Arnhem
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These were very isolated incidents however and like the glider landings, the parachute drop was an impressive achievement in its own right. By 14:08, eighteen minutes after the drop commenced, 2,278 of a planned 2,283 paratroopers were down on DZ X, virtually all of them equipped and fit to fight. An unusual exception was Sapper Tam Hepburn from the 1st Parachute Squadron RE. Having unwisely partaken in a badly cooked fry-up and several bottles of Guinness in his Donington billet the previous night, he suffered from griping bowels throughout the fly-in: ‘When I was down on the DZ I dropped my parachute and my trousers in almost the same movement and deposited the first Airborne spoor in the Netherlands.’75
Renkum Heath was a hive of activity as the paratroopers shed their parachute harnesses, unsheathed and prepared their weapons and set about recovering containers or making their way to their unit RVs, which were marked with coloured smoke along the eastern side of the DZ. The atmosphere was again akin to an exercise, with the paratroopers arguably in more danger from stray kitbags than the desultory German small-arms fire. As one participant put it, ‘It was what we called a YMCA drop – just like an exercise, with the YMCA canteen wagon waiting at the end.’76 Not everyone was carried away by the relaxed atmosphere, however. As he hurried toward his Battalion rally point Private Sims had an uncomfortable experience: ‘Something glinted in the sun not thirty yards away: it was a rifle levelled straight at me. To my relief a very cockney voice shouted “What Battalion mate?” “Second,” I croaked. “Over to your right about two hundred yards. OK?” “Thanks a lot,” I shouted, “but who are you?” “Independent Company. We’re holding the DZ until you’re all off it.’77 Lieutenant Eastwood, the unidentified Pathfinder’s Platoon commander, considered the landing more successful than any of the exercises he had participated in, not least because he was able to locate the 1st Parachute Brigade’s commander, Brigadier Lathbury, without difficulty and obtain permission to withdraw his Platoon to the Independent Company RV at Reijers Camp Farm.78
Ten miles to the south, the two C-47s carrying the 82nd Airborne Division’s pathfinders dropped their passengers on the Division’s landing zones at 12:47. Theodorus Roelofs, a nineteen-year-old Dutchman hiding from the Germans in the family farm near Grave, assisted one group in ascertaining their location; on discovering he spoke some English, Roelofs was recruited as an interpreter and watched in fascination as the Pathfinders took just minutes to mark out the DZ for the 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment’s DZ with coloured panels spelling out the letter O and purple smoke markers.79 Having lost one C-47 over Schouwen Island, the vanguard of the 479 C-47s from the US 50th and 52nd Troop Carrier Wings carrying the 82nd Airborne Division arrived over the landing area exactly on schedule at 13:00. The lead formation delivered Colonel William E. Ekman’s 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment onto DZ N just south of Groesbeek followed by Lieutenant-Colonel Edwin A. Bedell’s 307th Airborne Engineer Battalion, making its first jump as a complete unit, at 13:20. Bedell’s engineers were followed fifteen minutes later by another first, as the final parachute serials delivered 544 men, twelve 75mm Pack Howitzers and 700 rounds of ammunition from Lieutenant-Colonel Wilbur Griffiths’ 376th Parachute Artillery Battalion, the first time that a US field artillery unit had been dropped accurately and in one location.80 Ekman’s Regiment was accompanied by Brigadier-General Gavin who, according to the newly established US Airborne ethos, jumped first from an aircraft in one of the leading serials. Gavin jumped with the same load of ammunition and kit as his men including a Garand M1 rifle, and his serial may well have been flying under the recommended jump height given his subsequent account: ‘Although we seemed quite close to the ground, we went out without a second’s delay, and we seemed to hit the ground almost at once. Heavily laden with ammunition, weapons, grenades, I had a hard landing whilst the parachute was still oscillating.’ Gavin came down near the 307th Engineer Battalion and his landing was indeed hard, for although he did not mention it in his memoir or apparently at the time, the landing damaged several vertebrae and Gavin spent the remainder of the battle in pain. He also found himself under German small-arms fire immediately on landing. Captain William H. Johnson from the Engineers reported that there were a number of Germans in the wood skirting the DZ and that he had killed two personally. Undeterred, Gavin set off for his planned Command Post (CP) location, which lay a mile or so away, initially accompanied by the Engineers but latterly with just his Dutch liaison officer, Captain Arie Bestebreurtje. The CP was reached around an hour after landing, after a brief firefight with a German machine-gun team that ended with Captain Bestebreurtje killing the German gunner with a head shot, and contacting the Dutch Resistance for a situation report via the public telephone system in a house en route.81
Next in at 13:13 was Colonel Reuben H. Tucker’s 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment, carried in two ninety-strong serials from the 315th Troop Carrier Group.82 The C-47s delivered the bulk of the Regiment’s 1,240 paratroopers and 473 Parapacks to DZ O, just north-east of Grave between the River Maas and the Maas-Waal Canal; eleven C-47s were tasked to deliver Company E from the 2nd Battalion to a small subsidiary DZ on the west bank of the River Maas to secure the western end of the 1,800-foot Grave bridge.83 The main drop onto DZ O was extremely accurate, as attested by Captain T. Moffatt Burriss, commanding the 3rd Battalion’s Company I: ‘If ever we made a perfect jump, this was it. All of my company landed exactly on the drop zone. I touched down within a few feet of the assembly point. Within one hour, my entire company was assembled with all equipment and no injuries…None of our practice jumps had ever gone so well.’84 Unfortunately, this did not apply to the jump onto the supplementary DZ west of the River Maas. It is unclear if the subsidiary DZ was marked by Pathfinders, but ten of the eleven C-47s carrying Company E despatched their sticks up to 1,200 yards short when, for reasons that remain unclear, the Jumpmaster in the lead aircraft pre-empted the green light and ordered his stick to jump, prompting nine of the trailing aircraft to follow suit.85 The exception was the eleventh C-47 carrying Lieutenant John S. Thompson’s stick, where the Jumpmaster waited for the green light. However, noting that the aircraft was over a group of buildings Thompson went against all his training and paused for a few seconds until over open fields before leading his stick out of the door. Fortuitously, the pause delivered Thompson and his stick just 600 yards or so from the western end of the Grave bridge.86
The third of the 82nd Airborne’s parachute increments, Colonel Roy E. Lindquist’s 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment, began jumping onto DZ T, roughly midway between Groesbeek and Wyler, at 13:28.87 The centre of the 1st Battalion’s assembly point, which was marked with red smoke and markers, was relocated slightly after a wooded area on the issued maps and proved to be non-existent; the individual companies rallied to prearranged locations centred on the Battalion marker guided by whistle blasts, bugle calls and, in the case of Company B, a taxi horn liberated in Normandy.88 Lieutenant-Colonel Louis G. Mendez’s 3rd Battalion was dropped a mile north of DZ T but this did not seriously impinge on the Regiment’s cohesion and there was no resistance apart from a few flak crews and German labour troops in the woods bordering the DZ.89 However, two sticks from the 1st Battalion’s Company A, totalling twenty-two men led by 1st Lieutenant Rex G. Combs, received the green jump light forty-five seconds late and were delivered 2,500 yards astray on the wrong side of the German border near Wyler. Regaining the safety of the Divisional perimeter involved an extended skirmish lasting several hours, during which the paratroopers killed an estimated twenty-one Germans and took a further fifty-nine prisoner. Lieutenant Combs was subsequently awarded the Silver Star for his part in the action.90 Overall the 82nd Airborne Division’s parachute landing was, like that of the British a few miles to the north, overwhelmingly successful. Only a single C-47 had been lost on the fly-in, and 7,277 paratroopers had been delivered in under thirty minutes. Two per cent of the troops, equating to approximately 150 men, sustained landing injuries, of which two were fatal
: one man died when his parachute malfunctioned, and the other was killed when struck by a stray Parapack after landing.91
The 82nd Airborne’s glider increment, consisting of fifty Waco CG4s, was scheduled to arrive thirty minutes after the parachute landing on the swiftly renamed LZ N. The gliders carried a total of 209 men, the bulk of them from Lieutenant-Colonel Raymond Singleton’s confusingly named 80th Airborne Anti-Aircraft Battalion equipped with eight 57mm anti-tank guns, Americanised versions of the British 6-Pounder piece; the remaining machines carried nine Jeeps, two trailers and men from Division HQ and other specialist units. Up to two combinations were lost en route, one on crossing the Dutch coast and another south of Vught, but the remaining forty-eight arrived at approximately 13:45. Matters then went awry. For some reason the tugs cut their gliders loose prematurely, and as a result some forty CG4s came down a mile west of the LZ, with only six machines actually reaching it and another landing even farther afield. Two gliders were destroyed on landing and another fourteen suffered varying degrees of damage, but despite this only seven men were injured and all eight guns were recovered in working order. The final arrivals in the 82nd Airborne Division’s area were the gliders carrying Browning’s Forward Corps HQ, reduced to twenty-nine Horsas after three of the latter and all four Waco CG4s either aborted or were lost en route. Browning’s serial began landing on at LZ N at precisely 14:00 and in contrast to the preceding US glider contingent all but one landed squarely on the LZ.92 Colonel Chatterton brought Browning’s Horsa to a stop in a cabbage field only a hundred yards or so from the Reichswald Forest and the German border, after striking a power cable that removed one of the glider’s nose wheels. The Corps commander’s immediate reaction on the Horsa coming to a stop was to exclaim ‘By God, we’re here, George!’ before leaving the glider and running toward the trees in order to become the first British officer to urinate on German territory.93
Things did not run quite so smoothly for the 101st Airborne Division, a further twenty-five miles to the south, from the outset. In a foretaste of what was to confront the main body of the 101st Airborne’s lift, the four C-47s carrying the Division’s Pathfinders flew into intense flak that brought one aircraft down in flames, with only four men managing to jump before the doomed C-47 crashed; the stick may have been tasked to mark DZ A-1 for the 1st Battalion 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment, between the River Aa and Willems Canal a mile or so north of Veghel. The remaining three C-47s delivered their sticks accurately and by 12:54, DZ A, two miles south-west of Veghel, and DZs B and C seven miles to the south-west, just north of the Wilhelmina Canal, had all been successfully marked.94 As we have seen the 424 C-47s carrying the bulk of the 101st Airborne Division’s first lift made landfall near Ostend and then flew east past Antwerp before turning north for the Eindhoven landing area. Two aircraft were lost before the formation began its run-in to the drop point, flying over the Albert Canal, Bourg Leopold and the British front line, which was marked with yellow smoke. Thereafter the transports flew directly into light and medium flak for the final five minutes of the run-in, which damaged a number of C-47s and shot down fourteen. Only two machines went down before all their stick had jumped, and at least two crews sacrificed themselves by maintaining control of their damaged aircraft until all their passengers were away.
Colonel Howard Johnson’s 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment appears to have been the first of the 101st Airborne’s units to jump, with Regimental HQ, 2nd and 3rd Battalions dropping accurately onto DZ A, just west of Veghel, at 13:03, three minutes after the designated H-Hour. Lieutenant-Colonel Harry W. O. Kinnard’s 1st Battalion was not so fortunate, being delivered three miles north-west of DZ A-1 near Kameren on the east side of the River Aa. Kinnard realised his unit had been misdropped before jumping, but the drop was compact to the extent he was obliged to take avoiding action on the way down, and was able to pinpoint his location with the aid of the excited Dutch civilians that gathered on the DZ to greet their liberators. At the main landing area to the south-west, Colonel John H. Michaelis’ 502nd Parachute Infantry Regiment dropped onto DZ B at the northern edge. They were accompanied by Major-General Taylor, who jumped from the C-47 that was carrying the commander of the Regiment’s 1st Battalion, Lieutenant-Colonel Patrick Cassidy. He became engrossed in watching a burning C-47 flying nearby and had to be reminded that the green light was on by Taylor.95 Cassidy’s Battalion was also misdropped, being delivered onto DZ C two miles south of its assembly point, but the remainder of the 502nd was dropped accurately onto the correct DZ. Colonel Robert Sink’s 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment began jumping onto DZ C at 13:25. The drop was again compact and accurate, the only problem being some slight confusion with the 502nd Regiment’s coloured smoke rally signals on the adjacent DZ B. In common with the other MARKET drops, the 101st Airborne’s was an overwhelming success even with the loss of fourteen C-47s, with 6,769 paratroopers being delivered in around thirty minutes. Ninety-five per cent of the supplies and equipment dropped was recovered, and the jump casualty rate was again around two per cent. Three men were killed, one while standing in the door of his aircraft and the others were struck by a crashing C-47 during their descent.96 Overall the drop was the most compact and accurate the Division had ever experienced, including training drops.
As with the 82nd Airborne Division at Nijmegen, the 101st Airborne Division’s glider element came in at around 14:00 onto LZ W, which had been inserted between the two parachute DZs. Of the original increment of seventy Waco CG4s, two aborted over England and another ditched in the Channel. At least two and possibly four came down in friendly territory in Belgium, seven came down behind German lines, two collided over the LZ and up to three crash-landed. Approximately fifty-three landed safely, the lead machine in the first serial with the assistance of Corporal James L. Evans from the Division’s Artillery HQ. A flak hit knocked the pilot unconscious, severely wounded the man in the co-pilot’s seat in the thigh and wounded Evans, but the latter managed to take control while the pilot recovered his senses. He then applied a tourniquet to the wounded man’s thigh while the pilot brought the glider in safely. The glider lift brought in 252 men, thirty-two Jeeps, thirteen trailers and a war correspondent named Walter Cronkite.97
Thus by 14:30, Sunday 17 September 1944 approximately 20,000 Allied airborne soldiers with all their weapons and equipment were on the ground in German-occupied Holland. Operation MARKET had begun, and the Airborne soldiers began the race for their objectives against the German defenders.
6
D-Day 14:00 to 19:00
Sunday 17 September 1944
Like their airborne counterparts in England, the ground units slated for participation in MARKET GARDEN spent the run-up to Sunday 17 September making preparations to resume the advance into Holland. As we have seen, the Guards Armoured Division’s tank component had been withdrawn south of the Meuse-Escaut Canal on 13 September and the 5th Guards Armoured Brigade spent the next two days carrying out routine maintenance before beginning preparations for GARDEN on Saturday 16 September.1 The Division’s infantry component, which had defended the Neerpelt bridgehead against Kampfgruppe Walther’s counter-attack on 14 September, was relieved by the 50th Division the following day. Consequently, while unit briefings for GARDEN had been carried out by 16 September, some Guardsmen were still making their final preparations while the aerial armada carrying the MARKET first lift was flying across southern and eastern England. The 3rd Irish Guards, for example, spent the morning of Sunday 17 September checking weapons and equipment and loading vehicles. Lieutenant Brian Wilson’s platoon truck was so crammed with items ranging from spare ammunition to blankets, some of which had to be lashed to the roof, that ‘it could scarcely take another toothpick on board’. Wilson’s platoon finally climbed aboard their troop-carrying vehicles along with the remainder of the 2nd Company at midday and began the move forward toward the Meuse-Escaut Canal and the GARDEN start line.2
This rather leisurely start was due to 30
Corps setting H-Hour for GARDEN at 14:30 on 17 September. This meant that the ground advance was not scheduled to begin until the whole MARKET first lift was on the ground, and thus sacrificed the element of surprise and, arguably more importantly, several hours of precious daylight; sunrise and sunset occurred at 06:13 and 18:47 OST respectively at Arnhem on the day MARKET GARDEN was launched.3 The mid-afternoon start also militated against the already tight timetable the ground advance was to follow, which envisaged reaching Eindhoven by c.17:00 on Sunday 17 September. To meet this schedule the Guards Armoured Division’s lead elements would have to cover approximately seventeen miles in around two-and-a-half hours. While such a rate of advance might have been feasible for tracked vehicles with a top speed of around twenty miles per hour in an unopposed road march, it was somewhat optimistic for an opposed advance into enemy-held territory, especially as the enemy masking the Neerpelt bridgehead was well aware that something was afoot. 719 Infanterie Division reported continuous vehicle movement on the roads behind the Albert Canal throughout the night of 15-16 September for example, Kampfgruppen Richter and Walther reported seeing lights and heavy vehicles moving on the Hechtel-Valkenswaard road to the south, and Generalleutnant Kurt Chill predicted a major attack once the British had finished concentrating additional armour within the bridgehead.4