On March 24, 1945, more than 16,000 Allied paratroopers dropped into a storm of enemy fire on the eastern bank of the Rhine River. German antiaircraft guns tore through a column of transport planes and gliders stretching nearly 200 miles across the sky.
Only days later, three American soldiers had earned the Medal of Honor, a Canadian medic had performed acts that would win him the Victoria Cross, and the largest single-day airborne assault in military history had cracked open the last natural barrier protecting the German heartland.
Six weeks later, Germany surrendered.
Lessons From Arnhem
Operation Varsity was planned from the hard-fought failures of Operation Market Garden six months earlier, when British airborne troops were isolated and virtually destroyed at Arnhem. Allied planners refused to repeat those mistakes.
Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery designed Operation Plunder to force a crossing of the northern Rhine near the city of Wesel. He insisted on an airborne component to support the ground assault, but with several differences from Market Garden.
This time the paratroopers would drop close to friendly lines, not miles deep in enemy territory. Both airborne divisions would land simultaneously in a single lift rather than arriving in waves over several days. And crucially, the ground assault would begin first.
Maj. Gen. Matthew Ridgway commanded the XVIII Airborne Corps assigned to execute the drop. Under him, two divisions prepared for the jump.
The British 6th Airborne Division carried extensive combat experience from Normandy and the Ardennes. The U.S. 17th Airborne Division, led by Maj. Gen. William "Bud" Miley, had fought through the Battle of the Bulge but had never made a combat drop.
The Signal to Jump
The German defenders opposing the crossing belonged to Gen. Alfred Schlemm's 1st Parachute Army, weakened from months of fighting but still capable of fierce resistance.
The 84th Infantry Division and elements of the 47th Panzer Corps held positions along the Rhine opposite the planned landing zones near Hamminkeln and the Diersfordter Wald, a dense forest overlooking the river.
A massive Allied air campaign struck Luftwaffe airfields and transportation networks in the week before the assault. British engineers laid a 60-mile smokescreen along the Rhine to conceal bridging preparations.
Operation Plunder began at 9 p.m. on March 23, with ground troops crossing the Rhine under darkness. By early morning, several bridgeheads had been established, and the signal went out to the airborne forces.
Soldiers of the 17th Airborne ate steak and eggs before climbing aboard the trucks headed for the airfields around Paris. The first transports lifted off shortly after 7 a.m.
The enormous formation eventually included 836 C-47 transports, 72 of the newer C-46 Commandos, more than 900 American gliders, and nearly 800 British transports towing 420 gliders.
The combined armada took two hours and 37 minutes for each craft to pass a single point. The massive force was escorted by more than 2,100 fighters. At 10 a.m., the first paratroopers began landing on German soil.
The 507th Lands Under Fire
Heavy haze and smoke from artillery bombardments complicated navigation for pilots across both divisions. The 507th Parachute Infantry Regiment, commanded by Col. Edson Raff, was the first American unit to land.
Roughly half the regiment came down in the right place, but Raff and about 690 troopers drifted northwest of the drop zone near the town of Diersfordt.
Raff wasted no time. He rallied his scattered men and led them toward the correct assembly area, overrunning a German artillery battery along the way. His troopers killed or captured the gun crews before linking up with the rest of the regiment.
Pvt. George Peters of Company G landed in an open field roughly 75 yards from a German machine gun position. Pinned down with 10 other men, Peters stood without orders and charged the emplacement alone with only his rifle and grenades.
Enemy fire struck him and knocked him down, but he got up and continued forward. Hit again and unable to stand, Peters crawled close enough to lob grenades that destroyed the gun and killed two of its crew. He died from his wounds.
His actions freed his comrades to recover their equipment and secure the regiment's first objective. Peters received the Medal of Honor posthumously.
By 2 p.m., the 507th had secured all of its objectives around Diersfordt, even destroying a German tank in the process.
The 513th Hits the Wrong Drop Zone
The 513th Parachute Infantry Regiment, under Col. James Coutts, faced far worse conditions. Their transport aircraft flew directly through a belt of concentrated German antiaircraft positions that had survived the preliminary bombardment.
The 72 C-46 Commando aircraft carrying the regiment also faced a fatal design flaw in those first few minutes. Unlike the older C-47s, the C-46s lacked self-sealing fuel tanks. German 20mm incendiary rounds punctured fuel lines and sent high-octane aviation gasoline streaming along the wings toward the fuselages. A single spark could turn each damaged plane into a fireball hurdling toward the ground.
Nineteen of the 72 C-46s were shot down, 14 of them consumed by fire, some with paratroopers still aboard. Ridgway later reported that the heaviest Allied losses during the entire operation came in the first 30 minutes of the 513th's drop. He subsequently banned the C-46 from ever carrying paratroopers again.
The burning C-46 carrying Coutts himself barely held together long enough for his men to hook up a wounded soldier and push him out the door before the rest followed.
On the ground, Coutts discovered his regiment had been dropped roughly a mile and a half from its intended zone, landing instead on a British landing area near Hamminkeln.
The accidental misdrop had an unintended benefit as the American paratroopers cleared several German positions that would have threatened the British gliders arriving in the same area.
Coutts organized his men under heavy fire and pushed south toward the original objectives, destroying German artillery batteries along the way.
As Company E advanced on a fortified farmhouse roughly 250 yards away, a platoon making the frontal assault was pinned flat by concentrated fire. Pfc. Stuart Stryker, a 20-year-old platoon runner from Portland, Oregon, left cover and sprinted to the front of the stalled unit. Armed with only a carbine, he called for the men to follow him and charged.
They did. Twenty-five yards from the building, enemy fire killed Stryker. But his charge distracted German defenders long enough for other elements of the company to surround the structure, capturing more than 200 enemy soldiers and freeing three American bomber crewmen held prisoner inside.
Stryker received a posthumous Medal of Honor. The U.S. Army's Stryker armored fighting vehicle now bears his name.
By mid-afternoon, the 513th had taken all its assigned objectives, destroying two tanks and two full regiments of German artillery.
The British Sector
On the northern sector of the landing area, the British 6th Airborne Division was tasked with securing Hamminkeln, clearing part of the Diersfordter Wald, and capturing three bridges over the River Issel. Its 3rd and 5th Parachute Brigades dropped first, landing under heavy fire beginning around 10 a.m.
The 5th Parachute Brigade's drop was scattered by a smokescreen and haze blanketing the zone. The battalions fought through German gun and artillery fire to secure the positions covering the subsequent glider landings.
Behind the parachute troops came the 6th Airlanding Brigade in gliders, tasked with seizing Hamminkeln itself and the Issel River crossings. Companies of the 2nd Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry and the 1st Royal Ulster Rifles executed their landings directly on the bridges.
The glider troops took devastating casualties in the 10 minutes it took to land near Hamminkeln railway station, losing roughly half their strength before even assembling. The survivors fought running battles with German Mk. IV tanks that used timber stacks for cover around the rail yard.
The Glider Pilot Regiment paid a heavy price across the British sector. Out of 890 personnel who departed for Varsity, more than 20 percent were killed or wounded. Many pilots fought as infantry alongside the units they had delivered.
Despite the losses, all three Issel bridges were captured intact and Hamminkeln fell within hours.
The Canadian Battalion
The 3rd Parachute Brigade, which included the Canadians, dropped onto the western edge of the Diersfordter Wald and quickly engaged German paratroopers defending the forest.
The 1st Canadian Parachute Battalion held an impressive battlefield record within the brigade. The unit had jumped into Normandy on D-Day and fought through the Ardennes without ever failing to complete a mission or surrendering an objective once taken.
Their commander, Lt. Col. Jeff Nicklin, had been among the first Canadians to jump on D-Day, where his parachute snagged a rooftop over a German position at Varaville. He freed himself and continued fighting through the rest of the campaign.
On March 24, Nicklin again found himself stuck. His chute became tangled in a tree directly above a German machine gun position. His body was later found still in his harness with multiple bullet wounds.
Before the war, Nicklin had been a star football player for the Winnipeg Blue Bombers, winning Grey Cup championships in 1935 and 1939. The Canadian Football League's Jeff Nicklin Memorial Trophy, donated by his former paratroopers, is still awarded annually.
Lt. Col. Fraser Eadie assumed command and drove the battalion toward its objectives in the woods along the western edge of the drop zone. The Canadians completed their mission within hours, overwhelming the German paratroopers defending the area.
"Once we dropped in on Operation Varsity, the battalion had become purely a professional unit," Eadie later said. "In my opinion, there was none better."
Among the Canadians fighting that morning was Cpl. Frederick "Toppy" Topham, a 27-year-old medical orderly from Toronto. Around 11 a.m., a wounded man cried out for help in the open. Two medics from a field ambulance went to him in succession. Both were killed as they knelt beside the casualty.
Topham ran forward through intense fire to take their place. While treating the wounded man, a bullet struck him through the nose. Bleeding heavily and in severe pain, he finished administering first aid and then carried the soldier slowly back to the shelter of a tree line under continuous fire.
For two hours afterward, Topham refused treatment for his own wound and continued recovering casualties across the battlefield. When he finally allowed his nose to be dressed, he refused evacuation and returned to duty.
On the way back to his company, he found a burning weapons carrier that had taken a direct hit. Its mortar ammunition was exploding, and an officer on the scene had warned everyone to stay away. Topham went alone into danger, pulled three men from the wreckage, and carried them to safety.
One died shortly after, but the other two survived because of him. Topham received the Victoria Cross, the only member of the 1st Canadian Parachute Battalion and the 6th Airborne Division to earn it during the war.
Lembeck Castle and the Cost of Victory
In the days after the initial drop, the fighting continued as the XVIII Airborne Corps expanded its foothold.
Tech. Sgt. Clinton Hedrick of the 194th Glider Infantry Regiment participated in an assault on Lembeck Castle, which German forces had turned into a strongpoint near the town of Lembeck.
Three times on March 27 and 28, Hedrick charged through heavy fire with his automatic rifle, inspiring his men to overrun the fortified positions. When six Germans attempted a flanking attack, he killed all of them.
Later, he and his men pursued retreating enemies into castle itself. Hedrick and four of his comrades entered the massive structure as the Germans signaled that they wished to surrender. A self-propelled gun then fired into the group. Hedrick covered his men's withdrawal, but he was killed in the process.
Hedrick earned the 17th Airborne Division's fourth Medal of Honor during Operation Varsity. He was only 26-years-old.
Ridgway himself barely escaped death on the night of March 24. While returning from his routine visits to divisional commanders after midnight, his group ran into a German patrol. A grenade detonated beside his jeep, and shrapnel struck him in the shoulder. The wheel absorbed fragments that might otherwise have killed him.
The human toll was significant across both divisions. The 6th Airborne suffered approximately 1,400 casualties from its 7,220 personnel. The 17th Airborne lost roughly 1,300 of its 9,650 troops between March 24 and 29.
A total of 56 aircraft were destroyed on the first day alone.
The Legacy of the Last Great Airborne Assault
Despite the losses, every major objective was achieved. The Diersfordter Wald was cleared, Hamminkeln captured, the Issel River bridges seized, and the German 84th Infantry Division effectively destroyed. The British 15th (Scottish) Division linked up with both airborne divisions the afternoon of March 24.
Within three days, 12 Allied bridges spanned the Rhine, opening the northern route into the industrial heart of Germany. Only days later, the Ruhr industrial area was effectively surrounded, blocking German forces from their last major source of munitions and arms, while trapping over 370,000 Germans in the pocket.
Gen. Eisenhower called Varsity "the most successful airborne operation carried out to date." Ridgway stated in his after-action report that the drop was the decisive factor in Montgomery's Rhine crossing. Germany surrendered just six weeks later.
Whether the operation was necessary remains debated among historians. Charles MacDonald and James Huston both argued that ground forces could have taken the same objectives with fewer casualties, noting the two infantry divisions making the river assault lost only 41 killed combined.
What is beyond dispute is that Varsity represented the final evolution of Allied airborne doctrine in Europe. Every difficult lesson from Sicily, Normandy, and Arnhem was applied to ensure its success.
The 81st anniversary of Operation Varsity falls on March 24, 2026. British paratroopers have commemorated the operation annually with reenactment drops near the town of Rees, Germany. American troops based in Europe also attend anniversary ceremonies each year. During these ceremonies, attendees honor the lives and sacrifices of soldiers like Peters, Stryker, Hedrick, Topham and Nicklin as well as the thousands of other paratroopers who conducted the last major airborne operation of WWII.
Sources: U.S. Army Center of Military History; Army Historical Foundation, "Operation Varsity: The Last Airborne Deployment of World War II" by Matthew Seelinger; Congressional Medal of Honor Society; Government of Canada, Department of National Defence, Victoria Cross Recipients; 1st Canadian Parachute Battalion Museum; Juno Beach Centre, "The 1st Canadian Parachute Battalion in the Final Seven Weeks of the War"; Airborne and Special Operations Museum Foundation; Airborne Assault Museum, Imperial War Museum Duxford; Canada's History, "Airborne Assault"; Warfare History Network.
