On September 23, 1944 during Operation Market-Garden this C-47B, 43-48400 was hit by ground fire and crash landed at 61.07 on a heather outside of my village.
This Dakota designated to tow a glider with troopers of the 82 airborne division got hit by ground fire South, West of their initial point Schijndel in Holland.
This C47B was part of 440 Troop Carrier Group. 96th Troop Carrier Squadron, 6Z.
Flew that day from Exeter, Devon, England/USA AF Sta 463. Mission Combat Market, A-91.
The 440 TCG was under command by Group Commander Lt Col Frank X. Kreds.
The Squadron Co was Major Cooper.
Their mission was to tow the glider to Landing-Zone O near Groesbeek, NW of Arnhem.
ETA 16.15, route South of Antwerp, West of Eindhoven And the LZ was practically on the border of Holland and Germany.
The crew onboard where:
Pilot Major, William R. Cooper, 0-520488, Santa anna-California,
Co Pilot 2nd LT Lawrence L. Altermatt, 0-705208, Joplin-Missouri
Navigator 1st LT, Harvey I. Wardell, 0-809464, Longbeach-New jersey
Engineer S/SGT Gilbert A. Scherer, 17121526, Saint Joplin-Missouri
Radio Operator S/SGT Jerauld I Cutts, 19136125, Lebanan-Oregon
This crew flew in to Normandy on June 6, 3/506th, C/326th AEBn and missions to Southern France and Holland before.
The Radio Operator S/SGT Jerauld I Cutts was just new with this crew.
He came from 302nd Troop Carrier Squadron.
In June 1944 he flew with “A” Flight(3) Plane 43-15067 Chalk 84
The Dakota flying as lead plane was hit just before the turn point at the IP under the left wing when it flew trough intense ground fire.
A heavy black trail of smoke of oil was emitted from his left engine.
The glider on tow was set free in flight and landed behind enemy lines.
Pilot Major, William R. Cooper then made a down and out left under control and decent was being made at last sight heading in to direction of Brussel, Belgium.
Bailing out was out off the question because the plane was to low and loosing height fast so the pilot, Major Cooper decided to make a controlled crash landing.
During the ground fire Radio Operator S/SGT Jerauld I Cutts, was severely wounded to the head by flak while being in the navigator compartment..
The rest of the crew seemed oke and made ready for the crash-landing.
Cooper made a crash landing behind enemy lines in an area of heather called, the small Oisterwijk heather (kleine Oisterwijkse heide) close to the Oirschotsebaan (street name) just outside the small village called Oisterwijk about 15 mile West of Eindhoven.
During this rough crash-landing on the belly of the plane S/SGT Cutts suffered more internal injuries while the crew chief in the rear suffered a head wound.
The navigator in the baggage compartment, pilot and co-pilot seated in the cockpit suffered slight wounds.
After the plane came to a halt on the heather some farmers and civilians who witnessed the crash-landing directly went up to the plane.
Some out of curiosity others the help the crew that were just coming out of the plane that moment.
A farmer called Willem van Baast from farmhouse ‘De Loght’ a farm close by is on the crash site almost immediately.
Farmer Willem van Baast a person already helpful to the underground for their resistance activities wants to help.
His farm, a hide out for people who are in hiding for the Germans during that period could provide these airman a temporary shelter he must be thinking.
Now that he is eye to eye with these airman he thinks it’s a duty to give them a safe shelter.
All of a sudden a group of soldiers from the German Wehrmacht are seen coming to the site from a distance.
Now there is panic and everybody that is near to the plane take a run for it.
The Germans react and start shooting on the crew hereby hitting S/SGT Cutts fatally while he is beside the plane.
While being shot at the rest of the crew also take a run for it fearing for their lives while leaving S/SGT Cutts at the site.
They are led by Farmer Willem van Baast from the seen into the direction of the Oisterwijk forest surrounding the village.
It is not for long because they run strait in to the hands of other Germans soldiers coming to the crash-site and the crew and farmer are stopped.
Knowing the danger farmer Willem van Baast who is leading Major Cooper and his men runs away but is shot by the Germans while on the run.
He becomes severely wounded and is taken prisoner by the Germans close by the farm of farmer H Schoonus.
The crew become prisoners and are transported to Oisterwijk not knowing the condition of S/SGT Cutts.
In the meantime that all of this is happening some civilians are taken prisoner near the planes crash site accused by the Germans off ‘helping the enemy’.
S/SGT Cutts appears to have died at the spot after a fatal German shot and is buried beside the plane.
The civilians however who where being accused of ‘helping the enemy’ and taken prisoner are released later that evening by the Germans.
The crew that are taken prisoner and now in Oisterwijk are told that S/SGT Cutts has died of his head wound, nothing is said of the fact he was killed by a fatal German shot.
The crew chief is treated for his head injury in the local German field hospital in Oisterwijk.
Later the crew is told S/SGT Cutts was removed to the nearest hospital and buried with deceased hospital patients.
The farmer Willem van Baast who was severely wounded and bleeding heavily died that same day when he was transported on a wooden cart to the nearby village of Spoordonk.
The Germans didn’t allow a doctor near Willem van Baast.
A few day’s after all this some Dutch place a pine wooden cross and American helmed on the field grave off S/SGT Cutts.
Still a few day’s later the body off S/SGT Cutts is removed from the site by the German authorities and buried on the cemetery of the st Petrus Banden in Oisterwijk.
At this cemetery where the Germans also buried there own dead killed during this period of the war more American’s are buried.
The fore occupants of the Jeep carrying Waco glider ‘Queen-City’ are also buried here.
This glider was shot down on September 18, 1944 during the second day of Market-Garden.
Their names are:
McCann, Noel Clarence. Pilot f/o Nr.T122016
Hiltunen, Ray J. 1e.Lt. Nr.01103214
Le may, Robert J. Tec./5 Nr.36239073
Carson, Raymond L. Driver/Pvt. Nr.36176352
Later in 1946 all where relocated to the American cemetery in Margraten, Holland.
The crew of the Dakota ended up in Barth, Germany in Stalag Luft 1, a prison camp for Allied Airmen and survived the war.
Radio Operator S/SGT Jerauld I Cutts was awarded the Air Medal with Oak Leaf Cluster and Purple Heart.
The Dakota 43-48400 still remained at the crash-site for quite some time.
Of course the Germans took the time to investigate the plane.
Witnesses later told, on the wings there was some demolished receiving equipment left behind by the Germans from an opened radio panel.
Further on some bushes of straw and wooden clumps were lying around.
Inside the plane it was a big mess but still an American helmed was found and taken as a souvenir.
One witness that I interviewed told me you could also stand on the wings a move the plane up and down.
He even took a piece of the fuselage that he ripped of from the side of the plane, just where the white star was painted.
After the war farmer Willem van Baast was posthumously thanked by the American President Truman for giving aid to American service men and helping in their escape.
After the war his name was engraved on a memorial plaque that is placed in a little chapel dedicated to the Holy Marie.
On this plaque the names are engraved of all the civilians and allied soldiers who died during the German occupation and as a result of our liberation.
Strangely several names where forgotten on this plaque and sadly one is those Radio Operator S/SGT Jerauld I Cutts and several Scottish soldiers.
The Dakota, 43-48400 was on the heather for quit some time until the end of the war because during the spring of 1945 after liberation a British Tempest made a successful crash landing on that same heather.
This plane crash landed without lots of damage about a 100 meters from the Dakota and was guarded by some MP’s
What happened to the pilot of this Tempest ore his plane and the American Dakota is not known.
If the glider on tow by the 43-48400 with troopers on board of the 82 Airborne was to have made a left turn when cut lose it possible landed somewhere near Boxtel.
Boxtel is a village close to Oisterwijk and the two villages are separated by forest and heather.
In this heather called The Kampina the local resistance of those two villages had put numerous of Airborne’s in to hiding during and after Market-Garden.
Those Airborne’s who made an early landing in these surroundings where put in this heather until October 1944 when the area was liberated by the 15 Scottish Division and 51 Highland Division.
So it could be possible that also these Airborne’s ended up in this heather.
I have some pictures from an old book of 82 Airborne troopers and other army men hiding in that heather.
There’s even a little monument erected near the heather to commemorate those of the underground who hid them and those who where hiding.
Under these soldiers where British Airborne and American 101st, 82nd Airborne.
Peter.
Major Coopers Dakota on the heather in late October, 1944 after Liberation.
This is a piece of the fuselage that I have, note the white paint of the star.
Memorial Day, 2009 Margraten cemetery, grave of Radio Operator S/SGT Jerauld I. Cutts.
Special thanks' to Ronald Stassen, Relive History 44-45.
Commonwealth war graves in Oisterwijk, note the empty spots of relocated soldiers after the war.
If there's any one who can add something to this story please let me know.
This heartwarming (and tear-jerking) story was found in the June 2009 issue of Reader's Digest. The story begins in June of 1944...
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A New World
Gilbert Desclos sat in the tall grass on the cliff above Omaha Beach and shivered in the sea air. The sun rose over the trees as he hugged his bony knees tight to his chest and pulled his worn wool sweater around him.
Ever since the arrival of les Américains, his world had changed. Overnight, a military camp had sprung to life on the empty field just below his home in Normandy. For seven-year-old Gilbert, an orphan, it was a boy's dream. His caretaker, Mrs. Bisson, had to drag him in at night.
Diane Covington
Photographed by Erik Butler
Diane Covington, the author, near her home in Nevada City, California, grew up hearing about Gilbert.
Now he watched, wide-eyed, as jeeps roared up the road and men in white caps scurried about, emptying trucks loaded with guns, ammunition, food, and giant duffel bags. He yawned as the smell of bacon, eggs, coffee, and toast wafted up from a massive tent. He tilted his small head back, breathing in the aromas. His stomach growled.
Donald K. Johnson, a lieutenant in the Seabees, the U.S. Navy's Construction Battalion, held a clipboard and checked off the morning's accomplishments. The infirmary tent was complete; now the medics and doctors had a decent place to treat soldiers. The showers worked.
Johnson and his men had been busy since dawn, and it was now noon. He dismissed them, then took a moment and touched the breast pocket that held the photo of his wife and two young sons. It had been more than a year since he'd seen them.
When the lieutenant turned to go, he spied something in the tall grass on the hill. Was that a child? He waved. A small hand waved back. Johnson beckoned. There was a moment of hesitation, then the boy, barely taller than the grass, made his way down. Johnson knelt to look into the child's thin face.
He tried out his high school French: "Comment t'appelles-tu?"
The boy's sparkly blue eyes shone. "Gilbert," he said.
Johnson shook his hand. This little guy looked like he could use a good meal, and the camp had more than enough food. In his halting French, he invited Gilbert to have lunch. When the boy nodded, Johnson lifted him onto his hip, as he might've done with one of his own sons, and headed for the mess tent.
Inside, dozens of young soldiers ate, talked, and clanged their cutlery. Gilbert's eyes grew wide. Johnson piled two plates high with roast beef, potatoes, carrots and peas, freshly baked bread, and apple pie.
The men at the officers table smiled and made room for the two of them. Gilbert took small bites and, chewing slowly, ate everything on his plate. Johnson patted his head: "Très bien!" Gilbert smiled.
After lunch, Johnson held Gilbert's hand, and they walked into the June sunlight. He knelt beside the boy and explained that he had to go back to work. Gilbert nodded and ran back up the path to the tall grass, turning around to wave.
At 1800 hours, as Johnson was again heading for the mess tent, he saw Gilbert sitting in the same spot. He motioned, and Gilbert ran to him.
Dinner was fried chicken, mashed potatoes, corn, biscuits, and chocolate cake. Johnson again filled two plates, but Gilbert didn't eat as much as he had at lunch; it was clear that the boy wasn't used to so much food. But he sat close to Johnson and smiled his shy smile, taking big breaths between bites, as if willing himself to eat as much as he could.
After dinner, Johnson knelt close to Gilbert. "Bonsoir," he said. "A demain," till tomorrow. He watched the boy walk up the path and out of sight.
A New Friend
From that day on, Gilbert ate with Johnson, three meals a day, soon filling out from all the rich food. The other soldiers didn't mind; in fact, the boy helped ease their homesickness. Gilbert giggled when Johnson carried him around on his shoulders and soon began riding along in the jeep down to the beach, where Johnson supervised the unloading of ships. When Johnson oversaw construction projects in the camp, Gilbert tagged along. If Johnson left camp with his crew to rebuild a road or a blown-out bridge, Gilbert waited for his return.
As the summer of 1944 passed, Johnson's French improved, and Gilbert learned to say hello, goodbye, thank you, jeep, ship, and ice cream. He could also say Lieutenant Johnson.
In mid-October, when Johnson received orders to leave France, he drove to the local authorities in Caen to make some inquiries. He discovered that Gilbert had been abandoned at birth and had no living relatives. But when he asked if he could adopt him, the answer was firm: no.
My Father
Lieutenant Johnson was my father. Stories about the young boy and wartime France were an element of my childhood, as constant as the roar of Dad's motorcycle as he rolled in each evening at 5:45 after his commute from San Diego, where he worked as a civil engineer for the Navy.
At 6 p.m. sharp, my family gathered around the yellow Formica table that took up most of our small kitchen. Dad and Mom sat on each end, my sister across from me, our older brothers next to us.
Dad looked straitlaced in his short-sleeved white shirt, skinny tie, and plastic pocket liner holding a pen, a notebook, and sometimes a slide rule. But his eyes told you he was kind, funny, a bit mischievous. His stories made me laugh, and when he described his time in France, I could picture it all: the French countryside, the huge Navy ships, and Gilbert Desclos.
Dad always said Gilbert's name with a kind of reverence and the way the French would, with a soft g sound.
I knew he had tried to adopt Gilbert and bring him home. I thought about that sometimes, wondering what it would have been like to have another older brother at the dinner table.
As I grew up, Dad's stories seemed to belong more and more to my childhood, put away with my dolls and coloring books. After I married and had my own family, Dad visited Europe again, stopping in Paris. He told me how he tried to find Gilbert's name in the phone book but couldn't. I remember how his shoulders slumped and his head hung down as he told me about his failure.
In my father's old age, when he could no longer walk and had lost his eyesight, I would sit with him as he talked about his life. When he spoke about France, his eyes shone. They glistened with tears when he mentioned Gilbert, pronouncing his name with that special softness. I stroked his fragile hand, wishing there were something I could do.
Searching for the Past
After Dad died, in 1991, I wanted to learn more about World War II. I traveled to France in 1993 to tour the beaches and write about the 50th anniversary of the D-day invasion. I stood on the cliffs above Omaha Beach, now the site of the American cemetery where nearly 10,000 U.S. soldiers are buried. The air stung my face as I wiped away tears, remembering Dad, wishing I could ask him more questions.
In my article for my local California newspaper, I mentioned Gilbert Desclos. The press attaché at the French consulate in San Francisco read the story and contacted me. Learning that I was going back to Normandy to accept a medal in Dad's honor, she insisted I try to find Gilbert: "The French don't move around as Americans do. He's probably still nearby."
After the medal ceremony, I placed an ad in the local paper. Thinking it would take months, if not years, to find Gilbert, I listed my address in California, then left on a tour around France with Heather, my teenage daughter.
The next morning, Gilbert Desclos, reading his newspaper, wept when he saw my father's name. He called the paper and learned I'd left the area, so he wrote to my home address. My sister, collecting my mail, recognized the name, ran to a friend's, and faxed it back to France. I received it the night before Heather and I were to travel back to Paris and then home.
I called Gilbert and, stammering through my emotions, arranged a place to meet him that evening. As my daughter and I sat at a sidewalk café in Caen, waiting for Gilbert and his wife to arrive, I fidgeted in my metal chair, watching the passing faces. Could I possibly be meeting the boy from my childhood stories? And how would I know him?
Then a trim, well-dressed man walked up, smiled, and said my name. When I looked into his eyes, I saw the same expression of kindness that Dad always had; Gilbert actually resembled Dad somehow.
At his home, after dinner, Gilbert uncorked a dusty bottle of Calvados. As we sipped the apple brandy and talked, I realized that all the years of studying French vocabulary and irregular verbs had prepared me for this moment.
He asked questions about Dad, about our lives, about how Dad had died. He told me how he'd struggled after Dad left France, living in an orphanage, lonely and sad—but that in his teens, a sweet woman had brought him to live with her family. Nourished by those years of love and caring, he went on to join the military, find a good job, and marry his wife, Huguette. Together, they raised their daughter, Cathy.
But he had never forgotten Dad. He had always insisted to Huguette, Cathy, and later his two grandsons that he had a family in America who would come and find him one day.
I told him that Dad had never forgotten him either—that he had talked about him for the rest of his life, even at the end. I could tell that meant everything to Gilbert.
He told me the same stories my father had told, but from a child's perspective: his fascination with the military camp, the delicious food, Dad's gentleness. Remembering the lieutenant's arms around him, he wept again. We sat together, silent and moved, missing the father who had loved us both.
When Gilbert Said Goodbye
Gilbert took a gulp of his Calvados and told me his version of the October day in 1944 when he and Dad said goodbye on Omaha Beach.
Dad held him close. Gilbert hung on tight, burying his head in Dad's thick, wool Navy coat. Cold October winds whipped the sand around them as men rushed by, carrying their heavy seabags on their shoulders, excited to be going home.
"Do you want to come with me to America?" Dad asked.
"Oui," Gilbert murmured.
They boarded the ship. The captain, who'd been watching, shook his head. "Johnson, off the record, if you're caught, I know nothing about this." Dad nodded, shifting Gilbert's weight on his hip.
But within the hour, a storm raged. Twenty-foot waves lashed the hull of the ship. There was no way the boat could cross the English Channel until the storm had subsided.
As the sun set, the wind slackened and sailors prepared for departure. Moments before the ship was to sail, French gendarmes pulled up on the beach, demanding to speak with the captain; a Mrs. Bisson had reported that her ward had not returned home, and they were looking for him.
As Gilbert remembers it, the captain called for Lieutenant Johnson. There was a long, strained pause. The lieutenant appeared at the top of the gangplank, holding Gilbert in his arms. Gilbert sobbed and clung to him. "Non!" he wailed. "Non!" The gendarmes had to pull him away. The ship sailed without the boy, whom Mrs. Bisson placed in an orphanage the same day.
Waiting for the News
Gilbert put the cork in the Calvados bottle. "Your father said he would come back for me. I have been waiting 50 years for some word from him."
We sat in awkward silence until Gilbert's daughter asked, "Why didn't he? Why didn't he come back?"
I couldn't think of what to say in English, let alone French. Then Cathy said softly, "Le destin." It was Gilbert's destiny to stay in France and have his family and his life there.
As we said goodnight, Gilbert took my hand. "I always knew that I would hear from your father, that someone would come," he said. "Thank you."
I didn't sleep that night, picturing the goodbye on that desolate beach, imagining the police pulling a part of Dad's heart away. And how—why—had Dad carried that secret for the rest of his life? Was he ashamed that he hadn't fulfilled his promise? And why hadn't I helped Dad find Gilbert before he died?
As the clock ticked on the bedside table, I realized I would not find answers from the past. But we could go forward from here.
Keeping in Touch
For the next two years, Gilbert and I wrote, phoned, and e-mailed. In 1996, my mother, my sister, Heather, and I traveled to France for a celebration that received coverage in the same newspaper I'd used to find Gilbert.
A year later, the Desclos family came to America, welcomed by 40 members of the Johnson clan, spanning four generations. At dinner one night, Gilbert read aloud a letter he'd written for the occasion, as I translated into English. He shared memories of my father and told us what it meant to finally come to America. It was a dream, he said, that he had thought would remain a dream.
Other relatives and I returned to France several times through the years. Then, a few months before my planned visit last January, Gilbert was diagnosed with liver cancer. He died four days before my arrival.
I made it in time for his funeral. In his tiny village in Normandy, bells tolled as relatives and friends braved the cold to fill the church. The tricolor French flag draped his coffin, carried by an honor guard of fellow veterans.
I sat with Gilbert's family in the front pew and listened to the tributes to his life. During the service, the priest asked me to place on the coffin a photo of my father and one of Gilbert from 1944 together in one frame.
As candlelight flickered on the faces in the photographs and music echoed off the walls of the old church, I realized that Cathy was right: It was le destin that the naval officer and the little boy had found each other and destiny that they'd gone their separate ways. But it was also destiny, I knew now, that had brought them back together.
The fourth photo shows the two families with Diane seated center, and Gilbert behind her.
I want to open a topic the great sentences of the Second World war which marked us !! Has your feathers !!!!!
1st citation:
"There was never a good war or bad peace" Benjamin Franklin .
screaming on Omaha Beach by Colonel George A Taylor: -
« There are two kinds of people who are staying on this beach: those who are dead and those who are going to die. Now let’s get the hell out of here»
Everyone knew that was impossible to make; Then one day is come a man who did not know it. And it made. " W. Churchill "
Modesty must be the natural reaction of man who receives the cheers that to him were worth the blood poured by his subordinates and the sacrifice of his friends." Dwight David Eisenhower, June 12, 1945.
Today is the anniversary to the Hartford Circus Fire. It took place in 1944, shortly after D-Day. Not only was America dealing with the loss of soldiers on both fronts, but also here at home. The war directly effected the fire: there were no waterproof materials available for manufacturing tents, so old ones were dragged out and received a nice new coating of parrafin and gasoline to make them waterproof.
If you grew up in Connecticut, you knew someone effected by the fire. I used to work with a nurse that had been a student nurse in 1944 and was on duty the day of the fire. Where my uncle worked they came around asking for blood donors that afternoon.
Also because most adults were tied up in war production, most of those killed or injured were under age 15.
