Immediately after fighting ended on Tuesday, 26 September the Germans forced all the inhabitants of Arnhem and Oosterbeek to leave the area that day. With only the few belongings that they could carry or push on small handcarts, they had to flee the area to find refuge with relations or friends or in billets in outlying villages; some camped in the woods. This action was partly an act of reprisal by the Germans against the Dutch people for the help they had so happily given to the airborne soldiers, but it was also for practical military reasons: they planned to build a new defensive line along the north shore of the Rhine against a renewed Allied offensive, which they expected to be launched shortly. The Germans then systematically looted the empty houses of all furniture and household goods, to be sent as ‘a gift from the people of the Netherlands’ to the German families in the Ruhr made homeless by Allied bombing. All house doors were removed to be used for revetting the new defence positions. During the winter that followed there was acute hunger and starvation throughout the German-occupied part of Holland. Food and coal were forbidden to be transported into the zone as a reprisal for the strike by Dutch railway workers, which started in September. It has been estimated that 30,000 civilians died during that winter, known as ‘the hunger winter’ from starvation, disease and cold and at the hands of their enemy.
A great number succeeded in making their way back days and weeks later to the British line. Among them was Brigadier Gerald Lathbury, the Commander of the 1st Parachute Brigade, He, it will be remembered, had on his own urgent representations been left wounded and half-paralysed in a small house on the outskirts of Arnhem. Its inhabitants took him to the local hospital outside the defensive perimeter. There he was cared for by British surgeons and Dutch nurses, though the enemy was in control. In a day or two he had recovered sufficiently to be able to hobble and as soon as he realized that the plan had failed and that the 2nd Army would not arrive to capture, the town, he’ crept away at midnight into the woods, walking on a compass bearing in what he hoped was the direction of freedom.
Presently he fell in with a private soldier and for the best part of a week they remained in the woods, sleeping in a shed and constantly on the move. Another week went by and he was then put into contact with Major Digby Tatham-Warter of the 2nd Parachute Battalion. Once it was clear that the fight was almost lost, most of the remaining defenders were scattered into Arnhem to try and make their way back to Oosterbeek, leaving Tatham-Warter and the 2nd Battalion behind at Brigade HQ, where they could still fire upon the bridge, to fight until the last. The massive mortar barrage that had pounded the British positions for the previous four days was now concentrated on their small perimeter. The position was untenable and so Digby concocted the plan of slipping men out of the area in two’s and three’s so that they could hide overnight and escape the bombardment, but return before dawn to retake their positions and still be a threat to the Germans the following morning. Unfortunately the area was utterly surrounded and very few men escaped. Major Tatham-Warter, together with almost all of his Battalion, was captured.
He was admitted to the St. Elizabeth Hospital, but only stayed there throughout the daylight hours of Thursday 21st before escaping with his wounded Second-in-Command, Captain Tony Frank at 2200 hours the same day. Once their German nurses were out of sight, the pair dressed themselves, climbed down from their first floor window and then crawled through a garden next to the hospital before, exhausted from their ordeal over the previous days, coming to a halt close by in a wood. On the next day, using Tatham-Warter’s escape compass which was assembled from the buttons on his uniform, they headed east out of Arnhem and came to a halt in the pine woodland at Mariendaal, immediately north of the railway line and a mile west of Arnhem. At dawn on the following day they spotted a farmhouse on the edge of this wood and spent some time watching it for signs of life, of which there were none. The two men had not eaten since they had escaped from the hospital two days ago and even then they had only received a small helping of mashed potato and a slice of bread. Throwing caution to the wind Tatham-Warter decided to knock on the door of the farm in the hope of finding food and shelter. The owner turned out to be a solitary old lady and, though initially frightened by the scarecrow appearance of these two soldiers, she prepared them some cheese and fried eggs and directed them into a barn where they slept in the loft, hidden beneath a bed of damp straw. On the afternoon of Monday 25th September they were visited by Menno de Nooy, of the Ede Resistance, who assured them that from now on they would be safe. He took the men two miles northwards to the dense Warnsborn woods where they took up residence in the more habitable accommodation of the home of Van der Ven, a farmer. Living in a concealed room in the shed, the two men emerged each evening to cut home grown tobacco with the farmer, or to play cards with him.
On 3 October Tatham-Warter received a visit from the head of the Ede Resistance, Bill Wildeboer. There were at this time a considerable number of escaped airborne men on the run or in hiding with local residents and organizing them and finding appropriate shelters was an enormous task that was beginning to overwhelm him and so he turned to Tatham-Warter for help, who readily agreed. The next day, dressed in civilian clothes, he and Wildeboer covered the ten miles to Ede on bicycles and Digby took up residence in the family home and made it his headquarters. His bedroom was beneath a log pile where there lay a concealed dug out which Wildeboer had himself used in the past when hiding from the Gestapo. It held a cot and some other light furnishings and though damp it was warm and made for more than adequate accommodation under the circumstances. A barber, a tailor and a photographer arrived on the following day to tidy the Major up and provide him with a forged identity card; and so it was that to all intents and purposes, Digby became Peter Jensen, the conveniently deaf and dumb son of a lawyer from The Hague. He had no qualms at all about venturing out of doors and was as bold here as he had been at the bridge; setting out each day on a bicycle to visit the increasing numbers of men in hiding. Due to his casual manner he was never suspected by the swarms of German soldiers in the area. Indeed he almost seemed to invite the attention of the enemy; once stopping to lend a hand to help push a staff car out of a ditch. By a stroke of bad luck a group of German officers were billeted in Wildeboer’s home and shortly before the curfew, when Tatham-Warter would return from visiting the evaders around Ede, he would frequently find himself attempting to enter the house at the same time as the Germans. Initially he gave way and let them through first, but after a while grew tired of such polite gestures and insisted on entering first. There was a mild dispute over this, but after casting a scornful gaze in their direction the Germans allowed him to pass. From this day on these officers felt well disposed towards Tatham-Warter and they would nod to each other in greeting, even occasionally patting him on the back.
Tatham-Warter excelled in managing the large numbers of airborne evaders, now numbering in the hundreds and with the signal links set up at his HQ he was able to contact British Intelligence at Nijmegen and 1st British Airborne Corps HQ in England. Using these communications he arranged for the RAF to drop equipment, ammunition, as well as some food and cigarettes to his force; the arms were buried in the countryside until they were ready to use them and in short these remnants of the 1st Airborne Division were reformed into an effective force. Tatham-Warter envisaged that his men, together with the Dutch Resistance, would launch coordinated attacks on German targets in the event of a further attempted crossing of the Rhine by the 2nd British Army and in effect they were to be a coup-de-main force. However it became clear that an attempt to establish a bridgehead on the German side of the Rhine was not at all imminent and so with little else to be achieved by holding their present position, the thoughts of Tatham-Warter and his men turned to their mass escape to the Allied lines. Operation ‘Pegasus’ was set for 22 October; the plan being simply to advance 138 men, most carrying arms, down to the bank of the River Waal and all were to be prepared to fight their way through heavy German opposition to
get there. On paper ‘Pegasus’ appeared foolhardy, possibly even suicidal, but nevertheless it was a tremendous success for all of the 138 men who set out upon it. For the part he played in administering this force, Tony Frank was Mentioned in Despatches.54
Digby Tatham-Warter and Gerald Lathbury fell in with Lieutenant Colonel Dobie, commanding the 1st Parachute Battalion and the three men made various plans. Because of the importance of the information he possessed, Dobie was sent ahead and eventually succeeded in making his way with the utmost difficulty to the 2nd Army and safety. The others waited several days and collected stragglers from all over the place. Matters were complicated by the fact that the Germans had decided to evacuate the entire civil population. The day of the evacuation was that chosen by Lathbury and Tatham-Warter was that on which the parachutists should make their escape.
Travelling to the rendezvous area, which was deep in the woods around Renkum, with Brigadier Lathbury, the two men rode abreast on bicycles and passed as many as 200 marching German troops on the way without drawing a single challenge. ‘Our plan worked perfectly’ recalled Lathbury. ‘Eighty officers and men who had been hiding in the area were all assembled at the rendezvous... To reach it, Tatham-Warter and I cycled along the road side by side and every time we saw a German - and we passed at least 200, some in groups, some in platoons marching along - I expected to be challenged, but nothing untoward happened.’
At 2100 that evening, having conducted a reconnaissance to within a short distance of the Rhine without encountering opposition, Tatham-Warter gave the final go-ahead to begin Pegasus. His group began their march to the embarkation point and though their boots had been wrapped in rags to dull their noise, Digby later compared their stealth to a herd of stampeding elephants. Emerging out the cover of the woods, two hundred yards between them and the riverbank lay a meadow shrouded in low lying mist. Tatham-Warter, at five yard intervals, ordered every man to proceed to the Rhine on his belly. To ensure the sanctity of their position, fighting patrols were dispersed upon both flanks to deal with any enemy troops in the vicinity. But for a short exchange of Spandau and Sten fire, no shots were heard and in this particular engagement the Germans turned and fled. The column, though perfectly intact, had strayed a few hundred yards east of where it should have been, but luckily Tatham-Warter’s ‘V’ signal on his red torch was eventually seen and their position was discovered.55
Forty other ranks commanded by Major Hibbert, Brigade Major of the 1st Parachute Brigade, were too far away to reach the rendezvous in time, so they were taken there in two lorries. ‘During the journey they wore their uniforms, carried their weapons and lay flat on the floor of the lorries. They drove straight to the rendezvous and as they de-bussed, German troops were walking past them on the road.’ Eventually the whole party reached the bank of the Lower Rhine and after an anxious forty-five minutes, during which they had a brush with the Germans who evidently mistook them ‘for a strong patrol,’ got back across the river aided by the fire of tracer shells. By 0130 the next morning, all the men had been taken across in boats.
The men of the parachute and air landing brigades who fell into the enemy’s hands were most of them wounded. They were removed to Apeldoorn and after some days departed thence on foot, or in cattle trucks, to captivity in the interior of the Reich. The wounded received neither food nor medical attention after the first forty-eight hours, when the doctors and the Dutch nurses of Arnhem, who had attended them with unselfish devotion, were no longer allowed to continue their ministrations. Those who survived the journey were deemed fit to work and were accordingly put to labour under blows and unprintable insults in lead-mines. Here they languished until the swift advent of the victorious Allies announced an end to their sufferings. For a moment, however, these were increased, for the prisoners found themselves once again on the march, or jolting in lorries, towards any part of Germany not yet captured. For many that dreadful journey was their last... What the enemy had failed to achieve at Arnhem with Spandaus, self-propelled guns, mortars, tanks the courage of the survivors was found to be unbroken. Regimental Sergeant Major John C. Lord received his rescuers in a neatly pressed uniform with button bright and shining. His demeanour typifies the spirit that prevailed among the men of Arnhem.56
In the treatment of their prisoners the Germans maintained and enhanced that reputation for infamous cruelty which they have been at pains to acquire in so many wars through so many centuries.
With tales of heroism and suffering such as these the story of the 1st Airborne Division in Holland must end; but the story shows also that as a corporate whole this Division triumphantly vindicated the soundness of their training and proved beyond doubt or dispute that an airborne army is not a luxury but a necessity, On this ground alone ‘the expedition was more than justified; on every other it was abundantly so. For consider the general position of the British armies in the west before and after the battle. Up to 17 September the enemy thought to profit from the tenacious resistance offered by his garrisons in Dunkirk, Lorient, St. Nazaire and other great French ports. It was denying to the Allies certain links in the chain of supply of vital importance if the pressure of their armies was to be maintained. It seemed to the German High Command that they would be able to use the time thus gained to establish upon the Maas, the Waal and the Lower Rhine, three successive lines on which to stand and fight. They were in the full throes of preparing to do so when out of the skies, which Goering had once boasted would ever belong to the Luftwaffe, a blow fell with devastating suddenness. In the space not of days but of hours this scheme of defence collapsed. At one bound the British 2nd Army leapt nearly sixty miles towards the German frontier and became deeply ensconced in what the enemy had fondly hoped would be his front throughout the winter.
Before a week had passed the Allies had secured all the bridges over two of the three rivers and possessed that most valuable of all assets in war, a firm base for future operations. The enemy’s reaction to the airborne attack, though immediate and violent, achieved no more than a limited success. As has been told, he could claim the recapture of the most northerly of the bridges and the thrusting back of the 1st Airborne Division with heavy casualties over the Lower Rhine. This is a fact which must be neither minimized nor exaggerated. The loss of many gallant and highly trained men in an operation of great daring and much hazard must be set against the gain to the general conduct of the campaign as a whole. That this gain was very considerable, no one, not even the enemy, who was constrained to praise the conduct of the Division, will deny.
The resolute seizure of the bridge at Arnhem, which was under British control for three days, combined with the maintenance of a defensive position north of the river for nine days, forced the enemy to devote large resources, among them the remains of two SS Panzer Divisions, to the task of ejecting the audacious Urquhart and his men. Had the Germans not been under this necessity, their counter-attacks farther south against the American 82nd and 101st Divisions could have been pressed with much greater vigour and might possibly have succeeded, at least for a time. That they failed must be written largely on the credit side of the ledger when calculating the profit and loss incurred by the operation; or, to vary the metaphor, because a duellist pierces the chest but not the heart of his adversary, he has not failed in his attack, for he has, none the less, inflicted a grievous, perhaps a mortal wound. For the British 6th and the 17th American Airborne Divisions was reserved the honour of inflicting it on the Germans less than six months later, north of Wesel on the other side of the Rhine. Their swift and overwhelming success would scarcely have been possible if the battle of Arnhem had not been fought.57
As for the officers and men of the 1st Airborne Division, what they think of that battle is plain. ‘Thank you for the party,’ wrote Brigadier Hackett to General Urquhart afterwards. ‘It didn’t go quite as we hoped and got a bit rougher than we expected. But speaking for myself, I’d take it on again any time and so, I’m sure, would everybody else.’58
That he is right in his surmise no one who reads the story of the 1st Airborne Division at Arnhem can have any doubt. In the tranquil sunshine of an autumn afternoon, its officers and men descended upon territory held in force by the enemy. Some were in action while still falling or gliding through the air and all were heavily engaged within an hour of landing. From that moment onwards not a man, save the dead or desperately wounded, but was continuously fighting, both by day and by night. They fought in thick woods, tearing aside the undergrowth to come to grips with the enemy; they fought in well-ordered streets, in neat houses, in town halls, in taverns, in churches - anywhere where a German was to be found. With no weapon larger than a 75-mm gun and for the most part only with Brens, gammon bombs and PIATs, which can be carried and handled by one man unaided, they attacked Tiger tanks weighing fifty-six tons and self-propelled guns with a range of seven miles. Of these they destroyed or put out of action some sixty. The number of the enemy they killed or wounded is not exactly known, but it is not less than 7,000. With no reinforcements save the wounded, who, if their legs would still bear them, staggered back to the firing line, they fought on. With an enemy growing ever stronger, pressing against them on all sides but one-and that a wide, swiftly flowing river - they fought on. Without sleep, presently without food or water, at the end almost without ammunition, they fought on. When no hope of victory remained; when all prospect of survival had vanished, when death alone could give them ease, they fought on. In attack most daring, in defence most cunning, in endurance most steadfast, they performed a feat of arms which will be remembered and recounted as long as the virtues of courage and resolution have power to move the hearts of men.
A Bridge Too Far Page 21