This is a simple one-step multicache to honour and remember those who gave their life for our freedom.
A monument is located ar the published coordinate. The info you will get there will lead straight to the cache.
Remember: The parachute infantry
Theodore Herman Bachenheimer aka Theodor Storm, 23 April 1923 – 22 October 1944), was an American soldier. In just three years, he achieved legendary status as one of the war’s most daring reconnaissance scouts, he was better known as the The Legendary Paratrooper or The G.I. General and was befriended by Martha Gellhorn.
Private Bachenheimer had an extraordinary talent for war, but, in reality was a man of peace. ‘In principle I am against any war,’ he would say, ‘I simply cannot hate anyone'.
He chose to finish the task he started whatever the sacrifice. Bachenheimer, one of the most remarkable character of his division died at the age of twenty-one.
Biography
He was born in Braunschweig, Germany, the eldest of two, his younger brother Klaus Gautmann (1926-1996) went to become one of the top executives at Southwest Gas Corporation. His father William (1892-1942) was a musician of Jewish descent who served in the German Army during World War I (1914-16) and was once voice teacher and coach of actress Joan Blondell. His mother Katherina Boetticher (1899-1985) was an actress.
Following Hitler's rise to power, the Bachenheimers moved, firstly to Prague and afterwards to Vienna, sometime in September 1934 they boarded the Majestic in Cherbourg, France, and sailed for America, arriving in New York on 19 September and finally settled in California. Because of his family background, Bachenheimer registered aged 18 years old as an arts student at the Los Angeles City College.
After the attack on Pearl Harbor, he volunteered for military service (13 December 1941), and in May 1942 he was allocated to the 504th 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 successfully avoiding being captured by a band of German soldiers, he reorganized the Dutch underground organizations and went on to become the leader (with the underground rank of Major) of the Dutch resistance group in Nijmegen called K.P. (Knokploegen, or Fist-Fighters, part of the newly formed Netherlands Forces of the Interior, Prince Bernhard led as chief commander), where he gained the name of 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.
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 an helmet with a first lieutenant’s bar on it instead of his own helmet, he was sent back for reconsideration.Finally Bachenheimer agreed to a battlefield commission as a second Lieutenant.
On the night of 11–12 October, he volunteered to accompany British intelligence officer Captain Peter Baker across the Waal river at Tiel to contact the Ebbens family, the IS 9's mission, the last under the command of James Langley, was to deploy Operation codenamed the Windmill Line on site (The Ebbens’s family farm, near the village of Drumpt), bringing back British paratroopers hidden by Dutch resistance in the Arnhem area (Ede, Netherlands) safely to the Allied lines using guides. Bachenheimer was also determined to establish telephone contact between areas of Germany and the Netherlands opposite his divisional front. But both men disobeyed a written order from Major Airey Neave (codenamed Saturday) to remain in military uniform and not leave the safe house in daylight. They went for a walk in plain clothes and were spotted by German troops passing nearby. Operation Windmill might have been used by the British Secret Intelligence Service as a justification for a Covert operation. 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 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.
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. On the same night, Ebbens had a meeting with the Resistance leader for the Betuwe region. Bachenheimer and Baker were brought to a local school 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. Therefore, Bachenheimer and Baker were deported by train as prisoners of war to Stalag XI-B, Fallingbostel, Baker would reach the camp in the night on 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.). During the transport, the two men were put into different boxcars, and Bachenheimer and Baker, gave each other messages for friends hoping one day to meet again in Los Angeles: “Maybe we can do business together, we could start a Californian branch of your firm and call it 'The Musketeers'said Bachenheimer to Baker.”
and as for the Ebbens, they were moved on 14 November to Renswoude where they shot by firing squad in retaliation for terrorist activity, Ebbens was incriminated for having ordered to blow up a railway and his farm was burned to the ground.
The intrepid Bachenheimer managed to escape at night (20–21 October) from his boxcar with three other British soldiers but on 22 October, he was recaptured for the last time by the Germans near the village of 't Harde while laying a telephone wire possibly trying to reestablish contact with his Resistance force. His body was recovered the next day with two gunshot wounds, and a memorial monument marks the spot where he was shot dead.
Bachenheimer was due to be given the rank of lieutenant within a month.
Bachenheimer's body was later reburied in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Hollywood, California.
The cache
At the monument you will find an eight digit number. This number is ABCDEFGH. Now use the following formula:
N 52 25.A(G-F)E E 005 5F.(B-A)D(B/H)
Dutch: Op het monument vind je een getal van acht cijfers. Laat dit getal ABCDEFGH zijn en gebruik dat in de volgende formule om de cache te vinden:
N 52 25.A(G-F)E E 005 5F.(B-A)D(B/H)