“…That evening our main line of resistance, which ran right through Reusel, was fired on by mortars. The next morning, Tuesday 26 September, we attacked. The 7th Company advanced towards the church and rectory, and the ferocious house-to-house fighting began again. The Tommies' resistance became more and more intense as we moved closer to the church. To our right was the cemetery; in front of us was an open garden, on the back of which the rectory stood. Behind it, we could see the bulky church; it was its own fortress. The first platoon of the 7th Company hounded over the open terrain towards the rectory and we succeeded in taking the house from the English (= 4th. Bn. The Welch Regiment “D” Company ) in close combat. They retreated into the church, which they covered with heavy machine-gun fire. But now we were stuck. lf we tried to make it to the front towards the church, which was at most 20 metres away, a hellish machine-gun and submachine-gun fire opened up on us. 0n the left towards a gable wall, where a street opened up, we could also get no further. The English had control of the street junction and another assault to this side would be pure suicide. So we sat tight for a while and prepared ourselves for defence. Half of the platoon remained on the ground floor, while the rest split up in the second and third floors. From the attic we managed to throw hand grenades over to the church, but they had no effect. lt looked as though the neighbouring groups had also run aground, somehow a standstill in the battle prevailed over everything, and it became quiet except for a few single shots. One of us had found a stone pot with eggs in it that we quickly turned into scrambled eggs, and then served as a second breakfast with a lot of hoopla. Despite all this inactivity, the war eventually resumed and we tried again to approach the church. The attempt cost us two wounded. Around midday the Tommies turned the tables on us and attacked. We took casualties, but we managed to hold out until late in the afternoon. Then we ran into danger of getting boxed in. The order came to prepare to break through. We had to leave behind three severely wounded; one of them had double penetrating gunshot wounds to the lungs. The breakthrough was successful: firing from every position, we rushed back and reached our positions without further losses. The night passed; both sides sent out recon troops, spying on each other and feeling out the situation, so that no one could rest. Fighting continued on 27 September. Already in the early afternoon, the 7th was entangled in intense combat with the Tommies - all this for one important street intersection. During these fights, a comrade was severely wounded. He was screaming horribly, but we couldn't retrieve him from the intersection. Tommy was shooting at everything that approached. Then the wounded man fell still and I thought of the English soldiers whom l'd had in the crosshairs of my Panzerfaust two days ago, and whom l still hadn't shot at, because they were carrying their wounded in the truck... Around evening we took position in the cloister school; our command post was set up across the way in a cellar. ln searching the cloistered school, we came across two men in dark monks' robes. We tried to make it clear that it would be better for them to take shelter in the vaulted cellars of the church. The school had a large court garden, which was surrounded by a high, sturdy wall, on the inner side of which was a covered path. A small garden gate in the back wall led to an open field. 

Drone footage of the church and rectory in Reusel

Around 1900hrs, the enemy began to bombard us with intense mortar fire. The strong walls offered us protection. The fire became ever more intense and we suspected that the English (= 4th. Bn. The Welch Regiment  "B" Company ) were trying to take our position from the rear. Then I received the order: 'Albert, you secure the garden gate with a machine gun.' I took along the tall blond from Prague, Gunner 1*, and his Gunner 2 assistant**, and went into position at the garden gate. Relief: the mortar impacts were farther back. I probed the foreground while the two machine-gunners brought their guns into position. When I came back, Shooter 2 already was lying behind his MG42, ready to fire. The tall man from Prague stood leaning on the wall with a blanket over his shoulders. He smiled at me, wanted to say something, then we heard the mortars directly above us. You never heard the shells from the mortars coming, you only heard the howling right before they impacted. I tried to get down, but saw a red burst of flame directly in front of me; then my lights went out. I neither felt the explosion nor the fact that the pressure flung me into the air. When I came back to myself, I thought for a moment that I had dreamt everything, but then the pain set in. I tried to jump up, but just lay there flat. My reasoning starting working again and I tried to figure out where I had been hit. The one thing that I could move without pain was my right arm. There was blood everywhere else, it had hit me the worst in my leg. My right combat boot was shredded from my leg, the bone showing through. The left knee joint was swollen, full of shrapnel. Both thighs were full of iron, everything was just blood and mangled flesh. A large piece of shrapnel stuck in my left upper arm and pain wrenched my chest - I had two broken ribs, one on each side. My face and my mouth were full of blood. lt took me a few minutes to determine all this. I asked myself how long I had been lying there and how much blood I had lost since then.

Where were my machinegunners? The tall one was nowhere to be seen; no one could help Shooter 2 anymore- there was now nothing in the place where his head had been. That put me over the edge and l panicked: 'Medic! Medic! Medic!' l don't know how long l was screaming for. Then I realized that my comrades were still being held back by the mortars and couldn't help me at that moment. The fear of bleeding to death pushed me, despite my overwhelming pain, to pull myself towards our position with my good arm. I unbuckled my belt with all its heavy ballast and slowly but surely made my way forward. Pain overcame me and then night fell over me again. I awoke at the combat post. Our medic was taking care of me, but there wasn't much he could do. He covered up the large wounds and told me that two comrades had pulled me out during a lull in battle. Because I was being taken away from the combat, they had taken my hand grenades and Pistol 08 out of my combi-suit; when they realized that shrapnel had made them unusable, they had put them back. Maybe the pistol saved my life; it caught the shrapnel above my heart. I was laid out on a stretcher and brought to a house where the serious casualties were being kept. Around the morning we were picked up by the medics and driven to the main first aid station…”

*    Gefr. Harald Jandl  (1-5-1925)  - the tall blond from Prague, gunner 1
**   Jäger Alfons Glieden (26-10-1926)  - gunner 2 assistant

(Special thanks to: Mr. Chris Van Kerckhoven)

From the memories of Albert Sturm
Gefreiter in 7. Kompanie II./ Fallschirmjäger-Regiment 6
 
as described in the book: The Lions of Carentan -Fallschirmjäger Regiment 6, 1943-1945 / Volker Griesser (2011)