MSG John McCarthy’s Road to Lecaudey Farm (Part II)

And also 14 :shy:

 

Thanks, Patrick. That minimal content certainly justifies you not posting it. Kinda odd that they reported no ground fire since other sources mention it prominently. On that subject, if there was ground fire, is it possible it was from friendlies? I'm no expert on AAA targeting, but assuming reports of Keokuk crossing the coast at Utah are correct, where would enemy AAA have come from? Of course at that elevation it could have been from enemy MGs - if the horizontal distance was fairly small, but that just leads back to the original question: where were enemy forces in an arc west of Utah at 2100 that weren't preoccupied with pressure from US ground forces?

 

In the continuing effort to prove/disprove the theory that my father’s glider, Chalk #4 of the Keokuk Mission, landed in the field south of the Pratt Memorial on the evening of D-Day, I am currently working two long-term research initiatives. These include:

- A planned visit to the U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center (USAHEC) to review the contents of the George Koskimaki Collection that includes research files for his three books, including D-Day with the Screaming Eagles.

http://cdm16635.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/p16635coll16/id/3571

Included in the 42 boxes of historical material in the collection is the questionnaire that my father completed for George Koskimaki as he completed his research for D-Day with the Screaming Eagles. In a recent conversation with Mr. Koskimaki, he mentioned to me that, as expected, there is a large volume of unpublished information in these files.


- A planned visit by a friend to the Silent Wings Museum in Lubbock, TX to review their collection of WWII glider photographs. D-Day Gliders and Forgotten Wings author Phillipe Esvelin has utilized this museum as the source for many of the glider photographs in his books. Unfortunately, this collection is not cataloged or organized.

Silent Wings Museum - Home


Pending these visits, during a recent Internet search, I discovered that the Cornelius Ryan Collection of World War II Papers is maintained at the Alden Library at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio. This collection includes Ryan’s research material for his three books: The Longest Day, The Last Battle and A Bridge Too Far. An online catalog of the collection contents indicates that a research questionnaire that my father completed (most likely in 1967) for Ryan’s A Bridge Too Far, along with correspondence between Ryan and wartime correspondent Walter Cronkite are maintained in the same folder.

Manuscript Collection

With the outstanding assistance of the Alden Library staff, I was able to obtain copies of the content of this folder. In this post, and perhaps one or two others, I will upload some of this material. While the focus of the material is obviously Operation Market Garden, my father does make some reference to his Normandy experience.

Ryan’s four-page questionnaire consists of 25 questions. The questions range from asking about basic personal identification information (name, rank, unit, etc.) to specific questions about the operation: When did you know you were going to be a part of the Holland operation? How did you feel about a daylight operation? What were the rumors aboard your plane or glider in which you flew to Holland? Do you remember any significant experiences you may have had with Dutch civilians or members of the Dutch underground?

A few portions of that questionnaire are posted below.

Opening and closing paragraphs of the Cornelius Ryan research questionnaire:





In two of his responses, my father mentioned the Normandy operation:


Transcribed from above:

Question #13: How did you feel about a daylight operation? Do you recall any conversations with your friends about it? What was said?
Answer: “This was my second daylight operation. I went into Normandy on the afternoon of D-Day - which to my mind was a rough one as we had a lot of casualties – Holland by comparison was easy – Most all of my training had been for night operation – I felt better due to the fact that you could see where you were going”


Questions #20: Do you recall any incident, sad or heroic or simply memorable, which struck you more than anything else?
Answer: “When I got to Normandy I had a lot of trouble joining my unit – I had been pinned down – The first man I saw was a PFC Dave Bernay - Who led me to my unit – In Holland I took 4-men along a fire break towards Best to establish a defense around the area. The first man I ran into again was Bernay who was trying to link up with our unit – This time I was able to lead him to our unit”



With regards to Operation Market Garden:


My father’s answer to one question provided a good summary of his glider flight into Holland and identified some of the other personnel that were also on board his glider. Due to the poor print quality of his written response on the reverse side of Ryan’s questionnaire, I will just transcribe that information here.

Question #12: What was the trip like into Holland? Do you remember seeing anything unusual or conversations you had or how you passed the time?
Answer: “ The glider I was in was #3 of the first serial. We were not given a co-pilot in the operation as we had in Normandy. We had a Captain from the Dutch Underground or Army (I can’t remember (which) at this time) who had pilot training and he was given the co-pilot’s seat in case our pilot was knocked out. Across from me was a war correspondent who I believe was Walter Cronkite now of CBS. The trip across the channel was uneventful – after we landed we got some small arms fire or shrapnel – The war correspondent got a big thrill out of it – afterwards I understand he had some shrapnel in his musket bag. In landing there was a lot of activity. Some C-47s went down – gliders went end over end. I would say that this was a much safer operation than Normandy. Also in the glider was Col. Ned Moore who was later the Chief of Staff for the Division – he was the highest ranking officer”


Apparently, my father’s mention of Walter Cronkite in the questionnaire resulted in an August 22, 1967 letter from Cornelius Ryan to Walter Cronkite. Cronkite’s response to Ryan, sent on CBS News letterhead, was dated September 13, 1967.


Ryan’s letter to Cronkite




Cronkite’s response to Ryan




Walter Cronkite’s statement that “I do remember the sergeant” (my father) provides another piece of evidence that points to Cronkite arriving in Holland on September 17th, not on the 18th, as several other sources have erroneously reported.

I plan to post additional information from the Ryan Collection at a later date.

R/Kevin

 

Hi Kevin,

I have not actually do research on the Cronkite glider flight. But do have a few questions for you.
Did your father mention the date of his flight to Holland?
What was the unit he connected to?

Curious about what your father wrote to the other questions of the questionary.

Hans
www.airbornetroopcarrier.com

 

Hans,

My father was assigned to the 101st Airborne Division HQ Company, G-1. His boss was the G-1, LTCOL Ned Moore, who later served as the Acting Division Chief of Staff at Bastogne.

I believe my father arrived in Holland on September 17th. I base this on my recollection of conversations I had with him in the 1970s, as well as my recent research efforts. In the Ryan A Bridge Too Far questionnaire above, my father mentions that he was in glider #3 of the first serial and that LTCOL Ned Moore was the senior officer on his glider. My father makes no mention of the date in his response. However, from various sources, I have determined that the senior officer on glider #3 of the first serial on D+1 (September 18th) was COL Joseph Harper, 327th GIR. The glider lift on D+2 (September 19th) consisted primarily of artillery units. So, I am very confident that my father arrived in Holland on September 17, 1944.

I plan to transcribe and post more of my father’s responses from the Ryan questionnaire in the future. Several of my father’s responses to the questionnaire focus on his interaction with Dutch civilians. One gentleman welcomed him with “We have been waiting for you for four years and XX days.” (He knew the exact number of years and days since the beginning of the German occupation.) Other Dutch civilians welcomed the American troops to your country with cups of fresh milk. Another of my father’s responses discusses his interaction with a group of young German POWs.

More to follow.

R/Kevin

 

More from the Cornelius Ryan A Bridge Too Far questionnaire…

The first eight of the 25 questions were basic demographic-type questions: What is your full name? Your present address and phone number? What do you do today? What was your unit, division and corps in September 1944? What was your rank as of September 1944? What was your age as of September 1944? Were you single/married/engaged then? To whom? If married, did you have any children at that time? Where were you born?

For the remaining questions, my father’s handwriting is often difficult to read, even for me, so I will transcribe his responses:

Question #9: When did you get to the ETO and what previous combat had you seen?
Answer: I went into Normandy on D-Day in a glider and stayed in Normandy until July.

Question #10: When did you know you were going to be a part of the Holland operation?
Answer: Late August 1944 when the operation was originally planned. I had a Top Secret classification and I did a lot of the clerical work in making up the plans.

Question #11: What was your reaction? Were your anxious, resigned or relieved, for example, to return to Holland?
Answer: I did not know when the operation was to take place as two other operations had been scrapped. I had by that time learned to take things as they came. My job was such that we were constantly working and training for anything that might come up.

Question #12: See March 10th posting above.

Question #13: How did you feel about a daylight operation? Do your recall any conversations with your friends about it? What was said?
Answer: This was my second daylight operation. I went into Normandy on the afternoon of D-Day – Which was to my mind a rough one as we had a lot of casualties – Holland by comparison was an easy – Most all of my training had been for a night operation – I felt better due to the fact that you could see where you were going.

Question #14: What were the rumors on board the plane or glider in which you flew to Holland? Had you heard, for example, that if the Holland invasion was successful, the war would be over by winter?
Answer: No one happened to guess when the war would be over - However, we had in our plans that I had worked on been told we would be out of Holland in about 10 days – This was not true. It had been about 70 days before we were relieved. The British forces did not have enough power to widen the corridor leading to Arnhem and we had to stay there – We went through some rough fighting.

Question #15: Did you by chance keep a diary or notebook of what happened to you during the period just prior to September 17, 1944 through September 26, 1944? Do you still have it?
Answer: No.

Question #16: Were any of your friends killed or wounded on the day of the drop or on subsequent days?
Answer: No – Our unit suffered almost no losses in this operation.

Question #17: Do you remember any conversations you had with them before they became casualties?
Answer: No answer was provided.

Question #18: Were you wounded or captured during this period? Can you give details?
Answer: No.

Question #19: Do you recall seeing or hearing anything that seems humorous now even though it may not have seemed so at that time?
Answer: No answer was provided.

Question #20: Do you recall any incident, sad or heroic or simply memorable, which struck you more than anything else?
Answer: See March 10th posting above.

I’ll include the final five questions, #21-25, in a future posting.

R/Kevin

 

Final five questions from the Cornelius Ryan A Bridge Too Far questionnaire…

Question #21: Do you remember any significant experiences you may have had with Dutch civilians or members of the Dutch underground? Would you explain?
Answer: The Air Force had gone over the area and there were quite a number of dead on the ground. The Dutch people were giving fresh milk to our men. One man said to me, “We have been waiting for you for 4 years, xx months and xx days” (the exact number of days and months that his country had been occupied). Most of them spoke English and were very friendly. The fact that the country was so clean never ceased to amaze me. After a shelling or bombing was over they would be out cleaning up.

Question #22: What do you remember most about the country of Holland?
Answer: The beauty and simplicity and the way the homes were kept up.

Question #23: In times of great crisis, people generally show amazing ingenuity or self-reliance; others sometimes do incredibly stupid things. Do you recall any examples of either?
Answer: No. But I would like to say that most of the airborne soldiers showed great ability to do things even though some of them were only 19 years old. I think that this was one of the great reasons that the 101st Airborne Division was such a great fighting unit.

Question #24: Do you recall any incidents with the Germans? Fights, surrenders, truces or any conversations you may have had with them afterwards?
Answer: We had taken quite a number of prisoners and most of them were very young. I had found some clothing which I had distributed to them and it was put into the POW compound. They started to fight amongst themselves over the under clothing. It took some doing to break this up. Some Germans were so young that they did not know what it was all about. One of the gun crews that had been shooting down our planes was captured by one of our units and these “soldiers” were about 15 years old. That was when I started to wonder how much longer the war would last.

Question #25: Do you know of anybody else who landed within this period as infantry, glider or airborne troops, or who took part in any of the operation, whom we should write to? Please include addresses if available.
Answer: My father included the names and addresses of eight of his fellow Screaming Eagles. I found some of these names in the lists of contributors in the back of George Koskimaki’s three books. The units of these gentlemen included: DIV HQ, 101 MP and C/502. To maintain their privacy, as well as that of their families, I will not include this personal information in this posting.

To continue with the research related to this thread, I look forward to traveling to the U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center (USAHEC) to review the contents of the George Koskimaki Collection that includes research files for his three books, including the questionnaire my father completed for D-Day with the Screaming Eagles.

R/Kevin

 

Back to Normandy…

Last week, in response to a request I made four months ago to the U.S. Army Military History Institute (USAMHI), I received copies of the contents of Box 1, Folder 14 of The George Koskimaki Collection. The contents included:

- A letter from George Koskimaki to my father dated 6 September 1964. In the letter, George thanked my father for providing him information for his book and he also described his then recent trip to Fort Campbell and the Pratt Museum as part of his research effort. September 1964 was early on in his research process, close to six years before D-Day with the Screaming Eagles was actually published. During my phone call with Mr. Koskimaki last weekend, he told me that he wrote D-Day with the Screaming Eagles after he was challenged by his wife on the 20th Anniversary of D-Day (June 6, 1964) to tell this great story. Amazingly, he was able to recall, almost word-for-word, many of the detail of this letter that he had written almost 49 years ago.

- An undated letter from my father to George Koskimaki that apparently served as a response to the letter above.

- McCarthy Summary. This is a summary of my father's account of his D-Day experience that appears in Koskimaki's book. All of the data points in the summary are covered somewhere in the Keokuk Mission section of the book with one exception. That exception, which will be discussed in greater detail below, is the second to last paragraph that discusses the crash of a Signal Company glider. Koskimaki told me that he sent out 1350 questionnaires to members of the Division as part of his research for his book. (My father's completed questionnaire was not in the USAMHI folder.) He also stated that his wife (sometimes?) typed summaries of the questionnaires and/or any written summaries provided by the veterans and sent them back to the authors for their review as what happened in the case of my father.

- The Keokuk Mission. This appears to be a summary of the Keokuk Mission data that Koskimaki gathered and then used as the foundation for this portion of his book.


Two of the documents outlined above are available to viewers to download:

• McCarthy Summary (1.50MBs)
• The Keokuk Mission (1.60MBs)

During a review of the McCarthy Summary and during my last phone call with George Koskimaki, I discovered information that might serve as a link between two theories about Keokuk Mission glider landing sites that have been discussed in this Forum. The first theory, the one that forms the foundation for this thread, suggests that my father’s glider, Chalk #4, landed in the field south of the Pratt Memorial. The second theory, one presented by Don in his Keokuk thread, suggests that Chalk #8 landed in a field just to the south of Hiesville and east of Route de Rabey.

As I mentioned above, in the McCarthy Summary, my father mentions the crash of a Signal Company glider. As far as I can tell, this account is not mentioned anywhere in Koskimaki's book. Every other portion of my father's summary is somehow directly related to his glider landing and his trek from the LZ to Lecaudey Farm. Why would my father mention this one particular glider unless it was somehow related to his personal experience on June 6/7? If you assume that this is the case, then you have to assume that this Signal Company glider was somewhere along my father's route to Lecaudey Farm. If you assume that my father landed in the field south of the Pratt Memorial, this means he would have most likely encountered this Keokuk glider somewhere along Route de Rabey. Don has theorized that Keokuk Chalk #8 crashed into a hedgerow on the east side of Route de Rabey to the south of Hiesville and just north of the two farms where my father could have possibly spent the night of June 6th. As far as I can tell from NCAP 1857_4052, there are no other Horsas directly along this route. (Pat, please correct me if I am wrong about that.)

In my father's summary, he states: "One signal company glider piled into a tree in a hedgerow. Three men were killed and eight were injured. One of those injured in the crackup was the company's hard luck soldier, T/5 Ted Lawler.”

T/5 Charles Laden (Signal Company), who we have determined to be in Chalk #8, stated the following in a ww2airborne.com summary that I have previously provided: “When we did finally touch the ground, we continued to skid at a very high rate of speed. Evidently the smooth Norman grass in the fields was too slick to slow us down. We crashed through a hedgerow at the edge of one field and the wings of the glider were torn off. We continued to slide until finally crashing into another hedgerow that stopped us. Unfortunately due to the impact, we were torn up pretty bad. The pilot and co-pilot were both ejected, killing one of them. Also killed were a few guys from my company, Pfc. Raymond Demonge, T/5 Robert McCullum, and T/5 William Weber. Both the motorcycles ended up hanging in the trees, and the trailer and other equipment was tossed everywhere. Staff Sergeant Harrison who had been sitting in the tail section was alive, but wounded badly. I was also thrown from the wreckage, but miraculously I was fine, except for bumps and bruises on my right leg. I brushed myself off and then helped Harrison out of the wreckage and into a ditch at the side of the field for cover.

 A few minutes later a jeep from our signals company drove up and the driver told me to get in. I was then driven to General Taylor’s command post that he had established at a farmhouse in Hiesville.”

The basic points of my father's and Laden's accounts are identical… they both describe the crash of a Signal Company glider into a hedgerow and a casualty count that includes three members of the Signal Company (excluding the dead pilot or co-pilot of Chalk #8). (During one of our earlier conversations, Koskimaki mentioned to me that Signal Company personnel arrived in LZ E that evening in about six Keokuk Mission gliders. I failed to record the exact number.) The wreckage that Laden described would have been very obvious to my father as he walked up Route de Rabey early on June 7th after his overnight stay in one of the farmyards just to the south. Also, note that my father includes this account of the glider crash at the very end of his description of his D-Day experience, perhaps in the correct sequence that it took place with regards to the rest of his account. Most likely, encountering this crash site was the last event of major interest before my father’s arrival at Lecaudey Farm just 250 yards to the north.

During my phone call with George Koskimaki last weekend, I asked George about these two accounts as he was a member of the Signal Company and he knew all of these men (Laden, Lawler and the three casualties.) Koskimaki told me that he was positive that Laden and Lawler arrived in LZ E in the same Keokuk Mission glider (Chalk #8). Based on Laden's account above, "a few minutes later a jeep from the signals company drove up" and Laden was then driven back to Lecaudey Farm (where Koskimaki was at the time). I suspect that there is a good chance that Laden briefed Koskimaki on the status of their company-mates in Chalk #8 sometime after they met at Lecaudey Farm. Also, the quick arrival of the jeep might indicate that the landing site of Chalk #8 was relatively close to Lecaudey Farm, further confirming Don's theory about the location of the landing site.

So, to summarize, I am theorizing that my father encountered Chalk #8 somewhere along Route de Rabey during his trek from the landing site of his glider, Chalk #4, to the Lecaudey Farm as indicated below.




I realize that there is a lot of uncertainty with the theory I have outlined above as it is based on several significant assumptions. However, if you take that leap, it works and it serves to validate our two previously discussed theories. I welcome comments on the discussion above.

Pat, I would appreciate your assistance with the posting of a screen shot of the possible landing site of Chalk #8 from NCAP 1857_4052.

R/Kevin

 

The key feature in the photo is the west side of the road. Note the shadow cast into the road in the area directly west of the fuselage. At this time of day the shadow length is about 3.7x the height of the object casting the shadow. The shadow length is nowhere near half the width of the narrow lane - so the object cannot be much more than a couple of feet high. Google Earth street view shows that today only a small hedge (not a hedgerow; no raised ground) - is on the west side. Additionally, the road is depressed at least two feet below the shoulders, so it is possible that almost the entire shadow in 4052 is cast by bare earth - not foliage.

This physical feature makes Laden's account very plausible. The Horsa landed in the field to the west of Route de Rabey, couldn't stop in time (or took ground fire from other enemy elements operating with McCarthy's antagonists and decided to try for the eastern end of the field), so crashed through the thin hedge on the west side of the road (you don't suppose the interior of a Horsa acted like a drum when something struck the outside, do you?), maintained enough momentum to (mostly) clear the sunken road, then crashed through the thin, low hedge (not hedgerow) on the east side of the road. Considering that Laden was writing twenty years later plus the fact that as a passenger he didn't have the ideal viewing spot, this is about as good as it gets.

The tail section is to the NW of the fuselage (nestled up against the hedge) and the right wing is due west of the fuselage. You can see the shadows of the skinny trees that tore off the right wing (is the dark oval under the wing the top of the offending tree?). The eastside hedge is also minimal height in this area - either the pilot got lucky or aimed for the sparsest spot. The cockpit is reasonably intact and, judging by the triangular shadow starting at the left wing root, the fuselage is laying on well over on its right side.

What Laden identified as the first impact was the Horsa nose acting like the bow of a ship breaking a wave. Just like a watercraft, the curved belly of the Horsa rose up in the air in passing over the westside hedge - and combined with the glider's forward momentum, gave it enough ooomph to clear the sunken road and crash through the eastside hedge. By clearing out the eastside hedge, McCarthy could not have missed seeing the Horsa's resting place - and with his training, instincts, and experience of June 6, he would not have passed an opening in any hedge without first taking a careful look into the field.

In this scenario, it is very plausible that the Horsa hit the eastside embankment about where the tail section connects and sheared enough of the bolts (and crushed enough plywood) to break the tail free. From there, looks like it was dragged out of the way as we see typically.

Great clue, Kevin; a classic example of one little detail providing the link to other info. You tell 'em to be nice or we'll start drawing vector diagrams.

 

Not much to work with, but best guess is the shadows cast on the GI in the foreground and the guy behind him show the sun pretty high - so Horsa nose is pointing generally south, maybe between 150-210 deg; though it may be a bit more toward the SW.

If so, it couldn't be our purported Chalk #8 as it points due east. (what do we want to call "#8": East Rabey or Horse Track? (Pat seems to always have a memorable name at the ready.)

Does the GI in the foreground look a bit like #8 in Bob Ballintine's group photo? Doesn't matter much as we haven't identified him, but clues are clues.

 

List,

In an effort to find more details on the two glider photographs from Esvelin’s D-Day Gliders that Pat posted last week, I contacted the Silent Wings Museum in Lubbock, TX. The museum curator, Don Abbe, confirmed that these two photographs are indeed part of their collection. He also provided me with the captions on the reverse sides of the photographs. These captions, in comparison with the legends in the book, provide only a bit more information.

The legend for the photo on page #97 states: Broken Horsa in Norman field
The caption on the back of the photo states: British Horsa Above Beach at Normandy Field Too Small

The legend for the photo on page #98 states: Glider pilots awaiting evacuation
The caption on the back of the photo states: Above Beach in Normandy American Pilots Waiting For Evacuation

R/Kevin