General ‘Boy': The Life of Lieutenant General Sir Frederick Browning

by Richard Mead

  The operation has to be set in the context of the strategic debate which was now raging between Montgomery and Eisenhower and, if the Montgomery/Dempsey/ Browning meeting was important, the one that followed between Monty and Ike at noon on the same day was even more so. Montgomery fervently believed that the way to end the war in 1944 was to concentrate the most powerful possible force in a single thrust across the Rhine downstream from the Ruhr, leaving the other Allied armies to hold their positions. The Supreme Commander was equally convinced that his forces should advance on a broad front, with identical prominence being accorded to each of the three army groups now in the field. In this he was motivated, at least in part, by political considerations: American public opinion would never have tolerated leaving Bradley and Patton without resources to the south-east, whilst a British-led northern thrust was afforded priority.

  Eisenhower, who had flown up to Brussels from Normandy, had to remain on his plane as he had injured his knee and could only walk with difficulty. Montgomery had not met him since 26 August and now used this opportunity to pour out his grievances about the lack of supplies and his frustration at his superior’s obduracy over the strategic issue. ‘Steady Monty, you can’t speak to me like that. I’m your boss,’ said Eisenhower.5 Montgomery, temporarily abashed, apologized but continued to advance his cause. Eisenhower refused to concede, but agreed to give limited priority to the northern thrust and, crucially, authorized the use of FAAA for the new operation. To Montgomery’s disappointment he refused to scale down Patton’s advance towards the Saar.

  Two days later, Eisenhower appeared to change his mind.6 Bedell Smith flew to Brussels on 12 September, to tell Montgomery that the Supreme Commander had agreed to halt the Saar thrust, divert the transport of three American divisions to 21st Army Group, give priority within Bradley’s 12th Army Group to General Hodges’ US First Army on Montgomery’s immediate right and allow Montgomery to deal directly with Hodges. ‘As a result of these changed conditions,’ signalled Montgomery to Brooke, ‘I have now fixed D (D) day for operation Market (rpt Market) previously known as Comet for Sunday next 17th Sep. So we have gained a great victory. I feel somewhat overcome by it all but hope we shall now win the war reasonably quickly.’7 It was, unfortunately for all, an illusion. If Eisenhower did make such promises, he failed to keep them.

  After a meeting later on 10 September with Dempsey, during which confirmation of the new operation was received from Montgomery, Boy flew back to England with the outline plan. He had previously signalled Brereton with the news that the operation had been authorized and the latter convened a meeting for the airborne divisional, brigade and regiment commanders, the air force chiefs and the key staff officers8 at his HQ at Sunninghill Park, near Ascot, at 1800 that evening. Boy was the main speaker, outlining in clear terms the plan as it stood and the allocations of objectives to each of the formations. 101 US Airborne Division was to land along the main road from Eindhoven to Nijmegen and seize the bridges over the Wilhelmina Canal at Son, the Zuid Willemsvaart Canal at Veghel and the River Dommel at St Oedenrode. 82 US Airborne Division would land south of Nijmegen and take the bridge over the Maas at Grave, four bridges over the Maas-Waal Canal and the road bridge over the Waal at Nijmegen itself. 1 Airborne Division, with 1 Polish Parachute Brigade under command, was given the toughest assignment, the capture of the road, rail and pontoon bridges over the Lower Rhine at Arnhem. 52 Division would be flown in north of Arnhem once Deelen airfield had been captured.

  The ground forces driving up the airborne corridor and out at the other end would be Brian Horrocks’s XXX Corps, composed of the Guards Armoured Division, 43 (Wessex) Division and 8 Armoured Brigade, with 50 (Northumbrian) Division and the Royal Netherlands Brigade coming up behind. Simultaneous attacks would be launched by Richard O’Connor’s VIII Corps and Neil Ritchie’s XII Corps on either side of Horrocks, to expand the shoulders of the corridor.

  There was some disappointment from the Americans that the British had been given the toughest assignment, but the justification was clear. Not only was 1 Airborne Division familiar with the target through its planning of ‘Comet’, but there would be political problems if Americans were left stranded north of the Rhine by a British relieving force. Ridgway was particularly unhappy. ‘I well remember my bitter disappointment when General Brereton announced that he was giving command of this operation to General Browning. I had not anticipated this. We had two divisions committed to the operation. The British had one. We had won our spurs in three battles already – in Sicily, Italy and France. I felt in my heart that we could do a better job of commanding that operation than anyone else, and I imagine that I expressed these views, in private at least, with some fervor.’9 Ridgway, with his extensive combat experience, was better qualified than Boy for command in the field. On the other hand he was wrong about the composition of the force, as the British were providing two-and-a-half divisions, including the Lowland Division and the Poles. He also ignored the facts that his own HQ was just one month old and that I Airborne Corps HQ had planned ‘Comet’ and was very familiar with the proposed battlefield. Finally he was naïve to ignore Boy’s close personal relationships, both with Dempsey, the Army commander under which the corps would be placed, and with Horrocks of the relieving force.

  The codename first allocated to the new operation was ‘Sixteen’, but by 11 September, when Boy received his formal orders from Brereton, it had been renamed ‘Market’ for the airborne element, whilst for those advancing from the south it became ‘Garden’. The original target date was the night of 15/16 September, but this was in due course put back to the day of Sunday 17 September. The landings in Sicily and Normandy had been carried out in the hours of darkness and had been very largely inaccurate and scattered as a result. In this case there would be no moon from 17 September for a week, posing a high risk of a similar outcome. With growing allied air supremacy and a continuing lack of night flying experience in the USAAF, a daytime landing became not only possible but essential.

  The first major issue to emerge affected all the formations. The available transports and glider tugs could carry no more than half the total force at one time and, with the likely losses of aircraft, three lifts would be required. Hollinghurst was prepared to carry out two lifts in one day, the first taking off before dawn, but Major General Paul L. Williams, the commander of IX US Troop Carrier Command, believed that crew fatigue and the need for maintenance during the turnaround prohibited this and insisted on the lifts taking place on consecutive days.10 Brereton, himself an airman rather than a soldier, supported Williams and since a doctrine had been established that as far as air operations were concerned the air forces’ view would have supremacy, the decision was forced upon the ground commanders. If there was one feature of the whole plan which doomed the operation to failure from the start, it was this.

  There is evidence that Boy queried this decision, but he did not contest it vigorously and he has been much criticized for not doing so. He clearly understood the implications even before he went to Brussels and it appears from Walch’s evidence that this was the very issue which had caused him to express doubts to Montgomery about the ability of the airborne forces to take and hold the last bridge. Although he might on 10 September still have hoped for two lifts on the first day, he was now in no position to argue the toss with Brereton. Even if he had made an issue of it, Williams was widely respected and Brereton stood behind him. Boy had already discovered what would happen if he made this a matter of principle: nothing would change except that Ridgway would assume command in his place. Montgomery, when he heard of the detailed plan two days later, did query spreading the lifts over three days and sent Belchem to Brereton to try to persuade him to change his mind, but Brereton refused to budge.

  Within each of the formations other problems emerged. Major General Maxwell D.Taylor of 101 US Airborne Division complained that he was being asked to land on too many drop and landing zones on too long a corridor. He was conce
rned that his men would be so widely dispersed that they would not have sufficient force anywhere to take his objectives. He appealed to Brereton and in this case the air forces had no objection to a greater concentration. Because this aspect of the plan had come from Second Army, Brereton sent Taylor in person to see Dempsey, who approved a revised plan with fewer drop and landing zones. One feature of the new plan was that there would be no drop on the south side of the canal bridge at Son.

  The main issue for 1 Airborne Division was the location of the drop zones and once again this was driven by airmen, in this case led by Hollinghurst. The area of open ground nearest to the Arnhem road bridge was immediately to the south, but the RAF asserted that it was unsuitable for gliders, being low-lying polder with ditches and high banks.11 Furthermore, there were believed to be strong antiaircraft defences around the bridge, whilst the airmen feared that turning away after the drops would bring their aircraft over Deelen airfield, which was also thought to be heavily defended by flak batteries. Their solution was the open farmland and heath north of Heelsum for the first lift and Ginkel Heath, even further away, for the second. This would land the division some six to eight miles from its objective, with a lot of built-up area in between. Lacking adequate transport, the paratroopers would have to march there. Moreover, only 1 Parachute Brigade would be available for the attack on the bridge, as 1 Airlanding Brigade would have to remain close to where it had landed in order to protect the drop zones for the second lift.

  Boy held Hollingworth in high regard and there is no evidence that he made any great attempt to change his mind. Urquhart pressed Boy for more planes for the first drop, but was told that the priority had to be ‘bottom to top’, so that the divisions reached first by XXX Corps should have the best possible chance of achieving their objectives. Boy was nevertheless concerned enough to consult his most experienced airborne commander, Gale, who was insistent that there should be a coup de main landing close to the bridge and said that if he had been in command he would have resigned rather than accept the plan as it stood. He was asked by Boy not to reveal the substance of this conversation, almost certainly to avoid damaging morale.12

  For Gavin and 82 US Airborne Division, the problem was one of priorities. With two large bridges to capture, at Grave and Nijmegen, and several smaller ones, he would have to split up his force into small units. He had another issue to consider. Almost the only high ground in the area of operation lay south-east of Nijmegen, lying between the Maas and the Maas-Waal Canal on one side and the low polder along the Waal on the other. On either side of the little town of Groesbeek the heights faced the Reichswald forest, just across the German border. There was a serious concern that the Germans could attack out of the Reichswald and seize the heights, which would then allow them to dominate the route to be taken by XXX Corps as it crossed the Maas-Waal Canal. The extent of the possible threat was made more urgent by a report referred to in the SHAEF G2 (Intelligence) Summary of 13 September: ‘One thousand tanks reported in Forest of REICHSWALD (E85) in Holland on 8 September, presumably a pool for refitting Panzer Divisions.’13

  Boy and Gavin were of like mind about the priorities. Without the Grave Bridge and one or more bridges fit for tanks over the Maas-Waal Canal, XXX Corps would be unable to pass through, so the capture intact of these was imperative. The significance of the Groesbeek Heights meant that it too had to be a priority objective, not least because the second lift was planned to arrive on landing and drop zones dominated by this feature. The Nijmegen Bridge would thus have to have a lower priority, although Gavin proposed to detach a battalion against it in the event that the Groesbeek Heights were secured quickly. Once again, the insistence of the airmen on not carrying two lifts on the first day gravely compromised the operation.

  As in five previous aborted operations, the Advance HQ of I Airborne Corps was to take to the field. It would consist of most of the ‘G’ staff, both operations and intelligence, together with liaison officers from FAAA, each of the American divisions and the Polish Parachute Brigade, four members of the Dutch Liaison Mission, a number of Civil Affairs officers, including two more Dutchmen, and a detachment from Phantom, the GHQ Liaison Regiment. Together these totalled 105 officers and men, with 12 jeeps and 10 trailers, between them requiring 14 Horsas. An additional 18 Horsas would be required for the newly formed signals section and the RAF Light Warning Units, which would supply radar coverage and control Second Tactical Air Force’s ground attack operations. These would carry another 115 officers and men, 15 jeeps and 16 trailers. Six Waco Hadrians carrying 15 men and 6 jeeps would also be employed to bring in an American Air Support Signals party. The use of the 38 gliders, or more pertinently their tugs, would deny them to 1 Airborne Division, resulting in two-and-a-half companies from 2nd Battalion The South Staffordshire Regiment (2 South Staffs) and six 6-pounder anti-tank guns having to wait for the second lift.

  Main HQ, totalling 107 officers and men, largely from the ‘A’ and ‘Q’ branches and the services –RAOC, RASC, REME and RAMC – would come up by road with XXX Corps, whilst a Rear HQ of some 60 would remain at Moor Park, dealing with aspects of resupply, providing additional wireless contact with 21st Army Group and Second Army and passing messages through to FAAA and the Troop Carrier Command Post. Gale was instructed to act as Boy’s deputy at Moor Park during the operation.

  The decision to take the HQ into the field has been widely criticized but once Boy had been appointed to command, as he had been verbally by Montgomery and Dempsey on 10 September, and in writing by Brereton on the following day, it was unthinkable that he could have done anything else. Montgomery was adamant that his corps and divisional commanders should be located as close as possible to the front line and would never have tolerated the exercise of control from hundreds of miles away. It was so far from established practice that is unlikely that the parties even gave this any thought. In any event, it was not the corps commander’s own decision, other than at a purely tactical and local level, where to site his HQ, as he was at the disposal of his army commander, in this case Dempsey. The latter had made it quite clear that he wanted Boy on the spot for ‘Linnet’ and would have expected no less for a plan which placed the airborne forces even further away from the ground forces’ start point.

  From a personal perspective, Boy was desperate to lead his troops into action. Whilst waiting for ‘Comet’ to get the go ahead, he had written to Daphne to say that he envied ‘the people who are strongly ensconced in France in command of their divisions or corps with no worries except the battle in front of they faces.’14 In such a mood he was unlikely to want to do anything to prevent this happening and, although carrying out Montgomery’s plan and not upsetting morale any further were also uppermost in his mind, he was not going to do anything to jeopardize his chances. Moreover, he genuinely believed that the Germans were on the run and his attitude was not uncommon. Brian Urquhart was one of relatively few ‘worried by the state of mind of General Browning and my brother officers. There seemed to be a general assumption that the war was virtually over and that one last dashing stroke would finish it.’15 This mindset was by no means confined to I Airborne Corps, but was prevalent at SHAEF, where in early September Eisenhower believed that he was on the brink of victory, at 21st Army Group and at FAAA, as Brereton had proved by his willingness to take a serious risk in ‘Linnet II’ without any real planning at all. Urquhart ascribed the attitude primarily to those who, like Boy, had participated in September 1918 in the breach of the Hindenburg Line and the capitulation of the German Army two months later. As he correctly surmised, it was about to contribute to a gross underestimation of the capabilities of the enemy. He expressed his concerns to Walch among others, but the BGS would hear no criticism of the plan.

  Urquhart, as Boy’s senior intelligence officer, was also becoming seriously worried about both the number and the quality of the opposing forces in the operational areas and specifically in the neighbourhood of Arnhem. Intelligence was largely der
ived from Second Army, where Dempsey, unlike Boy, was privy to the product of Ultra decryptions of German radio communications. The situation was a fast moving one, however, and Ultra was, if anything, becoming less valuable the closer the Germans got to their own country and the more they were able to use fixed lines rather than wireless. Nevertheless, in the fortnight leading up to the launch of ‘Market Garden’, Ultra produced some valuable information. Potentially the most alarming report came on 5 September when II SS Panzer Corps was said to be in the Venlo-Arnhem-’s-Hertogenbosch area, but thereafter it disappeared from view. On 13 September, Ultra described Army Group B as chiefly concerned with establishing whether the Allies were preparing to advance on Aachen or to Arnhem. On 15 September there were two relevant decrypts, the first identifying Army Group B’s HQ as located in Oosterbeek, directly between 1 Airborne Division’s landing sites and Arnhem, whilst the second indicated correctly that the probable intention of XXX Corps was to thrust forward on either side of Eindhoven to Arnhem to cut off German forces in the western Netherlands.

  This information was not available to Boy or to Brian Urquhart, but the latter was growing concerned about suggestions in 21st Army Group’s intelligence summaries and reports from the Dutch Resistance16 that two panzer divisions, 9 SS (Hohenstaufen) and 10 SS (Frundsberg), might be in the Arnhem area. This was not entirely unknown to 1 Airborne Division, whose own intelligence summary on 7 September had stated: ‘It is reported that one of the broken panzer divisions has been sent back to the area north of ARNHEM to rest and refit; this might produce 50 tanks … .’