Arnhem

by William F Buckingham

  Owing to its position at the head of the stream, the British glider contingent soaked up most of the flak that briefly escaped the attention of the escorting fighter-bombers. A member of the 2nd South Staffords who slid his Horsa side-door closed in response to a burst of flak prompted amusement from his comrades, but a number of men were wounded by shrapnel passing through the glider’s plywood skins and the co-pilot of the 1st Border Horsa flown by Lieutenant-Colonel John Place was struck in the head and killed by a shell splinter. In all, eight Horsas appear to have been lost between the coast and the landing area near Wolfheze. One, carrying a Jeep, trailer and four men from the 1st Airlanding Light Regiment RA disintegrated after a direct hit, and two more, carrying a gun crew from the same unit and a Platoon from the 2nd South Staffords respectively came down near Tilburg, fifty miles south-west of Arnhem; passengers and crews all reached safety over a month later with the assistance of the Dutch Resistance. Two more Horsas carrying 6-Pounder guns from the 1st Airlanding Anti-Tank Battery came down short of the landing area, and rallied late but intact under their own steam.60 Despite the flak and forced landings the formation thundered on, encouraged by frantically waving Dutch civilians, to the final waypoint just north of Eindhoven. There the aircraft and gliders carrying the 1st Airborne Division peeled off to the north toward Arnhem, while the 82nd Airborne Division’s transports continued east toward Grave and Groesbeek.

  The twelve Stirlings carrying the 21st Independent Parachute Company approached the Wolfheze landing area from the west and delivered their sticks of paratroopers at 12:40 precisely. Their arrival was observed by farmer Jan Pennings and a chauffeur named Jan Peelen. The former was returning to Reijers-Camp Farm in the centre of what was to become LZ S, and assumed the Stirlings were going to bomb the railway sidings again until the parachutes appeared. As he was breathlessly breaking the news to his wife, some of the Pathfinders entered his farmyard and after shaking hands, one paratrooper, possibly Private Alan Dawson, informed him that they would be joined by hundreds more within the next half hour. Peelen was struck by the silence of the Pathfinder’s arrival and the disciplined way in which they immediately set about their business.61 3 Platoon, commanded by Lieutenant Hugh Ashmore, was tasked to mark LZ S north of the Arnhem-Utrecht railway line for the 1st Airlanding Brigade. Ashmore’s men shared the LZ with Major Bernard Wilson’s Company HQ section. Nicknamed ‘Boy’ in a wry reference to his years, Wilson was actually the oldest parachutist in the 1st Airborne Division at the age of forty-five. South of the railway line Lieutenant David Eastwood’s 1 Platoon was to mark DZ X for the 1st Parachute Brigade, while the task of marking the adjacent LZ Z for the glider-borne support elements was allotted to Lieutenant Cecil Speller’s 2 Platoon. The Pathfinder’s drop was accurate and without mishap apart from just two landing injuries, although two Pathfinders had German bullets pass through their equipment during their descent. The few German troops in the vicinity, who were apparently caught eating picnic lunches, either fled or surrendered. Major Wilson began MARKET in style by taking the surrender of several overawed Germans immediately on landing, and sixteen prisoners from a horse transport unit were rounded up near the Reijers-Camp Farm, where Wilson set up his HQ. While this was going on other Pathfinders were marking out the drop and landing zones. Large day-glo panels were pegged out to form each zone’s code-letter S, X and Z, along with a letter T to indicate wind direction, augmented by smoke canisters and a EUREKA beacon for each zone. The markers were all offset to counter a slight easterly breeze, in the case of DZ X to prevent parachutists inadvertently drifting into the trees that bordered the DZ, and the EUREKA beacons also had to be set up well clear of the trees to avoid interference. Each of the latter was allotted a small defence group, which remained in place while their Platoon mates withdrew to the woods bordering their landing area. All three zones were marked within the allotted twenty-minute deadline, and after confirming that this was the case Major Wilson ordered the release of a number of carrier pigeons which were supposed to carry word of the unopposed Pathfinder landing back to London. The pigeons initially had other ideas and promptly alighted on the roof of the Reijers-Camp Farm, from where they were eventually dislodged with some well-aimed pebbles.62

  The glider combinations carrying the 1st Airlanding Brigade arrived dead on time at 13:00, approaching the landing area from the south-west at a height of 2,500 feet. After requesting last-minute course corrections from their tugs, the glider pilots pulled the red-topped release lever and cast off on reaching a point approximately two-and-a-half miles from the LZ. The standard operating procedure was to maintain a gentle glide for two to five minutes after casting off while losing a thousand feet or so of altitude, then a steep dive to avoid enemy fire, levelling off for last-minute adjustments and the landing. Staff-Sergeant Miller’s account again gives a good overview of the process:

  The voice of the navigator on the Stirling came over the wire… ‘OK number two, when you’re ready.’ ‘Okay number one, thanks.’ … ‘Good luck number two – out’. My hand slid over the red topped release lever…Height 2,500 feet, exactly right. Airspeed 145 mph. I snapped back the release, and we were free…The airspeed needle slid back, 120, 110, 100 mph. ‘Half flap!’…The glider bucked as the great flaps were forced down into the airstream, the speed dropped to ninety, then eighty mph…the altimeter was unwinding fast; already we were down to just under 1500 feet…The field was very close now. Already I could see several gliders motionless with little figures darting around them…Full flaps! The tops of the trees were rushing up to meet us...My eyes flickered to the airspeed. Eighty mph…I eased back a fraction on the wheel…Now the ground was rushing up…Another glider was coming in alongside…We levelled. The wheels hit once. We bounced about three feet, came down again and held. Tom had already slammed on the brakes…We careered across the ploughed field. Dust rose up and was whipped past the cockpit. The line of trees loomed nearer. I gritted my teeth. The airspeed dropped rapidly, sixty, fifty, forty. The wheels sank into the soft earth which helped us to slow up. I relaxed slightly as we ground to a halt. Before the glider had stopped I turned my head and shouted ‘OK boys’ to the passengers. We were down to fifteen to twenty mph so I released the wheel, tore at my harness release pins and hurled aside the shoulder and leg straps. We had stopped short of the trees by fifty yard.63

  The first glider down on LZ S appears to have been that flown by Lieutenant-Colonel Place with his dead co-pilot, which delivered its load from the 1st Border onto the western section of the LZ. The Horsa flown by Major Ian Toler and Staff-Sergeant Arthur Shackleton, carrying the commander of the 2nd South Staffords, Lieutenant-Derek McCardie, was first down on the eastern sector. The pilots had been ordered to run up to the far end of the LZ in order to free up as much space as possible for the gliders coming in behind, but unfortunately the soil was softer on the eastern side and Major Toler’s Horsa came to an embarrassing stop in the middle of the LZ.64 Not all the Horsas landed on LZ S unscathed. The pilot of one glider carrying men from A Company, 1st Border took the instruction to push well forward on the LZ to the extreme, sliding his machine into a barn in the treeline despite applying the brakes and tearing off the wheels. Nobody was injured in that incident, but another from the same Battalion’s D Company was hit by automatic fire at the edge of the DZ, which wounded Private Ron Stripp in the arm.65 The heavily laden Horsas carrying vehicles and guns were susceptible to less happy outcomes as a matter of course. Sergeant George Barton from the 7th KOSB was travelling in a Horsa carrying a Jeep and 6-Pounder anti-tank gun which crashed into trees and ended up with its tail high in the air. The impact killed one pilot and left the badly injured co-pilot unconscious and trapped in the wreckage, while Barton and his unnamed driver were obliged to jump fourteen feet to the ground.66 Some crashes had a lighter side. Private Alan Dawson from the 21st Independent Company watched a Horsa crash head-on into an isolated tree on LZ S, but on rushing forward to assist what he assumed were casualties he fo
und the glider pilots unscathed and arguing fiercely over the destruction of a thermos flask of coffee.67

  The vast majority of the 1st Airlanding Brigade’s gliders came down safely however, and in a matter of minutes 134 of the scheduled 153 gliders were down on LZ S. After pausing briefly to gather their bearings and unload their Airborne handcarts, the passengers from the Horsas carrying infantry platoons began moving to their rendezvous points (RVs) while avoiding still-landing gliders; as Major Michael Forman, commanding B Company, 7th KOSB recalled, ‘The gliders coming in were whistling past us – terrifying!’ The 1st Airlanding Brigade’s constituent battalions rallied according to their post-landing tasks. As it was to move east and secure DZ Y for use by the 4th Parachute Brigade in the second lift, Lieutenant-Colonel Robert Payton-Reid’s 7th KOSB rallied at an RV at the northern end of LZ S; as an additional rally marker the Battalion piper, a Corporal Ford, played ‘Blue Bonnets over the Border’ for a full twenty minutes. Lieutenant-Colonel McCardie and the understrength 2nd South Staffords rallied to Reijers-Camp Farm in readiness to take over protection of LZ S, while the leaderless 1st Border rallied along the railway line at the southern edge of the landing area in readiness to extend a defensive perimeter around DZ X and LZ Z. Although there was some desultory German fire the general atmosphere was of an exercise, an impression reinforced by the scenery. Captain James Livingstone of the 7th KOSB was struck by its similarity to the area around Woodhall Spa in Lincolnshire, and two young soldiers from the 1st Border decided it was safe and appropriate to pause en route to their RV to brew tea. They were rudely and loudly disabused of this notion by their Battalion Signals Officer Lieutenant Joseph Hardy who ‘managed to keep a very straight and very stern face for the few seconds it took them to get on their way, and as soon as they were out of earshot I allowed myself a good hearty laugh. It was a terrific morale booster to see two kids, who, in a situation of that sort, thought the most important thing was a cup of char.’68

  While the 1st Airlanding Brigade was moving to its various RVs or unloading Jeeps, trailers and guns, the gliders carrying the 1st Airborne Division’s other glider-borne elements were landing on LZ Z. Many of these machines carried heavy loads and as a result most ended up clustered at the top end of the LZ, with a number overshooting altogether. One Horsa carrying troops and a Jeep from HQ Troop 1st Airborne Reconnaissance Squadron ended up wedged high in a stand of trees, fracturing the spine of Troop Sergeant-Major Bill Meadows in the process; Corporal Cyril Belcham was obliged to climb out of the Horsa and down a tree to get help after dosing Meadows with morphine.69 The landing difficulties were compounded by areas of unharvested potatoes making up part of the LZ. Several Horsas’ undercarriages collapsed on digging into the soft soil, and at least one ended up with ‘potatoes flying around the glider like cannon balls’.70 Several machines came to sudden and premature halts with their tails high in the air and their noses dug deep into the soil, sometimes trapping the pilots and frequently rendering their loads unrecoverable. Unloading was not straightforward even in perfect conditions. With the Horsa it involved cutting the control cables with specially stowed wire-cutters, undoing four quick-release bolts, removing the tail section and then driving the Jeep and its trailer or gun down specially made aluminium ramps. Unfortunately, the quick-release bolts frequently failed to quick release, obliging the crew to remove the tail section by brute force using axes and hacksaws. If the Horsa had nosed in, the cargo had to be painstakingly reversed out of the large side door just behind the cockpit. In normal conditions it took an average of thirty minutes to unload a Horsa, and the process took much longer in the latter case.

  The soft soil was a particular problem for the giant Hamilcars with their payload of over seven tons, and four of the thirteen in the first lift suffered serious landing accidents. One crashed into the railway embankment at the north end of LZ Z, shooting its load of two Universal Carriers out through the nose in a spectacular fashion, one came down heavily and broke up on impact, and two each carrying a 17-Pounder anti-tank gun, prime mover and gun crew dug into the soft soil and flipped over onto their backs with potentially fatal results for their pilots and passengers. Lance-Sergeant Sid Fitchett was strapped into the driver’s seat of one vehicle: ‘I was left hanging upside down, my right foot broken and trapped under the brake pedal, my head and face almost covered in what I thought was potato soil, and, to make matters worse, a jerrycan had burst, and petrol was covering me all over.’ He was eventually pulled free after someone snapped the pedal and despatched to a Regimental Aid Post via Jeep. The hazard was even greater for the pilots, as the Hamilcar’s cockpit was located in a blister atop the fuselage and directly over the cargo. The crew of one machine was trapped thus with one pilot dead and the other crushed by the vehicle it was carrying. Despite the frantic efforts of rescuers, which included digging a trench into the cockpit, it took several hours to extricate the injured man from the wreckage, and his injuries were so severe that he died later. In all, eleven men were killed, mostly glider pilots and up to four of them in the Hamilcar accidents. Serious as they were, such incidents were the exception rather than the rule however, and the vast majority of the 284 gliders from the 320 that had departed from the West Country three-and-a-half hours earlier landed safely on LZs S and Z with their cargoes intact in under forty minutes, an impressive achievement.71

  The 1st Parachute Brigade and other parachute elements assigned to land on DZ X in the first lift were the last to arrive. The sticks of paratroopers were given the signal to stand up, carry out last minute checks on their kit bags, weapon valises and neighbour’s parachute before hooking up their static lines approximately twenty minutes from the drop point. The wag behind Private James Sims tugged on his parachute pack and shouted, ‘Blimey, cowboy, this isn’t a chute, it’s an old Army blanket.’72 At five minutes out the red warning light mounted by the door came on, and the stick No. 1 took up position in the door with the USAAF crew chief to one side in readiness to assist or unhook the static line of any refusals. Each man’s right hand was holding the kitbag attached to his right leg with a special strap, with left hand on the shoulder of the man in front. By the time they reached the jump point the C-47s had adopted a tail-high attitude and throttled back to just above stalling speed, between eighty and ninety knots at an altitude of 600 feet, no mean feat for an entire formation to achieve simultaneously under any circumstances. The jump order was then given by switching the red stand-by light located by the exit to green, backed up with a bell in case of malfunction. The order was transmitted to the man in the door, who could not see the light, by a slap on the back from the stick’s No. 2, who also pressed the release for any containers stowed beneath the aircraft before jumping; he was followed as rapidly as possible by the remainder of the stick in order to minimise scattering. It took the average parachutists a mere fifteen seconds to reach the ground, during which he had to ensure his canopy deployed properly, maintain all-round observation to avoid entanglement or collision with other parachutists, release his kitbag on its five yards of cord and execute the appropriate landing drill. Private Sims’ landing was not textbook:

  Lieutenant Woods stood framed in the doorway, the slipstream plucking impatiently at the scrim netting on his helmet. The red light glowed steadily and then the green light winked on. ‘Go!’ The lieutenant vanished. We shuffled along the heaving deck of the Dakota…three…four…five…six…seven…eight…a chap from Maidstone half turned and shouted something with a grin but it was lost in the roar of the engines…nine…ten…eleven…twelve…thirteen…fourteen…the man in front of me hunched over slightly as he went out. Almost before his helmet disappeared I jumped but the slipstream caught me and whirled me around, winding up my rigging lines. I was forced to let go of my kitbag grip in an effort to try and stop the winding up process, for if it reached the canopy I was finished…All around me parachutists were being disgorged from Dakotas and I found myself in the middle of a blizzard of silk. The parachutes were a
ll the colours of the rainbow; it was an unforgettable sight…Luckily the twisting rigging lines had reversed their motion and I spun beneath them as they unwound…[but]…I faced another problem. My right leg hung straight down with the kitbag on it and I was quite unable to reach the grip to pull it up again…We had been told that to land in this way would almost certainly result in a broken leg, and any second I was going to find out. Wham! I hit the deck with a terrific jolt, but all in one piece, and immediately struggled out of my parachute harness, slicing through the cords that held my kitbag to pull out my rifle.73

  Private Sims had jumped from one of seventy-two C-47s from the US 314th Troop Carrier Group based at Saltby in Leicestershire. The transports were arranged in two trailing formations, the first carrying the 2nd Parachute Battalion and a platoon from 250 (Airborne) Light Composite Company RASC, while the second carried the 3rd Parachute Battalion and part of 16 Parachute Field Ambulance. A further seventy-one C-47s from the US 61st Troop Carrier Group from Barkston Heath arrived only six minutes behind schedule, carrying Brigadier Lathbury’s Brigade HQ, the 1st Parachute Battalion, 1st Parachute Squadron RE, the parachute element of Division HQ, the remainder of 16 Parachute Field Ambulance, men from the 1st Reconnaissance Squadron and an Advance Party from the 4th Parachute Brigade. Of this host, five men refused to jump, although one changed his mind after his C-47 went round again. Of the remaining four, a batman from the 1st Airborne Reconnaissance Squadron claimed to be sick and was unhooked by the officer in charge of the stick, an action that saved him from punishment. The other three likely returned to face a court-martial for refusing to obey a lawful order, before being stripped of their Airborne insignia and returned to their units of origin if applicable with the letters LMF (Lack of Moral Fibre) stamped in their paybook. The number of landing injuries is unclear but appears to have been tolerable for an operational jump with full equipment. One sadly unidentified paratrooper, probably a member of the 1st Parachute Battalion, was killed by a parachute malfunction. His demise was witnessed by a number of men from the 1st Border lined out along the railway embankment eating sandwiches from the haversack rations issued on departure: ‘One of the paras came down with a “Roman candle” – chute not fully opened…he hit the ground with a bump about 400 yards away. He was first down in that part…One or two of our lads thought of going along to have a look, but in the end no one went.’74