action. on september 17th, 1944, d-day in holland, but just seconds before the crossing of the bridge, the nazis had a surprise for them. >> they blew that bridge right up under our noses. >> so we had to wait there to get bridge material to build for the tanks. that delayed us. we lost probably a day there. that we shouldn't have. >> the nazis initially caught by surprise had launched a vicious counterattack by day two. they heavily fortified the area by the bridge and overran several allied drop zones. john hardy's platoon was tasked with ridding the drop zones of german troops. within his first sergeant leonard falk would become the most decorated paratrooper in airborne history. >> about 5'5", weighed about 140 pounds. and he had obviously unlimited courage. that's what made him such a tremendous combat leader was that he never hesitated. >> john hardy and his small band of paratroopers that were led by leonard, stormed across a drop zone. >> we had attack instantaneous. we got pinned down with a lot of fire. about half hour before the gliders were coming in. >> john mckenzie was looking down on the battlefield from his glider. >> got to the drop zone, made a slight circle. the germans were firing in the drop zone. we lost one of the 23 gliders, shot down along with a tow plane. and those eight people were lost. >> on the ground hardy and funk had people buzzing all around. >> a very close friend of mine killed instantaneously there. shot through the head. and funk at that time says, god damn, let's go. and he got out. >> they led the entire unit there to take back the field just in the nick of time as the glider reinforcements were coming down. >> we got out maybe 300 yards and battalion swept across the drop zone. by this time gliders were already cut off and circling to come down. >> the glider fleet comes in. drop glider landings are only to be expected. sometimes the boys get a shaking up. >> but it flew pretty much like a brick. there's a nylon cord, very strong, behind a c-47 there was an ability to cut the glider loose. and it was at that point more like a kite than an airplane. you could hit the field. if you were within a mile of it when you were cut loose. sglt 82nd got their reinforcements in safely with remarkably low casualties. but they were still unable to take the bridge. meanwhile, up at arnhem things were getting worse for the british airborne. >> in the first airborne was being pressed from all sides by the german army. and then the populous kind of starts to shrink. >> the only hope was the anticipated arrival of the british 30 corps tanks and infantry. the columns only reached the southern most town of eindhoven, a day later. the sun bridge had been blown up. they headed north to the one highway that led to the city of nijmigen. >> subject to counterattack all along. >> the 101st was tasked with securing the road so 30 corps could keep moving. >> the road was cut and that's when we encountered a lot of combat. we had constant action because cops were trying to prevent us from penetrating south. >> that night after the fighting we came to, it was really a drainage ditch. >> taking shelter in the ditch for the night, but there was no rest for the weary. >> it was a cold, miserable night. as you can imagine laying there all night long, couldn't see your hand in front of you. >> unexpected. we surprised them as much as they surprised us. one hell of a fistfight. >> tough, tough combat. >> they were called on again and again to take care of snipers and roadblocks. >> just about the time we got it open, they'd cut the road back the other side. so we had to march all the way back to knock out another roadblock. >> when the 101st struggled, the tank columns move along hell's highway, the 82nd awaited the arrival. the operation was now 36 hours behind schedule. >> the two main bridges at nijmagen still need to be taken. the s.s. heavily defending both bridges at this point. >> every hour of delay by the british we knew was killing their own soldiers, their main force was still ten miles south. so everybody was very anxious. and our commanders were probably very nuts. >> the officers i heard them talking, send some troops downstream and see if we can cross the river and take the bridges from the rear. i sat there and i thought, should do that at night. >> 30 corps finally arrived early in the morning with the boats to be used for the crossing were far behind in the column. >> i wonder what kind of armored bolts we have. and when the boats came we were absolutely dumbfounded. they were folding canvas boats. the flat bottom plywood and you pinned up the sides. and canoe paddles. cross a fast flowing river with flat bottom boats and can't hardly control with canoe paddles? >> the british weren't even sure they knew how to operate the boats. >> they would ask have you ever crossed a river in a boat? well, had they ever ridden a boat? no. what makes you think that they can cross this river? they'll have on-the-job training. that's what it turned out to be. >> we all turned and said if we've ever seen a suicide mission, this is it. >> and because 36 hours behind schedule, the crossing was going to have to take place at high noon in the middle of broad day. >> broad daylight? >> said, well, we're going to be smoke screen iing. see the banks on the other side. >> the chopper doesn't have to go, in fact it's suggested you not go. >> i knew i had to go with our men. some said you're crazy. they were shooting at us all with machine guns and they had artillery and mortars. when we started, i wondered if any of us would get across with that much fire. >> paratroopers make a bloody my "business" was going nowhere... so i built this kickin' new website with godaddy. building a website in under an hour is easy! 68% of people... ...who have built their website using gocentral, did it in... ...under an hour, and you can too. type in your business or idea. pick your favourite design. personalize it with beautiful images. and...you're done! and now business is booming. harriet, it's a double stitch not a cross stitch! build a better website - in under an hour. free to try. no credit card required. gocentral from godaddy. >> paratroopers in their epic paratroopers and their epic heroism orders biggest guns against the german war machine, yet they fought on. >> all we had to do was cross the wall and attack from both the north and south side. one of the big problems was that the bridge had all kinds of explosive charges on it. >> on this fourth day of market garden 300 paratroopers and 36 collapsible boats began to cross the river under heavy fire. >> with about eight or ten men boating across the river under heavy fire. >> well, we got in the middle river and -- >> get out of the boat and charge and start to move towards the bridges. and by about 7:00 they capture the main bridge. the germans are furiously counterattacking the 82nd aircraft and fighting for their lives. almost 50% casualties. >> kill and wound over boat. i hear a grunt and touch his shoulder and had his head blown off. that's how close it was. >> out of 26 boats, only 11 made it across. >> after the first wave of boats were able to come back, get another load and go back and take them across. >> luckily for the allies the bridge failed to explode. >> the charges on the bridge failed. and whether it was the dutch underground or airborne engineers at night, someone went under the bridge and cut the wires to these charges. >> so paratroopers seized nijmagen bridge and by about 7:00 british tanks come across the bridge and then they halt. >> they decided they would all stop for tea. and by that it really means stop. they leave the tanks in the road. they get out of the tanks. they start boiling their water. they start making the tea. the whole process is about an hour of tea making and tea drinking. and we're going crazy. >> what happens? >> this, colonel north, this is the thing that caused the heart ache to us. when i saw those men that were made to cross the river, get those boats and they never stop, we couldn't believe it when we have lost so many men. >> it seems to me at the time to be inexcusable. this is a matter of life and death for so many people. >> the british are great soldiers, but for some reason the higher-ups didn't get those tanks moving. >> tea didn't seem important to us, but it certainly seemed important to them. with my experience with the british, they're wonderful soldiers. they did a great job. but i had at least three occasions in which tea became regularly annoying. >> the united states soldiers -- taking huge risks. they're not very happy that the british had not brought to the next bridge. >> the americans had accomplished their objectives. the british general montgomery's operation market garden was a pitiful 48 hours behind schedule. his 30 corps was making little progress in getting to them. >> this is a compounding problem. i mean, there's the delay of the bridge and then the delay -- it snowballs. they were only supposed to hold there for two days and now it's several days out. it really starts to crumble. >> time had run out for the british. >> they were in impossible circumstances, running out of ammunition. they have no vehicles. they were incredibly broke. they held on for four and a half days. >> on the fifth day running short of food and ammunition, the first airborne had no choice but to try and break out. >> that meant really the whole operation had failed. because if you couldn't get across the major river, then you weren't going to pour into northern germany. >> the numbers tell the tale. out of the 10,000 british paratroopers that landed outside of arnhem, only 2,150 made it back. the rest were captured or killed. but the fighting didn't stop. >> everything that we were supposed to do was done in a week. but we stayed in holland for two months. and our casualties after that week were enormous. >> over 17,000 paratroopers were killed, wounded or reported missing, a devastating 50% casualty rate for those that parachuted in. coming up, how an entire bridge was air dropped to save the thousands of lives of >> oliver: operation market operation market garden ended a chapter in paratrooper history. large jumps of tens of thousands of men became a thing of the past. lieutenant colonel jeffrey tarhoon the commander at ft. benning, georgia. he explains why less were used. >> there were few if any combat jumps that were made during the korean war with the terrain of korea. very mountainous. it would be very difficult to find a place suitable to conduct an airborne operation. if you look at the drop zones that we chose in world war ii, they were large open areas. >> the deployment of paratroopers may have slowed in the 1950s, but the parachute itself remained a vital tool. dropped stranded soldiers and marines at the reservoir in korea and a parachute used to help safely land the first u.s.-manned space capsule. during the vietnam era airborne operations were overshadowed by the helicopter. >> send an entire division of paratroopers into those lines would make it difficult. so helicopter became a much more important player. >> because of this the number of airborne divisions was cut back to just one, the 82nd. >> the 101st still wears the airborne patch as a part of its uniform, but their mission inside the army is air assault. their main mode of transportation to a conflict would be with helicopter. >> october 25, 1983, the united states dispatches paratroopers and marines to the small island of grenada to rescue american students and restore democracy. sergeant major pickering remembers that the initial order wasn't for a parachute drop. >> i was a buck sergeant in the second range ft. lewis, washington. we got the alert on saturday to call the guys and said, men, we're going to go to war. get ready. so our deal was to be ready to go anywhere within 18 hours. so we got our mission brief and took off. and while we were flying, the mission changed. i was initially supposed to air land because the situation on the ground had changed. they told us, okay, forget that. put your parachutes on. you're going to jump in and help secure the airfield. >> very few of those aircraft could get down on the ground at a time. so it took a long time for the 82nd to actually get out of the aircraft on the ground where they were then in a position to fight. and the 82nd learned that lesson in grenada. and they applied it in panama six years later. >> a captain part of operation just cause, launched on december 20th, 1989. >> the mission of the operation was to remove noreaga from power in panama. he and his people were becoming violent with the u.s. in the area. there were a lot of reported cases of illegal arrests and detentions and even assaults on americans by panamanian forces. and it got to the point that president bush decided to execute operation just cause. >> u.s. authorities wanted to take noriega, the notorious leader of panama, back to the united states and put him on trial on drug charges. >> we did the combat jump the morning of december 20th. the combat jump is conducted at 500 feet aboveground level. when you look out it looks like the ground is right beneath you. the 82nd's mission was to get on the ground as quickly as we could, get assembled and then waited until the right level to bring in the blackhawk helicopters to fly the different units to their mission. we were very successful. >> on january 3rd, 1990, general noriega surrendered u.s. forces and currently serving a 30-year sentence in a federal penitentiary. there were few opportunities to use paratroopers during operation desert storm. it wasn't until the war on terrorism in afghanistan that paratroopers would be used again. >> we had an airborne operation conducted by the rangers. and everybody saw the news those c-130s were flying blacked out. and then in the middle of the sky 150 or more paratroopers quickly accomplish their mission and were again extracted from the area. >> the war on terrorists energized the troops with a renewed spirit as evidence by the new generation of volunteers like private wesley. >> the sooner i can help my brothers in afghanistan and missions like those the better. >> airborne is about character. it's about overcoming challenges. and that's what a paratrooper is. a lot of these people that come to airborne school will never jump out of an airplane again after they get their five jumps to qualify them for their wings. but they will always have the heart that they developed here. they will always know that they can see a challenge, and we can look for a way through the challenge and we can accomplish the mission. >> up next on "war stories," more paratroopers. (basketball game and crowd sounds) ♪ if you talkin' they will hear you ♪ every single time... why are we getting killed like this? kyle's not here. got caught drinking beer in the park a couple of nights ago. really? yeah. zero tolerance-he's out for the season. harsh. hey, he knew not to drink. we've made that clear to all our kids, right? uh, no... not really. bill, if we don't tell them what we expect and why they shouldn't drink, how're they gonna know? (announcer) talk. they hear you. for more information, visit underagedrinking.samhsa.gov. >> oliver: since since world war ii, paratroopers have been given the most dangerous missions, assigned the task of securing key terrain vital to the success of the military operation. though they no longer use c-47 aircrafts like this for transport into hostile territory, while the parachutes they've jumped in have changed over the years, one thing remains the same, a paratrooper must propel himself from the airplane, put his trust in flimsy material like this, land safely behind enemy lines, engage in numerically superior force often better armed than he is. whether in world war ii, korea or even the treacherous landscape of afghanistan, paratroopers have been the first to face the enemy. theirs is a war story that deserves to be told. for "war stories," i'm oliver north. good night. >> oliver: tonight on war stories, it was supposed to be tonight on "war stories," it was supposed to be a quick operation. >> we were pretty much expected to go ashore, get some exercise, get back on the ship. >> but in peleliu it all went to hell. >> the campaign was nothing but a continuous blood bath. >> i lost six or seven of my officers. >> they were hidden. they were in little spider holes. >> as soon as i turned around, a bayonet hit me here in the chest. >> what really happened on the bloody beaches of peleliu. that's next on "war stories." this is the natio

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