Arnhem

by William F Buckingham

  The consequences of these rash and ill-thought-out decisions lay in the future however, and Urquhart soon caught up with the 1st Parachute Brigade HQ Group and the tail end of the 2nd Parachute Battalion Column as they moved toward the riverside LION route. There he left word of the alleged failure of the Reconnaissance Squadron’s coup-de-main with Brigade Major Tony Hibbert and urged him on with a shout of ‘Hibbert, for God’s sake get your brigade moving or the bloody Germans will get to the bridge before us.’141 After moving up the column in an unsuccessful attempt to talk with Frost, Urquhart then drove north in search of Lathbury and the 3rd Parachute Battalion travelling on the centre TIGER route. At some point Lieutenant-Colonel Loder-Symonds departed to rejoin his own HQ at the landing area, as Urquhart was alone when he caught up with Lathbury at the tail end of the 3rd Parachute Battalion column on the Utrechtseweg just west of Oosterbeek at approximately 18:30.

  While Urquhart was committing his series of errors, his opposite numbers were acting in a more speedy and efficient manner. The basis of German reaction to the arrival of the 1st Airborne Division west of Arnhem lay with Hauptmann Weber from 213 Nachrichten Regiment who, after going forward from Deelen airfield to investigate and exchanging fire with the 1st Airlanding Brigade, arranged for what he had seen to be disseminated via the highly efficient Luftwaffe communication system. Weber’s information appears to have permitted Obergruppenführer Wilhelm Bittrich at II SS Panzerkorps HQ to issue a Warning Order at 13:40, just ten minutes after receiving word of the landings; this alerted all subordinate units and ordered them to assemble, ascertain the situation in the area of Arnhem and Nijmegen, secure Arnhem and its road bridge, and destroy the airborne landings near Oosterbeek.142 The Warning Order reached Obersturmbannführer Walther Harzer, commanding the portion of 9 SS Panzer Division remaining in Holland, within the hour. At the time of receipt Harzer was at a formal parade at Hoenderloo, ten miles north of Arnhem, awarding Hauptsturmführer Viktor Gräbner of SS Panzer Aufklärungs Abteilung 9 the Knight’s Cross for gallantry in Normandy.143 Harzer promptly ordered Gräbner to unload his vehicles from the railway flatcars onto which they had been loaded for transport to Germany and restore them to running order immediately. It should be remembered that Gräbner and his men had deliberately rendered their vehicles unserviceable by removing key components in order to avoid handing them over to 10 SS Panzer Division; by this means Gräbner’s Abteilung had kept thirty armoured half-tracks, ten eight-wheeled armoured cars and a number of trucks armoured with oil drums filled with sand. Harzer then returned to his own HQ at Apeldoorn to implement the rest of the order. The reactions of his subordinate units were equally swift. All 9 SS Panzer Division’s subordinate units acknowledged compliance with the Warning Order within an hour and were en route to the scene of the action shortly thereafter; SS Panzerjäger Abteilung 9 left Apeldoorn, sixteen miles north of Arnhem, at around 15:00 and SS Panzer Pionier Abteilung 9 was away from its billets at Brummen twelve miles distant by 16:30, for example.144

  Hauptsturmführer Gräbner had his vehicles, the most powerful collection of armour in the immediate vicinity of Arnhem, unloaded and refitted within approximately three hours and his instructions were refined by a further order issued by II SS Panzerkorps HQ at 16:30. This directed him to divide his Abteilung in two parts: ‘Smaller sub-units are to [reconnoitre] towards Oosterbeek, and secure the remainder of the divisions [sic] move to Arnhem’ while the main body crossed the Lower Rhine at Arnhem and carried out a reconnaissance of Nijmegen to clarify the situation there.145 Gräbner complied by despatching the first ten refitted vehicles, which appear to have been Sd.Kfz. 250 and 251 armoured half-tracks, toward Wolfheze; it is unclear if they were despatched individually or as a group but by 17:00 at least some of them were stationed along the Amsterdamseweg up to a point a mile or so to the north of Wolfheze. They were to form a serendipitous backstop for Hauptmann Weber’s patrol from 213 Nachrichten Regiment, which had retired to the woods between Wolfheze and the Amsterdamseweg, and was subsequently reinforced by Hauptsturmführer Klaus von Allwörden’s SS Panzerjäger Abteilung 9 with its two Panzerjäger IV tank destroyers and three composite infantry companies made up of dismounted vehicle crewmen and drafted Kriegsmarine personnel.146 Gräbner led the bulk of SS Panzer Aufklärungs Abteilung 9 south across the Arnhem road bridge at approximately 18:00.147 In so doing he also unwittingly missed possibly the sole opportunity to prevent the British seizing the north end of the bridge, for the 2nd Parachute Battalion was closing on its objective at that point; according to one source some of the latter actually saw the SS convoy moving across the bridge.148 The column reached Elst, six miles south of the Arnhem bridge, at c.19:00 after scouting the area either side of the main highway for Allied airborne troops. With no sign of the enemy Gräbner transmitted a situation report, detached a handful of vehicles in Elst for rear security and to act as a radio relay station and then pushed on to Nijmegen in the gathering darkness. He arrived there shortly before 20:00 to again find no sign of Allied activity and the Waal bridges protected by a scratch force of approximately 750 men assembled from a number of reserve and training units stationed in and around Nijmegen by a Luftwaffe Oberst Henke from a local Fallschirmjäger training HQ.149

  Bittrich’s orders from II SS Panzerkorps addressed the immediate situation at Arnhem and Nijmegen, and the arrival of Generalfeldmarschall Walther Model, the commander of Heeresgruppe B, did the same for the wider battle. Model had been using the Hotel Tafelberg in Oosterbeek as his HQ for four days, and according to one source he left in some haste, abandoning a partly consumed lunch because he was convinced he was the target of the Allied airborne attack.150 He arrived at II SS Panzerkorps HQ at Doetinchen at 15:00 on 17 September, took direct control of Bittrich’s formations possibly as early as 17:30, and issued a wide-ranging operation order that confirmed and clarified Bittrich’s local counter-measures and framed the future course of the overall battle to defeat MARKET GARDEN. In the south 1 Fallschirmjäger Armee, reinforced with Major Berndt-Joachim Freiherr von Maltzahn’s Panzer Brigade 107 that was en route to Aachen, and elements of Generalleutnant Walter Poppe’s 59 Infanterie Division, which was fortuitously regrouping at Tilburg after escaping across the Scheldt Estuary with other elements of 15 Armee, was to block the British ground advance from Neerpelt and destroy the US landings near Eindhoven. Presumably due to its proximity to German territory, responsibility for dealing with the US landing at Nijmegen was allotted to Wehrkreis VI, a rear echelon HQ responsible for replacement and training, located at Münster and commanded by General Franz Mattenklott. It was to be assisted by 10 SS Panzer Division, which was ordered to move south, secure the Nijmegen bridges and establish a foothold on the south bank of the River Waal for use as a base for further offensive action. Model added the specific proviso that linkage between the Allied lodgements at Nijmegen and Arnhem was to be prevented at all costs. Finally, responsibility for dealing with the British presence north of the Lower Rhine was allotted to 9 SS Panzer Division’s Warnungs Kompanien, apart from SS Panzer Aufklärungs Abteilung 9. With the exception of the detachment despatched to reconnoitre toward Wolfheze, Gräbner’s unit was placed under the operational control of 10 SS Panzer Division while Harzer received Hauptsturmführer Heinrich Brinkmann’s SS Panzer Aufklärungs Abteilung 10 in exchange.151

  This was speedy and efficient work by any standard and credit for II SS Panzerkorps’ initial moves is often attributed to a programme of anti-airborne training undertaken by its constituent formations in the summer and early autumn of 1943, notably by Brigadeführer Harmel, commander of 10 SS Panzer Division.152 However, given that both Divisions lost approximately three-quarters of their strength in Normandy it is legitimate to question how much influence this training exerted by September 1944. It is therefore more likely that the underlying reason for the speedy reaction of II SS Panzerkorps’ HQ and its constituent formations was more the general ethos of the Waffen SS, with its emphasis on aggression, rapid action
and personal initiative at all levels, although these attributes were by no means exclusive to the Waffen SS. Model was equally rapid in his appreciation of the situation, and some Heer units moved equally swiftly and from farther afield. Major Hans-Peter Knaust’s Panzer-Grenadier Ersatz und Ausbildungs Bataillon 64 ‘Bocholt’ for one, a replacement training unit for convalescent infantry personnel; it was despatched by Wehrkreis VI in response to Model’s 17:30 operation order and was in Arnhem by 04:00 on 18 September.153

  However, while the speed and focus of the German reactions were undeniably impressive, they also included two serious and interlinked errors. The first of these was the containment of the British airborne incursion west of Wolfheze. As we have seen, the 16:30 Order from II SS Panzerkorps instructed SS Panzer Aufklärungs Abteilung 9 to use part of its strength to reconnoitre toward the Allied landing area and made 9 SS Panzer Division responsible for securing Arnhem against the Airborne incursion. A further Order issued an hour later at 17:30 clarified precisely how this was to be done. Gräbner’s detachment was instructed to make contact with Bataillon Krafft in order to establish a cordon to the north and east of Wolfheze while Sturmbannführer Ludwig Spindler of SS Panzer Artillerie Regiment 9 was tasked to marshal 9 SS Panzer Division’s various Warnungs Kompanien into a single entity to deny access to Arnhem from the west.154 The idea was thus to mask the British airborne landing by creating a secure shoulder along the line of Amsterdamseweg and a blocking line in the western outskirts of Arnhem to prevent movement to the north or east, with the Lower Rhine acting as a block to the south. This cordon would effectively seal off the 1st Airborne Division until a clearing operation could be mounted moving west from Arnhem through Oosterbeek, Wolfheze and Heelsum. The problem was that establishing the northern shoulder of the cordon on the Amsterdamseweg placed it three miles or more north of the Lower Rhine. Had the blocking line in the western outskirts of Arnhem been set up earlier or at the same time as the northern shoulder this would not have been a problem, but it took Spindler until the early hours of Monday 18 September to gather and deploy his forces there. As a result there was a significant gap in the cordon for around twelve hours, and that gap included two of the Battalion-specific routes allotted to the 1st Parachute Brigade for the move from the landing area to Arnhem.

  The second error concerned the Lower Rhine crossings at Arnhem and specifically the road bridge. Model’s rapidly formulated operational strategy to counter MARKET GARDEN involved masking off the British airborne landing north of the Lower Rhine to be dealt with later while stopping the Allied ground advance on the River Waal. This was a perfectly logical scheme given the situation and German deployments in Holland but it depended almost totally upon possession of the Arnhem bridges, and especially the road bridge, as a conduit to funnel forces south to the Waal. As the bridges were located in a rear-echelon area sixty miles behind the fighting front their protection had been an internal security matter and the Stadtkommandant of Arnhem, Generalmajor Kussin, had garrisoned them accordingly. The road bridge was protected by approximately twenty-five teenage and elderly soldiers manning some light flak guns and using two concrete towers that formed part of the bridge structure as makeshift defensive bunkers; the railway bridge appears to have been covered by a ten-strong demolition party commanded by an NCO, and a group of gunners manning three 20mm anti-aircraft guns.155 Kussin may well have intended to reinforce the bridge guards in the face of the British landings, but he was killed in his encounter with the 3rd Parachute Battalion just west of Oosterbeek. The problem here was that despite the wide-ranging nature of his 17:30 Operations Order, Model did not make specific provision to ensure that the Arnhem bridges remained firmly in German hands, apart from placing them in 9 SS Panzer Division’s area of responsibility. The boundary of this area ran from Velp, just north-east of Arnhem, up to and including the road bridge and then along the line of the Lower Rhine to the west; 9 SS Panzer Division was responsible for the area north of the river and 10 SS Panzer Division for the area to the south as far as Nijmegen and the River Waal.156

  Model presumably did not feel it necessary to issue explicit instructions regarding the bridges because II SS Panzerkorps’ 13:40 Warning Order specifically instructed Harzer that the ‘Arnhem bridge is to be occupied by strong security forces’ with ‘absolute speed’.157 The problem was that Harzer appears to have made little effort to comply with this part of his orders. While all the Division’s Warnungs Kompanien were ordered to Arnhem post haste and it would have been a simple matter to specifically order one or more to the road bridge, all were directed either toward the landing area or the western outskirts of the city. This, incidentally, was also in contravention of an order issued by II SS Panzerkorps at 16:00, which instructed Harzer to concentrate at Velp to the east of Arnhem before moving on the landing area located to the west of the city.158 The only unit from 9 SS Panzer Division to deliberately approach the Arnhem road bridge at this time was Gräbner’s SS Panzer Aufklärungs Abteilung 9, and he was merely crossing the river to reconnoitre the situation at Nijmegen on behalf of 10 SS Panzer Division. Gräbner was criticised years after the event by Harmel for failing to reinforce the token force guarding the bridge, and for being cocksure and overly preoccupied with what might have been unfolding to the south.159 Harmel’s criticism was based on the fact that the II SS Panzerkorps Warning Order issued at 13:40 specifically instructed 9 SS Panzer Division about occupying the bridge with ‘strong security forces’, and failing to do so seriously impacted upon the ability of his own formation to comply with the instructions therein for it to ‘assemble, move to Nijmegen and firmly occupy the main bridges, and defend the Nijmegen bridgehead’.160

  Whilst perhaps understandable, Harmel’s criticism nonetheless smacks of wisdom after the event and was rather unfair given that Gräbner was unable to defend himself; he was killed on the morning of Monday 18 September. More importantly, Gräbner’s initial orders did not come directly from II SS Panzerkorps HQ but via Harzer, who may not have mentioned securing the bridge, and it was not Gräbner’s place to second-guess direct verbal orders from his Division commander. Furthermore, Gräbner arguably lacked the strength to provide ‘a strong security force’ at the Arnhem bridge, especially as he had no idea what situation he might be confronted with at Nijmegen; placing a relative handful of light armoured vehicles and trucks with rudimentary improvised armour in the likely path of a fully functioning British armoured division required a certain amount of steely courage in itself. Harmel may also have been looking to avoid blame, given that SS Panzer Aufklärungs Abteilung 9 actually came under the operational control of 10 SS Panzer Division when it was ordered to reconnoitre south to Nijmegen. It is unclear whether in an official or unofficial capacity, but Harmel was actually in Berlin on 17 September, leaving his Division under temporary command of Obersturmbannführer Otto Paetsch of SS Panzer Regiment 10.161 Harmel was ostensibly negotiating for resources to rebuild his Division and he did not return to reassume command until the early hours of Monday 18 September.162 This would suggest that Paetsch was rather more culpable in the matter than Gräbner.

  The salient point is that the failure to secure the Arnhem road bridge in the immediate post-landing period was a potentially fatal flaw in Model’s counter-strategy, and responsibility lay primarily with Harzer. This effectively left the road and railway bridges open for any Airborne elements able to reach them and with the benefit of hindsight it can be seen that Harzer compounded his error, albeit unwittingly, by holding his units along the line of the Amsterdamseweg rather than ordering them to concentrate on sealing the approaches to Arnhem between the Amsterdamseweg and the Lower Rhine. This in turn gave the 1st Parachute Brigade a clear run along the LION and TIGER routes to their objective for the first ten or twelve hours or so after the landing. The initial stage of the Arnhem portion of Operation MARKET was therefore in effect a straight race between the 1st Parachute Brigade and II SS Panzerkorps and, by extension, Heeresgruppe B. The key questi
on was whether the 1st Parachute Brigade would prove capable of offsetting the self-inflicted tardiness in the immediate post-landing phase by moving with sufficient speed and urgency to take full advantage of Model’s and Harzer’s errors.

  7

  D-Day to D Plus 1

  19:00 Sunday 17 September to 07:00 Monday 18 September 1944

  The 1st Parachute Brigade’s race for the Arnhem crossings commenced when Brigadier Gerald Lathbury released his three battalions to advance from the landing area, where they had been waiting for permission to move for the better part of an hour. Lieutenant-Colonel David Dobie’s 1st Parachute Battalion received permission to move from Brigade HQ at 15:30, and moved off ten minutes later.1 It took the heavily laden column around twenty minutes to reach the railway station at Wolfheze, using the same route as the 1st Airborne Reconnaissance Squadron across the top of LZ Z and following the south side of the Arnhem–Ede railway line to the level crossing in Wolfheze. At some point Dobie met Major Gough as the latter was moving back to Division HQ and he warned Dobie about the German presence across his intended route along the Johannahoeveweg to join the Amsterdamseweg/LEOPARD route further east.2 Dobie therefore decided to strike north from Wolfheze and directed Major John Timothy and R Company to lead the Battalion along the Wolfhezeweg in order to sidestep Bataillon Krafft’s outpost line.