One American Stayed Behind When 6 German Tanks Attacked

September 20, 1944, 3:00 PM. On the southern bank of the river Waal in Nijmegen, Holland, Major Julian Cook looks across four hundred yards of open water at a seventeenth-century fortress full of German guns — and there are no boats yet, no cover, and no way across except in broad daylight. Seven miles north at Arnhem, Lieutenant Colonel John Frost and roughly six hundred British paratroopers of the 1st Airborne Division have been holding one end of a bridge for three days against two SS panzer divisions, and everyone knows the corridor of Operation Market Garden will collapse if Nijmegen's bridges aren't taken within hours. The 10th SS Panzer Division Frundsberg, under Heinz Harmel, with a battle group led by Karl-Heinz Euling dug into Fort Hof van Holland and the Hunnerpark, has already beaten back two frontal assaults by the 82nd Airborne Division. General James Gavin orders the Third Battalion of the 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment to cross the Waal itself, in twenty-six canvas boats with barely enough paddles, under a British artillery barrage and a smoke screen that won't last. What happens when that smoke lifts — the assault up the dike, the men who make it across and the men who don't, Captain Thomas Moffatt Burriss, Captain Henry Keep, Chaplain Delbert Kuehl, and a wounded trooper named Gene Metcalfe who ends the day a prisoner — becomes one of the defining actions of the entire campaign, one even the German commander on the other bank would later call remarkable. If you want more stories like this pulled straight from the ground truth of World War II, hit subscribe and turn on notifications — and if this one held your attention, a like helps far more than you'd think. 📚 Further context / historical background: for more on Operation Market Garden, the 82nd Airborne Division, and the Nijmegen bridge crossing, consult general histories of the Western European campaign of 1944, veteran memoirs and oral history archives from the U.S. Army airborne divisions, and official after-action reports held in U.S. and Dutch military archives. #WW2History #MarketGarden #82ndAirborne