TO THE BOLD
It was after 8 p.m. on October 30, 1944, when the six men heard shovels clunk against the ground. To Private First Class Bob Nicholai, a seasoned scout, they were “the unmistakable sound of Germans digging in for the night.” Edging forward through the rain-spattered darkness on the north bank of Holland’s Nederrijn River, another American soldier stumbled into some brush. “Immediately we stood still as statues,” Nicholai recalled. “Then we heard the zip of a German flare going up. We hit the ground and froze.” More flares lit up the countryside. The men could hear Germans moving to either side of them. Only Pete Frank, a master sergeant fluent in German, understood the enemy shouts: “Why the flares?” one jittery German asked. “Somebody heard something,” replied another.
Each time a German flare burned out, the Americans—members of the 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division—crept forward between the flanking Germans. They were just minutes into what was planned as a day-and-a-half mission. A half hour later, with miles to go before daybreak, they had covered fewer than 900 feet. What would later be hailed as the “Incredible Patrol” was off to an inauspicious start.
THE 501st HAD BEEN BUILT and led by Lieutenant Colonel Howard R. “Skeets” Johnson, 39, a former collegiate boxer whom 101st Division commander Major General Maxwell D. Taylor described as “tough, very tough.” Noting Johnson’s 100-plus parachute jumps, Taylor said: “He wanted his 501 to win the war all by itself and worked his troops awfully hard.”
The night before Johnson’s unit made their first parachute jump, they watched the 1939 film In the words of the
