Across this very field, as dawn was breaking in October 1944, thirty-five men with bayonets fixed raced headlong towards more than two hundred and fifty heavily armed SS soldiers. In the minutes that followed, and in an episode immortalized in the series Band of Brothers, Captain Dick Winters and the men of Easy Company reigned chaos across this now peaceful landscape. But how exactly did that episode come about?
What really happened on that day? And do the events around this crossroads match those presented on screen? Using the latest technology, wartime aerial imagery, and the actual accounts of those who were there, we will explore the charge at Heteren Crossroads.
In order to do that, we need to understand the situation as it stood in early October 1944. Just two weeks earlier, British Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery’s bold plan to cross the river Rhine at Arnhem and end the war before Christmas had been launched. Beset by problems and poor management, it had failed, but had gained some ground.
Amongst that newly won territory was this patch of land known as the Island. Bordered on all sides by waterways, including the mighty rivers Rhine and Waal to north and south, it was a key area of ground.
When Operation Market Garden failed south of the Rhine, the Allies worked hard to expand the narrow corridor right up to the river and secure the flanks to both east and west. But the value of this ground wasn’t lost on the Germans, who were also desperate to retake this bridge across the Waal at Nijmegen. And so by early October, the scene was set for a bloody encounter which would decide control of the Island.
The men tasked with consolidating this area came predominantly from the US 101st Airborne Division, the Screaming Eagles. By now veterans of Normandy and Market Garden, they had a solid reputation on the battlefield. Amongst their units was the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment.
Let’s take a look.
Like all paratrooper regiments, the 506th was made up of three battalions, each of which was made up of three companies of at least, on paper, one hundred and twenty-five men each, with Able, Baker, and Charlie Companies forming the first battalion, Dog, Easy, and Fox the second, and George, How, and Item the third. Our focus lies with Lieutenant Colonel Robert Strayer’s second battalion and specifically Captain Richard Winters’ Easy Company. Winters himself was already something of a legend in the airborne, having taken command of Easy on D-Day when his company commander’s plane was shot down.
He had led an assault on a German gun battery at Brecourt Manor, earning the Distinguished Service Cross in the process. Since then, he’d fought at Carentan, the Bloody Gulch, and in the assault on Nuenen in Operation Market Garden, and he was still only twenty-six years old.
The role of Easy Company and the 506th generally, having moved up to relieve British troops on the northwestern part of the Island, was to push northwards towards the Lower Rhine, consolidate the ground won, and prevent enemy incursions across the river. So by the 4th of October 1944, Company E were based right here around the village of Randwijk, around one kilometer south of the river, though with responsibility of holding this two-kilometer stretch of line, which also included taking over several key outpost positions with views across the river. Little did they know, but this same area had also fallen within the German gaze as they prepared to launch their own attack.
Let’s take a moment to explore the area a little better by overlaying this wartime aerial image taken on the 6th of September 1944 by Allied reconnaissance aircraft onto the modern map. We can see that this area has hardly changed over the last eight decades. Still visible here to the southwest is the village of Randwijk, from which, and running parallel to the Rhine, is an embanked roadway or dyke leading to the village of Heteren.
Just here is a small crossroads, from which another lower raised road heads northwards across the flat farmer’s field to the southern bank of the river and a ferry crossing point. Across the fields themselves run a series of small drainage ditches, which by blending back out to the modern image we can see still lie in exactly the same position they did in October 1944.
In short, the German plan to assault this area was to send an entire division crashing across the Island from the northwest, drive the Allies back, and retake both the Island and the Waal River crossing at Nijmegen, some fifteen kilometers to the southeast. In order to aid that attack, on the night of the 4th and 5th of October, two full companies of SS had silently crossed the Rhine just here and moved into these fields to launch a diversionary assault the following morning, which would draw Allied eyes away from the main German thrust. But all of that was unknown to Captain Winters, who, though close to the river, did not have eyes on the river itself.
To remedy that, at 3:30 a. m. on the 5th of October, Winters ordered a patrol to push northeastwards and occupy a building right here and report on enemy movement on the opposite bank.
That patrol of four men, led by Sergeant Art Youman, with PFCs Al Lease and Strohl, immediately set off following the southern edge of this dyke on what they hoped would be an uneventful journey through unoccupied territory. Very soon they found out otherwise. Approaching this position right here some twenty minutes later, Sergeant Youman ordered Lease to climb to the top of the dyke for a better view northwards.
Just as he did so, and only a handful of meters away, he was met by the sight of a heavily manned German machine gun whose crew had clearly spotted him.
In just a few seconds, a shower of grenades rained down on the patrol, wounding every man, with Al Lease receiving a staggering thirty-two wounds to his face, neck, and arm. Incredibly, in the chaos that followed, all men reached safety, reporting to Captain Winters at 4:20 a. m.
exactly what they’d found. Knowing that there should be no German presence south of the river, Winters immediately called forward one squad from his first platoon along with Sergeant Boyle and his radio from company headquarters to go out and investigate. Following the same route as Youman’s patrol an hour earlier, the fifteen-man group used the shelter of the dyke to reach this spot, from which they could see and hear the intermittent fire of the machine gun crew firing southwards, presumably in error, as there were actually no Allied troops in that area.
Realizing his opportunity, he first tried to call in artillery support on the radio. No luck. Knowing then he would have to take on the gun himself, he crawled over this section of the roadway, luckily unseen, before calling across the rest of his squad, minus two men left to protect his flank, before assembling all in this shallow ditch north of the road.
Leaving his men in cover, Winters advanced alone, some two hundred and fifty meters, before spotting the gun and seven-man crew silhouetted at the top of the embankment. Quickly, he turned around and crawled back to his patrol, bringing them back to the same spot.
Winters recalled the moment. We reached a position about forty yards from the machine gun. As dawn approached, I halted the patrol and instructed Sergeant Jukeman and Corporal Christensen to set up our machine gun.
I then went to each man and in a whisper assigned each a target on the German machine gun crew with instructions to fire on my command. Next, I stepped back and raising my voice a bit louder, ready, aim, fire. The rifle fire was good, but our machine gun fired a bit high.
Three Germans started running for the other side of the dyke. I joined in with my M1, as did everybody else. In short order, we accounted for all seven enemy soldiers.
They had poked the hornet’s nest.
Moments later, a heavy rifle fire was opened up on the patrol from the road to their front, causing Winters to order a rushed withdrawal as the fifteen men fell back two hundred and sixty meters to take up position in this shallow ditch. It was whilst in this spot that twenty-three-year-old William Jukeman was hit and killed by a German rifle grenade fired from the cover they had occupied. Moving forward some fifty yards into the field from his precarious cover, Winters now had a moment to assess the situation.
It was clear that there were enemies to his front behind a solid embankment. But how many? He had no idea.
He did though know that his position was a very unhealthy one. Not only was he likely outnumbered, but running across the entire length of his right flank was that twenty-foot-high roadway that would offer perfect cover for an enemy moving along his flank. In addition, he also knew that to his right, the ground for at least three-quarters of a mile was completely open to the enemy.
As soon as they realized this, surely they would outflank him, trap his small patrol against the Rhine, and annihilate them. He had to act.
As was his way on more than one occasion, Winters was decisive, calling up the remainder of First Platoon over the radio along with a light machine gun section. They were soon reinforced by squads under Lieutenant Peacock and Staff Sergeant Floyd Talbert, bringing their number to thirty-five men. Winters’ plan was simple.
Using Lieutenant Rice’s machine guns to provide covering fire, the three squads, with Talbert on the right, Peacock on the left, and Winters in the center, would fix bayonets and charge directly across the field to this roadway, a distance of two hundred and sixty-five meters, and engage whatever lay beyond. It was incredibly risky.
Here’s Winters again. I assembled second squad and explained the plan. Don Hubler was standing right in front of me.
When I said fix bayonets, he took a big swallow. I can remember seeing his Adam’s apple make a difficult trip up and down his throat. Hubler’s adrenaline was flowing.
My adrenaline was pumping, too. I’d never been so pumped up in my life. On the smoke signal, the base of fire commenced, and all three columns started their dash across the one hundred and seventy-five to two hundred yards of level field.
I was a good athlete in school, but I’m sure I ran that two hundred yards faster than I’d ever run two hundred yards in my life.
Just a minute later, Winters, alone, having outstripped his men, reached the roadway, and immediately encountered a German sentry. In a split second, both men hurled grenades towards each other, and incredibly neither went off. Upon throwing, Winters immediately realized his error.
Although he had taken the pin from his grenade, he’d forgotten to remove the tape he habitually used to stop them going off accidentally. Realizing this, he mounted the roadway and saw the German sentry taking cover, still waiting for the explosion. It was all the time he needed.
He fired from the hip and killed the man right there.
Turning now to his right to this patch of field, he was shocked to find at less than twenty yards range, the first of more than one hundred SS men sheltering, totally unaware of his presence. Taking aim from just here, he fired fifteen rounds into the dense mass of the enemy before finally third squad under Floyd Talbert arrived to his right and added their own fire to the now chaotic scene. In the next few seconds, and it was only that, dozens of men fell as Peacock’s squad also arrived and thumped round after round into the disorganized mass who began fleeing back towards the Rhine.
At the same time that the men on the roadway opened up, the machine guns began to redeploy and join their comrades just here in time to see another panicked mass of perhaps one hundred SS men come streaming across this embankment directly into their path. It was a bloodbath. Dozens more men fell dead or wounded, with the remainder fleeing at top speed towards the ferry crossing back over the Rhine.
In just a handful of minutes, thirty-five men had bested two full companies of SS in this unassuming patch of ground in the Dutch countryside.
But unlike in the series, the fight wasn’t over. With the support of a platoon of Fox Company, Winters and his men turned north to pursue the fleeing Germans and capture the southern bank of the Rhine. Advancing along this track, they made it to right here before themselves being struck by enemy fire from around seventy-five Germans concealed in this field.
Finally, at risk of being cut off and feeling that his job had been done, he ordered his men to withdraw back to the safety of the raised embankment where the German machine gun had stood. Just as the last few men arrived, a heavy barrage of German mortars slammed into the rear ranks, wounding eighteen men, including Sergeant Boyle, who played a prominent part throughout the action.
It had been a clear victory for the men of the 506th, who had surprised and routed a much stronger force, but not a free one. All told, one man, William Jukeman, had been killed and a further twenty-two wounded. The Germans on the other hand had suffered far more heavily, with perhaps fifty men killed and at least twice as many wounded, along with seven prisoners taken who were, as described in the TV series, escorted back to the rear by a slightly wounded Private Joe Liebgott, who had just one round in his rifle.
All arrived.
The actions of Captain Winters and the men under his command right here on the 5th of October 1944 played a significant role in stopping the planned German assault to recapture the Island, which was destined to remain in Allied hands for the remainder of the war. Today that location is marked only by this small memorial which stands close to where the German machine gun position once did. But for all those men who once fought here, it’s a place they would never forget.