     At dawn on the morning of December 17th, Colonel Friedrich A. Freiherr von der Heydte surveyed the pitiful shards of Operation Hohes Venn. This paratroop drop had been scheduled for December 16th, but postponed when gasoline for the trucks to carry the paratroopers to the airfields was stolen by another division.
   The drop had gone ahead 24 hours later, but everything went wrong. Heavy anti-aircraft fire had broken up the formations of transport planes, scattering them all over the Ardennes. German paratroopers came down just about everywhere. High winds added to the confusion and caused many landing injuries. Colonel von der Heydte was one of the few members of the attack force to actually land on the objective. For the next few hours, his men combed the area, bringing in stragglers. By dawn, he had collected about 300 men out of the 1250 that had taken off from Germany 4 hours earlier.
   He had no working radios -- they had all been broken in the airdrop. His request for carrier pigeons had been contemptuously dismissed by Sepp Dietrich. Now he was completely out of touch.
   Then they heard the sound of approaching vehicles. It was a column from the American First Infantry Division -- the Big Red One, one of the toughest divisions in the American Army. The German paratroops hid in the woods and watched helplessly as the reinforcements they were supposed to delay rolled by. Operation Hohes Venn had failed in its primary mission.
/Airborne
   Paratroops might seem to be a powerful weapon -- highly trained soldiers dropping out of the sky like phantoms, pouncing on undefended locations deep behind enemy lines, wreaking havoc and destruction. The reality is less impressive. Most of the killing in war is done with heavy weapons such as tanks and artillery, weapons that can't be dropped from airplanes. Paratroops are armed with nothing more than rifles, machine guns, mortars, and bazookas. Paratroops fighting against tanks and artillery will be slaughtered. Nevertheless, paratroops can have considerable value when used properly. You have to follow some simple rules:
   First, never drop paratroops into defended locations. In the disastrous Market-Garden operation, the British First Airborne Division was dropped right into the middle of the German 9th SS Panzer Division in Arnhem. That's like diving into a shark pool (with similar results.) Always drop paratroops into empty rear areas.
   Second, drop paratroops as the leading edge of an offensive. The paratroops should grab vital bridges or road junctions and then dig in, defending them until ground troops can come to the rescue. This is the real value of paratroops: if the ground troops know that their comrades are just ahead, besieged and endangered, they will attack with fervor.
   Third, drop paratroops in mass. A paratroop force has to be big enough to take its objective and hold it for at least 24 hours. Von der Heydte's force of 300 men could not have held its road junction for two hours against the First Infantry Division./