A parachute-shaped stone stands at the edge of a field in Best, in the Netherlands. The marker carries the Medal of Honor citation of Lieutenant Colonel Robert Cole, and it sits next to the ground where he was killed. The memorial was unveiled on 18 September 2009, the 65th anniversary of his death, with his son and veterans of the 101st Airborne Division present.
Cole commanded the 3rd Battalion of the 502nd Parachute Infantry Regiment. On 18 September 1944, the second day of Operation Market Garden, his battalion was in contact with German positions near Best. Cole had requested air support and was in radio contact with a pilot who needed orange recognition panels laid out to mark the battalion’s line and prevent friendly fire. Rather than send a man into the open, Cole carried the panels out himself. He looked up to find the aircraft. A German sniper in a nearby farmhouse shot him in the head and killed him instantly. He was 29.
Medal of Honor
What Cole did not know was that he had already earned the highest award his country could give. Three months earlier, on 11 June 1944, he had led a bayonet charge against dug-in German positions on the causeway to Carentan in Normandy, rising to his feet in front of his battalion with a drawn pistol and leading the remnants across open, bullet-swept ground. The action secured the bridgehead across the Douve.
The Medal of Honor for Carentan was authorised by the War Department on 4 October 1944, more than two weeks after his death. On 30 October it was presented at Fort Sam Houston in Texas, on the same parade ground where Cole had played as a child. His mother accepted the medal. His widow and their young son looked on.
Cole is buried at the Netherlands American Cemetery at Margraten, not far from the field where he fell. We visit the memorial at Best on our Hell’s Highway battlefield tour.
