But acts of bravery were commonplace in the Zonsche Forest at the beginning of Operation MARKET GARDEN. Less than two miles away from the spot where Joe Mann’s life was cut short, Lt. Col. Robert G. Cole was leading his battalion in an epic fight against powerful German counterattacks. Commanding the 3rd Battalion of the 502nd Parachute Infantry Regiment, Cole was finding it challenging to coordinate air support for his rifle companies in the dense woods. When it became necessary to put out recognition panels to mark the position of the battalion headquarters, he elected to do the job himself. From 300 yards away, a shot suddenly rang out and a bullet struck Lt. Col. Cole in the temple, killing him instantly. He left behind a wife, a 2-year-old son and a reputation for fearlessness.

Three months earlier in Normandy, Cole had led a daring bayonet charge down a causeway leading into the city of Carentan. Because of the exceptional combat leadership he exhibited on that day, Cole had been recommended for the Medal of Honor, but the award had not yet been approved. In the weeks that followed his death in Holland, the approval finally came through, and the medal was presented to his family in a ceremony at Fort Sam Houston, Texas. Robert G. Cole had earned the Medal of Honor in Normandy, and he never even knew it. Instead, his life was brought to a violent and early end near a little Dutch farm by a German sniper.

An especially well-equipped fighting force, the Third Reich fielded a number of scoped rifles capable of functioning as effective sniping platforms. The legendary Mauser kar.98k was fitted with several different types of telescopic sights from several different manufacturers using a variety of mounting systems. Despite the fact that the kar.98k was not designed for scopes, more than 130,000 were ultimately fitted-out with them during the war. These rifles were quite effective, as were the Gew43 semi-automatic rifles that were also modified for precision shooting. It was one of these type rifles that killed Robert Cole in the Zonsche Forest on Sept. 18, 1944.

In addition to sniper rifles, German infantry units brought other excellent examples of handheld firepower to bear against the Allies in Holland. Of course, the kar.98k in its standard version was there in abundance, as well as the MP40 submachine gun and the MP44 Sturmgewehr. In addition to those firearms, Third Reich machine guns, such as the MG34 and the MG42 also fought the battle for southern Holland. Going back all the way to the invasion of Poland in 1939, the German military had been particularly characterized by its widespread use of lightweight, belt-fed, automatic arms that could be moved around on the battlefield with ease and operated by a single gunner if necessary. They opened the door to an entirely new world of versatility for military small arms and they showed other armies the value of highly mobile firepower.

When the war started, the U.S. military had nothing like the MG34. Both the M1917A1 water-cooled and M1919A4 air-cooled machine guns could be depended on to provide reliable and accurate fire, but they required the use of a tripod. The M1918A2 Browning Automatic Rifle could advance with an attacking echelon, but had the shortcoming of feeding from 20-round box magazines only. The U.S. Army Infantry Board, therefore, sought to adopt a belt-fed light machine gun comparable to the ones being used so successfully by the Germans. The process began six months before Pearl Harbor when the board recommended modifying the existing M1919A4 machine gun design by adding a bipod and shoulder stock.

During the next year and half, the Army’s new light machine gun underwent a period of design development that ultimately produced a substitute standard the Infantry Board designated M1919A6. The Saginaw Steering Gear Division of General Motors placed the A6 in production in July 1943, and a few examples reached the fighting front in Italy later that year. Although a sufficient number of the new light machine gun was not available to equip the Army’s two airborne divisions in time for Operation Neptune/Overlord (the Normandy invasion), the M1919A6 was to be an important part of Operation MARKET GARDEN. Hundreds of sky soldiers brought this new version of the .30-cal. air-cooled machine gun to Holland, finding it the perfect answer to the special portability needs associated with the airborne infantry’s vertical envelopment mission.

One of the men who jumped into southern Holland with an M1919A6 light machine gun was 19-year-old PFC Carl D. Beck. Born in Avondale, Mo., in 1925, Beck lied about his age to join the Army as a 17-year-old. After basic training, he volunteered for the parachute infantry and was subsequently assigned to the 3rd Platoon of H Company, 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division. He survived his introduction to combat during the Normandy campaign only to find himself in the thick of the action once again in the fighting north of Eindhoven. He remembered Sept. 17 as a “beautiful sunshiny, Sunday afternoon,” while descending under an open parachute canopy over the 501st Drop Zone near the village of Eerde Southwest of Veghel. In addition to his individual equipment and supply load-out, and a rigger-made leg bundle, Beck carried the 32-pound weight of his M1919A6 light machine gun. He landed safely and immediately went to work alongside the other troopers of H Company/501st in the struggle to seize and hold the corridor for the XXX Corps push to the Rhine.

Private First Class Beck saw almost constant combat in the days that followed, during which time his new A6 was called on to deliver a steady volume of fully automatic fire in several firefights. Just a few days after coming to the Holland, H Company was moving up to fill a gap in the lines when it collided with an element of German paratroopers. In the melee that followed, Beck and the other H Company men began to exchange fire with the Germans in a vicious engagement. With his A6 laying down devastating bursts of fire in a skirmish that was “hot for awhile,” PFC Beck poured it on for almost two hours and “got a mess of them.” When it was all over, he recalled that there were “dead krauts laying all around” and estimated that he had been responsible for at least 35. Despite the fact that it had been fathered by necessity and rushed into production, the new M1919A6 light machine gun was clearly an arm not to be trifled with.

With the road clear through Eindhoven and beyond, lead elements of XXX Corps continued to the northeast and entered the 82nd Airborne’s sector near Grave on Tuesday, Sept. 19. Just eight miles farther up the road, the overland drive toward Arnhem had reached a stalemate at Nijmegen. Although the 82nd had fought effectively since landing two days earlier, strong German counterattacks had thus far prevented the division from capturing the Waal River Bridge located there. Late that afternoon, Maj. Gen. Gavin had a commanders’ conference with British Lt. Gen. Frederick M. Browning, Deputy Commander of the First Allied Airborne Army. During the meeting, Browning had warned Gavin with the words, “the Nijmegen bridge must be taken today—at latest tomorrow.” By then, Gen. Robert F. Urquhart’s British 1st Airborne Division had been cut off in Arnhem for three days, and yet the Nijmegen Bridge was still in enemy hands. If the XXX Corps was going to get through to relieve the 1st Airborne Division, that bridge had to be taken.

To break the deadlock, Gavin came up with a bold plan: a force of parachute infantrymen would cross the Waal River in engineer boats borrowed from the British under the cover of a smoke screen. Upon reaching the opposite bank, the force would then attack the Nijmegen Bridge from the rear, outflanking its defenders. Capturing the bridge would allow XXX Corps to resume its advance toward Arnhem. Gavin ordered the attack for the following day, Sept. 20, and selected Col. Reuben Tucker’s 3rd Battalion/504th Parachute Infantry to lead it.

The night was spent locating and assembling the engineer boats that would carry the 504th troopers across the Waal. Only 26 of the flimsy craft were available, arriving only 20 minutes before the attack was due to kick off. At 2:00 p.m., someone yelled “Go!” and the paratroopers wrestled the boats down to the water’s edge and launched them one mile west of the bridge. Each 19-foot boat carried 13 troopers from I Company/504th PIR and three troopers from C Company/307th Airborne Engineer Battalion. There were 416 men in the first wave. As the boats entered mid-stream, the smokescreen blew away revealing their position to enemy guns on the opposite bank. Simultaneously, the Americans began to experience difficulty maneuvering the boats in the river’s strong current, so they began to use the M1 Garand rifle for something that its designer probably never imagined—a boat paddle. Despite withering German automatic weapons fire, the troopers managed to reach the opposite shore, where they immediately deployed for action. The enemy’s fire was so destructive that, out of the twenty-six boats that carried the first wave across the river, only eleven returned. The human cost was high too: 48 men from the 504th and the 307th were killed during the crossing. Despite the losses, the paratroopers had momentum that carried them on to the objective and they overwhelmed the German defenders. With the Nijmegen Bridge open for traffic, the British Guards Armored Division crossed the Waal River and began the drive north toward Arnhem where the British 1st Airborne Division was fighting for its life.