Arnhem

by William F Buckingham

  It was now 15 September, four whole days after the capture of Joe’s Bridge. Everyone was perturbed by the delay in the advance and could not understand it…every day of inaction would probably result in greater opposition ahead. This became only too apparent in days to come [and] subsequent events showed that the risk in continuing the advance at once might have been justified.40

  Having sustained considerable losses in the 14 September attack, Kampfgruppe Walther reverted to containing the British incursion, but there was at least one attempt to deal with Joe’s Bridge using a more unconventional method. During the afternoon of Friday 15 September a party of Kriegsmarine combat swimmers appeared unannounced at the HQ of SS Panzergrenadier Regiment 21 on the eastern extremity of the perimeter; the Regiment’s original commander, Hauptsturmführer Krause, appears to have been succeeded by Hauptsturmführer Friedrich Richter by this time. Having checked their credentials from OKW and ascertained their mission was to destroy the bridge utilising a 500-kg sea mine, Richter passed his visitors along to the company adjacent to the Meuse-Escaut Canal escorted by his adjutant, Obersturmführer Heinz Damaske. A truck was used to move the team and its equipment to a farm close to the front line after dark, but thereafter matters unfolded in a less than satisfactory manner. The only manpower available to assist was a handful of signal personnel from the company HQ, which proved insufficient to move the mine silently in the darkness, and this was compounded by a ten-foot drop to the water of the canal. The result was predictable, and the British troops on the opposite bank, alerted by the scuffling, muffled conversation and splashing, opened fire on the source of the noise with machine-guns and mortars.41 As Obersturmführer Damaske drily noted later: ‘It did not bear thinking what would happen should it [the mine] be struck by a mortar round. This is precisely what occurred to the naval team as well. Their task they decided was impossible under these prevailing conditions, and they left us alone with their “package.”’42

  With that, attempts to demolish the bridge appear to have come to an end, and the units encircling the bridgehead were obliged to restrict their activities to monitoring British activity. Richter’s men reported hearing heavy vehicles moving on the Hechtel-Valkenswaard road to the south, along with vehicle lights, as did other Kampfgruppe Walther men and other units. 719 Infanterie Division reported continuous vehicle movement on the roads behind the Albert Canal throughout the night of 15-16 September, and Kampfgruppe Chill prophesied a major attack once the British had finished concentrating additional armour within the bridgehead.43 Whatever else it might have been, Operation GARDEN was clearly not going to be a surprise for the German troops immediately facing it.

  ***

  Meanwhile the senior commanders from the Guards Armoured, 43rd and 50th Divisions and attached units and formations were being introduced to their roles in Operation GARDEN via a large-scale briefing at 11:00 on Saturday 16 September held in the cinema at Bourg Leopold. The gathering appears to have resembled a fancy-dress party owing to the wide variety of non-issue garb on display: ‘The variety of headgear was striking…The Royal Armoured Corps affected brightly coloured slacks or corduroys. The Gunners still clung for the most part to riding breeches or even jodhpurs. Few had retained their ties, but wore in their place scarves of various colours, dotted with white spots. Sniper’s smocks, parachutist’s jackets, jeep coats, all contributed to the amazing variety of costume.’44 The briefing was delivered in person by the commander of 30 Corps, Lieutenant-General Brian Horrocks. After striding theatrically down the aisle and mounting the stage, he opened proceedings with the oft-quoted line ‘This is a tale you will tell your grandchildren….and mighty bored they’ll be!’

  Horrocks then outlined the concept of MARKET GARDEN with the aid of a large map board with the airborne objectives at Eindhoven, Nijmegen and Arnhem marked with violet tape. 30 Corps’ role in the operation marked on the map with black arrows running between the airborne objectives. The Guards Armoured Division, led by the Irish Guards Group, was to spearhead the breakout from the Neerpelt bridgehead and lead the advance north. The 43rd Division was to trail the Guards, along with the equipment necessary to span the broad Dutch rivers and canals and 9,000 engineers to erect it. This included not only assets belonging to 30 Corps and its three subordinate Divisions but also 21st Army Group’s Bridge Column and an additional 2,000 truckloads of equipment gathered from across the theatre. All this was sufficient to bridge the Wilhelmina Canal, the Maas-Waal Canal and Rivers Waal and Lower Rhine, while the additional truckloads provided sufficient equipment to totally resupply the formation and division-level bridging units and to put pontoon bridges across all the major water obstacles too.45 If any of the major bridges were destroyed before the airborne troops could secure them, the Guards Armoured Division was to peel away to the flanks and permit the 43rd Division to move up and cover the engineers while they went about their work. Once the Lower Rhine had been crossed the 43rd Division was to take over the point of the advance, pushing on from Arnhem across the River Ijssel and on to Deventer and Zutphen, while the 50th Division followed on as the Corps’ reserve.46 Horrocks stressed that speed was vital, reiterating Montgomery’s priority expressed at their meeting on 12 September, and specified that Arnhem had to be reached within forty-eight hours if possible. This was a tight schedule by any standard, for to meet it the ground advance would have to reach Eindhoven by approximately 17:00 on Sunday 17 September, Veghel by midnight, Grave by midday Monday 18 September, Nijmegen by 18:00 and finally Arnhem by 15:00 on Tuesday 19 September.

  While this timetable was not issued as an explicit operational requirement, the idea of a forty-eight-hour deadline appears to have originated at the meeting between Montgomery and Browning in the former’s caravan at 21st Army Group HQ on 9 September; Montgomery allegedly announced that the operation should be achievable within two days, while Browning allegedly suggested that the airborne force could hold on for four.47 More pertinently, a primary source simultaneously explains why no specific timetable has been found and indicates the likely source of the forty-eight-hour deadline: ‘…in a discussion before the operation, General Dempsey said that he expected to reach Arnhem by D+2…No latest date was fixed for a junction between 30 Corps and 1 Airborne Div and dates were not discussed with General Horrocks.’48 This also accords with Browning receiving his orders to proceed with MARKET from Dempsey, rather than Montgomery, as popularly but erroneously assumed.49 Horrocks may not have been privy to these discussions but he nonetheless specifically stated that his intent was to reach Arnhem ‘if possible in forty-eight hours’ during the Bourg Leopold briefing.50 The timings necessary to achieve this deadline also permeated down the chain at least as far as the 5th Guards Armoured Brigade. Its commanding officer personally signed a declaration of future operations on 15 September which read ‘Intention: To reach the area north of Eindhoven 4321 before dark on 17th September in preparation for advance at first light on the following day, 18th September’. This intention was repeated and signed again the following day.51 Thus while it is true that the forty-eight-hour relief deadline was not issued explicitly, it is clear that it emanated from the top and more importantly, was disseminated to and accepted by virtually all parties and command levels involved in MARKET GARDEN.

  It is unclear how long the Bourg Leopold briefing took; according to Lieutenant-Colonel Curtis D. Renfro, a liaison officer from the 101st Airborne Division, Horrocks talked for an hour.52 Details may also have been disseminated to subordinate formations and units beforehand, given that Lieutenant Wilson and the 3rd Irish Guards appear to have been briefed on their part in Operation GARDEN while the Bourg Leopold briefing was still underway. The briefing placed the Irish Guards Group at the very forefront of the attack, a rather curious choice given that the infantry component had only been out of the line for less than forty-eight hours, and was presumably due to the atypical Guards habit of permanently grouping tank and infantry units by regimental affiliation. The reaction of the 3rd Iris
h Guards to being assigned the spearhead of the new advance was not recorded.53 Interestingly and perhaps significantly, the presence of Allied airborne troops along the GARDEN route only appears to have been seen as an incidental factor in either briefing as related, which concentrated on simply reaching the assigned crossing points. It is also curious that Horrocks waited four days to reveal GARDEN officially to his subordinate commanders, although the details may have been disseminated twenty-four hours earlier via 30 Corps’ Operation Instructions No. 24, issued on 15 September.54 Horrocks may therefore have been waiting for Montgomery’s official authorisation for the Operation, which did not appear until 14 September as part of a wide-ranging directive.55

  Horrocks’ reticence nonetheless remains curious because the prevailing circumstances and sheer scale of GARDEN required every possible minute of preparation time; the initial attack involved gathering and marshalling in the region of 20,000 assorted vehicles, for example.56 Furthermore, future events strongly suggest that 30 Corps was not fully ready to launch GARDEN on 17 September, and while this would appear to have been largely due to the fight across the Albert and Maas-Escaut Canals, Horrocks’ tardiness may nonetheless have also sacrificed valuable preparation time. The root of the problem was likely Horrocks’ physical condition; some observers at the Bourg Leopold briefing noted that he looked unwell, which was indeed the case. Horrocks had been seriously wounded in a Luftwaffe strafing attack near Bizerte in Tunisia on 24 June 1943, and his wounds required multiple operations and over a year of recuperation.57 At that point in his rehabilitation Horrocks approached Field Marshal Sir Alan Brooke, the Chief of Imperial General Staff, in person and requested another corps level command.58 His case was doubtless assisted by his status as a long-standing Montgomery protégé, having commanded a battalion and then a brigade in the latter’s 3rd Division in the retreat to Dunkirk in 1940. Whatever the rationale, Horrocks was given command of 30 Corps at the beginning of August 1944, although his recovery does not appear to have been complete given that he was suffering ‘periodic bouts of high temperature and sickness’ that incapacitated him for several days at the end of August 1944.59 This would certainly explain why Horrocks’ approach to the preparations for Operation GARDEN appears to be somewhat casual, and indeed his subsequent behaviour.

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  While all this was going on in Holland, the airborne troops tasked to carry out Operation MARKET were busy recovering from the cancellation of Operation COMET on 10 September. Unit responses varied. The 1st Parachute Battalion, based at Grimsthorpe Castle and Bourne in Lincolnshire, remained on ‘instant standby’ until 14 September when all ranks were granted thirty-six hours’ leave.60 Fourteen miles to the east at Spalding, the 3rd Parachute Battalion were released on thirty-six hours’ leave on the day the cancellation was announced, and then spent the period 12 to 15 September assisting local farmers, presumably with harvesting.61 The 11th Parachute Battalion, based forty miles to the north-west at Melton Mowbray in Leicestershire, were allowed out of camp on Tuesday 12 September, and then despatched on forty-eight hours’ leave the following day. It is unclear whether its running mate, 156 Parachute Battalion, also billeted at Melton Mowbray, was allowed leave after being stood down from COMET on 10 September.62 The pattern was similar in the US formations. According to Sergeant George Kosimaki, a radio operator with the 101st Airborne Divisions HQ, twenty-four-hour passes were cancelled on 11 September, and the rank and file were aware that an operation was in the offing as the Divisional ‘War Room’ was placed under strict guard. Leave appears to have been granted the following day, and football practice with newly arrived equipment was arranged for the day after that, Wednesday 13 September.63

  Meanwhile the Airborne Division commanders, accompanied by key staff members, reconvened at Browning’s 1st British Airborne Corps HQ at Moor Park on the morning of Thursday 14 September. All three commanders had spent the days after the conferences on 10 and 11 September drawing up their detailed operational plans and conferring with staff and subordinate commanders, and they now presented their work to Browning and their opposite numbers. Major-General Maxwell D. Taylor, the 101st Airborne Division’s commander, began the briefback. The most northerly of the Division’s objectives, the four road and rail bridges across the Willems Canal and River Aa at Veghel, were assigned to Colonel Howard R. Johnson’s 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment and utilised two drop zones (DZs). The larger, dubbed DZ A, was located just over two miles south-west of Veghel and was initially intended to house the entire Regiment. This was amended after Lieutenant-Colonel Harry W. O. Kinnard suggested inserting part of the landing force closer to the bridges over the River Aa in order to sidestep possible resistance on the western edge of Veghel. Kinnard’s 1st Battalion was thus assigned its own DZ dubbed A-1 between the Aa and Willems Canal, adjacent to the railway line running a mile or so north of Veghel. The 501st Regiment’s 3rd Battalion, commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel Julian Ewell, was tasked to secure the town of Eerde just west of DZ A, and to block the Veghel-St. Oedenrode road just to the east while Lieutenant-Colonel Robert A. Ballard’s 2nd Battalion moved straight for the two bridges over the Willems Canal in the western outskirts of Veghel.

  The remainder of the 101st Airborne Division was to land on a large combined drop and landing zone seven miles south-west of Veghel. The southern third of the area, codenamed DZ C, was assigned to Colonel Robert F. Sink’s 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment. The latter’s mission was to secure the three bridges over the Wilhelmina Canal just south of Son before moving on to secure Eindhoven. To this end Major James L. La Prade’s 1st Battalion was tasked to move rapidly through the Zonsche Forest that bordered the landing area, along the north bank of the Wilhelmina Canal and to seize the three bridges. Lieutenant-Colonel Robert L. Strayer’s 2nd Battalion was tasked to advance through Son and approach the bridges from the north, while Lieutenant-Colonel Oliver M. Horton’s 3rd Battalion brought up the rear as Regimental reserve. DZ B, the northern third of the landing area, was assigned to Colonel John H. Michaelis’ 502nd Parachute Infantry Regiment. His 1st Battalion, commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel Patrick C. Cassidy, was tasked to move north-east and secure the four bridges across the River Dommel in St. Oedenrode while the 2nd and 3rd Battalions, commanded by Lieutenant-Colonels Steve A. Chappuis and Robert G. Cole respectively, protected the landing area and acted as Division reserve. The exception was Captain Robert E. Jones’ Company H from the 3rd Battalion, which was tasked to move south-west and secure the road and rail bridges across the Wilhelmina Canal just south of Best, reinforced with a platoon drawn from Company C and a detachment from the 326th Airborne Engineer Battalion. The Best bridges were added to the 101st Airborne’s list of objectives by Major-General Taylor despite British lack of interest, and it is unclear whether the initiative figured in the 14 September briefback or whether 30 Corps were informed.64 The central third of the landing area, designated Landing Zone (LZ) W, was reserved for seventy Waco CG4 gliders carrying elements of Lieutenant-Colonel Harry W. Elkins’ 377th Parachute Field Artillery Battalion. The glider lift was scheduled to arrive an hour after the parachute landing.

  Brigadier-General James Gavin’s plan for the 82nd Airborne Division ended up being a little more complicated. The task of securing the Division’s most westerly objective, the nine-span 1,800-foot bridge across the River Maas in Grave, appears to have been allocated to the 2nd and 3rd Battalion of Colonel Reuben H. Tucker’s 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment, commanded by Majors Edward M. Wellems and Julian A. Cook respectively. In order to seize both ends of the bridge simultaneously, the 2nd Battalion’s Company E was to be delivered to a small DZ on the western bank of the River Maas, while the remainder of the two Battalions used the large Regimental DZ O between the Maas and the Maas-Waal Canal to the north-east of Grave. Tucker’s 1st Battalion, commanded by Major Willard E. Harrison, was to secure crossings over the Maas-Waal Canal, just east of DZ O. These were located, running south to north, near Molenhoek, Malden and Ha
tert.65 A fourth crossing farther north at Honinghutie, a substantial combined road and rail structure, was not included in the 82nd Airborne Division’s list of objectives; Gavin listed it as a provisional additional objective to be secured jointly by the 504th and Colonel Roy E. Lindquist’s 508th Parachute Infantry Regiments to deal with, dependent upon ‘the development of the fight once the landings were accomplished’.66 Gavin’s decision was presumably based on a desire to avoid stretching his units too thinly, and justified by the fact that the MARKET mission orders only specified seizure of ‘at least one’ of the four crossings.67 The 82nd Airborne Division’s other primary mission was the seizure of the major road and rail bridges that spanned the River Waal in the northern outskirts of Nijmegen.