Even allowing for all that, however, the German airborne operations in the Low Countries proved spectacularly that airborne warfare was effective in a battlefield context. More importantly, it also supplied the catalyst for their current and future enemies to emulate the concept by forming Airborne Forces of their own, which were to carry out Operation MARKET GARDEN.
2
Framing the Battlefield and Marshalling the Players:
II SS Panzerkorps, 30 Corps and the 1st Allied Airborne Army
16 August – 8 September 1944
Although it was not immediately apparent, the chain of events that led to Arnhem began almost exactly a month before Operation MARKET GARDEN was launched. With the initial invasion force safely ashore along a sixty-mile stretch of the Normandy coastline stretching from Ouistreham to St. Mère Église by 9 June 1944, the Allies then spent almost two months consolidating their beachhead. To the west, US forces concentrated on clearing the Cotentin Peninsula to access the port of Cherbourg after linking the OMAHA and UTAH landing areas at Carentan> To the east British and Commonwealth forces slowly advanced inland in the face of fierce German resistance toward the city of Caen, a rather optimistic D-Day objective and ostensibly key to the local communication network. The breakout began on 25 July with Operation COBRA, an attack south from St. Lô by the US VII and VIII Corps. The US advance pushed south before swinging east in a sweeping pincer movement that pressed the Germans back against British and Canadian units advancing south from Caen, which had been secured on 8 July. By 16 August approximately 100,000 German troops from 7 Armee and Panzergruppe Eberbach with all their vehicles, livestock and equipment had been hemmed into an area sixty miles deep and thirty-five miles wide running west from Chambois, which was dubbed the Falaise Pocket. Within two days remorseless Allied pressure had compressed that area by half, and the capture of St. Lambert by the 4th Canadian Armoured Division on 18 August brought them within a couple of miles of the US 90th Infantry Division pushing up to Chambois from the south.
Elements of General Stanislaw Maczek’s 1st Polish Armoured Division made contact with the US 359th Infantry Regiment in Chambois in the early evening of Saturday 19 August, but with insufficient strength to block the exit from the Pocket. Two battlegroups totalling approximately 1,500 men supported by eighty tanks and representing half the Division’s combat strength thus moved five miles or so to the east and occupied the commanding height of Mont Ormel, also known as Hill 262 after its spot height. The Poles codenamed their new position Maczuga (Mace) and spent the night of 19-20 August digging in. This was a wise precaution, for Hill 262 provided panoramic views of the surrounding area for artillery observervation and lay squarely in the centre of the exit from the Falaise Pocket. Despite being cut off, the Poles held out against increasingly desperate attacks from elements of five Waffen SS and two Heer Panzer divisions in some of the most ferocious and intense fighting of the war. By the evening of Sunday 20 August, for example, one of the two Polish battlegroups on Mont Ormel had been reduced to 110 men and their supporting tanks were down to five rounds of main gun ammunition apiece. The situation was sufficiently serious that the battlegroup commander, Lieutenant-Colonel Antoni Stefanowicz of the 1st Polish Armoured Regiment, made a fatalistic farewell speech to his men pointing out the futility of surrendering to the SS and urging them to die for Poland and civilisation by fighting to the last man.1 Relief finally arrived in the afternoon of Monday 21 August in the shape of the 22nd Canadian Armoured Regiment, after the Poles had expended virtually all their remaining ammunition rebuffing a last ditch attack by elements of 2 SS Panzer Division. In all, the two Polish battlegroups suffered 352 killed, 1,002 wounded and 114 missing during the two-day battle for Mount Ormel, a casualty rate of roughly seventy-five per cent.2 German losses included 2,000 dead, fifty-five tanks and 152 assorted armoured vehicles.3
The Falaise Pocket was finally sealed in the evening of 21 August, and by the following day the only German troops west of Mont Ormel were either dead or prisoners. The bulk of Heeresgruppe B’s combat strength had been destroyed with the loss of some 10,000 dead, 50,000 prisoners and almost all their transport and heavy equipment; Allied post-battle surveys counted 304 armoured vehicles, 3,178 assorted soft-skin vehicles and 166 assorted artillery pieces destroyed or abandoned within the Pocket.4 However, the tenacity of the Poles was matched by some German units battling to force open escape routes to the east, and their efforts permitted around 20,000 men to evade the Allied trap.5 Many were individuals and small groups intent only on escape on foot or by vehicle, but there were also larger, more organised and disciplined groupings. The latter included Obergruppenführer Wilhelm Bittrich’s II SS Panzerkorps, which was to play a key role in the German response to the British advance into Holland in mid-September. Bittrich’s formation consisted of two divisions: 9 SS Panzer Division ‘Hohenstaufen’, commanded by Standartenführer Friedrich Wilhelm Bock; and Brigadeführer Heinz Harmel’s 10 SS Panzer Division ‘Frundsberg’. II SS Panzerkorps had arrived in Normandy from the Eastern Front toward the end of June 1944 and was immediately plunged into some of the most intense fighting of the campaign, blocking British attacks at the eastern end of the invasion area including Operations EPSOM, CHARNWOOD, GOODWOOD and BLUECOAT. By mid-August, 10 SS Panzer Division was making a fighting withdrawal along the shrinking southern perimeter of the Falaise Pocket following the abortive German counter-attack at Mortain, and after regrouping near Villedieu-les-Bailleul broke out of the trap and linked up with II SS Panzerkorps HQ east of the River Dives during the night of 20 August. 9 SS Panzer Division had been withdrawn from the Vire area on the British front south-west of Caen on 13 August and after regrouping near Argentan was ordered out of the still-forming trap to Vimoutiers, from where it launched an abortive attack on elements of the 4th Canadian Armoured Division holding the north shoulder of the Falaise Gap in the early hours of 20 August.
The sealing of the Falaise Pocket on 21 August obliged II SS Panzerkorps HQ and the surviving combat elements of the Hohenstaufen and Frundsberg Divisions to embark on the odyssey that would ultimately carry them to Arnhem. The move began in the wake of their service and support elements, which had begun to withdraw across the River Seine on 17 August. The most direct route was to the east, but that was blocked by US forces who had by-passed the fighting to close the Gap and pushed east for over sixty miles to reach the Seine near Mantes on 19 August. The SS units therefore moved north-east toward Rouen, where the only crossings over the Seine remaining in German hands were located. Elements of both Divisions fought a blocking action against Canadian troops in the vicinity of Bernay and Orbec, roughly midway between Vimoutiers and Rouen, on 23-24 August. This action was instrumental in buying time for an estimated 150,000 German troops and 25,000 assorted vehicles to escape across the Seine to safety. The remainder of 9 and 10 SS Panzer Divisions continued their journey north-east while these rearguard actions were underway, regrouping in the vicinity of Bourgtheroulde, east of Rouen, while some elements pushed on to organise matters at their designated crossing points from 24 August. The Hohenstaufen was directed to a crossing over the Seine ten miles north of Rouen in the vicinity of Duclair, where the Kriegsmarine were operating a 100-ton-capacity steam-powered ferry. The engineers of SS Panzer Pionier Abteilung 9 augmented this with a motley collection of pontoon ferries, inflatable rafts and assault boats, with which the bulk of the division were ferried to relative safety by dusk on 29 August. The remainder crossed the following day, with elements of SS Artillerie Regiment 9 led by a Hauptsturmführer Nickmann making the final crossing using rafts improvised from timber and fuel cans. The Frundsberg was ordered to cross the Seine three miles or so upstream from Rouen, using the damaged Oissel railway bridge. This was fortuitously supplemented with a nearby emergency bridge discovered by SS Panzer Aufklärungs Abteilung 10, and the bulk of the Frundsberg was safely across the river by the evening of 27 August. This was achieved by restricting access, at gunpoint, to the emergency br
idge solely to Frundsberg units and personnel, a rather drastic measure prompted by the sheer volume of traffic trying to cross the Seine; one eyewitness estimate reported up to 7,000 vehicles jammed three abreast and nose to tail along every approach road to Oissel.6
The German retreat across the Seine thus had the potential to become another Falaise, and disaster was only averted, at least in part, by the weather. The latter broke on or around 25 August, and the subsequent rain and low cloud prevented fighter-bombers from the RAF’s 2nd Tactical Air Force and the US IX Tactical Air Command from taking full advantage of the situation.7 Even so, Allied airpower did interfere significantly with German cross-river traffic. In the seven-day period leading up to 23 August 300 barges were sunk, and on 24 August Allied aircraft destroyed a bridge at Elbeuf and damaged others at Oissel and Rouen proper. USAAF P-47 Thunderbolts also attacked the Duclair ferry in the afternoon of 24 August, killing the commander of SS Panzer Regiment 9, Obersturmbannführer Otto Meyer, and an Untersturmführer Suhrkämpfer from SS Panzer Pionier Abteilung 9.8 However, the main factor that saved the Germans was that Allied ground units needed time to mop up the Falaise Pocket and reorganise, as well as untangle and reorient formation and Army group boundaries and lines of advance. The latter process presented a considerable staff and logistic challenge, even for units that had not been involved in the Falaise fighting. It was at this point that the British formations that were to be tasked with carrying out the ground advance to Arnhem came into the picture, and they provide a good example of these problems. Lieutenant-General Brian Horrocks’ 30 Corps was released from the British 2nd Army reserve on 20 August to spearhead the advance to the Seine and beyond, and getting the lead 43rd Division forward to its designated crossing point entailed moving 4,400 vehicles and a bridging train seventy miles from the vicinity of Chambois. The process took five days, with the Division divided into three increments because the move coincided with the reorientation of the US 19th Corps across the same local road net. As a result the 43rd Division was only permitted access to a maximum of two routes for periods of four to six hours at a time; this remained the case until the last elements of the US formation finally cleared the 21st Army Group boundary in the early hours of 28 August.9
Not all the formations to be involved in Holland were moving with such urgency and purpose. The Guards Armoured Division, which was to play a leading role in the pursuit from the Seine and spearhead 30 Corps’ subsequent advance into Holland, went into British 2nd Army reserve on 16 August in the vicinity of Condé-sur-Noireau. There it remained while the Falaise Pocket was closed and the pursuit eastward began, resting, reorganising and absorbing replacements for the 249 dead, 975 wounded and 176 missing the Division had sustained since 31 July.10 ENSA concerts were provided for entertainment,11 while the upper echelons of the Division did some entertaining of their own. On 16 August the Division was visited by General Sir Bernard Law Montgomery accompanied by Secretary of State for War Sir Anthony Eden. The latter made a second visit to Division HQ four days later, which also played host to the Major-General Commanding the Brigade of Guards on 23 August.12 One infantry platoon commander from the 3rd Battalion Irish Guards, Lieutenant Brian Wilson, referred to the period as ‘an idle life’ and recalled an inter-brigade boxing tournament between the Irish and Welsh Guards that jammed approach roads with vehicles in a manner reminiscent of the German withdrawal across the Seine at Oissel, and to his Battalion organising a party for local French children.13 There were a hundred children for whom the Battalion Quartermaster, a Lieutenant R. Hastings, managed to provide food while they were entertained by the Battalion pipers and motorcyclists performing riding tricks.14 Lieutenant Robert Boscawen, a Troop Commander with the 1st (Armoured) Battalion, Coldstream Guards, appears to have been typical in spending much of the time dining with acquaintances in other units in the Division, sightseeing as far afield as Mont St. Michel on the US side of the invasion area and a period at a rest camp on the coast at St. Aubin-sur-Mer inland from the JUNO landing beaches.15 The sojourn ended in the last days of August when the Division was assigned to Horrocks’ 30 Corps for the breakout across northern France, starting with a Movement Order on 27 August for a move to the area of L’Aigle-Verneuil-La Ventreuse, sixty miles to the east and halfway to the River Seine.16
Despite the traffic problems encountered en route, the 43rd Division was in place on the south bank of the River Seine by Friday 25 August, the same day US troops liberated Paris. The town of Vernon, located approximately forty miles north-west of Paris and which boasted a road and a rail bridge, was selected as the crossing point, although the road bridge was badly damaged and the rail bridge had been partially demolished. The attackers therefore employed wooden storm boats capable of carrying twenty troops, and the crossing commenced in the early evening of 25 August under cover of smoke after a fifteen-minute artillery barrage. The assault wave suffered a number of casualties from enemy fire after some craft became grounded on submerged islands, and subsequent waves were thus delayed until after dark; by dawn on 26 August more than a battalion of infantry had established a foothold on the north bank. In the course of the day, high ground overlooking the crossing site was secured despite several German counter-attacks, while engineers constructed a bridge capable of carrying light armoured vehicles; a number of tanks were ferried across the river early the next morning. By 28 August the whole of the 43rd Division was firmly ensconced on the east bank of the Seine, having expanded the bridgehead to a depth of four miles at a cost of 550 casualties. The Vernon crossing was quickly followed by additional bridgeheads downstream at Louviers and Elbeuf on 27 and 28 August respectively.17
The tentative German plan had been to hold on the Seine for around seven days, while a coherent defence line was organised further east, but this was overtaken by US forces crossing the Seine at a number of points to the south-east of Vernon. Generalfeldmarschall Walther Model, the commander of Heeresgruppe B, consequently ordered a sixty-mile withdrawal to the River Somme on Friday 25 August. II SS Panzerkorps was allotted the task of protecting the withdrawal, and Obergruppenführer Bittrich issued the necessary orders two days later, while his constituent formations were still withdrawing across the Seine at Duclair and Oissel. Both Divisions were to despatch all rear echelon elements and vehicles eastward and amalgamate their combat elements into kampgruppen (battlegroups) to cover the withdrawal to the new line. Brigadeführer Harmel’s Frundsberg appears to have moved off first, arriving at Beauvais as ordered on 29 August while the 3,500 strong Hohenstaufen Kampfgruppe, commanded by Obersturmbannführer Walther Harzer, moved off for Amiens via Neufchâtel the same day. Harzer appears to have succeeded Standartenführer Bock as division commander on 29 August, which is presumably why the latter had been specifically ordered to accompany the division’s rear echelon elements directly to the Dutch border.18
However, events had once again overtaken German intentions. After crossing the Seine via a newly constructed Class 9 pontoon bridge, the 11th Armoured Division led a breakout from the Vernon bridgehead at 06:00 on Monday 28 August directly along II SS Panzerkorps’ line of withdrawal to Amiens and Beauvais.19 The Hohenstaufen Kampfgruppe was thus ordered out of Amiens in the afternoon of Wednesday 30 August to establish a blocking position north-west of Laon. The move came in the nick of time, for elements of the 11th Armoured Division entered Amiens early the next morning after a night march in heavy rain. One Troop from the 23rd Hussars took the opportunity to refuel their Shermans at a civilian filling station in the town centre, and reconnaissance troops from the 2nd Fife and Forfar Yeomanry captured the commander of 7 Armee, General der Panzertruppe Heinrich Eberbach, who was trying to establish contact with his units accompanied by Oberstgruppenführer Sepp Dietrich, commander of 5 Panzer Armee, who managed to escape. According to one source, a Corporal Byrne took Eberbach prisoner while the latter was eating his breakfast,20 but an intelligence summary issued by the British 2nd Army HQ clearly stated that General Eberbach was captured travel
ling in a Volkswagen after his staff car had been shot up, presumably by Allied aircraft.21 Whatever the truth of the matter, the two main bridges over the River Somme in the centre of Amiens were secured by late morning and by evening 11th Armoured Division had handed over to the 50th Division in preparation to continue the advance.22
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