Private Bachenheimer
Private Bachenheimer
Private Bachenheimer
Bachenheimers baptism of fire was the invasion of Sicily in July 1943. Captured
immediately after his jump, he escaped the same night with important tactical
information on enemy plans, which he had overheard at the command post where he
had been questioned. It was at Sicily that he established himself as a trooper who
daringly made use of his fluency in German to get information on the enemy. Here a
patrol of paratroopers cautiously advances through an olive grove somewhere in the
Sicilian countryside. (USNA)
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Bachenheimers reputation with his fellow-troopers grew to almost mythical proportions during the battle for the Anzio beach-head in Italy from January 22 to March 23,
1944. Roving behind enemy lines almost daily, mostly on his own, he never failed to
bring back information or prisoners for interrogation. For most of the eight-week battle, the 504th Regiment was dug in along the Mussolini Canal in the south-eastern
corner of the beach-head. Here troopers of the 2nd Battalion, 504th, cross the canal
on January 26, when the situation was still fluid. (USNA)
Infantry participated in the Anzio seaborne
assault (see After the Battle No. 52), disembarking from 13 LCIs on Red Beach. The
regiment fought under command of the US
3rd Infantry Division on the right flank of
the beach-head, mostly along the line of the
Mussolini Canal. There was offensive fighting in the first ten days of the battle but after
that, and for the remaining seven weeks of
the campaign, it was strictly trench-type warfare, the paratroops digging in along the
canal and the Cisterna river and living in foxholes. Combat was limited to night patrols
through enemy lines and minefields. It was
during this period that Bachenheimer
became really legendary.
One night, he and a fellow soldier from the
Recon Platoon, Pfc James McNamara, left
the outpost line aided by a diversionary burst
of fire by other troopers. The two men bellied their way through the German lines, circling round to come up from behind on a
German machine-gunner. Bachenheimer
told me to wait, McNamara afterwards
recounted. I watched as he stood up and
walked towards the outpost, stopping once to
talk to the Kraut, to reassure him that everything was okay. I lay there with my stomach
flipping over, afraid even to breathe. All this
time I could hear Bachenheimer and this
Kraut carrying on a muffled conversation
like they were long-lost buddies. Finally the
talking stopped. I heard our pre-arranged
signal and crawled toward them. Ted had
relieved the surprised Kraut of his pistol.
With the prisoner between us we made our
way back to Company C.
On yet another night, Bachenheimer was
persuaded to take along three other troopers
on a patrol. Out in no mans land, a flare
went up and the patrol was raked by
machine-gun fire. The other three men, reasoning that their task was to locate German
positions, headed back to their own lines but
Bachenheimer carried on forward. Minutes
later, automatic weapons were heard in the
direction that he had taken, followed by ominous silence. His three comrades speculated
that Bachenheimer must have been killed.
However, a half hour after they had returned
to their lines, an outpost telephoned the
504th: Bachenheimer just passed here on the
way back. He has got a Kraut sergeant in
tow.
The Feldwebel in question was mortified
that he been captured by a kid ten years
Jean Paul Pallud pictured the exact same
spot, a few hundred yards south of the
Railway Bed Bridge, in 1986.
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Above: Holland, September 18, 1944, and Bachenheimer comes peddling into town
on his one-man reconnaissance of Nijmegen on the second day of Operation MarketGarden. Although the paratrooper in this picture is unnamed, it is practically certain
that it is Bachenheimer. Not only is there the strong physical likeness, but the time
and place and not least the fact that he is on a Dutch bicycle all perfectly fit the
details of his entry into town. The picture was taken by a civilian on Dobbelmanweg,
which is a side street of Groenestraat. This is another strong indication that it is him
as the latter street is where the next episode in Bachenheimers career would unroll.
(courtesy N. A. de Groot) Below: A Dutch cyclist stands in for the lone rider of 1944.
RAILWAY STATION
Map showing the Neerbosch bridge (known to the Americans as Honinghutje) and the other sites of Bachenheimers time in Nijmegen.
to a Dutch request to help clear the
Nijmegen railway station from German
harassing fire. At 1630, he arrived at the station accompanied by just one member of the
OD much to the surprise of the man in
charge there, A. van Hedel, who had
expected a much larger force. Quickly the
three men hatched a plan. First, searching a
bombed-out German train for weapons, they
found two carbines, ammunition and handgrenades to arm the two Dutchmen. Next,
they sneaked to a post on Platform No. 2
which controlled the stations public-address
system. Mr van Hedel switched on the microphone and called out in German: Come on
out with your hands up, or you will all die!
This was followed by Bachenheimer firing a
Due to the trees we had to take our comparison from a slightly different angle.
The houses in the background stand on Brederostraat.
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A permit written out by Bachenheimer for Jan Postulart, who used the motorcycle
referred to an old Harley-Davidson for reconnaissance trips into the no mans
land west of Nijmegen. (courtesy N. A. de Groot)
an army of 300 Dutch patriots drew several
war correspondents there. One of them was
Martha Gellhorn (then Mrs Ernest Hemingway), the female war correspondent of Colliers Magazine, whose despatch is worth
quoting in some length:
His headquarters is a very small crowded
room in a former Nijmegen schoolhouse. Bill
One, who is Willard Strunk of Abilene, and
Bill Two, who is Bill Zeller of Pittsburgh
also old men of 21 work with him in this
room. They eat here and they have a neat,
small arsenal hanging on the wall. They collect their souvenirs in one corner and they
have the most fantastic list of callers every
day.
I listened to Bachenheimer interrogating
an Alsatian prisoner and never saw a prettier
or more thorough job; next he received a
German informer whom he wanted to get
some information about German defence
constructions in the region; then, two
sergeants from other regiments who were
also engaged in collecting information came
and had a brisk argument about a patrol they
wanted Bachenheimer to send out and which
he deemed unsound.
English officers, also, arrived from time to
time, and Dutch undergrounders and Dutch
civilians who wanted to get collaborators
arrested or wanted to get people released
from jail on the grounds that a mistake had
been made. Nothing seemed to worry
Bachenheimer who is an extremely competent and serious boy, and nothing seemed to
shake his modesty. His previous training for
this work consisted of one job in America
he had briefly been press agent for a show
that failed.
Bachenheimer, who has this curious talent
for war, is actually a man of peace. As a
matter of fact, I am against war in principle,
he said. I just cant hate anybody. According to Bachenheimer it does not take more
guts to work behind enemy lines; it just takes
a different kind of will. I think it must take a
very special kind of guts, as well as a cool and
agile mind. But who am I to argue with
Bachenheimer?
Articles about Bachenheimer appeared in
the New York Times and the Los Angeles
Times. The latter paper sent a reporter to
interview his wife Penny who at that time
lived with her sister and brother-in-law at
144 East Street, Fullerton. When told that
her husband had wandered into a Germanheld town on a personal reconnaissance and
formed his own army in Holland, she
reacted: Just like him. Hes always out
patrolling along, trying to win the war all by
himself. (Most of the articles appearing in
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EBBENS FARM
TIEL
The Ebbens farm lay on the Linge river, two miles north of Tiel. Known locally as De Wildt, in 1944 it was surrounded by orchards.
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On the night of October 16/17, the Germans raided the Ebbens farm, arresting everyone in the house, including Bachenheimer and Baker. The farm and all its outbuildings
was burned to the ground as a reprisal measure. Today a new house occupies the site.
was a quiet knock on the door. As it happened, Ebbens was expecting a shipment of
arms from across the Waal. When he
answered the door, two Germans asked
whether they could come in to look at their
map in the light of the living room. The
deception worked. The Germans had surrounded the house. Although they came
looking only for the Jews, they trapped and
arrested ten men, including Johannes van
Zanten (alias Van Buren), the chief of the
entire Resistance district. Bachenheimer and
Baker were caught asleep in beds upstairs.
Just then the Resistance men arrived with
the consignment of arms. There was a brief
exchange of shots, in which one German was
wounded, and a few of the Dutchmen
arrested outside managed to escape. The
Resistance fighters withdrew, shifting the
arms to another hiding place.
When the Germans found their uniforms,
Bachenheimer and Baker were able to convince their captors that they were ordinary
Allied soldiers who had been cut off from
their units. Separated from the others, they
were marched away to a schoolhouse in Tiel
which was in use as a German battalion CP.
Here, to their surprise, they were offered a
drink of red wine and a sandwich by the
battalion commander and his staff.
Next morning they were put in a truck
T HARDE
CULEMBORG
EBBENS FARM
TIEL
NIJMEGEN
S-HERTOGENBOSCH
Bachenheimers route after capture led him via stops at Tiel, s-Hertogenbosch and
Culemborg to the POW camp at Amersfoort. Put on a train to Germany, he
escaped before the train had left Holland (his second evasion of the war), only to be
caught again soon afterwards. Twenty-four hours later he was dead, murdered by a
German guard and dumped from the back of a truck in the village of t Harde,
35 miles north of Amersfoort.
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Above right: The memorial cross to pilot Bachenheimer, erected by the inhabitants
of t Harde immediately after the war. (G. Thuring) Above right: In 1980, during the
35th anniversary of the liberation, local school pupils wanted to know more about
the Allied soldier remembered in their village. Three years later, headmaster Albert
Visser (right), finally identified Bachenheimer as the legendary airborne scout. In
1984, the cross was replaced by a Star of David. (A. Veldman)
The Dutch locals at t Harde never forgot
the incident on Eperweg and, shortly after
the war, erected a memorial cross at the
exact spot where the American soldier had
been found. As they knew not better than
that he had been an airman, the cross
referred to Bachenheimer as pilot.
In April 1946, his remains were recovered
from Oldebroek, and reinterred at the US
military cemetery at Neuville-en-Condroz in
Belgium. In April 1949, at the request of the
family, the remains were repatriated to the
US and given a final resting place at Beth
Olam Jewish Cemetery in Hollywood, California. Ethel Bachenheimer remarried in
1950 becoming Mrs Kenneth Betry. (She still
lives in Hollywood today.)
On March 3, 1952 in the Royal Palace in
Amsterdam HRH Prince Bernhard of the
Netherlands presented a posthumous Dutch
Bronze Cross to Bachenheimer for his