On 9 September, a Saturday, British planes strafed a train and ammunition dump in Wolfheze, nine miles to the west just past Oosterbeek. Both the train and munitions went up in explosions that boomed for an hour within easy earshot of Velp.
But even though the air attacks were increasing by the day and the Americans and Brits ruled the skies with no German fighter planes seen anywhere, the German retreat seemed to have stopped. German troops were gathering around Velp. Ella knew who they were because she remembered them well: They were Waffen SS from the Panzer Corps. Lots of them suddenly appeared in the village. Gaunt, stone-faced, battle-scorched men lazed about on Rozendaalselaan. They sat and talked, smoked cigarettes, ate food that the Dutch could only dream about, and enjoyed the renowned shade trees, their tanks, cannon, and half-tracks dented and bullet-riddled from combat in Normandy. The worst thing about them—they weren’t passing through. They were said to be gathering in Arnhem, digging in north of Velp, and requisitioning buildings and villas in town and up by the Burgers’ Zoo and Openlucht Museum, and east in Rheden and beyond, all along the IJssel.
Word had it there were at least a dozen tanks of the II SS Panzer Corps in the Arnhem-Velp area—Audrey had seen a number of them parked in front of the Beukenhof before they rolled up the boulevard and into the woodlands.
There was a hint of autumn—herfst as the Dutch called it—in the air with cool evenings and a touch of orange in the edges of the leaves on the trees. The breezes carried conversations among the Germans of the Panzer Corps to Ella’s ears as they discussed the joy of being in a peaceful place after the hell of their time in Normandy.
But the word peace uttered by anyone threatened bad luck, and sure enough, on 10 September the gun emplacements in Westervoort just to the south hit an Allied fighter plane that Audrey heard screaming overhead just before it exploded into houses on the Kerkallee, the street just a few blocks to the south past the railroad tracks. Five Dutch civilians were killed.
Then came yet another new worry. On the evening of Saturday, 16 September, after dark the Dutch Resistance set off a bomb that damaged a railway viaduct between Arnhem and Velp. It seemed to be just another random event in a series of random events—Deelen bombed repeatedly, Spitfires buzzing overhead as if looking for something, and now an act of sabotage by the Resistance. If only Audrey had known what was to come, that the events weren’t random at all. Even Dr. Visser ’t Hooft and the L.O. with all their connections had no idea about the bomb this evening or the plans for tomorrow. But really, what could they have done about it? There was nothing the civilians could do now as, far away in England, the Allies were setting their sights on Arnhem. No, the Dutch could do nothing but risk some precious plastic explosives to blow up the odd rail line. It was likely the Resistance arm known as the L.K.P., the Landelijke Knokploeg, the local saboteurs, that had set that bomb, and they wouldn’t dream of letting the L.O. know about it. Such operations were need-to-know only.
Locals awoke on Sunday morning to learn that the Germans had reacted as the Germans always did, with posters nailed to the message boards of Arnhem, Velp, Apeldoorn, and other towns in the area: The saboteurs involved in this cowardly bombing must present themselves at Utrechtseweg 53 in Arnhem—the notorious headquarters of the SD—by this afternoon, or hostages would be chosen at random and shot. The pronouncement iced the blood in the veins of the women of the Beukenhof as it brought back those August days and the death of Otto, and Audrey could but sit alone and wonder: Would Opa be next?
The inhabitants of the Beukenhof had spent a restless Saturday night worrying about sabotage and reprisal. All Velp remained on edge through Sunday morning because the saboteurs did not surrender themselves. But the baron was not one for worry. All along he had remained civil to the German officers who tried to befriend him. He collected stamps, and so did they. So few gentlemanly pastimes remained in this violent world; surely the mutual love of collectible postage stamps that he shared with the Wehrmacht men must shield him from harm, mustn’t it? No, of course not, because decisions on this scale were political and not based on who was friends with whom. They came from Seyss-Inquart himself, based on how the wind was blowing. Or they came from General Christiansen, of whom Seyss-Inquart said, “We got along together very well in our work,” or from the most evil decision maker of all, Rauter. Any attempt to arrest the baron would come out of the blue with a knock at the door, and so the logical thing was for him to go underground at once—the very last course of action the baron would ever consider.
The baron was above all a practical man and it was Sunday morning, which meant they must all dress for church. With thoughts of reprisals and death in the air, they pulled on their worship clothes not knowing that life for the village and for the country would change in an hour and never be the same again.
22
The Devil’s Picnic
“There was a sudden, terrible noise,” said Audrey. “Everything seemed to become a burning mass.”
Despite the German ultimatum, the morning of 17 September had progressed like any other Sunday with the mostly Calvinist churches of Gelderland filled. But nothing would be usual in just a little while. This account by Greta Stephany from Wolfheze, the next village over from Oosterbeek, typified what Dutch civilians around Arnhem experienced this particular morning. “That Sunday we were in church,” said Greta. “We started hearing noises above us, like planes shooting at each other, and flying low. We knew that meant we had to find shelter, but the minister kept preaching as usual. People became restless and there was lots of whispering. Then, all of a sudden, we heard bombs falling. Everybody got up and started running outside, to our homes and safety….”
Low-level Allied air attacks were taking place all over the area, from Wolfheze to Velp and beyond, causing people to spill out of churches to find cover. Near some houses of worship, the ground rattled and people toppled off their feet. The concussion accompanying the explosions wrenched breath from bodies and blew in precious stained glass.
Twin-engine B-26 Marauder and Mosquito bombers had come calling to hit German barracks, air defense cannons, and ammunition stores. The big Wehrmacht barracks across the street from Arnhem Centraal Station went up in a mushroom cloud. The Wehrmacht building and ammo dump in Wolfheze shot sky high.
Anti-aircraft batteries all about, in Arnhem, up by Deelen, in Wolfheze, and in Westervoort, answered the attack, only to come under fire themselves from British fighter planes guarding the bombers. The Nazi defense cannons in all the local Dutch towns sent shells continuously skyward. Every second the thump-thump-thump of the cannons could be heard, with flak bursts plainly visible above Velp as German shells exploded in the western sky. The Arnhem tableau as seen from Hoofdstraat looking west seemed like angry bees swarming around a picnic as the Marauders and Typhoons swooped and dove and climbed and circled, and British Mosquito fighter-bombers joined the attack in formations of six. Dozens of fast-moving dots filled the sky. Smoke rose from several places to the west, and heaven help the poor Arnhemsche civilians caught in so many deadly transactions. Audrey could only try to plot the location of the Dansschool in relation to the black smoke and fret over the safety of her ballet friends and their families and especially Mistress Marova in what had suddenly become the devil’s own inferno. The sight of the columns of smoke billowing up from Arnhem in this moment simply terrified her.
The action over Arnhem continued from late morning into early afternoon. The poor place took such a pounding, and the air smelled of sulfur and burning wood.
Just when it seemed Audrey’s village would be spared, the Velpsche air-raid siren sounded. The van Heemstras sought shelter in the small cellar under the kitchen in the rear of the villa. Down the baron shepherded his daughters and granddaughter. Audrey’s ears were filled with the sounds of the alarm and then with the roar of Allied planes buzzing above the treetops of town.
Very close by, the Velp anti-aircraft battery opened up and cannons boomed every second. Then ca
me the suspended moment when they knew the eye of the storm had found them, with the planes directly overhead and ready to drop their bombs. The air-raid siren had fallen silent and no one so much as breathed. All that could be heard now were aircraft motors and the occasional purring of German-made Spandau machine guns pointed skyward. Did the men in the planes know about the radio station upstairs? Would they go after that? There! There! The whistle of falling bombs! The four van Heemstras could but cover heads with arms and pray. Onze Vader die in de hemel zijt …
Explosions began to sound close by—much closer than Arnhem. The Beukenhof’s walls and floor joists above their heads shook. The Allied planes must be going after the cannons down below Willemstraat. That was just a little ways off, across the railroad tracks in South Velp. More and more death rained down. How long did the attack continue? It seemed like hours but was only minutes, and then all grew quiet again. The van Heemstras allowed themselves a breath, but in their minds they wondered how many innocent Dutch didn’t have any breath left at all. What would they find outside? In a village like Velp, everyone knew everyone and every structure was dear.
The air-raid siren sounded all clear and the four of them trooped upstairs and outside, where the clanging bells of the fire brigade testified that Velp had new troubles. All along the street, neighbors could be seen creeping out of the shadows in a day that had begun with worship until the air had been fouled by the arrival of war. Warily, homeowners inspected rooflines for damage and walls for bullet holes, while the German soldiers occupying the town had a very different reaction and could be seen running in all directions. German officers barked commands randomly, and on Hoofdstraat army vehicles sped along in both directions as if not knowing which way was best but understanding that a moving vehicle was harder to hit. Some of these machines careened by the Beukenhof and sped north in the direction of Rozendaal.
Sure enough, down toward the main thoroughfare past the activity of the Germans, black smoke billowed up with fury over the rooftops of the business district and into the hazy blue afternoon. It was unspeakable, unthinkable—innocent Velpenaren losing their homes and their lives just for being in the wrong place at the wrong moment, because they had been unlucky enough to see the Germans wheel an anti-aircraft battery into their neighborhood.
The van Heemstras’ first impulse was to help, whether that meant fighting the fire or bandaging survivors or heading to the Ziekenhuis to offer aid there. By the time they reached Hoofdstraat, word had spread that a number of Dutch had indeed been killed down past Willemstraat, with many more wounded and several houses destroyed. But before the baron or Ella could decide what should be done in the way of helping victims, a new, deep, and foreboding sound could be heard off to the west. More planes were coming. Many, many more. The four van Heemstras turned to head for home, but shouts and pointing made them stop. Many in the neighborhood climbed onto their roofs to see over the tree line. Off to the west amid the rising columns of dirty brown and black smoke from Arnhem and the villages beyond, those in the streets beheld a breathtaking sight. Orderly formations of dots had appeared on the horizon, planes flying in rank and file and not terribly high. Then, oh! Something new—something spilling out of the planes filling the midday blue.
Fourteen-year-old Dick Mantel, Audrey’s neighbor across the street, stood on his roof to get a view of what was going on in the western sky.
“Parachutes!” someone called with excitement. Parachutes? It took a moment and the people of Velp realized all of a sudden: Invasion! Allied invasion! Shouts of joy filled the air as, at long last, liberation was at hand. Their saviors would not be plodding along on the ground from the Belgian border to the south; they would drop from the heavens by act of God. Of course—deliverance on a Sunday!
Planes, planes, and more planes appeared on the horizon, some of them banking grandly as if part of an aerial ballet and easing into a landing somewhere west of Arnhem and Oosterbeek. So many parachutes! Hundreds, thousands maybe. Surely it would be enough to drive out the “rot moffen”—those hated Germans. Everyone wept from a wellspring of tears, years of them.
In Oosterbeek Kate ter Horst lived near the Old Church—a thousand years old—and watched the spectacle up close. “We can see the large bombers approaching from the west in marvelous formations,” she wrote in her diary. “They seem to be towing something behind them; planes but without landing wheels, flat underneath and very long. Oh! They’re coming down. Do you see that?”
Soon thousands of paratroopers of the British 1st Airborne spilled out of the gliders and unhooked from their parachutes. Green-clad Tommies in steel-pot helmets or red berets, each carrying everything they would need for a mission of short duration, began forming up into their units in the farm fields and then hurrying east looking for the roads to Oosterbeek. Just as British scouts had predicted, there wasn’t much German activity near the landing zones, so maybe this would be a cakewalk after all.
A few miles away, the German command reacted to the invasion with veteran calm, although nobody quite knew why the Allies had chosen Arnhem for an attack. There had been no intelligence this might happen. Seyss-Inquart and Rauter imagined they might be the targets, so both packed up and headed east toward the German border. The Dutch SS commanders at the Hotel Naeff, located a few blocks from Audrey and the Beukenhof, knew they possessed years of top-secret documents recording actions that in no way aligned with the 1929 Geneva Conventions. As soon as parachutes filled the air off to the west, they decided there wasn’t time to move their records out of harm’s way. They doused everything with petrol and set the venerable hotel ablaze, loaded into staff cars, and evacuated.
Even a battle-tough Wehrmacht man like Field Marshal Model at the Tafelberg watched with mouth agape at the enormity of the parachute drop. He knew he was dealing with at least a division’s strength of enemy troops and got on the phone at once. His calls to German units in the area and then a series of visits in his staff car set in motion a critical response. Then, he packed up his headquarters and headed out of Oosterbeek.
Just east in Velp, the air-raid siren sounded again, yanking the Rozendaalselaan neighbors back into the moment. It was past time for the van Heemstras to retreat once more to the cellar as Allied fighter planes could be heard again roaming over the treetops, and German cannons thudded and now frantic bursts of machine-gun fire joined the chorus. No one among the civilians could make sense of where the liberators were or where a battle might take place. All they could do was sit underground and wait.
By now the British paratroopers had started the journey toward Arnhem and made good progress eastward into Oosterbeek. They’d been able to bring some light jeeps on the gliders to carry machine guns, ammunition, and other equipment. Cheering Dutch citizens saw them coming and lined the streets as if viewing a parade, some waving Dutch flags grabbed from hiding, others sporting the Oranje armbands of the Dutch Resistance.
A young local girl remarked to herself that “a lot of the soldiers seemed small, with their squat helmets and laden with equipment. It is a memory I shall never forget, all those men….”
Capt. Tony Frank of Frost’s battalion was impressed by “the incredible number of orange flowers or handkerchiefs that suddenly appeared like magic. The Dutch were very much in family groups, in staid clothing, out on this fine Sunday afternoon.”
September blooms were presented to Lt. Col. John Frost, commanding officer of the British 2nd Parachute Battalion. Bread and fruit were offered to his 500 men as they passed single file—wine, champagne, and everything else the ecstatic Dutch could find, especially flowers since the marigolds were in bloom.
Frost, a relaxed officer except in combat situations when he became a tiger, was a stern-looking man with a moustache surrounded by an oval face. He had already seen a lot of action in this war, enough to make him pass sharp orders now to ignore the adulation and by no means consume any alcohol! Yes the locals meant well, but distractions just now could be lethal.
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sp; He hurried his men eastward along the narrow little road designated by his commanding officer for the advance to the bridge. This road with an unpronounceable Dutch name a mile long—Benedendorpsweg, which meant Lower Village Road—snaked along the southern edge of this place called Oosterbeek that was as colorful and tidy as a picture postcard, with lush greenery and stone fences near the road, and old, well-kept houses with steep-sloping tile or thatched roofs. The men were conscious of their equipment, canteens, mess kits, weapons, shovels, and ammunition all clanking with every step, and their hobnail boots clomped like horse’s hooves on the cobblestones of the street.
Frost wasn’t enamored of this plan to drop his men nine miles from the main objective, the Arnhem Road Bridge, because it meant troops scattered all over the place in unfamiliar country, and they would be vulnerable to ambush. But there just wasn’t a place closer to the bridge to bring in all the gliders and equipment. His column moved eastward into the dusk in enemy territory as fast as they dared. Up ahead on the right Frost found a landmark on his map: the ancient Protestant church called, fittingly enough, de Oude Kerk—the Old Church. He knew nothing of the van Heemstras or their patronage of this fine building in the 1930s. Frost cared only for the fact he was on course and making good progress toward Arnhem.
Two of Oosterbeek’s leading citizens, Jan ter Horst and his wife, Kate, learned of the approach of Englishmen: “We rush out of the garden on to the road,” said Kate. “Yes, there is the impossible, incredible truth. Our unknown British liberators, like a long green serpent, are approaching one by one, a couple of yards between each of them; the first gives us a jolly laugh from under his helmet….”
A short while later, Frost heard machine-gun fire to the north a ways and the explosions of grenades. He knew some of his mates had found the enemy and feared the Germans would soon run into his lonely single-file column. Frost had but one thought now as the sun set in the western sky behind him: He must reach downtown Arnhem and capture the road and railway bridges over the Rhine. He could see them occasionally up ahead, a tantalizing glimpse here and there as the road twisted and turned.
Dutch Girl Page 17