I was recently gifted with a photo of my uncle, F/O Sylvan Lucier, found in a photo album that was donated to the Silent Wings Museum in Lubbock, Texas. It is wonderful that the album creator, a fellow glider pilot with the 316th TCG, put names on photos! It must be the last photo before my uncle died, October 13, 1944.
I am grateful to Hans den Brok, a Dutch researcher who has helped me for years, for finding this photo of my uncle. It belongs in the narrative of Sylvan's After Action Report posted earlier on this blog:
"After much confusion we finally were relieved and on Sunday, September 24, we started by motor convoy to Brussels. We ran into a German Ambush and had to wait a couple days for the road to open again. We did make it to Brussels on September 27 and flew back to home station."
With such a wonderful photograph to add to my uncle's story, I naturally was curious about where it was taken. Hans was on the trail to find the location, searching photographs of Veghel and Uden. He found a photo taken in front of that same building in Uden, in a book, Operation Market Garden, Then & Now by Karel Margry, After The Battle Publisher. The building in the far background is distinctive. It is gone today but was previously a hospital. In the same scene today there are new buildings in the background.
An earlier photo I have shows Sylvan in dress uniform, on leave in Italy, before the 316 TCG leaves Sicily for England, around March 1944. Here we see somebody very different; the glider pilot veteran of D-Day in Normandy and D-Day+1 in Holland, in the clothing of an armed combat soldier on Hell's Highway. He landed his CG-4A glider under fire; jeep, men and equipment safe, and for a few days collected para drop bundles needed by the airborne troops. Glider pilots with the United States Army were always directed to return to base quickly for another mission, but this was often not possible.With a group of 295 (I've read different numbers), all flight officers, he volunteered to fight on the front lines in order to free the paratroopers to cross the Waal River capture the Nijmegen Bridge.
(That is from the story of the Waalcrossing by the 504 Parachute Infantry Regiment [PIR], 307 Engineers.)
On 19 September at 2100, General Gavin called the 50th Wing Glider Officer, Maj. Hugh Nevins, and told him to get 295 glider pilots lined up to take the places of the 504th troopers needed for the river crossing. The GPs, bivouacked near Groesbeek, were to go into the line on the Groesbeek Heights, which was under constant attack at the time. Most of the pilots were armed with nothing heavier than .45-cal. automatics or M-1 carbines; all were volunteers. The change took place around midnight of 19 September--two GPs into each foxhole, replacing two troopers. The glider pilots would not sleep for another 36 hours.
The pilots, though they were spared a frontal attack, were under steady fire from small arms, machine guns, and hourly attacks by mortars, 88s, and the “screaming mimis” (Nebelwerfers). However, according to Maj. Nevins, “The single most devastating ordeal was lack of sleep. . . [which was] really worse than the enemy fire.” In daylight on 21 September, Maj. Nevins was checking positions overlooking Mook when he spotted eight of the formidable Tiger tanks moving in on his lines from the Reichswald. The tanks, “looking like enormous crawling prehistoric monsters, were creaking up the railroad around our right flank. If they got behind us, they would slaughter us piecemeal. Over the field phone, I alerted battalion and division command posts, asking for anti-tank support as quickly as possible. I’m sure my voice was shaking.” Within minutes, two bazooka teams appeared and began to stalk the tanks. When they had crept up within less than fifty yards of the lead tanks, they cut loose and “literally detonated the first three tanks.” The others withdrew back into the woods. When the GPs were relieved, they had suffered 12 casualties, including two killed (Dank, a, 191-93).
Sylvan with the other glider pilots had to again fight, while on "Hell's Highway" to Belgium when they attempted to return to England as ordered:
The glider pilots were put on 26 empty trucks headed for Belgium, and evacuated on 24 September. In the 101st’s sector, just south of Veghel (see “The Unknown Hero,” the convoy was ambushed by Col. Freiherr von der Heydte’s 6th Parachute Regiment. Fortunately for the glider pilots in the convoy, the GP in charge, Capt. Elgin D. Andross, Group Glider Officer of the 313th, had previously served in the infantry. At considerable risk to his own life, Andross organized his troops, who eventually fought their way out of the ambush, killing over 100 German paratroopers. Thirteen glider pilots had been casualties, and three others were captured (Devlin, 274f).
1st-Hand Accounts: D-Day in Holland: War Diary Airborne in Action Nijmegen Waal River Crossing No Time to Die Unknown Hero Return to "From the Book" Copyright © 2001-10 Charles D. Young. All rights reserved. Last modified: 23 Nov 2010
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