Arnhem

by William F Buckingham

  Lathbury left the landing area at 15:30 in a Brigade HQ Jeep equipped with a No. 22 radio set, accompanied by his Brigade Intelligence Officer, Captain Willie Taylor, and presumably a signaller.115 Before departing he appears to have decided that the non-appearance of the liaison officer from the 1st Airborne Reconnaissance Squadron meant that the entire unit had failed to arrive in Holland. Rather than attempting to ascertain if this were indeed the case, by despatching a messenger to the Squadron’s RV on the adjacent LZ Z for example, Lathbury instead reportedly radioed the 2nd and 3rd Parachute Battalions with a warning and suggestion that they assemble an alternative coup-de-main force from their organic motorised transport.116 Nothing appears to have come of the idea, although this message may well have been the source of the rumour concerning the Reconnaissance Squadron’s alleged non-arrival that rapidly ran around the landing area and was to subsequently hamstring the coup-de-main effort. Despite having obliged his units to remain immobile for a considerable period Lathbury then set off to urge his units to greater haste in person, beginning with the 2nd Parachute Battalion on the LION route. According to one source, he conferred first with Frost at some point before the 2nd Parachute Battalion reached Heveadorp and thus within the first two miles of its advance.117

  In fact, the 1st Airborne Reconnaissance Squadron was fully present in Holland and preparing to depart for Arnhem at its rally point on LZ Z, located at the edge of a wood 750 yards south of the Arnhem‒Utrecht railway line.118 At least twenty of the Squadron’s allotment of twenty-two Horsas had landed as planned with only four landing casualties, although several Jeeps were damaged and/or trapped in wrecked gliders and four vehicles failed to arrive; the latter may have included vehicles assigned to the liaison officers tasked to report to 1st Parachute Brigade and Division HQs.119 Fortuitously, most of the damaged and two of the missing vehicles belonged to A Troop, which was to remain at the landing area as Squadron reserve. The coup-de-main force lost only three Jeeps, which reduced its strength to twenty-eight operational vehicles. The glider-borne component, commanded by the Squadron’s second-in-command Captain David Allsop, was on the ground by 13:35, but did not move off for the Squadron RV until 15:00, apparently due to problems unloading Jeeps from Allsop’s glider; they arrived at the rally point fifteen minutes later, at around the same time as Major Gough, who had come in by parachute with the bulk of the Squadron’s personnel.120 The Squadron was thus fully assembled by 15:30 and the coup-de-main force moved off for Arnhem ten minutes later, just over two full hours after the glider landing was complete.121 This was a considerable period given that it took an average of thirty minutes to unload a Horsa, even allowing for the additional time required to unload damaged machines and for the glider and parachute contingents to reach the Squadron RV. It is therefore likely that the Reconnaissance Squadron was infected with the same lack of urgency that had afflicted the 1st Parachute Brigade, and waiting for the arrival of four Jeeps from the 9th Field Company RE tasked to accompany the coup-de-main force caused additional delay; unbeknown to Gough and his men the Horsas carrying the Sappers had been allocated to LZ S, and they never did link up with the Reconnaissance Squadron as planned.122

  The bulk of the Reconnaissance Squadron left its RV at 15:40 with Captain John Hay’s C Troop in the lead followed by Major Gough’s Tactical HQ, Captain John Park’s D Troop and Support Troop, commanded by Lieutenant John Christie. The column’s initial route ran across the top corner of LZ Z to a sandy track paralleling the south side of the Arnhem‒Utrecht railway and thence east toward Wolfheze. Nurses from the still-burning Wolfheze Mental Asylum pressed information and fresh fruit upon C Troop as they passed, and Sergeant David Christie from 9 Section encouraged a stray German to the rear with a burst of Sten fire while Sergeant Bill Stacey from 7 Section shot another who made a dash for the woods. Once in the northern outskirts of Wolfheze the Squadron crossed the railway tracks at a level crossing and continued east along the Johannahoeveweg still paralleling the railway line, which now ran atop a brush-covered embankment on the right. The two Jeeps of Lieutenant Peter Bucknall’s 8 Section assumed the lead from 9 Section at the level crossing as part of the Squadron’s standard tactical leap-frogging, travelling a few hundred yards apart. A thousand yards or so east of the level crossing the trees thinned away and the Johannahoeveweg dipped before rising again and entering the northern edge of the woods surrounding the Hotel Wolfheze. Lieutenant Bucknall’s Jeep entered the woods at approximately 15:45 and in so doing triggered an ambush set just moments before by elements of Bataillon Krafft’s 4 Kompanie; had the Reconnaissance Squadron moved off earlier ahead of the 1st Parachute Brigade as scheduled, it might well have avoided the ambush altogether.123

  Precisely what happened to the lead Jeep is unclear, but all its occupants including Lieutenant Bucknall were killed and the state and location of the bodies led men from the Squadron who examined the ambush site the following day to believe they had been executed after surrender.124 8 Section’s second Jeep, commanded by Sergeant Tom McGregor, came under fire as it reached the bottom of the dip and Trooper Richard Minns was hit in the stomach and tumbled from the vehicle. Standard operating procedure called for the trail vehicle to stop and render dismounted assistance but Sergeant McGregor’s Jeep was raked by fire from German troops stationed atop the railway embankment to the right as it came to a stop. Sergeant McGregor was killed and the other four men travelling in his Jeep, Lance-Corporal Taffy Thomas and Troopers Arthur Barlow, Reg Haslar and Jimmy Pearce were all wounded and obliged to surrender.125 Their captors permitted Haslar to be carried but Minns had to be left behind with assurances from a German NCO that he would be dealt with properly in due course. The prisoners were hustled away so quickly that they were gone by the time Lieutenant Ralph Foulkes and 7 Section moved forward on foot to investigate. Foulkes and a Trooper Dodson attempted to drag Sergeant Bill Stacey to safety after he too was hit in the stomach while investigating McGregor’s shot-up Jeep, but he proved too heavy and they were obliged to abandon the attempt.126 There then followed a drawn-out but inconclusive firefight across the dip in the Johannahoeveweg, with the Germans calling down mortar fire on the stalled Reconnaissance Squadron from 16:00.127

  At approximately 16:30, while the firefight was in full swing, Major Gough received a radio message summoning him to Division HQ immediately. Gough therefore handed over command to Captain Allsop and departed at 16:45, accompanied by his Intelligence Officer Lieutenant Trevor McNabb, the commander of HQ Troop Captain Horace Platt and some men from D Troop.128 In the event, Gough’s departure effectively brought the coup-de-main effort to an end. Because he assumed Gough’s absence would be a short one, Allsop left matters in the hands of the Troop commanders, with the result that the coup-de-main force remained in place until 18:30, when it was ordered to withdraw to the landing area. The source of the order is unclear, although the Squadron’s semi-official history claims it was issued by Division HQ.129 Whatever its source, between the initial ambush and the withdrawal order only C Troop attempted to push forward, and two of its men caught a glimpse of Lieutenant Bucknall’s Jeep ablaze in the trees with a body still aboard. Captain Hay ordered a withdrawal to the main Squadron perimeter when the SS tried to outflank him, and an attempt to gather in the wounded by the Squadron Medical Officer, Captain Thomas Swinscow, was also abandoned when the stretcher party was fired on despite displaying a Red Cross flag.130 As a result Sergeant Stacey and Trooper Minns were left behind; the former consequently bled to death but Minns was still alive the following day when he was discovered by a party from C Troop and removed to an aid post.131

  Although routine reconnaissance was the Squadron’s raison d’etre there does not appear to have been any attempt to ascertain the strength and extent of the German blocking position or to find an alternate route to Arnhem; as 4 Kompanie was at the northern extremity of Krafft’s outpost line, it may have been possible for the coup-de-main force to abandon the Johannahoeveweg route, sidestep to th
e north and pick up the LEOPARD/Amsterdamseweg route around two miles further west than originally intended. To be fair, this might well have brought them into contact with Hauptmann Willi Weber’s patrol from 213 Nachrichten Regiment and armoured reinforcements from SS Panzer Aufklärungs Abteilung 9. However, Gough and then Allsop appear to have been content to exchange fire with largely unseen opponents and passively to endure mortaring at their hands while restricting their activity to recovering the wounded. It is therefore difficult to escape the conclusion that the coup-de-main mission was shelved while awaiting Gough’s return, and then quietly dropped altogether when he failed to reappear. As with the Squadron’s tardiness in leaving the landing area, the precise reason for the Squadron’s lack of application is unclear, but it may have been the result of Gough’s misgivings over the coup-de-main mission being transmitted to and/or shared by the remainder of the Squadron. Be that as it may, the salient but frequently overlooked point is that a mission of potentially vital importance to the Arnhem portion of Operation MARKET was stopped and then abandoned virtually on the edge of the landing area following a skirmish that cost two Jeeps from a total of twenty-eight and a dozen or so casualties. For his part, Hauptsturmführer Krafft passed off the ambush of two armed Jeeps and an inconclusive firefight with a relative handful of lightly armed reconnaissance troops as a full-scale attack by two full British companies in his self-serving report.132

  Gough’s summons to 1st Airborne Division HQ came directly from Major-General Urquhart, who arrived without mishap on LZ Z shortly after 13:00. After watching the 1st Parachute Brigade’s drop onto the adjacent DZ X at 13:50 Urquhart drove across to confer with Brigadier Hicks at 1st Airlanding Brigade HQ, but Hicks was absent visiting his Battalions. At around this time Urquhart became privy to the rumour that Gough had lost almost all his vehicles and that the coup-de-main mission had not gone ahead.133 At this point it would have been logical to try and establish the veracity or otherwise of the rumour, which should have been relatively easy, given that the Reconnaissance Squadron’s Rear HQ under Lieutenant Quarter Master Tom Collier and Captain Michael Grubb’s A Troop, the Squadron reserve, were located only a few hundred yards away; it would have taken a messenger a matter of minutes to make the journey.134 However, Urquhart chose instead to proceed on the totally erroneous and unjustified assumption that the rumour was proven fact and issued the order for Gough to report to Division HQ forthwith via his own and the 1st Airlanding Brigade’s signallers. The recall order raises three salient points. First, it strongly suggests that Urquhart had a poor to non-existent grasp of his Division’s signals set up, for the Reconnaissance Squadron’s vehicles were netted into their own internal frequency with two external links, to the 1st Parachute Brigade and Division HQ, via radio-equipped Liaison Officers. The 1st Airlanding Brigade was netted into a different frequency and was therefore unlikely to be able to contact the Reconnaissance Squadron whatever Urquhart may have wished and it is likely that Division HQ only succeeded in contacting Gough because he was stationary during the protracted firefight, rather than on the move.135 Second, it suggests that Urquhart had a low opinion of the competence and indeed common sense of Gough and his men. At least a score of the 181 men of the Reconnaissance Squadron took into Arnhem were officers and it is difficult to imagine any combination of circumstances that would prevent at least some of them from finding some way to report any serious impediment to their coup-de-main mission to Division HQ.136 By merely framing the recall order Urquhart was therefore assuming that Gough and his men lacked the wit to make contact. Third, the recall order also assumed that Gough and/or his men were lurking in the vicinity of the landing area, for Urquhart had no way of knowing that they were embroiled with elements of Bataillon Krafft a mile or so east of the landing area. Had matters gone as planned, Gough would likely have been well on the way to Arnhem, and possibly in the city itself when the recall order was issued. Urquhart was thus operating on the assumption that it was perfectly acceptable or indeed possible for Gough to motor blithely back and forth across miles of enemy-held territory and that it was equally acceptable to remove him from his command in the middle of what was supposed to be a vital mission.

  It is therefore difficult to see Urquhart’s summoning Gough to Division HQ as anything other than a poorly thought out knee-jerk reaction to a baseless rumour, and one taken with no effort whatsoever to establish its veracity. It reinforces the contention that Urquhart had not properly grasped the realities of Airborne command, something his next action was to prove beyond doubt. Urquhart had originally intended to remain at Division HQ until the arrival of the second lift on Monday 18 September, but at 16:30 he left in order to carry news of the supposed abandonment of the coup-de-main mission to the 1st Parachute Brigade in person, and to urge Lathbury to greater haste.137 The final prompt for his decision appears to have been Division HQ losing contact with 1st Parachute Brigade soon after the latter left the landing area at 15:30; this was caused in turn by only two of the Brigade’s four Jeep-mounted No. 22 Sets arriving in Holland intact. One was acquired by Lathbury and the other was assigned to the Brigade HQ column to control the internal Brigade net. Contact with Division HQ was thus relegated to a lower-powered and shorter-ranged No. 68P Set, which moved out of range shortly after the Brigade moved off from the landing area.138 Urquhart therefore ordered the Divisional Signals Section to continue their efforts to contact Gough and to direct him on to 1st Parachute Brigade HQ, before departing in his Jeep accompanied by his personal signaller, Corporal Warford, and Lieutenant-Colonel Robert Loder-Symonds, the Division’s Commander Royal Artillery (CRA). Quite how Gough was supposed to locate Lathbury when the latter was busy shuttling between his widely separated Battalions by Jeep was not explained. In the event, the recall order not only aborted the coup-de-main mission but also permanently separated Gough from his command, for he eventually fetched up at the Arnhem bridge in his fruitless quest to locate Urquhart while his men were eventually subsumed into the defence of the Oosterbeek Pocket after acting as guides and scouting the route into Arnhem.

  Although sometimes partially excused on the grounds of Urquhart’s growing frustration at his inability to exert control over events, the decision is nonetheless widely and correctly judged to have been a serious mistake.139 Whatever his personal feelings, Urquhart’s place was at Division HQ because the radio communication problems made his presence there more rather than less important; messengers were the only practical alternative method for subordinate units to make contact, and Urquhart should therefore have been in place there ready to react to reports and issue orders as necessary. His decision to take on the role of a lowly HQ messenger was thus another poorly thought-out reaction, and he does not appear to have appreciated the risk he was running by driving around unescorted sixty miles behind enemy lines. As it was, he was lucky not to have suffered the same fate as the Stadtkommandant of Arnhem Generalmajor Friedrich Kussin, who was killed after his car blundered into the 3rd Parachute Battalion at the junction of the Utrechtseweg and Wolfhezeweg.

  Urquhart seriously compounded his error. First, he failed to inform his Operations Officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Charles Mackenzie, of how and where he could be contacted, how long he would be absent and to clarify what measures were to be taken in his absence should the need arise or he fail to reappear. This omission was to exacerbate his earlier failure to clarify and disseminate the Division’s succession of command to all those involved. Second, at some point after leaving his HQ, Urquhart ordered Corporal Warford to retune the No. 22 Set mounted in his Jeep from the Division frequency onto that of the 1st Airborne Reconnaissance Squadron and to continue the effort to contact Gough.140 This was not the effortless process allowed by modern radio equipment but involved partially dismantling the set to replace the delicate tuning crystals, a fiddly job at best and more so in a moving Jeep. Urquhart therefore deliberately severed his only link to his Division HQ, and although it was not apparent at the time, the point when Corpo
ral Warford broke the connection with Division HQ is the moment when Urquhart abdicated command of the 1st Airborne Division.