Throughout the long months of training, Urquhart “often felt like an outsider, a kind of military landlubber.” He was aware of “being watched closely; not with hostility, though some airborne officers had reservations and a few did not bother to conceal them. I was on trial; my actions were being judged. It was an unenviable position, but one I accepted.” Slowly, Urquhart’s confident, assured handling of the division won over his officers. And among the troopers, Urquhart was far more popular than he knew. Private James W. Sims, of the 1st Airborne Division’s 1st Parachute Brigade, remembers “the General’s supreme confidence and his calmness.” Sergeant John Rate, of Division headquarters, had the impression that “General Urquhart did whatever job had to be done. He didn’t just ask someone else to do it. The General didn’t stand on ceremony.” Signalman Kenneth John Pearce called him “a big wonderful fellow. He called us ‘son’ or used our first names if he knew them.” And from Sergeant Roy Ernest Hatch, of the Glider Pilot Regiment, Urquhart earned the supreme compliment. “He was,” Hatch asserted, “a bloody general who didn’t mind doin’ the job of a sergeant.”
To Urquhart’s frustration, his division had not been chosen for the Normandy invasion, and “the summer passed interminably, planning one operation after another, only to see each canceled.” Now, his “Red Devils” were “hungering for a fight.” They had almost given up. “We were calling ourselves ‘The Stillborn Division,’” recalls Major George S. Powell of the 4th Parachute Brigade. “We figured we were being kept in reserve for use in the victory parade.” As Urquhart saw it, “there was a dangerous mixture of ennui and cynicism slowly creeping into our lives. We were trained to a fine edge and I knew that if we didn’t get into battle soon, we would lose it. We were ready and willing to accept anything, with all the ‘ifs.’ ”
Urquhart’s principal target—the prize of Operation Market-Garden—was Arnhem’s concrete-and-steel highway bridge over the Lower Rhine. Additionally, Urquhart’s men had two secondary objectives: a nearby floating pontoon bridge and a double-track railway crossing upriver, two and a half miles west of the town.
Urquhart’s assignment presented a series of problems. Two were particularly worrisome. Reports of heavy antiaircraft defenses in the area indicated that some enemy units were massing in the vicinity of the Arnhem bridge itself. And Urquhart was uneasy about the three days it would take to airlift his entire force of British and Polish paratroops to their objectives. Both these problems had a direct bearing on Urquhart’s choice of landing sites. Unlike the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions, he could not pick zones almost on or even close to the principal target. Ideally, he should land his forces near the Arnhem bridge on both sides of the river; but Urquhart’s terrain was by no means ideal. The northern exit of the crossing ran directly into the densely populated, built-up center of Arnhem itself. Near the southern exit, low-level polder land was, according to reports, too marshy for men or gliders. “Many of my own commanders,” Urquhart remembers, “were quite willing to land on the southern side, even though it was marshy. Indeed, some were ready to risk injury by parachuting on the northern side—on the town itself.”
In the previous week, bomber crews returning from other missions had reported a 30 percent increase in antiaircraft fire near the Arnhem crossing and from Deelen airfield seven miles to the north. Consequently, R.A.F. commanders whose pilots were scheduled to tow Urquhart’s glider-borne troops raised strong objections to landing zones close to the Arnhem bridge. If sites were located near the southern exit, tug aircraft wheeling north after releasing gliders would run into heavy flak over the airfield. Turning south was almost as bad; planes might risk collision with aircraft dropping the 82nd Airborne near Nijmegen, eleven miles away. Urquhart was confronted with a dilemma: he could insist that the R.A.F. place his troops in proximity to the bridge, or he could choose drop zones much farther away, outside Arnhem itself, with all the dangers that choice entailed—delay, loss of surprise, possible German opposition. The risks were multiplied because on D Day Urquhart would have only a part of his division. “My problem was to get enough men down on the first lift,” Urquhart recalled, “not only to seize the main bridge in the town itself, but also to guard and defend the drop zones and landing areas for the succeeding lifts. To seize the main bridge on the first day my strength was reduced to just one parachute brigade.”
Faced with these restrictions, Urquhart appealed to Browning for extra planes. It seemed to him, he told the Corps commander, “that the Americans are getting all they need.” Browning disagreed. The allocation of aircraft, he assured Urquhart, was “entirely due to priorities and not to any high-level American pressure.” The entire operation, he explained, had to be planned from south to north, “bottom to top”; objectives in the southern and central sections of the corridor must be “seized first to get the ground forces through. Otherwise, the 1st Airborne would be wiped out.”
In his command caravan on the Moor Park golf course near the clubhouse that General Browning used as headquarters, Urqu-hart pored over his maps and pondered the situation. Some open sectors existed north of Arnhem in a national park, but these were too small and the terrain was unsuitable. At best, these spots might accommodate a small parachute force but no gliders. The only alternative was to land in some broad expanses of open heaths and pasture land bordered by pine woods, 250 feet above sea level, lying west and northwest of Arnhem. The heathlands were firm and flat, perfect for gliders and parachutists. They were ideal in every way—except one: the areas lay between six and eight miles from the Arnhem bridge. Faced with the R.A.F.’s continued opposition to a drop in the immediate vicinity of the bridge, Urquhart reluctantly decided on the distant sites. “There was nothing else to do,” he recalled, “but to accept the risks and plan for them. I was left with no choice.”*
By September 12, Urquhart had his plan ready. Outlined on the map were five landing and drop zones straddling the Arnhem-Amsterdam railroad in the vicinity of Wolfheze, approximately four miles northwest of Arnhem. Three sites lay north of Wolfheze and two south, the southern zones together making up an irregular box-shaped tract more than a mile square. All were at least six miles away from the bridge at Arnhem; the farthest, northwest of Wolfheze, was eight.
On D Day two brigades would go in—Brigadier Philip “Pip” Hicks’s 1st Airlanding Brigade, scheduled to hold the drop zones, and Brigadier Gerald Lathbury’s 1st Parachute Brigade, which would make a dash for Arnhem and its highway, railroad and pontoon bridges. Leading the way would be a motorized reconnaissance squadron of jeeps and motorcycles. Urquhart was counting on Major C. F. H. “Freddie” Gough’s highly specialized force of some 275 men in four troops—the only unit of its kind in the British army—to reach the highway bridge and hold it until the main body of the brigade arrived.
The next day, D plus 1, Brigadier John “Shan” Hackett’s 4th Parachute Brigade was due to arrive, together with the remainder of the Airlanding Brigade; and on the third day, Major General Stanislaw Sosabowski’s Polish 1st Parachute Brigade was to be landed. Urquhart had marked in a sixth drop zone for the Poles. Because it was anticipated that, by D plus 2, the bridge would be captured and the flak batteries knocked out, the Poles were to drop on the southern bank of the Lower Rhine near the village of Elden about one mile south of the Arnhem crossing.
Despite the risks he must accept, Urquhart felt confident. He believed he had “a reasonable operation and a good plan.” Casualties, he thought, might be “somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 percent”; considering the intricate nature of the attack, he did not think the cost was too high. In the early evening of September 12, he briefed his commanders on the operation and, Urquhart remembers, “everybody seemed quite content with the plan.”
One commander, however, had grave misgivings. Major General Stanislaw Sosabowski, the trim, fifty-two-year-old leader of the Polish 1st Parachute Brigade, was quite sure that “we were in for a bitter struggle.” The former Polish War Academy professor had alre
ady stated his position to Generals Urquhart and Browning when he first heard about Operation Comet. At that time he had demanded that Urquhart give him his orders in writing so that “I would not be held responsible for the disaster.” With Urquhart he had visited Browning and told him “this mission cannot possibly succeed.” Browning asked why. As Sosabowski remembered, “I told him it would be suicide to attempt it with the forces we had and Browning answered, ‘But, my dear Sosabowski, the Red Devils and the gallant Poles can do anything!’”
Now, one week later, as he listened to Urquhart, Sosabowski thought, “the British are not only grossly underestimating German strength in the Arnhem area, but they seem ignorant of the significance Arnhem has for the Fatherland.” Sosabowski believed that to the Germans Arnhem represented “the gateway to Germany, and I did not expect the Germans to leave it open.” He did not believe that “troops in the area were of very low caliber, with only a few battered tanks sitting around.” He was appalled when Urquhart told the assembled brigade commanders that the 1st Airborne was to be dropped “at least six miles from the objective.” To reach the bridge the main body of troops would have “a five-hour march; so how could surprise be achieved? Any fool of a German would immediately know our plans.”
There was another part of the plan Sosabowski did not like. Heavy equipment and ammunition for his brigade was to go in by glider on an earlier lift. Thus, his stores would be on a northern landing zone when his troops landed on the southern bank. What would happen if the bridge was not taken by the time the Poles landed? As Urquhart spelled out the plan, Sosabowski learned to his astonishment that, if the bridge was still in German hands by that time, his Polish troops would be expected to take it.
Despite Sosabowski’s anxieties, at the September 12 briefing he remained silent. “I remember Urquhart asking for questions and nobody raised any,” he recalled. “Everyone sat nonchalantly, legs crossed, looking bored. I wanted to say something about this impossible plan, but I just couldn’t. I was unpopular as it was, and anyway who would have listened?”
Later, when the entire airborne operation was reviewed for all commanders at General Browning’s headquarters, others had grave misgivings about the British part of the plan but they too remained silent. Brigadier General James M. Gavin, commander of the American 82nd Airborne, was so astonished when he heard of Urquhart’s choice of landing sites that he said to his operations chief, Lieutenant Colonel John Norton, “My God, he can’t mean it.” Norton was equally appalled. “He does,” he said grimly, “but I wouldn’t care to try it.” In Gavin’s view, it was far better to take “10 percent initial casualties by dropping either on or close to the bridge than to run the risk of landing on distant drop zones.” He was “surprised that General Browning did not question Urquhart’s plan.” Still, Gavin said nothing “for I assumed that the British, with their extensive combat experience, knew exactly what they were doing.”
*At their first interview Urquhart was still wearing his Brigadier’s badges and tight-fitting Tartan trousers (trews) and spats of the Highland Division. As the meeting broke up, Browning, pointing to Urquhart’s pants, said, “You might also get yourself properly dressed and get rid of those trews.”
*Colonel George S. Chatterton, commanding the Glider Pilot Regiment, recalls that he wanted a coup de main, “a force of five or six gliders to land near the bridge and take it. I saw no reason why we could not do it, but apparently nobody else saw the need for it, and I distinctly remember being called a bloody murderer and assassin for suggesting it.”
SS STURMBANNFÜHRER (MAJOR) SEPP KRAFFT did not intend to move again if he could avoid it. In the past few weeks his under-strength SS Panzer Grenadier Training and Reserve Battalion had been ordered back and forth across Holland. Now, after only five days, the unit was being ordered out of the village of Oosterbeek—and not by a superior of Krafft’s, but by a Wehrmacht major.
Krafft protested vehemently. The main body of his three companies of men was billeted in the village, with the rest in Arnhem, and another 1,000 SS recruits were due to arrive momentarily for training. The Wehrmacht major was adamant. “I don’t care about that,” he told Krafft bluntly, “you’ve got to get out.” Krafft fought back. The ambitious thirty-seven-year-old officer took orders only from his SS superiors. “I refuse,” he said. The Wehrmacht officer was not intimidated. “Let me make things clear to you,” he said. “You’re moving out of Oosterbeek because Model’s headquarters is moving in.”
Krafft quickly calmed down. He had no wish to run afoul of Field Marshal Walter Model. Still, the order rankled. Krafft moved, but not very far. He decided to bivouac his troops in the woods and farms northwest of Oosterbeek, not far from the village of Wolfheze. The spot he happened to choose was alongside the Wolfheze road, almost between the zones marked on maps in England for the men of the British 1st Airborne Division to land, and blocking the route into Arnhem itself.
HENRI KNAP, Arnhem’s underground intelligence chief, felt safe in his new role. To protect his wife and two daughters from complicity in his activities, he had left home four months earlier and moved a few blocks away. His headquarters were now in the offices of a general practitioner, Dr. Leo C. Breebaart. The white-coated Knap was now the doctor’s “assistant,” and certain “patients” were messengers and couriers belonging to his intelligence network: forty men and women and a few teen-agers.
Knap’s was a time-consuming and frustrating job. He had to evaluate the information he received and then pass it along by phone. Arnhem’s resistance chief, Pieter Kruyff, had given Knap three telephone numbers, each with twelve to fifteen digits, and told him to commit them to memory. Knap never knew where or to whom he was calling. His instructions were to dial each number in turn until contact was made.*
Gathering intelligence was even more complicated. Knap’s requests were passed down through the network chain, and he never knew what agent procured the information. If a report seemed dubious, Knap investigated on his own. At the moment he was intrigued and puzzled by several reports that had reached him about enemy activity in Oosterbeek.
A German officer wearing staff insignia, Major Horst Smöckel, had visited a number of stores in Renkum, Oosterbeek and Arnhem and ordered a variety of supplies to be delivered to Oosterbeek’s Tafelberg Hotel. What Knap found curious were the requisitions; among them were hard-to-find foods and other specialty items which the Dutch population rarely saw anymore, such as Genever gin.
Additionally, German signalmen had been busy laying a welter of telephone cables to a number of hotels in the suburbs, including the Tafelberg. The conclusion, Knap felt, was obvious: a high-ranking headquarters was moving into Oosterbeek. But which one? Who was the general? And had he arrived?
It was even more important for Knap to keep abreast of the enemy strength in and around the Arnhem region. He knew there were other intelligence men sending back information in each town and that he was “only a small cog in a vast collection system.” As a result, there was probably “much duplication of effort.” Nevertheless, everything was important, for “what one cell might miss, we might pick up.”
Two weeks before, as he later recalled, “there was almost no German strength in the Arnhem region.” Since then, the military picture had changed dramatically. Now, Knap was alarmed at the German buildup. From his network sources, over the previous seven days, Knap had reported that “the remains of several divisions, including panzer units, were in the process of reorganizing in and around Arnhem or were moving into Germany.” By now, more specific news had come. His sources reported the presence of tanks north and northeast of Arnhem. Knap believed that “parts of at least one or even two panzer divisions” were in the area, but their identity and exact location were, so far, not known.
Knap wanted details quickly. Urgently, he passed the word to his network. He demanded more exact information on the panzer activity and he wanted to know immediately the identity of the “new occupant” in the Tafelberg Hotel.
Van de Kraats had noticed an influx of German activity around the hotel. German military police and sentries had moved into the area. His problem was how to get through the sentries along the road—the Pietersbergweg—running past the Tafelberg. He decided to bluff his way through.
As he made for the hotel, he was immediately stopped by a sentry. “But I must get through,” Van de Kraats told the German. “I work at the petrol station up the street.” The German let him pass. Three other sentries gave him only a cursory glance. Then, as Van de Kraats passed the Tafelberg, he quickly looked at the entrance and the driveway. None of the parked cars had any identifying markings, but near the front door of the hotel stood a checkerboard black, red and white metal pennant—the insignia of a German army group commander.
On the afternoon of Thursday, September 14, Henri Knap heard from his network. Several sources reported large formations of panzer troops, tanks and armored vehicles encamped in a semicircle to the north of Arnhem. There were units at Beekbergen, Epse and along the Ijssel River. There was even a startling report of “20 to 30 Tiger tanks.” Exactly how many units were involved, he was unable to ascertain. He was able to clearly identify only one, and that by a fluke. One of his agents noted “strange markings—reverse F’s with a ball at the foot of them”—on some tanks. Checking through a special German manual, Knap was able to identify the unit. He immediately called his telephone contact and reported the presence of the 9th SS Panzer Division Hohen-staufen. From the agent’s report, Knap located its position as lying approximately to the north between Arnhem and Apeldoorn and from there, eastward to Zutphen.
A Bridge Too Far Page 12