A Bridge Too Far

by Cornelius Ryan

  In all, eight gliders ditched safely during this first lift; once they were on the water, the air-sea rescue service, in a spectacular performance, saved nearly all crews and passengers. Once again, however, it was Urquhart’s force that was whittled down. Of the eight gliders, five were Arnhem-bound.

  Apart from some long-range inaccurate shelling of a downed glider, there was no serious enemy opposition during the Channel crossing. The 101st Airborne Division, following the southern route, which would bring it over Allied-held Belgium, was experiencing an almost perfect flight. But as the Dutch coastline appeared in the distance, the 82nd and the British troopers in the northern columns began to see the ominous telltale gray and black puffs of flak—German antiaircraft fire. As they flew on, at an altitude of only 1,500 feet, enemy guns firing from the outer Dutch isles of Walcheren, North Beveland and Schouwen were clearly visible. So were flak ships and barges around the mouth of the Schelde.

  Escorting fighters began peeling out of formation, engaging the gun positions. In the planes men could hear spent shrapnel scraping against the metal sides of the C-47’s. Veteran paratrooper Private Leo Hart of the 82nd heard a rookie aboard his plane ask, “Are these bucket seats bullet proof?” Hart just glowered at him; the light metal seats wouldn’t have offered protection against a well-thrown stone. Private Harold Brockley, in another C-47, remembers one replacement wondering, “Hey, what are all those little black and gray puffs below?” Before anyone could answer, a piece of shrapnel came through the bottom of the ship and pinged harmlessly against a mess kit.

  Veteran troopers hid their fears in different ways. When Staff Sergeant Paul Nunan saw the “familiar golf balls of red tracer bullets weaving up toward us” he pretended to doze off. Tracers barely missed Private Kenneth Truax’s plane. “No one said anything,” he recalls. “There was only a weak smile or two.” Sergeant Bill Tucker, who had gone through antiaircraft fire in Normandy, was haunted by a “horrible fear of getting hit from underneath.” He felt “less naked” sitting on three air-force flak jackets. And Private Rudolph Kos remembers that he felt “like sitting on my helmet, but I knew I would need it on my head.”

  One man was more concerned with the danger within than that without. Copilot Sergeant Bill Oakes, struggling to hold his Horsa glider steady in the air, looked back to see how his passengers were faring. To his horror, three troopers were “calmly sitting on the floor brewing up a mess tin of tea over a small cooker. Five others were standing around with their mugs, waiting to be served.” Oakes was galvanized into action. He handed the controls over to the pilot and hurried aft, expecting the glider’s plywood floor to catch fire at any minute. “Or, worse still, the mortar bombs in the trailer we were carrying could explode. The heat from that little field stove was terrific.” He was livid with anger. “We’re just having a little brew up,” one of the troopers told him soothingly. Oakes hurried back to the cockpit and reported the matter to the pilot, Staff Sergeant Bert Watkins. The pilot smiled. “Tell ‘em not to forget us when the tea’s ready,” he said. Oakes sank into his seat and buried his head in his hands.

  Although the escort fighters silenced most of the coastal flak positions, some planes were damaged and one tug, its glider and a troop-carrier C-47 were shot down over Schouwen Island. The tug crash-landed, and its crew was killed. The glider, an 82nd Airborne Waco, broke up in mid-air and may have been seen by Major Dennis Munford, flying in a British column nearby. He watched, aghast, as the Waco disintegrated and “men and equipment spilt out of it like toys from a Christmas cracker.” Others saw the troop-carrier go down. Equipment bundles attached beneath the C-47 were set on fire by tracer bullets. “Yellow and red streamers of flame appeared in the black smoke,” recalls Captain Arthur Ferguson, who was flying in a nearby plane. Within minutes the C-47 was blazing. First Lieutenant Virgil Carmichael, standing in the door of his plane, watched as paratroopers jumped from the stricken aircraft. “As our men were using camouflaged chutes, I was able to count them as they left and saw that all had escaped safely.”

  The pilot, although the aircraft was engulfed in flames, somehow kept the plane steady until the paratroopers jumped. Then Carmichael saw one more figure leave. “The Air Corps used white parachutes, so I figured he had to be the crew chief.” He was the last man out. Almost immediately the blazing plane nosedived and, at full throttle, plowed into a flooded area of Schouwen Island below. Carmichael remembers that, “on impact, a white chute billowed out in front of the plane, probably ejected by the force of the crash.” To First Lieutenant James Megellas the sight of the downed C-47 had a “terrible effect.” As jumpmaster in his plane, he had previously told his men that he would give the command “to stand up and hook up five minutes before reaching the drop zone.” Now, he immediately gave the order. In many other planes, jumpmasters reacted as Megellas had and gave similar commands. To them, the battle was already joined—and, in fact, the drop and landing zones for the airborne men were now only thirty to forty minutes away.

  *Many official accounts give 10:25 A.M. as the time when the first Market aircraft left the ground. Perhaps they had in mind the departure of the pathfinders, who arrived first. From an examination of log books and air controllers’ time schedules, it is clear that the airlift began at 9:45 A.M.

  INCREDIBLY, DESPITE THE NIGHT’S widespread bombing, and now the aerial attacks against Arnhem, Nijmegen and Eindhoven, the Germans failed to realize what was happening. Throughout the chain of command, attention was focused on a single threat: the renewal of the British Second Army’s offensive from its bridgehead over the Meuse-Escaut Canal.

  “Commanders and troops, myself and my staff in particular, were so overtaxed and under such severe strain in the face of our difficulties that we thought only in terms of ground operations,” recalls Colonel General Kurt Student. Germany’s illustrious airborne expert was at his headquarters in a cottage near Vught, approximately twenty-one miles northwest of Eindhoven, working on “red tape—a mountain of papers that followed me even into the battlefield.” Student walked out onto a balcony, watched the bombers for a few moments, then, unconcerned, returned to his paper work.

  Lieutenant Colonel Walter Harzer, commanding officer of the 9th SS Panzer Division Hohenstaufen, had by now transferred as much equipment as he intended to his rival, General Heinz Harmel of the 10th SS Panzer Division Frundsberg. Harmel, on Bittrich’s orders and without Model’s knowledge, was by now in Berlin. The last flatcars containing Harzer’s “disabled” armored personnel carriers were ready to leave on a 2 P.M. train for Germany. Having been bombed repeatedly from Normandy onward, Harzer “paid little attention to planes.” He saw nothing unusual about the huge bomber formations over Holland. He and his veteran tankers knew “it was routine to see bombers traveling east to Germany and returning several times a day. My men and I were numb from constant shelling and bombing.” With Major Egon Skalka, the 9th Panzer’s chief medical officer, Harzer set out from his headquarters at Beekbergen for the Hoenderloo barracks, about eight miles north of Arnhem. In a ceremony before the 6oo-man reconnaissance battalion of the division, he would decorate its commander, Captain Paul Gräbner, with the Knight’s Cross. Afterward there would be champagne and a special luncheon.

  At II SS Panzer Corps headquarters at Doetinchem, Lieutenant General Wilhelm Bittrich was equally unconcerned about the air attacks. To him, “it was routine fare.” Field Marshal Walter Model, in his headquarters at the Tafelberg Hotel in Oosterbeek, had been watching the bomber formations for some time. The view at headquarters was unanimous: the squadrons of Flying Fortresses were returning from their nightly bombing of Germany, and as usual, other streams of Fortresses in the never-ending bombing of Germany were enroute east heading for other targets. As for the local bombing, it was not uncommon for bombers to jettison any unused bombs over the Ruhr and often, as a result, into Holland itself. Model and his chief of staff, Lieutenant General Hans Krebs, believed the bombardment and low-level strafing were “softenin
g-up operations”—a prelude to the opening of the British ground offensive.

  One officer was mildly concerned by the increased aerial activity over Holland. At the headquarters of OB West in Aremberg near Koblenz, approximately 120 miles away, Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt—although he still believed that airborne forces would be used only in an attack against the Ruhr—wanted more information. In Annex 2227 of the morning report for September 17, his operations chief recorded that Von Rundstedt had asked Model to investigate the possibility that a combined sea and airborne invasion was underway against northern Holland. The notation read, “The general situation and notable increase of enemy reconnaissance activities … has caused the Commander in Chief, West, to again examine the possibilities of ship assault and air landing operations…. Results of the survey are to be reported to OKW [Hitler].”

  The message reached Model’s headquarters at about the time the first planes of the armada crossed the coast.

  Over Arnhem at 11:30 A.M. columns of black smoke rose in the sky as fires burned throughout the city in the aftermath of a three-hour near-saturation bombing. In Wolfheze, Oosterbeek, Nijmegen and Eindhoven, whole buildings were leveled, streets were cratered and littered with debris and glass, and casualties were mounting minute by minute. Even now, low-level fighters were strafing machine-gun and antiaircraft positions all over the area. The mood of the Dutch, huddling in churches, homes, cellars and shelters or, with foolhardy courage, cycling the streets or staring from rooftops, alternated between terror and exultation. No one knew what to believe or what would happen next. To the south, eighty-three miles from Nijmegen, Maastricht, the first Dutch city to be liberated, had been entered by the U.S. First Army on September 14. Many Dutch expected American infantry to arrive at any moment in their own towns and villages. Radio Orange, broadcasting from London, fed this impression in a flurry of bulletins: “The time is nearly here. What we have been waiting for is about to happen at last…. Owing to the rapid advance of the Allied armies … it is possible that the troops will not carry Dutch money yet. If our Allies offer French or Belgian notes … cooperate and accept this money in payment…. Farmers should finish off and deliver their harvest….” Prince Bernhard, in a radio message, urged the Dutch “not to show joy by offering flowers or fruit when Allied troops liberate Netherlands territory … in the past the enemy has concealed explosives among offerings presented to the liberators.” Uppermost in the minds of most Dutchmen was the certainty that these intensive bombings were the prelude to Allied invasion—the opening of the ground offensive. Like their German conquerors, the Dutch had no inkling of the impending airborne attack.

  Jan and Bertha Voskuil, taking shelter in the home of Voskuil’s father-in-law in Oosterbeek, thought the bombers in their area were aiming for Model’s headquarters in the Tafelberg Hotel. The bright day, Voskuil remembers, “was perfect bombing weather.” Yet he found it hard to “reconcile the war that was coming with the smell of ripe beetroots and sight of hundreds of sunflowers, their stems bent under the weight of their great heads. It did not seem possible that men were dying and buildings burning.” Voskuil felt strangely calm. From his father-in-law’s front veranda, he watched fighters flashing overhead and was sure they were strafing the hotel. Suddenly, a German soldier appeared in the garden without helmet or rifle and dressed only in a shirt and trousers. Politely he asked Voskuil, “May I take shelter here?” Voskuil stared at the man. “Why?” he asked. “You have your trenches.” The German smiled. “I know,” he answered, “but they are full.” The soldier came up on the porch. “It is a very heavy bombing,” he told Voskuil, “but I don’t think Oosterbeek is the target. They seem to be concentrating more to the east and west of the village.”

  From inside the house, Voskuil heard voices. A friend of the family had just arrived from the Wolfheze area. It had been heavily hit, she told them, and many people were dead. “I am afraid,” she said, tremblingly, “it is our Last Supper.” Voskuil looked at the German. “Perhaps they’re bombing the Tafelberg because of Model,” he said mildly. The German’s face was impassive. “No,” he told Voskuil, “I don’t think so. No bombs fell there.” Later, after the soldier had gone, Voskuil went out to survey the damage. Rumors abounded. He heard that Arnhem had been heavily hit and that Wolfheze was almost leveled. Surely, he thought, the Allies were now under march and would arrive at any hour. He was both elated and saddened. Caen, in Normandy, he remembered, had been reduced to rubble during the invasion. He was convinced that Oosterbeek, where he and his family had found shelter, would become a ruined village.

  Around Wolfheze, German ammunition caches in the woods were exploding, and the famed mental institute had received direct hits. Four pavilions surrounding the administration building were leveled, forty-five patients were dead (the toll would increase to over eighty), and countless more were wounded. Sixty terrified inmates, mostly women, were wandering about in the adjoining woods. The electricity had failed, and Dr. Marius van der Beek, the deputy medical superintendent, could not summon help. Impatiently he awaited the arrival of doctors from Ooster-beek and Arnhem, who, he knew, would surely hear the news and come. He needed to set up two operating theaters with surgical teams as quickly as possible.

  One of the “inmates,” Hendrik Wijburg, was in reality a member of the underground hiding out in the asylum. “The Germans,” he recalls, “were not actually inside the institute at the moment, although they did have positions nearby and artillery and ammunition stored in the woods.” During the bombings when the dump was hit, Wijburg, on the veranda of one building, was knocked to the floor. “There was a huge explosion,” he remembers, “and shells from the dump began whizzing into the hospital, killing and injuring many.” Wijburg hastily scrambled to his feet and helped nurses, at the height of the strafing attacks, to lay out white sheets forming a huge cross on the grass. The entire area had been so badly hit that it looked to him as if “the place would soon be filled to the rafters with the dead and dying.”

  In Arnhem, fire brigades fought desperately to bring the spreading flames under control. Dirk Hiddink, in charge of a fifteen-man outdated fire-fighting unit (his men pushed two carts—one loaded with coiled hoses, the other with ladders), was ordered to the German-occupied Willems Barracks, which had received direct hits from low-flying Mosquitoes. Although the barracks were blazing, Hiddink’s instructions from the Arnhem Fire Brigade Headquarters were unusual: let them burn down, he was told, but protect the surrounding houses. When his unit arrived, Hiddink saw that it would have been impossible to save the barracks in any case. The fires were too far advanced.

  From his father’s apartment at Willemsplein 28, Gerhardus Gysbers saw everything around him engulfed in flames. Not only the barracks, but the nearby high school and the Royal Restaurant, opposite, were burning. The heat was so intense that Gysbers remembers “the glass in our windows suddenly became wavy and then melted completely.” The family evacuated the building immediately, scrambling over bricks and lumber into the square. Gysbers saw Germans stumbling from the blasted rubble of the barracks with blood pouring from their noses and ears. Streetcar driver Hendrik Karel reached the Willemsplein unintentionally. With the electric power cut by the bombing, Karel’s pale-yellow streetcar coasted down a slight incline to reach a stop at the square. There he found a jumble of other streetcars which, like his own, had coasted into the square and were unable to leave. Through the smoke, crowds and debris, Karel saw waiters from the Royal Restaurant make their escape from the burning building. Abandoning the few diners who were heading for the doors, the waiters jumped right through the windows.

  At the Municipal Gas Works just southeast of the great Arnhem bridge, technician Nicolaas Unck admired the skill of the bombardiers. Looking across the Rhine, he saw that twelve antiaircraft positions had been knocked out. Only one gun was left but its barrels were twisted and bent. Now that the city was without electricity, Unck was faced with his own problems. The technicians could no longer ma
ke gas. After the fuel remaining in the three huge gasometers was exhausted, there would be no more. Aside from coal and firewood, Arnhem was now without electricity, heating or cooking fuels.

  Thousands of people remained cloistered in their churches. In the huge Dutch Reformed “Grote Kerk” Church alone, there were 1,200 people, Sexton Jan Mijnhart remembers. “Even though we had clearly heard the bombs exploding outside,” he says, “the Reverend Johan Gerritsen had calmly continued his sermon. When the power was cut off, the organ stopped. Some one of the congregation came forward and began pumping the bellows manually.” Then, against a background of sirens, explosions and thundering planes, the organ pealed out and the entire congregation stood up to sing the “Wilhelmus,” the Dutch national anthem.