Arnhem
Page 14
In all, 9 SS Panzer Division was divided into nineteen Warnungs Kompanien, spread across twelve separate locations and totalling approximately 2,500 men.12 Of these, only two were within reasonable proximity to Wolfheze. The nearest was Obersturmführer Harder’s battalion group, made up of dismounted tank crew, fitters and logistic troops from SS Panzer Regiment 9, augmented with a draft of Kriegsmarine personnel; according to one source Harder may also have retained three Panther tanks, which were presumably immobilised in some way to avoid handing them over to 10 SS Panzer Division.13 Located approximately six miles north of Arnhem on the road to Apeldoorn, Harder’s unit was nine miles from the Wolfheze landing area in a straight line. The other unit was Hauptsturmführer Gräbner’s SS Panzer Aufklärungs Abteilung 9, located at Hoenderloo, roughly ten miles north of Arnhem and around twelve miles from Wolfheze. 9 SS Panzer Division’s HQ and logistic elements, located six miles further north at Apeldoorn with SS Panzerjäger Abteilung 9, commanded by Hauptsturmführer Klaus von Allwörden, were too far north to interfere in the initial stages of an Airborne landing at Wolfheze. This was even more the case with the remainder of the Hohenstaufen’s units which were located east and north of Arnhem along the eighteen miles leading to Zutphen, and thus on the wrong side of the city. SS Panzergrenadier Regiment 20 was camped on a former Dutch military training area near Rheden six miles east of Arnhem and thus closer to the Arnhem road bridge than 1st Airborne Division’s landing area, but by 17 September the unit had handed in all personal weapons and combat equipment in readiness for rail transport to Germany and was thus unarmed.14 The remainder, SS Panzer Artillerie Regiment 9, a detachment of SS anti-aircraft gunners under Obersturmführer Heinz Gropp and an SS Panzergrenadier bataillon commanded by Hauptsturmführer Karl-Heinz Euling billeted in and around Dieren eleven miles from Arnhem, Hauptsturmführer Hans Möller’s SS Panzer Pionier Abteilung 9 at Brummen and SS Panzergrenadier Regiment 19 in Zutphen, were also all too far away to intervene at Wolfheze in the short term.
Despite being the closest to Wolfheze, Harder’s bataillon group was also incapable of interfering with a landing or advance eastward in the immediate aftermath without the aid of motor transport, which was in extremely short supply. Moving on foot would have taken at least two hours if not more, by which time any Airborne force ought to have been reorganised and well on the way to its objective.15 Furthermore, even had they been capable of doing so it is doubtful that a collection of dismounted tank crew, technical and support personnel and land-bound sailors would have been able to do much more than harass a properly functioning British Parachute Brigade. Much is sometimes made of a month-long anti-airborne training cycle carried out by the Hohenstaufen in September 1943, but the practical value of this a year later and after the Division’s losses in Normandy is arguable at best.16 Be that as it may, Gräbner’s SS Panzer Aufklärungs Abteilung 9 was not able to interfere immediately either, partly because it had deliberately rendered itself immobile, and partly because by 17 September its vehicles had been loaded onto railway flatcars for transport to Siegen. In fact, there was only one German unit definitely capable of interfering with a British landing and advance from Wolfheze within the necessary time frame, and it was not part of the Hohenstaufen. This was Hauptsturmführer Sepp Krafft’s SS Panzergrenadier Ausbildungs und Ersatz Bataillon 16, sometimes referred to as Bataillon Krafft, a replacement training unit billeted near Oosterbeek, three-and-a-half miles east of Wolfheze and thus midway between the 1st Airborne Division’s landing area and Arnhem proper. With between 306 and 435 men organised into two infantry and one heavy weapons kompanien, Krafft’s command appears fairly formidable on paper but almost half its personnel were officially classified as not yet combat ready.17 Whatever its level of training, such a relatively lightly armed unit was again only capable of harassing a multi-brigade Airborne landing at best, and dealing with it should have been well within the capabilities of a properly functioning Parachute Brigade. In addition, the German policy of not billeting troops in large urban areas meant that once Krafft’s unit had been side-lined or destroyed there was nothing standing between the 1st Airborne Division and Arnhem proper, which at least partially nullified the handicap of distance between landing area and objective. However, success still depended on the Airborne interlopers making the absolute maximum of the element of surprise, by moving from the landing area with sufficient speed, urgency and aggression to reach and secure their objectives before the Germans could react and formulate counter-measures.
There was at least one other German presence in Oosterbeek besides Krafft’s training and replacement unit, somewhat smaller but more illustrious. The creation of a new front in Holland to counter the British advance toward the Meuse-Escaut Canal was only part of a reorganisation of German forces in Holland under a reconstituted Heeresgruppe B, still commanded by Generalfeldmarschall Walther Model. By 13 September the area between the Meuse-Escaut Canal and the River Waal had been designated the Forward Combat Zone, manned by 1 Fallschirmjäger Armee, Kampfgruppe Chill and 176 and 719 Infanterie Divisions which were tasked to prevent any further Allied advance. The area north of the Waal, dubbed the Rear Combat Zone, was configured to support operations to the south. This involved setting up reception centres to screen and redirect retreating troops, and preparing positions and covering detachments to guard crossing points over various rivers and canals that criss-crossed the area. To this end an eleven-strong demolition party was stationed at the south end of the Arnhem railway bridge, and the nearby road bridge was protected by a twenty-five-strong detachment, for example; both locations were also equipped with a handful of light flak guns. All depot, internal security and replacement training units from all branches within the Rear Combat Zone were considered first-line reinforcements for the Forward Zone, which in the Arnhem area amounted to Krafft’s unit and SS Wacht Bataillon 3, a largely Dutch internal security unit based twelve miles west of Arnhem at Ede. All this was controlled by Heeresgruppe B HQ, which by 13 September was housed in the Hotel Tafelberg in southern Oosterbeek. Generalfeldmarschall Model had thus inadvertently placed his HQ just three miles or so from the 1st Airborne Division’s designated landing area, and directly in its line of advance to Arnhem.
***
While all this was going on around Arnhem, the Guards Armoured Division was continuing to press forward sixty miles to the south. Having pushed across the Albert Canal at Beeringen on 7 September, it took the Guards a further five days to clear the villages of Bourg Leopold, Heppen and Hechtel, roughly seven miles short of the next water obstacle, the Meuse-Escaut Canal. The Grenadier Guards Group resumed the advance north on Saturday 9 September, while the fight for Hechtel was still in progress but ran into determined German resistance that inflicted a number of casualties, including twenty-one-year-old Lieutenant Sir Howard Frederick Frank, Second Baronet of Withyham, who was mortally wounded when his tank was hit.18 The advance also involved the Irish Guards Group. After handing over the Beeringen bridgehead to elements of the 11th Armoured Division at 17:30 on Friday 8 September, the 3rd Irish Guards made a dusk move to Helchteren and spent the night laagered short of the town with tanks from the Regiment’s 2nd Battalion.19 The halt highlighted that there was more to tank-infantry co-operation than merely pairing up units according to cap badge, and that the Guards Armoured Division was deficient in such expertise, despite its experience in Normandy. Even though at least one of the 3rd Irish Guards companies was deployed in front of the 2nd Irish Guards tanks, the latter adhered to their apparently standard practice of spraying fire from their .30 machine-guns at any sound or movement in the darkness to their front; as a result one infantry company HQ was pinned down in the farmhouse it had occupied, and one of its platoon commanders was obliged to run the gauntlet of ‘friendly’ fire in order to obtain tank support against a German probe.20 The 3rd Irish Guards lost a total of nine killed and eighteen wounded over the period 8-9 September. Three of the dead were officers killed in the morning at Beeringen; whe
ther any of the remainder resulted from the Irish Guards tanks is unclear.21
This lack of training or practical co-operation was further highlighted the following day. At 14:00 the 3rd Irish Guards was ordered to move forward to the village of Exel, two or three miles north-east of Hechtel, riding the 2nd Battalion’s tanks rather than using its own troop-carrying vehicles. As Lieutenant Brian Wilson, a platoon commander in the 3rd Battalion’s 2nd Company, commented:
For most of us it was our first close-up view of a tank. On reflection, it seems surprising that, for infantry in an armoured division, training in Britain did not include any exercises in company with tanks. We had to be told on that particular day that, if an infantryman needed to speak to a tank crew, he should do so by means of the telephone set on the back of the tank. Otherwise, engine noise would make ordinary conversation inaudible. It did on the telephone, too.22
The move appears to have gone uneventfully and Exel was reached at approximately 18:00, although there were ample signs of recent German occupation of the area, including knocked-out vehicles, groups of prisoners guarded by Grenadier Guardsmen, German military road signs and large pits for concealing tanks and other large vehicles. However, fresh orders obliged another move as the infantry were deploying to night defensive positions. A patrol from the 2nd Household Cavalry commanded by Lieutenant J. N. Creswell had located an intact bridge across the Meuse-Escaut Canal seven miles or so to the north, and the Irish Guards Group was thus tasked to move immediately to secure it, following a route marked by other Household Cavalry vehicles covering side roads.
It is uncertain when the Irish Guards Group reached the de Groot Bridge, located just west of Neerpelt, but it was secured in a hasty attack by Captain J.A.H. Hendry’s No. 2 Company supported by a troop of Shermans commanded by Lieutenant D. Lampard.23 The rapid British advance appears to have come as a total surprise to the German troops tasked to defend the bridge. Two prisoners taken in the process claimed to have only recently arrived from garrison duty in Denmark, and that they and their comrades had mistaken the Irish Guards’ tanks for friendly vehicles. With the bridge secured, a Captain Hutton RE moved in to make safe and remove a number of demolition charges; according to Lieutenant Wilson, who met him near the bridge, Hutton was assisted by four Irish Guardsmen ‘volunteered’ for the task by their RSM. Whatever the truth of that, Hutton was subsequently awarded the Military Cross for his part in the affair.24 In all, the action cost the Irish Guards one dead and five wounded, although the fatality and two of the wounded may have been suffered earlier.25 Immediate German reactions were muted, but began in earnest at around 09:00 the following day, with an infantry counter-attack supported by a single armoured vehicle variously reported as a self-propelled gun or a Tiger tank. The attack was driven off but not before the armoured vehicle had closed to within a hundred yards of the 3rd Irish Guards’ HQ. It is unclear whether it was knocked out but the Battalion MT officer, Captain Edward Rawlence, was killed while stalking it with a PIAT. The RSM appears to have suffered blast and burn injuries to the eyes and face in the same incident. The day’s action cost the Irish Guards three more killed and ten wounded, some of the latter apparently hit by German mortar and artillery fire that also wrecked a number of vehicles, including a staff car belonging to the Battalion commander, Lieutenant-Colonel John O. E. Vandeleur. The captured bridge was christened ‘Joe’s Bridge’ the following day as some kind of compensation.26
In the meantime the Germans were forming a new unit to block and repel the British penetration across the Meuse-Escaut Canal. Named after the Fallschirmjäger Oberst who commanded it, Kampfgruppe Walther was ordered into existence on 12 September and initially comprised a handful of Luftwaffe units. These included Oberstleutnant Friedrich von der Heydte’s Fallschirmjäger Regiment 6, Fallschirmjäger Ausbildungs Regiment Hoffmann, a replacement training unit commanded by an Oberstleutnant Helmuth von Hoffmann and Luftwaffe Strafbataillon 6, a penal unit drafted in from Italy still wearing tropical uniform. Despite their Fallschirmjäger titles the former two formations contained large numbers of partially or totally untrained Luftwaffe ground personnel, reportedly up to ninety per cent in the case of von Hoffmann’s unit, and the penal unit proved to be marginally effective at best.27 They were therefore augmented with Sturmbannführer Heinke’s Kampfgruppe from 10 SS Panzer Division, which arrived in the area from Arnhem on 12 or 13 September. Oberst Walther himself reportedly arrived at Valkenswaard, seven miles north of Neerpelt, in the early hours of Wednesday 13 September. After taking charge of his new command from Oberstleutnant von Hoffmann, Walther immediately issued orders for a co-ordinated attack to be mounted against the Neerpelt bridgehead the following day.28 Although cloudy weather protected preparations from air attack, vigilant British artillery observers brought down heavy fire on any detected activity, and the HQ of von Hoffmann’s I Bataillon located at Luyksgestel, three miles north-west of the bridge, suffered this unwelcome attention on several occasions. A comment by Leutnant Heinz Volz, the Bataillon adjutant, illustrates the deleterious effects:
Lieutenant Hansbach was killed on 13 or 14 September by a direct artillery strike on his trench. A member of the staff was torn to pieces as a shell splinter set off the hand grenades he was carrying. At the same time a Feldwebel fell before the door of the command post, killed by a mortar burst. Another of these persistent strikes…landed when Lieutenant-Colonel von der Heydte happened to be present. With an elegant leap he disappeared through the ground floor window. I – with splinters flying all at around, covered in plaster and dust – got further under the table.
A ringing field telephone had to be left unattended during the shelling; when a lull finally permitted Volz to answer it he received a dressing down from a Major Schacht at 1 Fallschirmjäger Armee HQ who touchily reminded Volz that keeping a superior waiting on the telephone was a breach of military protocol.29 On the British side the point of the bridgehead, just a mile or so short of the Dutch border, was taken over by the 5th Coldstream Guards on 12 September. The 2nd Irish Guards’ tanks were withdrawn across the Albert Canal, while the 3rd Irish Guards took over a sector of pine forest on the left of the perimeter. Lieutenant Wilson’s 2nd Company was designated to provide close protection for Battalion HQ, although enthusiasm for what appeared to be a cushy task waned when it became apparent that it included digging slit trenches for the HQ personnel in addition to their own. Matters were enlivened by sporadic German shelling, and a nuisance night bombing attack by an unidentified light aircraft.30
Kampfgruppe Walther’s attack was to be spearheaded by Fallschirmjäger Regiment 6 attacking the western sector of the bridgehead, by securing the hamlet of La Colonie and moving across Heunel Heath to the bridge. Fallschirmjäger Ausbildungs Regiment Hoffman and Hauptsturmführer Dr Segler’s battalion from SS Panzergrenadier Regiment 19 were to mount diversionary attacks astride and east of the Hasselt-Eindhoven highway, supported by a number of Jagdpanzer IVs from Hauptsturmführer Roestel’s SS Panzerjäger Abteilung 10. The attack was launched at 08:00 on 14 September in light drizzle and under low cloud that kept Allied fighter-bombers at bay, although some elements may have moved in before daylight; at least one British unit reported activity by infiltrators armed with machine-guns and Panzerfausts.31 Von der Heydte’s men overran some outlying positions on the approach to La Colonie but then ran into defensive artillery fire called down by the British at 08:30 and the advance subsequently became bogged down in the village. To the east the supporting attacks did little to alleviate the pressure, for the Jagdpanzers’ narrow tracks had difficulty coping with the boggy conditions off-road, and their presence also appears to have prompted counter-attack by British armour. Up to three of Roestel’s vehicles may have been knocked out in the course of the day’s action.32 The German attack may have been rebuffed, but it did put the 3rd Irish Guards under heavy pressure, and especially No. 3 Company defending the edge of the wood occupied by the Battalion. The thickness of the forest made it difficult to preven
t German infiltration, and Lieutenant Humphrey Kennard’s platoon became the focus of determined German attack. This grew so intense that Lieutenant Wilson’s platoon, which was still providing close protection for Battalion HQ, was ordered to detach a Rifle Section as reinforcement. The section, led by a Sergeant Sullivan, ran into a German assault and was overrun with at least one man being killed and the remainder taken prisoner.33 The attack finally ceased at nightfall when the Germans broke contact under cover of an intense artillery and mortar barrage, while the Guards took advantage of the lull to reorganise into a tighter perimeter. The days fighting cost the 3rd Battalion seven dead including Lieutenant Kennard, twenty-three wounded and five missing; the latter appear to have been Sergeant Sullivan’s ill-fated section.34 Darkness did not mean a lull for everyone, however. Lieutenant Wilson was detailed to carry out a reconnaissance patrol to determine whether the Germans remained in front of No. 3 Company’s original positions, and if so in what strength. Accompanied by two volunteers, he initially lost his bearings but after gingerly skirting a pair of burning farms that had not featured in his pre-patrol appraisal, he eventually ascertained that the woods 600 yards to the Battalion’s front were occupied by von der Heydte’s Fallschirmjäger. The patrol regained the safety of the Battalion perimeter after two hours or so, and only a few yards from the start point.35
The Guards Armoured Division was relieved by elements of the 50th (Northumbrian) Division on 15 September, with the 3rd Irish Guards’ positions being taken over by the 1st Hampshires from 231 Infantry Brigade.36 Lieutenant Wilson witnessed the arrival of the Hampshire advance party while breakfasting on bully beef and ‘liberated’ German champagne; the cold breakfast was apparently due to the 2nd Company’s cook truck being damaged by German shellfire the previous day.37 The handover occurred around midday, with the Guards marching back to meet their motor transport at an abandoned factory just south of Joe’s Bridge, which then carried them to billets farther south. In all, the Guards Armoured Division had suffered a total of 113 killed, 405 wounded and 80 missing in the eleven days between liberating Brussels and its withdrawal from the bridgehead, with the burden falling mainly upon the 1st Welsh, 3rd Irish and 5th Coldstream Guards.38 The 3rd Irish Guards may have been especially badly affected by this, given that officer losses from 8 September obliged the Battalion to reorganise eight days later.39 Nonetheless, the general attitude appears to have been a desire to get on with the job and puzzlement that things were not being pressed with greater urgency. As Lieutenant Wilson put it: