Harmel had meanwhile been ordered to pull the Frundsberg back from Beauvais to the River Somme. There he subdivided his force into two parts commanded by Standartenführer Otto Paetsch and Obersturmbannführer Schultze. Kampfgruppe Paetsch was despatched to defend Bray and Kampfgruppe Schultze to defend Peronne – the latter unwittingly drew the short straw in the process. The fall of Amiens obliged Schultze to withdraw to Albert to avoid being cut off, and his arrival coincided with another general withdrawal order from Heeresgruppe B, this time all the way to a line running from Antwerp to Maastricht on the Belgian-Dutch border. Schultze was ordered to hold Albert ‘to the last man’ in order to cover this withdrawal, which he did, firstly against reconnaissance troops from B Squadron, 2nd Household Cavalry and then Grenadier Guards tanks and infantry from the 5th Guards Armoured Brigade. The SS rebuffed attempts to break into the town, knocking out several tanks in the process, after which the Guards maintained a screen around the town until relieved by elements of the 50th Division, possibly 231 Infantry Brigade.23 The latter then attacked and cleared Kampfgruppe Schultze from Albert in a house-to-house battle that went on throughout Friday 1 September and into the night, during which Obersturmbannführer Schultze was killed; a handful of SS survivors managed to break contact in the early hours of Saturday 2 September. Kampfgruppe Paetsch was more fortunate, holding its position in Bray until dark on 1 September before withdrawing to Cambrai where it made passing contact with the Hohenstaufen Kampfgruppe.24 It then continued moving north-east, fighting a sharp action against elements of the 2nd Irish Guards holding Douai, twelve miles north of Cambrai, in the process.25 Meanwhile the Hohenstaufen Kampfgruppe had abandoned its ordered move to Laon to avoid being cut off by armoured columns from the US 19th Corps, and instead withdrew north-east to Cambrai. There, like Schultze, Harzer was ordered to support the general withdrawal to the Antwerp-Maastricht line, in this instance by denying the Allies access to Cambrai and thus the routes running into Belgium until nightfall on 2 September. To this end, Harzer therefore deployed SS Flak Abteilung 9’s eighteen 88-mm anti-aircraft guns in the anti-tank role covering the roads from Arras and Bapaume, set SS Panzer Pionier Abteilung 9 to demolishing nearby canal bridges and tasked the survivors of SS Panzergrenadier Regiments 19 and 20 to protect the flak guns. Preparations were complete by 09:00 on 2 September. According to Harzer, his position was then attacked by a force of 200 US tanks whose advance was only stymied by the Escaut Canal, despite losing forty tanks to the Hohenstaufen’s guns by 15:00.26 Interestingly, the US official history does not mention any such epic battle at Cambrai, and the sole reference to the town is connected to it being a stop-line for the US 5th Armored Division running to Cambrai from Landrecies, a few miles to the east. Most US units reportedly ran out of fuel in the region of Landrecies on 2 September before reaching the stop-line, and by the afternoon of 3 September the ‘…only resistance, encountered near Landrecies, had been overcome without difficulty. Relatively few prisoners were taken’.27
Be that as it may, according to Harzer SS Flak Abteilung 9 had somehow lost most of its guns by the time the Hohenstaufen Kampfgruppe withdrew after dark on 2 September toward Mons, thirty-eight miles to the north-east. In the process the fifteen vehicles carrying Harzer and his command group became separated from the main body. After spending daylight on 3 September hiding around the Canadian First World War memorial in Bourlon Wood just outside Cambrai, they made their way to safety by travelling under cover of darkness over successive nights, inadvertently but fortuitously following the boundary between the British 2nd and US 1st Armies; according to Harzer the journey also involved disguising his own vehicles with Allied recognition panels, brazenly looting unattended Allied vehicles, and using his SS Feldgendarmerie to halt Allied columns and allow progress where necessary.28 Meanwhile, the bulk of the Kampfgruppe paused for several hours en route to allow the command group to catch up, possibly at Valenciennes where one of SS Flak Abteilung 9’s batteries were obliged to abandon a number of their seriously wounded to become POWs under the care of a medical orderly named Gottschalk after their vehicle broke down.29 The withdrawal to Mons was resumed when Harzer’s party failed to appear. There the Kampfgruppe was joined by Hauptsturmführer Klaus von Allwörden and SS Panzerjäger Abteilung 9, which had recently arrived by rail from East Prussia with twenty-one Panzerjäger IV tank destroyers. Some of these were damaged by Allied fighter bombers while being unloaded and others were lost in hasty rearguard actions, probably against the US 1st Infantry and 3rd Armored Divisions. The latter occupied Mons on 3 September after performing a spectacular ninety-degree shift in its line of advance to block the German line of retreat to the north-east, while elements of the US 5th and 19th Corps pressed in from the south and west respectively.30 The Hohenstaufen Kampfgruppe evaded the trap at Mons and reached the II SS Panzerkorps assembly point at Hasselt in eastern Belgium on 5 September, where it was reunited with Harzer and his command group. After a day’s respite, what remained of 9 and 10 SS Panzer Divisions moved again, following two routes north into Holland via Eindhoven and Venlo to their final assembly area near Arnhem, where they arrived on 7 and 8 September 1944 respectively.31
Although they had no way of knowing, the Frundsberg and Hohenstaufen Kampfgruppen had only been a step ahead of 30 Corps and the Guards Armoured Division during their retreat, and sometimes not even that. The Guards Armoured Division began its move to the front on 28 August, with three RASC companies carrying the tanks on transporters while the infantry elements moved in their own troop-carrying vehicles.32 In the event the move did not stop at L’Aigle but transformed into a tactical advance to the River Seine and beyond in the wake of the 11th Armoured Division. The Grenadier Guards Group led 5th Guards Armoured Brigade across the Seine at Vernon on 29 August with Division HQ following the next day, and on 31 August launched Operation SUPERCHARGE II; by nightfall the Division’s lead elements had advanced some eighty-five miles, receiving the first of many triumphal greetings from French civilians at Beauvais in the process.33 The following day the Coldstream Guards Group and the 2nd Welsh Guards liberated Arras,34 while the 2nd Household Cavalry and the Grenadier Guards Group clashed with and then masked Kampfgruppe Schultze at Albert. With Arras secured the 2nd (Armoured) Battalion Irish Guards was brought up from reserve at 17:30 on 1 September, reinforced with a company from 5th Battalion Coldstream Guards, and ordered to move immediately on Douai fifteen miles further east. The move was carried out without incident, apart from running across a mob of French civilians intent on lynching a ‘disagreeable’ German officer with a car packed with looted brandy. On arrival, the Battalion commander disposed Nos. 1, 2 and 3 Squadrons to cover the roads to Arras, Lille and Cambrai respectively before meeting with the mayor of Douai and after a round of speeches and toasts ascertained that the Germans were in fact retiring from Lille by persuading the mayor to telephone his counterpart there. At 21:30 No. 3 Squadron’s roadblock was attacked by Kampfgruppe Paetsch as it retired from Cambrai. In the ensuing fight Troop commander Lieutenant John Swann was killed and the crew of another tank led by a Sergeant Mews were taken prisoner but escaped later. Six German vehicles were set ablaze and the SS broke contact and bypassed the roadblock, leaving approximately a dozen dead behind.35
After pausing for forty-eight hours at Douai, the Guards Armoured Division resumed the advance on 3 September, moving north-east along two parallel tracks toward the Belgian border. The Grenadier Guards Group on the left covered only fourteen miles before becoming embroiled in a three-hour battle with the German defenders of Pont á Marq that cost them twenty-two dead and thirty-one wounded; German losses totalled 125 dead and the same number of prisoners.36 Nonetheless, the Division’s lead elements crossed the Belgian border at 13:30 and orders were issued to continue the advance to Brussels during the afternoon. Just over eight hours after crossing the border a scout car from A Squadron, 2nd Household Cavalry was in the centre of Brussels, closely followed by a Welsh Guards tank commanded by Lieutena
nt J. A. W. Dent. The reaction of the civilian population was ecstatic, to the extent that the Guards had great difficulty in moving through the celebrating crowds to their assigned locations. This was especially problematic as there were still many Germans in Brussels. Lieutenant Dent had shot up a German bus and knocked out a tank on his move into the city for example, and the tanks accompanying Lieutenant Brian Wilson of the 3rd Irish Guards fought a brief action against a German anti-tank gun en route to establishing a roadblock at the Forêt de la Soigne on the south-east edge of the city. Wilson’s men subsequently shot up several German vehicles that tried to force the roadblock in the course of the night, and were in turn subjected to an ineffectual machine-gunning by some retreating German tanks after first light.37
By 4 September the situation in Brussels had stabilised sufficiently for the Guards Armoured Division commander, Major-General Allan Adair, to make an official entry into Brussels at 14:00, having spent the previous night with his HQ on the city’s outskirts.38 The Division as a whole remained in the Belgian capital for a further forty-eight hours, which was spent in reorganisation and maintenance by many units. Although there is no mention in the official and unit histories, a participant account claims that the pause at Brussels was also necessary to allow supplies, and especially fuel, to catch up with 30 Corps’ rapid advance.39 However, this is not fully borne out by the Division War Diary daily fuel stock entries, which records higher fuel stocks on the day of the Division’s arrival in Brussels than it possessed on arrival at Arras and Albert, and approximately the same stocks between leaving Douai, arriving in Brussels and pushing on from the latter.40 Neither does the Guards Armoured Division appear to have been short of organic logistic support in spite of being transferred to 30 Corps at short notice and then being pitched into an open-ended advance across northern France and Belgium virtually straight from the approach march. The Division’s logistic tail, dubbed the Administrative Group, was engaged on tasks for British 8th Corps and 2nd Army when Guards Armoured was ordered to move up, prompting Lieutenant-Colonel W. M. Sale from the Division’s Quarter Master General section to raise the matter with Lieutenant-General Horrocks in person. The latter appears to have permitted additional time for the Administrative Group to concentrate and reorganise.41
Not all the Guards Armoured Division’s formations spent the pause in Brussels resting or carrying out maintenance. At 13:00 on 4 September No. 3 Squadron, 2nd Irish Guards were ordered south to Waterloo to assist the Belgian resistance deal with a reported force of 200 Germans supported by three tanks. The Belgian estimate was treated with some scepticism until Lieutenant W. C. T. McFetridge’s Sherman was knocked out by a Panther and the Battalion commander, Lieutenant-Colonel John Vandeleur, lost his scout car to enemy fire. A Panzer IV was knocked out in return before the Guards withdrew, with Lieutenant McFetridge and his crew swimming a nearby river to rejoin the Battalion; as the Battalion War Diary drily observed, ‘The second battle of Waterloo was not as successful as the first.’42 While all this was going on D Squadron, 2nd Household Cavalry and the Grenadier Guards Group had been despatched to secure the university town of Louvain, eighteen miles east of Brussels. On arrival a Household Cavalry Troop commanded by Lieutenant T. F. J. Hanbury seized an intact bridge over the River Dyle in the town centre and held out against determined German counter-attacks until relieved by the Grenadiers. The arrival of the latter effectively ended German resistance and prompted another celebratory outburst by the local civilian population, after which the Guards established a perimeter and spent the subsequent twenty-four hours patrolling and rounding up German stragglers.43
Major-General Adair issued orders for a continuation of the advance across the Belgian border into Holland during a conference on 5 September, following a route through Eindhoven, Grave and Nijmegen to Arnhem; it is unclear if Adair was informed at this time but the British 1st Airborne Division and attached 1st Polish Independent Parachute Brigade were slated to support the advance by seizing water crossings ahead of the advance, codenamed Operation COMET.44 The first stage was an advance up to and across the Albert Canal, and the Division began to move out of Brussels at first light the following day. The advance was again a two-pronged affair screened by the Household Cavalry, with the Grenadier Guards Group leading the 5th Guards Armoured Brigade toward a bridge over the Canal near Oosthem. The Welsh Guards tanks and 32nd Guards Brigade headed for Beeringen, five miles to the south-east, and only ten miles from II SS Panzerkorps’ assembly point at Hasselt. The survivors of the Hohenstaufen and Frundsberg Divisions appear to have departed for Arnhem as the Guards Armoured Division commenced its advance from Brussels. In the event, the advance on Oosthem was halted when 2nd Household Cavalry patrols reported that the bridge there had been destroyed, and the 5th Guards Armoured Brigade was instructed to use the crossing at Beeringen, where the Welsh Guards had discovered the bridge to be only partially demolished. On being informed by a Belgian civilian that the Germans were withdrawing, the 1st Welsh Guards moved quickly and pushed Lieutenant J. F. R. Burchell’s Carrier Platoon across the damaged structure, closely followed by the Battalion’s rifle companies. While they established a defensive perimeter, men from the Division’s RE contingent set about assembling a temporary bridge for light traffic from barges and repairing the bridge proper, which, despite heavy rain and German shelling, was declared fit for heavy vehicles in the early hours of 7 September. The 2nd Welsh Guards’ tanks, which had been employed in patrolling out to the flanks, then crossed to link up with their infantry brethren from the 1st Welsh Guards and prepared advance to the Meuse-Escaut Canal, fifteen miles or so to the north.45
It was at this point that Guards Armoured ran into the first properly organised German resistance encountered by 30 Corps since crossing the River Seine, and began paying the price for the enforced two-day halt at Brussels. As we have seen, Generalfeldmarschall Model at Heeresgruppe B had ordered a general withdrawal to a line running from Antwerp to Maastricht on 1 September, but this was undermined by the 11th Armoured Division’s liberation of Antwerp on 4 September. This not only disjointed German defensive plans but also cut off General Gustav von Zangen’s 15 Armee which had been withdrawing along the French and Belgian coast, leaving it with a single line of retreat across the Scheldt estuary into Holland. The loss of Antwerp also prompted the German high command to step in over Heeresgruppe B, with Generaloberst Alfred Jodl, chief of staff at OKW, ordering the creation of a new front along the line of the Albert Canal. The defence was entrusted to Generaloberst Kurt Student, head of German Airborne Forces, who was placed in command of the newly created 1 Fallschirmjäger Armee which was to be formed from units scattered across northern Germany including 176 Infanterie Division and a kranken (ill) formation made up of men with medical and physical disabilities stationed near Aachen. Units from these formations began to arrive on the new line from 6 September.
In the meantime the Wehrmachtbefehlshaber Niederlande, General der Flieger Friedrich Christiansen, was ordered to plug the gap with whatever troops he had to hand. At the time the Guards Armoured Division was paused at Brussels these amounted to a handful of Dutch SS internal security units, some Luftwaffe and Kriegsmarine training units and Generalleutnant Karl Sievers’ 719 Infanterie Division. The latter was a festung (fortress) unit made up mainly of overage personnel, which had been deployed on the Dutch coast since 1940. It was ordered to move south and dig in along the northern bank of the Albert Canal on 4 September, where Sievers was fortuitously assisted by the unilateral actions of Generalleutnant Kurt Chill. The latter had arrived at his designated assembly point at Turnhout near the Belgian-Dutch border on 4 September with the remnants of his 85 Infanterie Division on 4 September, accompanied by elements of 84 and 89 Infanterie Divisions gathered up during the retreat from France. Although he had been ordered to take his Division back to Germany to rest and refit, on hearing of the fall of Brussels and Antwerp Chill instead moved south and deployed his formation along the stretch of the A
lbert Canal backed by the Meuse-Escaut Canal, which was coincidentally directly astride 30 Corps’ line of advance. Reception posts were organised on crossings over the Albert Canal to redirect troops from the flood of personnel moving east to safety; the flow appears to have peaked on 5 September, the day dubbed Gekke Dinsdag (Mad Tuesday) by Dutch civilians who witnessed it. Chill reported his dispositions and battle readiness to the local Korps commander, General der Infanterie Hans Reinhard, the same day and was promptly reinforced with a regiment from 719 Infanterie Division and had his polyglot command renamed Kampfgruppe Chill; he may also have been responsible for the destruction of the Albert Canal crossings.46
The Welsh Guards Group appears to have run into elements of Kampfgruppe Chill on the morning of 7 September. The Beeringen perimeter was left in the hands of a company from the Scots Guards, reinforced later by the 2nd and 3rd Irish Guards while the Welsh Guards Group advanced east toward Helchteren on the main road running north over the Meuse Escaut Canal to Eindhoven. Before moving, the Welsh Guards battalions broke up into their constituent units and paired each tank squadron with an infantry company, which formed the basic tactical unit thereafter. This pairing by cap badge appears to have been an exclusively idiosyncratic Guards Armoured Division practice that dated back to the July fighting in Normandy, when armoured and motorised infantry battalions were permanently grouped by regimental cap badge across the formal brigade structure; this differed from the standard British armoured division way of doing things, where tank and infantry units remained under the control of their respective brigade structures and were only teamed up on a temporary basis for specific tasks. The Guards practice was good from a tribal regimental affiliation perspective, but even one of the Divisional histories admitted that treating armoured reconnaissance and motorised infantry battalions like their standard tank and infantry equivalents nullified their special training and superior cross-country vehicle and communications equipment. More importantly, it also involved ‘…sacrificing some of the flexibility innate in the organisation of an Armoured Division’.47 As we shall see, it was also to prove a serious hindrance when the Guards Armoured Division was tasked to carry out Operation GARDEN.
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