After the
attack on Pearl Harbor, Bachenheimer volunteered for military service (13 December 1941), and in May 1942 he was allocated to the
504th Infantry Regiment after successfully obtaining his parachuting certificate. In August 1942, he was transferred to
Fort Bragg,
North Carolina together with the 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment which was attached to the
82nd Airborne Division. While the 504th was training at Fort Bragg, Bachenheimer, fluent in German, taught an intelligence class, where he would read out of a German infantry training manual. Bachenheimer was granted
U.S. citizenship on 23 October 1942 by the
United States district court of
Atlanta,
Georgia, his petition for naturalization described him as a 5 ft 10, 160 lbs white male with brown hair and brown eyes, ruddy complexion, exhibiting a small scar on the tip of the chin. On 23 March 1943, in
Fayetteville,
Cumberland County, North Carolina, he married Ethel Lou Murfield, whom he called Penny, from
Fullerton,
California who at the time was working for the
Douglas Aircraft Company as a
timekeeper. Bachenheimer took part in
Operation Husky, fought in the battles for
Salerno and
Anzio, where his bravery behind enemy lines made him a legend in the 82nd Airborne Division, earning him the nickname of
The Legendary Paratrooper. From 1942 to 1944, Bachenheimer was the subject of articles in newspapers such as
Star and Stripes, ''
Collier's Weekly and the Los Angeles Times'', and some of his exploits were broadcast in radio dispatches. In action during
Operation Market Garden, he landed near
Grave, the
Netherlands, on 17 September 1944. After entering the city he met with a Dutch resistance member who introduced him to a local underground group, its leaders fled fearing a German ruse and the remaining members asked Bachenheimer to be their leader (with the
underground rank of
Major) of the Dutch resistance group in
Nijmegen called K.P. (Knokploegen, part of the newly formed Netherlands Forces of the Interior, who, in an ironic twist of fate, had accepted
Prince Bernhard as their chief commander). It was in their midst that he was nicked
The G.I. General, his army was known as
The Free Netherlands Army, a
Battalion consisted of more than three hundred fighters. His partisans dubbed him
Kommandant, Bachenheimers's HQ was set up in a steel factory situated in Groenestraat, south-west part of Nijmegen. By the end of September, Bachenheimer had moved his HQ to a primary school gathered intelligence about the occupation forces and the information was then transmitted forward to the 82nd Airborne Division and other allied officers who came to Bachenheimer for intel. For his heroic actions in Nijmegen, Bachenheimer was recommended for a
battlefield commission and was directed to report to
division for an interview by a board of officers. On his way to his interview he picked up a helmet with a
first lieutenant's bar on it, and was sent back for reconsideration.
The Windmill Line According to statements by Airey Neave, he accompanied British intelligence officer
Captain Peter Baker and PFC Bachenheimer for their crossing of the
Waal river near
Tiel on the night of 11–12 October as he sent them on a secret mission to organize a rescue line named 'Windmill'. They were to set up their HQ working from a local resistance hotbed, the Ebbens family's farm, near Zoelen and the village of Drumpt In addition to Bachenheimer and Baker, the other boarders at Ebbens's house were a group of young Dutchmen, a Jewish family, a wounded British paratrooper, Staff-Sergeant Alan Kettley of the
Glider Pilot Regiment and
Canadian military officer, Lieutenant Leo Jack Heaps (1922–1995). Heaps would be involved with
Operation Pegasus, he would be later raised to the rank of Captain and awarded the
Military Cross, his son is Canadian politician,
Adrian Heaps. It was to prove
IS 9's last mission under the command of
James Langley and fatal to Bachenheimer and Fekko Ebbens. Operation Windmill might have been used by the British Secret Intelligence Service as a justification for a
Covert operation: Many of Neave's statements concerning the operation are at odds with Baker's and Heaps's:
Captain Peter Baker and Lieutenant Leo Heaps stated that Bachenheimer volunteered to join Baker's secret HQ but that Bachenheimer arrived a day or two after Baker's arrival.
Raided: Betrayal, arrest and interrogations On the night of 16 October, three days after glider pilot Kettley left, the Ebbens's farm was raided by the
Wehrmacht, two German soldiers were killed and during their search, the Germans found a stock of arms and some papers. Ebbens was in the middle of a meeting with one of the resistance leaders for the
Betuwe region. when his farm was raided. IS9 was first informed of the raid around 2am in the early morning hours of 17 October by a local resistance member who crossed the river to inform them that both men had died. Neave consequently blamed Baker and Bachenheimer for the failed operation: According to Major
Airey Neave (codenamed
Saturday), Baker and Bachenheimer disobeyed a written order to remain in military uniform and not to leave the safe house during daylight hours, despite the nature of their tasks being at practical odds with such an instruction and Neave praising and recruiting Leo Heaps who himself had abandoned the Ebbens farms shortly before the raid took place during daytime hours wearing civilian clothing rushing to flee a German patrol who had stopped him. The truthfulness of Airey Neave's claims and the motivation behind his putting the blame squarely on Baker and Bachenheimer is highly questionable. Neave may have been misinformed initially about Baker and Bachenheimer not wearing their uniforms, since the men were in bed when the raid took place around 0:30am on 17 October and the Germans took some time to discover 2 allied uniforms. The Germans initially misidentified their captives as including one Englishman and one Canadian, quite probably based on the Canadian uniform jacket left behind by Leo Heaps. Airey Neave failed to mention master scout Bachenheimer's work in the Betuwe region near Driel and Renkum in the days and weeks leading up to the crossing where the successful rescue mission later known as
Operation Pegasus took place. Following their arrest, Bachenheimer and Baker were brought to a local school in Zoelen where they were interrogated for some hours, but they remained unmolested. They managed to establish a false identity and said they were cut off from their units and had lost their way in a
no man's land between the
Waal and the
Rhine. Baker would reach the camp on the night of 26 October, (when news that both men had been arrested, the "Windmill line" was abandoned, the other escape route via
Renkum codenamed Operation Pegasus went ahead as scheduled.). Fekko Ebbens was moved to Renswoude on 14 November and shot in retaliation for
terrorist activity, his farm was burned to the ground. == Death ==