American Valor Quarterly Issue 12 - Spring 2015 | Page 33

a congressman coming to talk to me is
going to wish he was never born.” We
hated this man with everything that
was in us while we were training, but
when we got to combat, we saw why he
did this. He wasn’t supposed to coddle
us. He was supposed to make men out
of boys. On top of that, he was the
only commander at that level in WWII
who stayed with his men all the way
through. He had two
separate offers to get out
of our unit and become
a general, but he turned
them down. That’s how
passionate he was about
us. And he took care of us
and made us famous.
On the evening before
June 6, 1944, we were to
sent to jump near SaintCôme-du-Mont, right
near Utah Beach. We
had three jump zones,
and I was a part of Drop
Zone D, now referred to
as “the slaughter house”
in history books. There
were two divisions of
Nazi SS soldiers and two divisions of
German Panzergrenadiers in that zone,
and we jumped right on top of them.
Another officer of the 506th Parachute
Infantry Regiment, Lt. Col. Robert Lee
Wolverton was killed. My company
commander was also killed and for
three days we only had one officer who
showed up. So we did what we were
trained to do. We worked as a unit, or if
the unit got broken up for some reason,
we were trained to act individually.

Jim Martin

If an officer or an NCO wasn’t there,
somebody else stepped in. Nobody
pointed at anyone; they just did it.
Privates would step in and the minute
they said, “I’m in command. Follow
me,” that’s what everyone did. That’s
the way we were trained and it worked
out very well.
When we landed, we had to follow
through on two objectives that had
been given to us. There were two
bridges across the Douve River that
SPRING 2015

the Germans had put up shortly before
the invasion. They were intended to
funnel troops down to the beach in
order to reinforce beach forces. One
of the bridges was for vehicles and the
other was a pedestrian bridge. If we
could deny the Germans access to these
bridges, then the beach forces would be
cut off from any reinforcements. That
was our primary mission.

Operation Market Garden. The
objective there was thought up by Gen.
Bernard Montgomery, and called for
us to jump near a little town called
Son, in Holland. There was a road that
ran 60 miles up the Rhine River. We
were supposed to keep the road open
for supply lines to run through, with
a mile and a half buffer on each side.
The 82nd Airborne was responsible for
“PEE WEE”
MARTIN IN
RAMSBURY,
ENGLAND,
WHERE THE
506TH TRAINED
IN PREPARATION
FOR THE D-DAY
INVASION.

We had to follow through and get
the two objectives that had been given
to us: There were two bridges across
the Douve River that the Germans
had put up shortly before the invasion.
They were to funnel troops down to
the beach to reinforce beach forces.
One was a vehicle bridge and one
was a pedestrian bridge. If you denied
Germans access than the beach forces
were cut off from any reinforcements.
That was our primary mission and we
did achieve that the first day, although
at great cost.
They had a lot more German forces
there than we thought they did. We
were only supposed to be there three
days in Normandy. Gen. Taylor had
said, “Give me three days of hard
fighting and we’re out.” We stayed for
33 days. All told, we jumped 535 men
and we lost 75 who were wounded or
captured, and 93 who were killed.
Our next mission was known as

clearing bridges to the Northeast, at
Nijmegen and Grave. We were tasked
with taking the bridges at Son and
Veghel. The Germans would hit us
every place they could and as a result
of that, the convoys going up the road
were stopped. That didn’t help, but then
here we were trying to shove 10-foot
wide tanks and trucks up a road while
separate convoys were coming back
at the same time with wounded and
dead soldiers. It became quite chaotic.
Eventually we came to another bridge
we needed to secure. The British had
a group of commandos that were
supposed to come and take the bridge
from our control so we could move
into Arnhem where Allied forces had
dropped 10,000 British and Polish
airborne units. Unlike at Normandy,
where they dropped gliders almost on
top of the Pegasus Bridge and were
able to take it easily, they dropped these
guys six miles away from the bridge,
and the Germans weren’t stupid. The
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