OTD 79 years ago: Operation Varsity

Haus Duden near Wesel - this morning shortly before 11 AM. By that time on this day in 1945 the 194th Glider Infantry Regiment had already landed and was engaging the enemy. The monument erected there by veterans and families of 17th Airborne servicemen is a place to remember the sacrifice of those US airborne soldiers who fought and died in the Wesel area 79 years ago.



To honour them I left a flower and a little sprig - tried to make it red, white and blue...

 

Not to forget the British side - one of a number of messages sent on March 24th after the mission. Recently photographed at The National Archives.

 

In the early 1970s - when I was a little boy - I found this badge on a plot of land across from our house in Bergerfurth, the hamlet adjacent to
DZ A. It has since been my most cherished find. Why? I keep wondering who lost it, and why he lost it. Did it belong to one of the four RAMC men killed on March 24th in or around Bergerfurth? The local church was used as a dressing station by 224th Airborne Field Ambulance.

 

From a 2003 interview with T/4 DeWitt Housel of HQ Battery, 466th Parachute Field Artillery Battalion:

INTERVIEWER: “And what have you got on your helmet?”
DEWITT HOUSEL: “Oh, that’s a first aid pack. Safest place for it because if your head is blown off you don’t need it.”


T/4 DeWitt Housel and Lt. John Stacy check the equipment of Lt. James Nammack (center left and lower right). A staff officer before the jump, Nammack was promoted to command Battery ‘A’ of the 466th PFAB, after all officers were killed, wounded or injured on the drop zone.



Brigadier General Josiah Dalbey—staff officer with the 1st Allied Airborne Army—made his first parachute jump this day, nominally as an observer. General Dalbey later presided over the Malmedy massacre trial at Dachau.


Brigadier General Ridgely Gaither likewise jumped from the same C-47, as an observer. He was commanding officer of the parachute school at Fort Benning, Georgia. The original caption states this was his 13th parachute jump; a lucky number it turned out. The man speaking to Gaither is probably Lt. John Stacy of 466th Parachute Field Artillery Battalion.


Unidentified paratroopers from same plane ...