I firmly believe that my service with the Third Battalion, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment (3/506 PIR), 101st Airborne Division, during World War II, set the standard to which I have adhered for the rest of my life. It turned me from a clueless youth, still wet behind the ears, into a combat veteran able to make split-second decisions that would separate the quick from the dead – although some of our bravest were not quite so fortunate or perhaps lucky.
From the very moment I was ambushed and wounded in Normandy on June 6, 1944, my powers of concentration grew beyond all previous recognition. While I was totally unaware of it at the time, my parents played a huge part in arming me with the attitude and mind-set I would need to cope with the demands of military life. My contemporaries have often been referred to as “The Greatest Generation” but I beg to differ … to me the greatest generation was the one that preceded, and produced, us. The ones from many different lands and cultures, who came to America to breathe free and climb the financial ladder, through nothing but hard work and a selfless devotion to their new country.
Before immigrating to the USA in early 1917, my father had been wounded and invalided out of the Italian army during World War I. When he discovered that the quickest route to American citizenship was through the armed forces, he quickly enlisted and by the end of the year, was on his way to face the same old enemy, but this time wearing a different uniform. After being honorably discharged, he married my mother, Anna, who had just arrived in the United States. My parents may have come to America as unschooled immigrants but they brought with them a love for freedom and a work ethic unmatched by any generation before or since. Multiply Alfonso DiCarlo and Anna Lolli by several millions and one can more fully understand the impact they had on a growing nation.
In 1941, I was graduating Wildwood High School in New Jersey when Pearl Harbor was attacked by Japan. Like most of America’s youth, I was anxious to get into the ongoing war and went to Philadelphia, where I enlisted into the fledgling 506th PIR. Suffering from acute agrophobia, I reasoned that this was a sure way to conquer my fear of heights! When I informed my parents of my fait accompli I was surprised by their response. Having “been there and done that,” my father was lukewarm but my mother, whom I had anticipated would burst into tears, simply kissed me and said, “God be with you and don’t dishonor your name.”
What follows on these pages accurately describes and explains the trials and accomplishments of 3/506 through its most extended single period of combat during World War II in the Netherlands. With Allied forces solidly entrenched in France, the high command was looking for ways to expand upon their successes and shorten the war. General Bernard Law Montgomery had envisioned, and sold General Dwight D. Einsenhower and the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF), a plan for a bold strike up the Eindhoven–Arnhem highway, to penetrate into the vulnerable factories of the Ruhr and deliver a fatal wound to the Nazi regime.
The plan was to fold the Germans back from the road that became known universally as “Hell’s Highway” and throw a steel spear across the Rijn (Rhine). Eindhoven and the bridges at Nijmegen and Arnhem were the keys to that success. In essence, we were to open the road to enable the armor from the British Second Army to speed unimpeded to its intended targets in the Ruhr.
The 3rd Battalion of the 506th started out by successfully attacking and investing Eindhoven and ended up almost 70 days later at the northern end of the Allied penetration, engaging the enemy in the ferociously fought battle for Opheusden. Through the recollections of the remaining veterans and the meticulous research that has been the hallmark of the author, the reader can relive the actual events that occurred – presented with clarity and a passion for the facts that is not often encountered in military histories.
As I write this, it occurs to me that we were all members of two separate but inseparable families. The one we were born into and the one we voluntarily joined in a time of national peril. Our obligation and commitment to each aspect was total. Yet one was centered on life and growth and the other dealt with death and destruction. Despite the disparity in goals the core of our innermost conviction was the unspoken willingness to imperil our very existence to preserve the continuation of the lives of other members of both our families. I never heard any of our guys say it out loud but I think their actions under fire prove my thesis.
Our regimental commander, Colonel Robert F. Sink, showed his pride in our performance when he said about us in the attack, “When they fell, they fell face forward.” Scared witless or not, we did what had to be done, even when we really didn’t want to do it, and, as I recall, there were times when we really didn’t want to do it. But we did it anyway. The one immutable fact is that the young boys who marched so blithely off to war in 1942 bore little resemblance to the weary men who came home in 1945.
Read and enjoy.
Mario “Hank” DiCarlo – July 2010
Fort Washington, Pennsylvania, USA