Positivity: Story of WWII Paratrooper Saved by Unknown Dutch Girl
From Kearneysville, West Virginia:
As the minutes slowly crept past the noon hour above the skies of Nazi-occupied Holland in early fall 1944, nothing could prepare Jefferson County native Allen Russell for what fate had in store for him.
Russell, a Purple Heart recipient, along with 10,000 to 12,000 of his fellow paratroopers with the 101st and 82nd Airborne Division, would soon parachute to the ground below to secure what Allied troops would come to know as “Hell’s Highway.” The fateful jump would mark the start of a journey that would see Russell saved from certain German capture by a courageous village girl, bitter cold and fighting in the Battle of Bulge. His journey would culminate with the occupation of Hitler’s vacation retreat.
“I landed in Holland on the 17th of September 1944, five minutes after 12 in broad daylight, and that’s when all hell broke loose,” Russell said. “From then on I guess it was every man for himself.”
All stories have a beginning, however, and Russell’s began in late November 1943 when he was called up for active duty at the age of 22.
Married and expecting his first child, Russell was sent to Camp Croft, S.C., for basic training After completing basic training he volunteered for paratrooper school and was sent to Fort Benning, Ga. where he completed jump school.
“The only reason I volunteered was because it paid $50 extra a month. I was sending a lot of it home to my wife,” Russell said.
After qualifying, he was sent to communications school and from there was sent to Fort Meade, Md. His journey then led him to New York where Russell and 8,000 to 10,000 other soldiers boarded the Ile De France, a converted luxury liner, for the four-and-a-half week trip by sea to Britain. Once they landed troops began conducting dry runs of forthcoming combat jumps.
“We didn’t know what was going on,” Russell said.
The only thing he and his fellow paratroopers were told, was, sooner or later, they would see combat. The 101st, nicknamed the Screaming Eagles, were to play a vital role in Operation Market Garden, a two-phase operation involving paratroopers and ground forces. The paratroopers were to jump into Holland and secure a corridor for advancing ground forces.
Russell was dropped 120 miles behind enemy lines where paratroopers were tasked with keeping the roadway and bridges open for advancing troops.
“We named it Hell’s Highway because first the Germans had it and then we had it,” Russell said.
His unit’s main objective once they landed was to secure a highway bridge south of the village of Son, which has also gone by the name Zon.
“Our main objective when we jumped into Holland was to take the bridge in Son,” he said. “When the first parachute opened up in the air, the Germans blew the bridge.”
With the bridge destroyed, Allied engineers constructed a wooden plank bridge allowing troops to cross. From there, troops were able to secure the area and later liberated the town of Eindhoven.
At one point during the long campaign in Holland, Russell was tasked with climbing a telephone pole to cut a telephone wire so it could be used it to establish a communications line.
“They had radios, but the Germans could pick up a radio just as well as we could. It’s not like the radios that we have today,” Russell said.
As he climbed the pole, the top suddenly broke off, forcing Russell to jump to the ground. The broken portion of the pole fell across his back, leaving him hardly able to move. At first, the injured Russell was to be taken to a first aid station, but he refused until his fellow soldiers could continue establishing the communications line.
He was eventually carried to an old building filled with straw where he could rest and recover.
“They used it to sleep on. It was the only thing we had,” Russell said.
That night, as Russell lay on the makeshift straw bed recovering from his back injury, German forces staged a counterattack and were able to push forward, retaking the building where Russell lay helpless. That’s when he said a local village girl literally saved his life.
“This girl came over and she put a blanket over top of me and put this stuff over top of me. The Germans didn’t know I was in there and I laid there in that stuff that night,” Russell said.
From his hiding spot that night he spied a crack in the building’s foundation where he saw two German soldiers standing, smoking a cigarettes.
“I laid right there and they didn’t know I was in there,” he said. “They came in right over top of me. That (blanket) was the only thing that kept me from being a prisoner of war.”
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