> Rural Wisconsin of the 21st Century.

Looks very similar to the pastural Wisconsin of the 1920's and 30's.

Growing and harvesting corn, soy beans and wheat remains a way to make an honest living.

As does dairy farming, just like it was during the Great Depression, which hit East Central Wisconsin hard, as it did most of America prior to World War II.

During those years of misery this region of Wisconsin, more than half of which came from German ancestry, produced its share of resilient people.

Many of whom would leave the picturesque farms and decorated shop fronts on North and South Main Street in the city of Fond du Lac and head off to foreign lands to fight the Germans and Japanese.

One native son would become one of World War II's most decorated officers.

>> I would never say that I was born to be a leader.

I was just a poor kid trying to keep my soul together and trying to find a job and trying to get to college and trying to do what everybody else did.

> First generation Greek-American James Megellas.

The self described poor kid was one of seven children of immigrant parents, who grew up in this small house on 3rd Street and South Park Avenue in Fond du Lac.

Megellas's ultimate path however didn't lie in farming or in his home town.

He didn't know it when this photo was taken at three years old, but Jim Megellas was destined to lead men in battle in a World War that was still many years away.

In 1937 James Megellas enrolled at nearby Ripon College, about 20 miles from his boyhood home.

He arrived there three years after graduating from high school and following the short stretch in the Civilian Conservation Corps.

At Ripon, Megellas played for the football team and majored in Art Studies.

On Monday December 8, 1941, halfway through his senior year and second year as a Cadet in the College's ROTC program, Jim Megellas tuned in his radio and listened as President Franklin Roosevelt talked about a date which will live in infamy.

The Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor, Hawaii a day earlier.

>> We knew that the work clause were gathering and those of us in ROTC we were seniors, we were going to graduate shortly.

And uh reckon we'd go in active duty.

And all of the sudden we realized we were at war.

> In May of 1942, 25 year old James Megellas, diploma in hand, World War II raging, wanted in the fight badly.

>> When I walked across the stage at Ripon College with my cap and gown on, in one hand I had a Bachelor of Arts of Degree and the other one I had a Commission of Second Lieutenant.

> But fresh out of college, Second Lieutenant Megellas landed in the signal core, soldiers responsible for military communications.

A support role and hardly the front line on the battlefield.

Megellas wanted out and his ticket was a private pilot's license acquired before the war.

The army was looking for glider pilots, so this son of Wisconsin shipped out of the signal core and trained in the heat and dust of Texas in gliders.

At that very same time, American troops were landing in North Africa in November 1942, as part of "Operation Torch."

>> My only question was, "what is the quickest way that I can get into combat?"

> Jim Megellas was now a glider man, until Uncle Sam discovered they had too many of those.

So in the late spring of 1943, Megellas, still itching for a fight, arrived at the parachute training school at Fort Benning, Georgia to give something called the Airborne Paratroops a go.

If he couldn't fly into the fight in Europe he would jump in.

>> I knew that it was risky, I knew it required a special kind of guy that was willing to do that, but I was one of those kinds of guys.

> Megellas's training in the State's as a parachutist continued as the 82nd Airborne jumped into Sicily in July of '43 as part of Operation Husky.

The Airborne gave Jim Megellas what he wanted most, the quickest route to war.

>> That was the truth, I was in a combated short order.

> Jim Megellas left for the war in Europe from Newport News, Virginia on September 5, 1943, aboard a ten thousand ton liberty ship, which had been converted into a troop carrier.

On the same boat was his best friend, another 82nd Airborne Second Lieutenant named Richard LaRiviere, from Chicopee, Massachusetts.

Maggie and Rivers became buddies at Benning and would serve side by side in some of the Wars most fierce battles.

Both men would prove to be exceptional platoon leaders.

>> We were both dressed in the same situation.

We both went through parachute school together, got to know each other, and we're assigned to the same company.

> They were like brothers.

Jim is more refined, very detailed in a speech and very well mannered.

My father?

Very direct.

>> They liked one another.

They're one of the best out of everybody, and they gave their best too.

Didn't hesitate to do what they told you to do.

Both were afraid they wouldn't get to the war before to kill German soldiers.

That's what they said too.

And they did everything to make this come true.

And they didn't know what we had left, but we had enough time left to give them everything they wanted.

> On September 13th, while en route to North Africa, Jim Megellas learned the 82nd Airborne had jumped into Salerno, Italy.

Megellas, Rivers and the other newest paratroopers of the 82nd, docked in Oran, French Morocco twelve days later.

More training would ensue in North Africa, until word came in late November that Megellas and Rivers were to join H Company, 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 3rd Battalion of the 82nd Airborne, as replacements for those killed or wounded in Sicily in Italy.

25 year old Lieutenant Jim Megellas and his good buddy Richard LaRiviere, reported for duty in the middle of a brutal fight in the rugged Apennine Mountains of Italy, near Monte Cassino in late 1943.

>> I was where I wanted to be, on the cutting edge of the battlefield.

> Fighting in those damn mountains is a very difficult thing to do.

Twice as difficult to do your fighting in a mountainous area that is where you have to move bricks and move stones and move everything else in order to get past, to get a unit past anyway.

>> There was one thing more prominent than other was, not that I would get killed, I was in combat.

I had already come to terms with that, I want you to know that.

I came to terms with that when I went to paratroopers that I could die.

But what I thought about more than anything was that I would get maimed and become an amputee or something and be shipped home and the sorrow and the grief I would cause my family.

> The fighting in Italy was static, the mountains favoring the defender, in this case the Germans.

The Apennine's would be a proving ground for Lieutenant's Megellas and Rivers, who both soon realized they weren't going to stay alive long if they fought this war by the army manual.

>> We didn't go by the book, at all.

We went by what was right.

Now Rivers and I were older, we were more mature, we'd seen combat.

> I'm surprised at the two different people, Megellas and Rivers, they're different as hell, were so damn good at what they did.

>> They were very well respected and the guys that do anything for them.

> You can tell after so many days of combat whether someone's going to last very long.

>> The fighting is done in squads and platoons by privates, many teenage kids, lead non-commissioned officers and junior officers.

> His first combat action was uh terrific at what he did.

I mean he uh he held on to the territory the Germans were trying to take it away from us and they didn't get in there.

>> Much of what Jim Megellas learned in the mountains of Italy also came from watching the Germans, how they would fire and maneuver.

He soaked in every lesson of each fight, filing the information away for future battles.

> I can just tell that he was a, you know, hell he was an intelligent individual, he was a college graduate, which you don't get too much in the officers at that time.

>> The Gustav line ran across the peninsula and was anchored at Cassino.

To break the stalemate, we tried an end-run, amphibious landings at Anzio and Nettuno.

> The fighting in the mountains of Italy was Jim Megellas's baptism of fire, but it would be the brutal carnage at Anzio on the Italian coast just south of Rome, beginning in late January of 1944, that would change Second Lieutenant Megellas dramatically.

It was here he was wounded twice and left behind the young man who was James Megellas, a Third Street and South Park Avenue in quiet Fond fu Lac, Wisconsin.

In Anzio, Megellas transformed into Maggie, known simply as a fearless leader, weapon always in hand and with a single focus.

>> The turning point in my career as a combat soldier, when I when Maggie first when Maggie became Maggie, was at the Battle of Anzio.

That was brutal.

I was wounded twice, we were surrounded by the enemy or as I like to put it, we had them surrounded from the inside.

We were about out of ammunition, I had a limp arm, we didn't have any food, we didn't have any we had no contact of any kind with anybody.

And that fighting was so bitter and people that we lost and bodies that I dragged back, that it changed my whole attitude.

It was no longer "I was in combat and I had to survive."

We were up against a bitter enemy.

And it was us against them.

My M.O.S.

Military Occupational Specialty, and that of the men who fought with me was simply stated, "killing Germans."

Nothing more nothing less.

And uh I did that an awful lot.

> It was in Anzio that first platoon leader Maggie Megellas learned one lesson he would take with him through the rest of World War II in Europe.

Leaders must always lead from the front.

>> If I was the best guy to be out in front and to lead rather than stand in the back and command, that's the way it had to be, cause I was the leader.

I wouldn't send an 18 year old kid to go out and try to disarm mines when I knew better, I'd do it.

> His leadership instilled kind of a confidence in that you were going to get this done.

I like the guy.

>> Leadership develops in the field of battle, people who'll respond to a situation.

It isn't cause you were born that way or anything else, I've never said that.

> In April of 1944, after 62 days of fighting on the brutal Anzio beach head, the 504th, now nicknamed the Devil's in Baggy Pants by the battered Germans, was sent back to England to regroup.

For his leadership actions in Italy, Jim Megellas was awarded a bronze star, buddy Richard Lariviere a silver star, and the entire regiment a Presidential Unit Citation.

England would be a place for more training as Lieutenant Megellas and the rest of the 504th readied for Operation Market Garden, the invasion of Holland.

As a paratrooper it would be Maggie's first official combat jump from a C-47.

H Company's drop zone on September 17th were large open fields near the Dutch city of Grave.

Their ultimate objective would be the capture of the rail and highway bridges in Nijmegen, assisting the British in their dash for the city of Arnhem and a route across the Rhine River into Germany.

Seven decades later, now retired Lieutenant Colonel James Megellas is on a much more comfortable plane headed back to Europe with a small group of family, friends, and 82nd Airborne veterans he served with in the war.

This time Maggie won't need a parachute and no one will be shooting at him as he arrives.

His mission will also be very different.

It is here in Holland, back in the Dutch countryside, where Jim Megellas's thoughts become more focused.

He visualizes the events of September 1944, snapshots of planes, parachutes and men crossing a turbulent river come into focus.

He is Maggie again, back in the middle of World War II.

> We knew we were part of a larger cause greater than ourselves, but that wasn't what motivated us.

What motivated us was to get the enemy.

They were our enemy; they were out to kill us.

And that's what war's all about.

>> He was without fear and he would've gave you a shot in the arm.

> Revisiting the battlefields of Europe provides a time for reflection.

Many long forgotten memories are revived as the landscape rolls by.

Images of his C-47 approaching the drop zone in Holland become vivid, the sights, the sounds, the jolt of his parachute opening, the Germans watching him from below.

>> I could see all these bullets coming at me.

Everyone looked light because the deflection of angle light was going to hit me right here in the forehead.

> As was always the case with Maggie, the first order of business was the welfare of his men.

>> My concern, get on the ground, get ready to defend myself, make sure my men were accounted for and we assembled and we got in the assemble area and I could count them and I could talk to my squad leaders and take noses and see what we lost.

We lost two men in my platoon over the drop zone.

Okay guys hold up here and they all saves you, if you got them, smoke them.

Light up.

> Today horses graze on the original drop zone outside of Grave.

Much like their ancestors did in 1944.

The only new features on these fields are parachute like memorials, marking the spot where the 82nd came on a quiet Sunday afternoon in September of 1944 to liberate Holland.

While other 504th men went on to different objectives, Lieutenant Maggie Megellas and H Company moved toward the bridges at Nijmegen, where in three days they would be assigned one of the most difficult missions in all of World War II, the crossing of four hundred yards of brown churning water known as the Waal River.

After that, they would have to capture the vitally important rail and highway bridges in Nijmegen, which were crucial to the success of Operation Market Garden.

>> Here I was, young guy just out of college, volunteered for paratroopers, fighting in a brutal war in the scene of a bloody battle.

And that's the affect it has on me.

Other than that to be here and have any emotional feeling about it or anything, yeah it's a tragedy and I relive it, but it doesn't have an effect on me that way.

> H and I Company's of the Third Battalion of the 504th got the word that on September 20th, they would have to cross the Waal from the Southern side.

Leaving from near an old power station, which remains part of the landscape today.

H and I would attack the Germans on the North side and then seize both the railroad and highway bridges in Nijmegen, so British tanks could get across and make a sh for Arnhem.

It would be 250 men of the 504th against more than a thousand Germans, including elite SS troops, who were on the North side of the river and on the two bridges, all in perfect position to rain down fire on the Americans crossing the river in broad daylight.

>> We knew we weren't surprising anybody that we knew.

And so when guys got together in groups, they felt well this is it guys.

You know.

I told my buddy Rivers, look I says, "Rivers, if you make it across and I don't, go to Wisconsin and see my mother and tell her what happened."

He says, "Maggie I'll do the same if you do that for me as well.

Go to Massachusetts, Chicopee Falls."

I said, "Okay it's a deal."

And when they opened up the cover of this sort of box truck where they had brought the boats up in, they got up and they peel them off like a deck of cards.

Shoo, here's your boat.

> The 504th would have to make the crossing in small canvas and wood bottom boats.

Hastily delivered by the British, most of which didn't have paddles.

33 were needed, only 26 arrived.

The mission was already off to a bad start.

>> We were behind this dike and we charged over the top carrying these flimsy canvas boats, and charged down this embankment and set our boats in the water.

> We lost our mind, we can't get across in that heavy fire and those little boats.

But we, you know, you do it anyway.

>> I can tell you honestly and sincerely that I didn't think any of us would make it across that river to the opposite dike where the Germans were dug in with machine guns.

We might've got across the river, but whether we could navigate that open terrain and rot the Germans and capture the bridges.

I didn't think any of us would make it.

> At fifteen hundred hours on September 20, 1944, 504th Major Julian Cook blew his whistle and the first wave of paratroopers from H and I Companies grabbed their flimsy boats and headed for the South Bank of the Waal River.

>> The Waal River to me stands out because of its daring and courage.

The Germans couldn't believe that we would do it.

Paratroopers did an awful lot of things, we went up mountains and we made assault landings and we attacked cities and we did everything.

But, asked to do that, which appeared to be an impossible mission made that something that you'd never forget.

> People were taking their rifles and rowing trying to get across quicker.

Cause that was withering fire and they put up smoke, but wind blew it right away.

So we were pretty easy targets for the Germans at that time.

>> Some of the guys didn't have no paddles even.

And that took a long time, under all that fire.

> I used my hands, besides I could duck down a little further in the boat.

>> The casualties we had and the brutality of it.

In the period of say four hours was unequalled in any battles that we fought.

> Just had to keep going and going.

>> I don't know how the hell anybody didn't see that.

> And our Chaplain was praying and our General Commander was sighting the rosary.

And we were praying under heavy fire and looking to the Lord for guidance and for his assistance.

>> I kept seeing all them faces.

I still do.

Of all them guys that I think of getting killed sitting next to me in the boat trying to get across that river.

> I got out of the boat and got on land and we were reaching and uh my friend said to me, "You peed your pants."

I said no I didn't.

I said there's a hole right there in that canteen, that's how I got wet.

And it's just an incident that you know, I've got a canteen with a bullet hole in it, at home in the garage.

And just as a reminder you know, that how close I came.

>> Getting across the Waal in slow canvas boats with enemy fire directly on top of them was bad enough.

What awaited platoon leader Megellas, Rivers and the men of the 504th on the other side of the river wasn't a walk in the park either.

> If there ever was hell on Earth, that was it and we were in it.

And once you got there then it was no, you guys are going to pay for it.

>> On the north bank of the Waal were more Germans, dug in along a road dike with an open field of fire on the men of the 82nd as they emptied out of their boats.

> And the Germans who were determined here to stop us.

>> If he got down and ran for cover, you got down and ran for cover.

And if he advanced you went with him.

> What drove us up here was rage and vengeance and we were cussing and swearing.

And we had no place to take cover.

>> When we got over to the river bank and threw hand grenades across over to the Germans on the other side, they picked them up and threw them back.

> More out of futility than anything else, we were firing like the tops of sub-machine guns, firing in this direction.

>> No place to hide, no place to hide from the machine gun fire that was coming.

> The only things we had to get here and so we charged up into it and we had a number of men that were killed.

Made it across the river, but didn't make it across this open area.

>> After eliminating the Germans on the dike, H and I Companies were still taking heavy fire from Fort Hof van Holland, from the north side of the Waal.

Megellas and his men had to take out the Germans firing from the fort before there were any thoughts of H Company heading for their first objective, the railroad bridge.

> The entrance was around behind, which we didn't know.

There was a moat and a draw bridge and a motor on the water and the Germans were in there and they had these weapons that they were firing from outside this fort.

>> One of his Sergeants stripped down a little bit and then swam across the moat.

Then they from there they had a little fire fight with whoever was trying to defend the fort.

> Today the residents of Hof Van Holland aren't Germans, but Dutch professors at a local university at Nijmegen.

Maggie's reception inside the Fort today is quite different than it was on September 20th, 1944.

>> We knew where the enemy was.

We could see the objectives.

We knew who was firing at us, so let's go them guys.

We didn't need any further orders.

Our commanders were on the other side of the river anyway.

> For the men of H and I companies securing the railroad bridge over the Waal became personal, payback for the Germans slaughter of 82nd men crossing the river.

When the rail bridge was finally secured 267 Germans were dead.

Not many prisoners were taken.

>> There's nothing greater than rage and a desire for revenge.

> Less than a mile away other men from H and I companies of the 504th secured the north end of the 18-Hundred foot long highway bridge over the Waal.

Many more Germans were killed.

American casualties were forty men killed and a hundred wounded in just over four hours of battle.

After all the carnage British tanks finally crossed the bridge at Nijmegen, but were inexplicably ordered to stop and not move on to Arnhem.

Market Garden would ultimately fail.

The 504th would be awarded another Presidential Unit Citation for its courage at the Waal River and for taking the bridges.

Visiting Nijmegen today doesn't lessen the pain for Platoon leader Maggie Megellas, however it does put the fight in perspective.

>> It was a war of survival.

And we were up against an enemy that already ravaged all of Europe.

And it enslaved a good part of the world.

And I look back at how I viewed it in combat and how I viewed killing my enemy.

It makes a little sense in that context.

Today I wouldn't advocate any of that.

> If Jim Megellas is looking for any signs that the crossing of the Waal River was indeed worth the price, then just down the road from the Nijmegen bridges that can be found.

>> Hello welcome to our school again.

> I'm Colonel Megellas.

>> A school, named De Over Steek or translated "the Crossing" was built some years ago in honor of the heroics of the 504th on September 20th, 1944.

It's a place Maggie has visited a few times on his trips back to Holland, speaking to the great grandchildren of those he helped to liberate.

> I come here because this is De Over Steek.

And for what you do to keep the memory of the Waal River crossing alive.

When you come here and you see people that are grateful like that.

Then you realize that our efforts in what we were doing and the sacrifice were made were worthwhile because here are future generations that now live in peace, can go to school of their choice, have freedom to move, have freedom to go on to school, they have all the freedoms that they didn't have when we got here.

>> Even though Market Garden itself was a failure Lieutenant Jim Megellas and the soldiers of the 504th weren't done fighting in Holland.

> This is the area where we took up defensive positions after the mission failed at Arnhem.

82nd Airborne Division was deployed along a line here because this is the boundary between Holland and Germany.

And we could look out here and this is where the Germans were at.

>> On September 30th word came of an impending German attack in the area of the Wyler Meer, a long narrow body of water on the border of Holland and Germany.

The regiment needed prisoners who could talk about the upcoming offensive and Maggie Megellas was once again called on to lead a dangerous patrol to find some.

> Well I took my whole platoon.

The medic had took everybody.

We expected to get into a heavy fire fight and casualties and all the rest and so we started off.

At that time in 1944 when I led this patrol, I was 27 years old, I was an old man.

And most of the men in my patrol were teenagers, or young guys 20 or 21.

You're responsible for their well being and you've got a mission to accomplish, you're going to use the best guy that you've got to lead that patrol and it happened to be me.

If we're running into an enemy situation, I knew what to expect.

If I'm running into a mine field I know how to disarm a mine, I knew how to do all these things.

A lot of my guys were great soldiers, but they didn't have that same skill, so I always used the term that I was a platoon leader and I led from the front.

I wasn't a commander who commands from the rear.

I could see out ahead of me maybe 20, maybe 40 feet ahead a couple of German helmets popped up out of a hole.

I said, "a ha, here's where they are."

So I took one of my hand grenades, pulled the pin and I rolled it in on them.

And then I crawled over to the next hole and repeated it.

I says, "Kommen aus.

Kommen aus."

Nothing.

So I rolled in another one.

I go over to another hole and I holler again, "come out" and he didn't do it and this time instead of a hand grenade, I went on the edge of that fox hole with my Thompson sub-machine gun and opened fire on them.

We kind of fanned out into three squads and then we charged over the top and got in behind everywhere the Germans dug in.

And we got in a fire fight.

>> The result of H-Company's prisoner grab was 17 dead Germans and six prisoners and only one man wounded, Sergeant Jack Fowler.

> Most dreaded words that a combat platoon leader can hear in a situation like that is the call for a medic.

Cause you know somebody's been hit.

>> Megellas carried the wounded Fowler back to company lines.

> So I picked him up and I threw him over my shoulder like a fireman carrier.

And then I gave the call, "let's pull back" and one of them had two more prisoners and I hollered to him, "bring those guys over here to me."

And I said to them in German, "Mach schnell.

Get going, hurry, let's get going."

As we started out and began to pull away back, the Germans began to shoot up flares.

So we'd hit the dirt, but we finally made it back and when I got to this wider mirror on that foot bridge, I knew we were home safe.

I never thought anything about; it was a day's work.

Later on I was told that I was being put in for a medal.

You're not off trying to earn any distinction for yourself.

It's you or the enemy, he For his leadership of the patrol along the Wyler Meer, Lt. Jim Megellas was later awarded the distinguished service cross, next to the Congressional Medal of Honor, the highest award given to an American soldier in combat.

On November 13th, 1944, after 57 days in combat, H Company and the 504th were taken off the line in Holland, and returned to France for rest and retraining.

He didn't know it then, but in just over a month, Maggie would find himself in the middle of the Battle of the Bulge.

>> The Margraten Cemetery in Holland is the final resting place for many of the 82nd men Jim Megellas and his fellow 504th veterans fought alongside in Holland, from the Waal River to the Wyler Meer.

The Waal crossing felt like a suicide mission to all those who stepped into those canvas boats, but for one friend of Maggie's in particular, the premonition of impending death came true.

Decades later Jim Megellas visits the white cross of Lieutenant Harold Busby.

> And while Rivers and I were congregated and saying you know, if we make it go and see our mothers, Pappy Busby comes over from, they were down the dike a little further from us and he come up to me and he came up and looked at me and he says, "Maggie.

I don't think I'm going to make it today."

But I looked at him and I said, "Oh come on now Pappy, I said you know, every time we went into a combat mission whether it was the mountains of Italy, it was at Anzio or wherever.

We had casualties, it was a war, we expected it.

I said, "Pappy, it doesn't mean you're going to get it, that's ridiculous.

You'll be okay, you'll be okay, you'll be."

I looked at him, I'm telling you this, I looked at him and never forget, he was shaking, his face was discolored and nothing I could say to him could dissuade him from the fact that he wasn't going to make it.

Anyway, he went back to I Company, he was in another boat for me, and we get in our boats that we come across.

And he made it across the river.

But when he got to the other side, machine gun cut him down.

I never saw him again ever.

But he was a buddy, and the war continued and went on and we went on into Berlin and I never saw him again until I came here to this cemetery.

And I stood here.

Sixty something years later.

>> The Battle of the Bulge was Hitler's last gamble at victory in World War II.

On December 17th Maggie, H Company and the 504th got the word they were headed from France to the Ardennes forest in Belgium.

Their first major test would come in the small town of Cheneux, against elite troops from the first SS panzer Division.

> This was one of our objectives.

And the Germans were coming from that direction.

We were coming around the other side and we're coming over this rolling territory near the Somme River and then we started down a knoll, a grassy knoll, and the Germans were in there and they had all of their units and their mechanized units and the whole thing had arrived here.

And we started down this knoll, they opened fire on us.

And with 20 millimeter flack wagons again, the guys were dropping all around.

>> The fighting in and around Cheneux on December 20th was bloody, but thanks to courage and leadership by a great many men in the 504th, it would be the first time the Germans were turned back in the Bulge.

There were lighter moments in combat for Maggie and the men.

One came with his buddy Rivers after clearing Germans out a centuries-old church in the Belgian town of Grand Halleaux.

Megellas' days as an altar boy in Wisconsin paying off.

> So I crawl around back in there and I find four bottles of wine.

I grabbed them.

It's one of the fruits of victory so to speak, spoils of the war or whatever.

I take these bottles and River's he's Catholic, I'm Greek Orthodox, he's Catholic, he was a little upset about stealing wine from the church.

So I take a couple of bottles of wine and we go over there, well who happens to be there that night but Chaplain Kozak, Catholic priest, and River's part of his flock.

And get back in there and I break out this wine, you know pour it around.

And Kozak tastes it and he looked at me and he looked at Rivers, "so where'd you get this?"

He says Maggie got it.

So you stole the wine.

Well I said you know so what?

They don't need it anymore.

He got all upset, he gave Rivers hell.

He says, "You know when that priest comes back he's not going to be able to give communion."

Well Maggie could care less if they ever had communion here or not.

> Many decades later a quick check behind that very same altar by Megellas confirms the sacramental wine has a new hiding place.

>> Well it changed some.

Back in that corner was the wine.

> Over the course of his time as leader of H Company Jim Megellas had proven himself one of the 82nd's best officers.

He commanded from the front with total disregard for his own life.

He was fearless, but also cared deeply about the men he led.

In no other situation would all of Lieutenant Maggie Megellas' experiences and lessons learned in battle come into play than on January 28th, 1945 in Herresbach, Belgium.

The Germans held Herresbach, a small village nestled in the Ardennes forest, and a place where the view hasn't changed much since January of 1945.

Militarily, Herresbach stood between the Americans and the Siegfried line, so it had to be taken.

After 12 hours of walking through deep snowdrifts to reach the outskirts of the town, Maggie, Rivers, and their platoons ran directly into more than 300 Germans heading in their direction, supported by a Panther Mark Five tank.

>> You have to realize that this area was covered with heavy snow.

Maybe two feet of snow.

> When we went into Herresbach we went head on into this German battalion.

Just by complete surprise and everybody starts shooting.

>> And the minute we open fire, it was pandemonium, I mean everybody was shooting.

Our guys were all firing.

> I had a Thompson by that time and I'd just pointing it and shooting.

They're falling right and left, here and there I don't know how many I hit, I put rounds in their direction.

And there's just Germans falling all over the place, and they were the most confused German bunch I'd ever saw.

>> And after about ten or fifteen minutes firing it quieted down.

Killed a lot of them, a lot of them ran in the woods and escaped and so, actually the ground was littered with blood and dead and it was all Germans.

Wasn't an American hit.

None of us were hit at all.

It was the most amazing thing.

> We caught them completely by surprise and the difference was we reacted before they reacted.

>> We proceeded to come up this road and we got near here, a tank camber must've come around this road and set up and began to fire at us.

> A tank was out there, that was the main weapon they had.

>> I was in the lead element in my platoon and we were coming down the road and the minute they fired on us we took cover.

> Megellas seeing the fact that there was a lot of trees along this road, he went along the road between tree to tree while I was firing at him and his platoon.

>> I ran off the side the road and got in that wooded area.

So I had concealment heading for the tank.

And I proceeded over there and got there close enough so that I could take what I call a gammon grenade out of my pocket.

> Maggie made two gammon grenades every time he was going to go out on an attack.

And carried them in his pocket.

>> The gammon grenade was a Composition C plastic, a plastic explosive that you could mold and I had molded it into a ball and I had a cover over it with a firing device.

> It just so happened that he was a lieutenant who was ready for anything when he's in there.

>> I got in close enough to the tank and they didn't see me.

And I threw it over in the broad side of the tank and it hit the side of it.

> It probably killed everybody in the tank cause it's a concussion grenade.

>> The gunner who was up there, went down into the tank.

There was a turret there and a machine gun.

He went down into the tank and I then charged up the tank and came up and got up there close enough.

> Although he didn't have to, he ran up and got up on top of the tank and dropped a grenade in there.

>> I don't know how many were in the tank but there could've been a crew of five.

I didn't bother to look, it wasn't a concern.

But I threw a hand grenade in there and then things were all quiet.

So I get up and I motion let's go.

> After that tank incident and then we got into town we were knocking them out of buildings.

And they're lining them up.

Over hundreds of them you know?

And we wouldn't have done that without any casualties if he hadn't taken that tank out.

That's my feeling.

>> We didn't lose anybody in that whole damn operation.

> Over 100 Germans were dead, 180 captured.

Incredibly, in all that firing there was not one American casualty.

For his leadership at Herresbach Lieutenant Jim Megellas received another Silver Star.

Many who were there obviously felt he deserved much more.

>> Nobody else saw what I saw that morning, what he did.

There were no officers up there to see what Maggie did, and none of them came up after it was done.

> Now if you jump up and you knock out a tank by yourself, with a hand grenade, a Gammon grenade, then jump on top of, while people are shooting around and drop a grenade in the turret, that's just a little bit beyond ordinary.

And that's what you call extraordinary heroism, above and beyond, that's what I feel.

>> And what do you do?

Do you say well, "hey Sarge you take your squad and get over there and just bologna."

I took off right away, there was that tank, I knew how to disable it, I had the wherewithal I had grenades in my pocket.

I had some grenades.

I didn't hesitate, I went.

That was the heat of battle, it had to be done.

And I was the platoon leader, who else is going to do it?

> You know I studied the what you needed for Medal of Honors and I thought well Jesus this is far beyond what you would expect some human being to do.

>> When Simms and Grey put him in for Medal of Honor, they wrote the thing all up and sent it up.

> We got a new company commander and I made a recommendation to him that Megellas should be put in for a Medal of Honor.

>> It got the regiment and I think, I hate to criticize anybody, but I think [ unintelligible ] took the easy way out and he sanitized it and sent it up for a silver star and he left out completely the fact that there was a tank involved.

> No mention was made of the tank in what they put out.

And that's what Megellas was awarded the Silver Star for that action.

>> If they had knocked it down to a D or C, wouldn't have been as bad.

But to kick it down to Silver Star?

Come on, you know.

That Silver Star was kind of an offer to good conduct medal you know what I mean?

> They told him at battalion headquarters that never be no Medal of Honor because there were no casualties.

He had no casualties.

I said what does that got to do with it for Christ's sake?

The fact that he had no casualties is another reason why he should be put in for it.

>> The German army was being pushed back across the Rhine into Germany following their defeat in the Battle of the Bulge.

It was here where atrocities were discovered, camps where living skeletons, decaying bodies and the stench of death seemed to be everywhere.

On May 2nd, 1945 Maggie Megellas and H Company entered the German city of Ludwigslust where they cut open the gates to a small concentration camp named Wobbelin, a place where Jews and political prisoners were being starved and worked to death.

There is not much left of the camp today.

Some bricks remain where a pile of bodies were found stuffed in a doorway.

Areas where prisoner barracks once stood can still be seen.

Part of a rusty water pump exists.

Here and there reminders of the horror...

The tall pines of the forest look down on this ground.

The wind whispers through these trees producing a haunting sound.

No chirping of birds can be heard.

> We bust the locks on the concentration camp and we were the first to endure that, there wasn't more than fifteen or twenty of us.

>> The citizens of Ludwigslust were made to visit the camp, to see and smell the death that occurred on their watch.

They also had to bury 200 of the victims in the center of their beautiful city, in front of their royal palace, as a reminder of the crimes they ignored.

Those graves remain today, as does a memorial to those murdered by the Nazis.

> They marched through here and all that.

Then they assembled over here and Chaplain Wood, he was the senior Chaplain, division Chaplain.

He had a message for them.

They were responsible for sort of the government responsible for you or are you responsible for your government.

That sort of saying.

And by your own indifference and acceptance of all this, this is what you've sewn.

>> Six days after liberating Ludwigslust, the war in Europe ended as Germany formally surrendered.

Lieutenant Maggie Megellas and H-Company of the 504th moved on to Berlin.

There they saw an entire city devastated, from the Reichstag Parliament building to the smallest of neighborhoods.

> I asked one German, you know who spoke English and I ask him, "Why?

When you knew you were done, did you keep fighting so furiously?"

He said, "we're like a family."

He said, "for four years, four and a half years, five.

Nobody but the rest of the squad.

That was our family then."

And that's why they did that.

It made sense to me.

>> On points alone, Lieutenant Jim Megellas could have gone home instead of pulling occupation duty in the German capital, but Maggie, the soldier, first needed some closure to his war.

> I was going go onto Berlin because Hitler had told the German people that when the Americans enter war we won't worry about them because they're soft and they can't fight.

And I said I'm going to go to Berlin and I'm going to teach him Germans something different.

And I went there and I really wasn't happy about them at all.

Cause after all they were goose stepping, they were in all the youth organizations, they were cheering and hooting and heiling Hitler all over the place when they were riding high.

We left dead all over the battlefield.

I had no feeling for them.

And that's a terrible thing to say because I do now, I do now.

I respect the German people, back then I didn't, I didn't.

>> Thank you very much.

> I was there.

>> Decades later James Megellas revisits a beautiful and completely rebuilt Berlin, here the Brandenburg gate still stands tall and the Reichstag building has been rebuilt.

Today, German citizens greet Jim Megellas as a hero, not a conquering enemy.

This is the world he now lives in.

He is no longer Maggie.

Maggie belonged to World War II.

> How you could take peaceful, loving young guys out of school and thrust them in a situation like this and make of it a transition.

They had to become killers to survive and prevail.

And then once the war ends two and half years later, to come back and become a useful citizen.

And take up your place in society again.

And pick up where you left off.

It just happens to you in combat.

You become this from peaceful, loving guy and all of a sudden you're a killer.

You're in for the duration of war and you're seeking revenge for your buddies you lost.

>> On January 12th, 1946 Lieutenant Maggie Megellas, and the rest of the famed 82nd Airborne Division were officially welcomed home with a victory parade down Fifth Avenue in New York City.

Maggie led H Company's march.

The following morning Jim Megellas boarded a train west and headed home for Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, which is a long way from Anzio, the Waal River, the Wyler Meer, Herresbach and Berlin.

Maggie's war was over.

> And I just wanted to make sure, you know I talked to school kids if they fully understood what was involved.

And how we like those kids in school, just out of school, were thrust in this kind of a situation.

>> I wanted the original "Devils in Baggy Pants."

> You should be honored and you should be respected by all of us.

>> Decades later some of the men Maggie led in many of World War II's bloodiest battles gather once again in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, Jim Megellas' home town, where the local veterans center bears his name.

They reunite for most likely the last time.

These once young soldiers are in their late 80's now and in Jim Megellas' case, his mid 90's.

They come to share stories and share laughs, not so much to talk about the fight itself, but to keep hold of the bond they all still share, unspoken but still very much alive, born out of adversity from a war fought a long time ago.

They also come to honor and say thank you to a highly-decorated platoon leader whom they still respect, a man who always led from the front and who cared deeply for all his men.

Many are still alive because of his exceptional leadership in battle.

> Some kind of guys have something extra.

And it comes out.

They're leaders.

>> He had a strong feeling about his men.

He had a strong feeling about himself, which made him a good leader.

With good luck and fortunate, intelligent and persistent and consistent, you know, he could count on his men and he did.

> He knew what the hell he was doing, you know he was, you could tell he knew his stuff.

He wasn't the normal young lieutenant that I'd been dealing in my army career up to that time.

And Rivers was real confident too.

>> I've looked at my own life over the years and my personal opinion is good leaders are born.

> What makes a brave man is when he's got a group of people as far as I'm concerned and how big they are doesn't make any difference.

He's there when they're going through the worst part of any type of fighting and things like that.

That what makes a brave man.

>> The Charge of the Light Brigade for example, in the Valley of Death road to 600.

Cannon to the left of them, cannon to the right of them but forever charging forward.

> He was Maggie then.

Today, many decades removed from World War II, he's James Megellas.

You don't become a heroic leader of men in combat without drawing on the experiences of both.