It has been claimed that the late start time was due to 30 Corps’ HQ not being informed that MARKET was going ahead until 13:00 on 17 September, when the transports carrying the 101st Airborne Division were actually passing over Horrocks’ forward HQ near the Neerpelt bridgehead.5 This claim is presumably based in part on the Operation Order issued by 30 Corps HQ on 15 September, which did not specify a start time for GARDEN but instead referred to a generic ‘Z Hour’ throughout; the latter was defined as the ‘time leading troops of divisions taking part in Operation Garden will advance…Z Hour is likely to be the same as H Hour [the beginning of the MARKET landings] and will in any case not be earlier [original emphasis]. The exact time of Z will be notified later.’6 The problem with this is that the official records show that it is highly unlikely that Horrocks was unaware that MARKET was going ahead well before 13:00 on 17 September. 30 Corps HQ signal logs note a request for confirmation that MARKET had been launched as arranged being transmitted at 10:15 and attracting a rapid affirmative response7 and the news reached the 2nd Irish Guards, the unit selected to spearhead GARDEN, at 12:00.8 In fact, Z Hour appears to have been fixed for 14:30 at least twenty-four hours before GARDEN commenced, and possibly earlier than that. The 3rd Irish Guards was informed of that start time at an Orders Group during the morning of Saturday 16 September, in accordance with the Guards Armoured Division’s allotted tasks and timings.9 These specifically ordered the lead formation to reach the crossing over the Wilhelmina Canal at Son before dark on 17 September. Both order and intent were clearly understood and explicitly acknowledged by 5th Guards Armoured Brigade on 15 September and again the following day by the Brigade commander, Brigadier Norman Gwatkin. Gwatkin 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’. A further signed entry in the Brigade War Diary for 16 September reads ‘5 Guards Armoured will advance to Eindhoven 4218 on D Day preparatory to an advance to the area NUNSPEET on D+1.’10 The simple fact was that it was not feasible to marshal and keep forces of the scale committed to GARDEN hanging on the start line without a definite start time. It is therefore likely that Horrocks deliberately selected 14:30 as the latest possible time to launch the Operation in order to offset the relatively short lead time, even though it militated against the tight schedule for the advance, and that he did so because 30 Corps was still completing preparations for the attack when MARKET commenced.
This does not appear to have been the case with the very tip of the spear, given that the Irish Guards Group was formed up ready to move by 13:15 on 17 September, having received confirmation that GARDEN was going ahead at 12:00.11 Any problems likely manifested themselves farther down the line, given that GARDEN involved marshalling 20,000 assorted vehicles with all the traffic control problems inherent in deploying a force of that scale on a restricted road net, exacerbated by the narrow attack frontage. The Guards Armoured Division alone deployed 3,124 vehicles for the initial attack, for example.12 Apart from the 5th Guards Armoured Brigade all the Guards Armoured Division’s constituent and attached units were specifically forbidden to move from their pre-battle harbour areas without explicit authorisation from Division HQ.13 Marshalling the 9,000-strong bridging train may have been especially problematic, given that it was assembled from units drawn from all across the North-West European theatre; in addition to 30 Corps’ organic and division-level Engineer assets, this host included four Army-level formations, two of them Canadian, two GHQ formations and two Mechanical Equipment Platoons. Some elements were only just arriving in the area of Bourg Leopold as GARDEN commenced. The 23rd Field Company Royal Canadian Engineers (RCE) only arrived in the area at 03:00 on 17 September after a two-day, 200-mile drive from St. Omer in the Pas de Calais for instance, and did not link up with other Canadian units slated to participate in GARDEN until 10:40, in the area of Hechtel.14 The Engineer contingent nevertheless deployed sufficient materiel to bridge all the water obstacles on the GARDEN line of advance twice over, with an additional 2,000 truckloads of equipment being cached at Bourg Leopold, where the Engineer units initially concentrated. The bridging train was divided into twenty individual columns, each organised and equipped to meet a variety of specific contingencies and allotted codenames and convoy serial identification to permit them to be despatched north along the traffic control system if and when required.15
Whatever its timings and their ramifications, the basic concept for 30 Corps’ plan for Operation GARDEN was relatively straightforward. The Guards Armoured Division was given responsibility for leading the advance north, and to this end moved with six days’ rations to hand, and with each vehicle carrying sufficient extra fuel to move a further 250 miles after its integral fuel tanks had run dry.16 The Guards were to be trailed by the 43rd Division, accompanied by the bridging train. In the event that any of the bridges at the major crossings was destroyed before it could be secured by the airborne troops, the Guards Armoured Division was tasked to move outward and secure the flanks of the corridor while the 43rd Division moved forward to cover the bridging operation, after which the Guards would resume the advance north. Once the Guards Armoured Division reached Arnhem the 43rd Division was to take over the advance, push across the River Ijssel and on to Deventer and Zutphen, while the 50th Division followed on as the Corps’ reserve.17 The axis of the initial break-out from the Neerpelt bridgehead was the Hasselt-Eindhoven highway, and the attack was to be preceded by a preparatory artillery barrage from ten Field and three Medium Royal Artillery Regiments, supported by a Heavy Battery and a Heavy Anti-Aircraft Regiment firing in the ground role, totalling around 350 guns in all. The barrage was to begin at 13:55 with all guns putting down counter-battery fire until 14:15, at which point the ten Field Regiments were to switch to delivering concentrated fire on the approaches to Valkenswaard. At 14:25 the 50th Division’s heavy mortars were to thicken the barrage with a ten-minute concentration on known enemy locations, and two minutes later the Field Regiments were to shift their fire again, this time to a point 1,000 yards ahead of the Start Line, extending 1,000 yards either side of the axis of advance. The barrage was to remain static for the two minutes until 14:30 and then begin moving forward at a rate of 200 yards per minute until 14:50, at which point responsibility for fire support was to switch to eleven squadrons of Hawker Typhoon fighter-bombers from the RAF’s 2nd Tactical Air Force (TAF).18 These were to be controlled by specialist RAF Forward Air Control teams codenamed TENTACLES, which linked the Army ground units with the close-support aircraft via radio-equipped ‘Control Cars’ travelling with the advance, co-ordinated by RAF Forward Control Posts (FCPs) attached to Corps-level HQs.19 For the initial phase of GARDEN Guards Armoured Division appears to have been allotted three TENTACLES, one travelling initially with the 5th Guards Armoured Brigade, one with 32 Guards Brigade and one with Division HQ, while 30 Corps HQ maintained a single co-ordinating FCP.20
Responsibility for the initial break out from the Neerpelt bridgehead was allotted to the 5th Guards Armoured Brigade. Brigadier Gwatkin in turn delegated the initial assault to the tanks and infantry of the Irish Guards Group, consisting of the 2nd Irish Guards and 3rd Irish Guards. The Irish Guards’ initial objective was the town of Valkenswaard, approximately seven miles from the Start Line, but this entailed crossing a bridge across the River Dommel, which bisected the Hasselt-Eindhoven highway a mile or so short of Valkenswaard. A hasty reconnaissance by Lieutenant A. R. J. Buchanan-Jardine from the 2nd Household Cavalry had confirmed that the bridge was intact on 11 September.21 The Shermans of the 2nd Irish Guards’ No. 3 Squadron were therefore tasked to secure the bridge, accompanied by two Troops from the 2nd Household Cavalry and a reconnaissance party from 14 Field Squadron RE equipped with a heavy bulldozer as a contingency measure. No. 3 Squadron’s Shermans were to be followed by the tanks of Nos. 1 and 2 Squadrons in that order, carrying
infantry from the 3rd Irish Guards’ Nos. 1 and 3 Companies respectively on their decks, with No. 2 Company bringing up the rear in its organic troop-carrying vehicles.22 Once No. 3 Squadron and its attachments had secured the Dommel bridge the remainder of the Group was to pass through, clear Valkenswaard and hand the town over to the 1st Dorsets and the 2nd Devonshires, which had been detached from the 50th Division’s 231 Infantry Brigade to assist in the opening phase of GARDEN. The Irish Guards Group was then to push on to Eindhoven and link up with the elements of the US 101st Airborne Division holding the crossings over the Wilhelmina Canal north of the city. The advance from Valkenswaard was also to widen into two separate axes. The 5th Guards Armoured Brigade were assigned to continue advancing north along the main highway through the small town of Aalst and into Eindhoven from the south, while 32 Guards Brigade looped to the right along subsidiary routes to enter the city from the east.23 Both were scheduled to link up with the US airborne troops by nightfall, which occurred at approximately 19:30.24
The German units screening the Neerpelt bridgehead were less numerous and less well equipped than the attacking Guards Armoured Division. Having suffered considerable loss during the failed counter-attack on 14 September, Kampfgruppe Walther had remained fairly passive with the abortive attempt to destroy the bridge by Kriegsmarine combat swimmers with a 500-kilogram sea mine on 15 September being a notable exception.25 Oberst Walther was ordered to resume attacking the bridgehead by 1 Fallschirmjäger Armee HQ during the evening of 16 September, but unwilling to squander his strength in the face of imminent attack, Walther compromised by authorising a few local probes. It is unclear if these began before Operation GARDEN commenced.26 The sector of the bridgehead to the west of the Hasselt-Eindhoven road was covered by Oberstleutnant Friedrich von der Heydte’s Fallschirmjäger Regiment 6, while the sector to the east was held by two battalions drawn from SS Panzergrenadier Regiments 19 and 21 commanded by Hauptsturmführer Dr Karl Segler and Hauptsturmführer Friedrich Richter respectively; the SS units were part of Kampfgruppe Heinke which had been despatched south by II SS Panzerkorps on 10 September. The central sector, straddling the Eindhoven road and thus the boundary between the Fallschirmjäger and SS contingents was assigned to Fallschirmjäger Ausbildungs Regiment Hoffmann and Luftwaffe Strafbataillon 6, the former a replacement training unit commanded by Oberstleutnant Helmuth von Hoffmann and the latter a penal unit drafted in from Italy. In all, the Germans could muster approximately ten understrength infantry battalions to oppose any Allied advance out of the Neerpelt bridgehead, supported by a handful of towed anti-tank guns and around a dozen Jagdpanzer IV tank destroyers from Hauptsturmführer Franz Roestel’s SS Panzerjäger Abteilung 10. The latter were billeted in the village of Borkel-en-Schaft, which was located in a wooded area roughly halfway between the front line and Eindhoven and just east of the Hasselt-Eindhoven road.27
Despite their titles Fallschirmjäger Ausbildungs Regiment Hoffmann and Luftwaffe Strafbataillon 6 both contained a large proportion of partially trained Luftwaffe ground personnel, and the road blocking force had to be reinforced with up to a company of combat engineers drawn from SS Panzer Pionier Abteilung 10. The reinforcement proved to be a wise precaution as the commander of Luftwaffe Strafbataillon 6, a Major Veith, was killed by British artillery fire on 16 September along with his adjutant. At around the same time Major Helmut Kerutt’s I Bataillon Fallschirmjäger Ausbildungs Regiment Hoffmann was redeployed into a reserve defensive position to the rear of the main line. Kerutt’s Bataillon was joined by his Regiment’s anti-tank company, commanded by a Hauptmann Brockes and equipped with eight or possibly nine towed guns. These may have been 75mm PaK 40 pieces, although some sources refer to them being captured and refurbished Soviet pieces, designated 7.62 PaK 36(r) in German service.28 Whatever their provenance, Brockes lacked all-terrain prime movers capable of moving his guns over the boggy ground that flanked the Hasselt-Eindhoven road, which obliged their crews to site them where they could be positioned by wheeled vehicles and muscle power. This restricted them to positions a few metres off the main road at best. Major Kerutt also organised a tank ambush position as a backstop 2,500 metres behind the front line, manned by thirty men from his HQ defence platoon. The ambush consisted of a number of slit trenches with overhead cover for use by men armed with disposable Panzerfaust rocket launchers spaced along the sides of the road. The concealed trenches were supported by machine-gun positions farther out, which were tasked to protect the Panzerfaust operators from Allied infantry and to deal with any tank crews attempting to abandon their vehicles.29
The GARDEN artillery bombardment commenced on schedule at 13:55 on Sunday 17 September 1944, accompanied by bombing from Allied medium bombers along the line of the Eindhoven road as far as Valkenswaard. The bombs also enveloped Borkel, where Hauptsturmführer Franz Roestel’s detachment of Jagdpanzer IV tank destroyers from SS Panzerjäger Abteilung 10 was billeted, although it is unclear whether any of the vehicles were damaged.30 The 2nd Devons and 2nd Irish Guards crossed the start line at 14:35 led by Lieutenant D. K. F. Heathcote’s Sherman, which closed to within 300 yards of the barrage and followed it forward into the clouds of smoke and dust kicked up by the shelling.31 Initially there was little or no resistance, for the barrage had effectively suppressed the German defenders and knocked out all of Hauptmann Brockes’ anti-tank guns deployed in the forward area, killing many of their crewmen in the process. The dead included Brockes himself, killed by a direct hit on the house commandeered for his HQ, possibly by one of the 50th Division’s 4.2-inch mortars. The battery of 105mm guns from SS Panzer Artillerie Regiment 10 stationed behind the Fallschirmjäger positions was also hit repeatedly and badly damaged.32
The lack of opposition continued for the ten minutes or so it took for the advance to reach Major Kerutt’s newly established reserve defensive position, which had escaped the bombardment relatively lightly because it was targeted upon known German locations. Kerutt had been absent at 1 Fallschirmjäger Armee HQ and only arrived back at his command post as the British tanks approached, but his men manning the tank ambush displayed admirable discipline by allowing most of No. 3 Squadron’s Shermans to pass before springing the trap on the rear of the Squadron and the lead vehicles of the following No. 1 Squadron. Nine Shermans and possibly two armoured cars were knocked out in the first two minutes of the action, killing eight men from the 2nd Irish Guards and wounding several more. Some tank crewmen may also have been captured, given that one account refers to some of Kerutt’s men rallying to his HQ with prisoners.33 The rising pillars of greasy black smoke from the knocked-out vehicles and sound of the subsequent battle were obvious to Lieutenant Wilson and his Platoon bringing up the rear of the Irish Guards Group column, despite the ongoing artillery barrage.34 The surviving tanks from Nos. 3 and 1 Squadrons immediately assumed defensive positions as best they could and laid down fire on the road verges and likely enemy locations while the infantry they were carrying dismounted and set about clearing the German positions. They were assisted by 2nd TAF fighter bombers called in by the TENTACLE accompanying the 2nd Irish Guards HQ. In all, eleven Squadrons of Typhoons from RAF No. 83 Group carried out 116 sorties through the afternoon from 15:12. The margin for error was very small, given that the Typhoons were attacking targets within 200 yards of the lead Guards vehicles and thirty yards either side of the road.35 In some instances the Typhoons were firing their rockets from behind the 3rd Irish Guards’ No. 2 Company at the tail end of the Irish Guards column, and some of the aerial fire reportedly struck the Guards’ leading elements.36
The fighting along the road was intense. Kerutt’s adjutant, Leutnant Heinz Volz, referred to his unit losing a large number of killed and missing, some crushed in their slit trenches by tank tracks.37 Others appear to have decided that discretion was the better part of valour, given that some 250 German prisoners had been captured by 15:30. Around 100 of these were taken by the 3rd Irish Guards, and Lieutenant Wilson reported unescorted prisoners
coming down the road from the front with the ‘curious shambling gait of the physically frightened’, although sympathy had its limits: Wilson also referred to a group of prisoners sitting in a ditch next to a Regimental Aid Post coming close to being ‘murdered where they sat’ after sniggering at a ‘bewildered Devonshire soldier nursing a bloodsoaked hand’.38 The remaining prisoners appear to have been taken by the 2nd Devons which, after moving past the rear of the Irish Guards Group, became engaged in a protracted fight to clear a wooded area on the east side of the road.39 The fighting also involved some of Roestel’s eight surviving Jagdpanzer IVs, which used the dense vegetation flanking the road north of Kerutt’s ambush site as concealment for hit-and-run attacks on the advancing Irish Guards tanks.40 It is unclear if they inflicted any casualties on the advancing Guards vehicles, but the 2nd Irish Guards War Diary referred to a Lance-Sergeant Cowan knocking out a German self-propelled gun and then forcing its crew to point out other targets from the rear deck of his Sherman.41 By just after 16:00 No. 3 Squadron had reached the edge of 300 yards of open ground leading to the Dommel bridge and the ten RA Field Regiments were requested to repeat the final stage of the artillery barrage for cover. However, the 2nd Irish Guards lead elements were within 200 yards of the barrage line, and a 500-yard withdrawal was deemed necessary for safety reasons if the barrage were to include the edge of the wood overlooking the road from the west. Although the road was two lanes in width at this point, turning the vehicles was a time-consuming process, not least because some sections of the road verge were mined; turning the bulldozer from 14 Field Squadron RE appears to have been especially problematic. The 500-yard withdrawal thus took an hour-and-a-half to complete. This meant the advance and renewed barrage, of twenty minutes’ duration and again lifting 200 yards per minute, was not able to commence until 17:39. After an additional five-minute artillery concentration, No. 3 Squadron finally reached the bridge, which was intact and, following inspection by the Engineers, capable of supporting tanks. The Squadron then pushed some of its Shermans across to the north bank of the Dommel and the bridge was declared secured at 18:30.42
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