getting the dispositions. Captain Robert Ward wrote that “upon being informed that we had attacked the twenty-four [hours] period pervious in order to facilitate their effecting relief of our battalion, and to stabilize the general line, the British in turn informed us that we would not be relieved on position, but that the relieving force would occupy the positions from which we had launched our attack! A small war was narrowly averted between Allied troops upon this information being disseminated.”

At 8:00 P.M., just after dusk on October 3, heavy mortar and artillery concentrations began falling on the 3rd Battalion. Private Robert Eschbaugh was manning an outpost when he saw cows coming from the direction of Middelaar. There were Germans mixed amongst them. “All hell broke loose again,” he wrote. “Hardy’s BAR barrel turned a cherry red. A potato masher grenade blew the stock of Dunn’s rifle.” The British delayed relieving them because of the German attack.

Shortly before 2:30 A.M., the battalion began to fall back. They also were not being relieved in place. They passed through the British who were just beginning to occupy the road that was their first phase line in the attack. “Next morning, in the fog in front of us,” remembered Eschbaugh, “were dead and wounded, thick. As the fog cleared up, one man was seen moving slightly. Two of our men took off their helmets, laid down their guns, got a board from a fence and went out to get him. He was our machine gun sergeant, riddled with holes but alive.”

At around 4:00 A.M., the relief was complete. The men marched back into Mook, turning their backs on the British and the Mook plains alike.

“Walsh Bridge” at Mook built by Canadian engineers in February 1945. Library and Archives of Canada

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Next week on Ridgway’s Notebook: “Sharpening the Talon”