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The same process was taking place fifteen miles or so away to the east and south of Nijmegen. Although British intelligence reports had insisted on the presence of German armoured units in the Reichswald forest adjacent to the 82nd Airborne Division’s landing area, the Germans actually had very little in the area to contest the US landings apart from the units protecting the bridges across the various watercourses. As we have seen, Heeresgruppe B allotted responsibility for dealing with the US landing at Nijmegen to Wehrkreis VI, a rear-echelon formation commanded by General Franz Mattenklott from his HQ in Münster. The latter appointed General der Kavallerie Kurt Feldt, a First World War veteran and Knight’s Cross holder who had recently escaped from the debacle in France, to head the counter-measures. Heeresgruppe B assigned Feldt 1 and 2 Fallschirmjäger Divisions, which were to be assembled at Cleve by the afternoon of 18 September. In the meantime he was to gather and employ whatever he could from Wehrkreis VI’s resources, and on that authority he therefore devolved operational responsibility to Generalleutnant Gerd Scherbening’s 406 z.b.V. Division, an administrative HQ for a number of training and replacement units also based in Münster. Scherbening was informed of his assignment at some point before 21:00 on 17 September, when he issued a warning order to his HQ personnel, and five hours later he ordered a move to an as yet unknown location, scheduled to begin at 08:00 on 18 September. As 406 z.b.V. Division had been a static administrative entity for some years, the news understandably caused some consternation. Major Rasch, Scherbening’s adjutant, noted: ‘Only an expert in such matters can appreciate what it means to change from a barracks-based staff organisation, with no equipment or vehicles, and turn it into a mobile field headquarters, all in the space of six hours.’107 The unknown location turned out to be Geldern, eighty miles west of Münster and just five miles from the Dutch border, and Scherbening was informed that he was to form an ad hoc fighting division covering a fifty-mile sector running along the River Maas from Venlo to Nijmegen; this coincidentally corresponded with the entire US section of the MARKET Airborne Corridor.
While Scherbening and Rasch were busy arranging for their move to Geldern, Feldt was busy rounding up units for them to command on arrival. These included an NCO training school, possibly Unteroffizier Schule Wehrkreis IV, several Luftwaffe ground units and a pionier bataillon drawn in from Roermond, among others. In the course of the night a force of approximately 3,500 men equipped with 130 assorted machine-guns and twenty-four mortars had been assembled along a ten-mile line running south from Beek to Wyler and then west around Groesbeek to Mook near the River Maas. The force was divided into three roughly battalion-size battle groups named after their commanders: Kamfgruppen Goebel, Greschick and Stargaard. A fourth kampfgruppe commanded by a Hauptmann Freiherr von Fürstenberg included five armoured cars and three 20mm armed half-tracks gathered in from a training unit, which represented the only armoured support immediately available, and the equivalent of three artillery batteries was concentrated in the area of Zyfflich, midway between and just east of Beek and Wyler. With all this in hand, Feldt redefined the 406 z.b.V. Division’s mission. First, Scherbening was ordered to establish a tactical forward HQ thirty miles to the north of Geldern near Kranenburg, only three miles or so east of Groesbeek. Second, he was ordered to attack the US landing area along the line from Beek to Groesbeek with the intention of securing the Groesbeek Heights and ultimately driving the US troops back across the River Maas. The attack was to begin at 06:30 on Monday 18 September. Given the circumstances, Scherbening’s reaction to the order can be well imagined, and he may have been even less impressed had he been aware of Feldt’s thinking in issuing it: ‘I had no confidence in this attack, since it was almost an impossible task for 406 z.b.V. Division to attack picked troops with its motley crowd. But it was necessary to risk the attack in order to forestall an enemy advance to the east, and to deceive him in regard to our strength.’108
Little if any of this was apparent to the men holding the various sectors of the 82nd Airborne Division’s perimeter, however, and most spent a generally quiet night in their positions or patrolling around them. Company E from the 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment’s 2nd Battalion, stationed at the western extremity of the perimeter, despatched one such patrol to investigate strange noises emanating from Grave and discovered the German garrison had abandoned the town; the noise proved to be the jubilant Dutch civilian population singing their version of ‘Tipperary’ in celebration.109 At the eastern end of the perimeter the 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment experienced an even more unusual incident when a railway train steamed into the Divisional perimeter from Nijmegen at 23:45, took the eastern spur and drove right through the Regimental perimeter before exiting through the 3rd Battalion’s positions in Groesbeek, all without a shot being fired. In so doing the train passed close to the 2nd Battalion, which was acting as Divisional reserve, and Division HQ; the locomotive’s whistle disturbed Major-General Gavin from a fitful sleep under a tree near his Command Post and prompted a terse enquiry to 3rd Battalion HQ.110 It is unclear whether it was due to orders from Gavin or from further down the chain of command, but a second train received a rather different reception an hour or so later. By that time the line had been seeded with anti-tank mines and a well-aimed Bazooka rocket scored a direct hit on the locomotive, bringing it to an abrupt halt. The train was carrying German military personnel including a number of female auxiliaries and members of the Organisation Todt labour force, all of whom promptly fled into the darkness, to be rounded up later by the paratroopers.111
The exception to the 82nd Airborne Division’s generally quiet night was Lieutenant-Colonel Shields Warren’s 1st Battalion 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment, which, along with Regimental commander Colonel Roy E. Lindquist, was stationed along the northern edge of the Groesbeek Heights overlooking the Nijmegen suburb of De Ploeg, roughly three miles from the road and rail bridges across the River Waal. Warren had been warned off to move on the bridges before the drop but the mission was delayed by Lindquist, who misunderstood Gavin’s admittedly rather opaque instructions and assumed that he was free to complete his Regiment’s routine tasks before moving on the bridges. Lindquist did, however, authorise Warren to despatch a patrol from Company C to the Nijmegen road bridge to confirm Dutch Resistance reports that it was defended by only a handful of Germans; if this proved to be the case, the patrol was to seize the southern end of the bridge and await reinforcement. However, while preparations for the patrol were underway Lindquist was radioed by Gavin, who resolved his confused priorities by explicitly ordering Lindquist ‘to delay not a second longer and get the bridge as quickly as possible with Warren’s battalion’.112 Lindquist therefore convened a conference at 18:00 that ended with Warren being ordered to advance on the Nijmegen road bridge with Companies A and B, commanded by Captains Jonathan E. Adams and Woodrow W. Millsaps respectively, guided by a member of the Dutch Resistance rather than the route mapped out by Gavin back in England. The force was to be reinforced with .30 machine-guns and 81mm mortars along with Warren and a party from HQ Company; according to Adams, he was also to collect additional information en route from the Dutch Resistance. The remainder of the 1st Battalion, consisting of the depleted Company C and part of HQ Company commanded in Warren’s absence by the 1st Battalion’s Executive Officer, Captain Benjamin F. Delamater, were to remain in place on the Groesbeek Heights with Colonel Lindquist and his Tactical HQ.113
The initial patrol was commanded by Lieutenant Robert J. Weaver and consisted of his platoon from Company C, reinforced with the Battalion Intelligence Section and two .30 Machine Gun Squads. Weaver and his men moved off from the 1st Battalion perimeter at 18:30 and approached the road bridge from the east, probably using the circuitous route Gavin had worked out back in England to prevent the attackers becoming lost in Nijmegen’s streets. Penetrating as far as the traffic roundabout at its south end known as the Keizer Lodewijkplein, Weaver’s party ascertained that the bridg
e was in fact held by Luftwaffe Oberst Henke’s scratch force of trainee Fallschirmjäger NCOs, possibly augmented by that time with two half-tracks from SS Panzer Aufklärungs Abteilung 9. As this precluded them from securing the bridge, the paratroopers contented themselves with scouting the extent of the German defences and additional avenues for attack. At some point the element of surprise was lost when the patrol ambushed a truckload of German troops, but it was nonetheless able to remain in the area until 06:00 on 18 September. At that point and having received no further instructions from Warren, Weaver and his men withdrew to the 1st Battalion position on the Groesbeek Heights. It is unclear how many casualties the patrol sustained, but Captain Delamater later referred to several key men from the Battalion Intelligence Section being killed.114
The subsequent two-Company move on the road bridge proved to be rather less successful and went awry from the outset. Departure was delayed for two hours while Dutch reports of a large German force lurking in the woods to the 1st Battalion’s rear were investigated; when the reports proved to be false, Company A, its Dutch guide and Lieutenant-Colonel Warren, accompanied by part of HQ Company, moved off for the rendezvous with Company B. This was scheduled for 19:00 just south of Nijmegen but Millsaps became lost en route and during the hour when Warren held back, the Dutch guide went off to contact the Resistance armed with Warren’s Colt .45 pistol. Neither he nor the pistol was seen again and at 20:00 Warren finally ordered Adams to leave a guide for Millsaps and proceed. The plan was to move north-west into the centre of the city along the Groesbeekseweg and then veer north-east toward the road bridge to avoid becoming entangled with Lieutenant Weaver’s earlier patrol, which was supposed to approach the objective from the east. With no moonlight and visibility at less than ten yards, progress was slow and the need to allow scouts to check buildings dominating the route made it even slower. It therefore took the better part of two hours to cover the two miles or so to the Keizer Karel Plein, the wooded traffic roundabout where the advance was to veer north-east along the Oranjesingel for the final half mile to the Hunnerpark, an area of parkland astride the bridge ramp. Adams’ lead platoon was just two blocks from the roundabout when the scouts literally bumped into German troops, sparking a confused firefight in which the lead platoon commander was wounded and his deputy killed, possibly by friendly fire; according to Adams his Company began firing wildly from both sides of the Groesbeekseweg and Company B, which came up to the tail end of Adams’ column at this point, also began firing down the middle of the roadway.115
Although the various US commanders involved had no way of knowing it at the time, the outbreak of the confused firefight at c.22:00 on the Groesbeekseweg marked the point where the paratroopers were pipped to the post in the race for the Nijmegen bridge. Just two hours earlier the Waal crossings had only been defended by Oberst Henke’s scratch force of trainee Fallschirmjäger NCOs as Gräbner, finding all quiet at Nijmegen, had moved back north with his vehicles, possibly prompted by reports of the fighting at Arnhem from his rear security detachment at Elst. Reinforcements were on the way, the most substantial being Hauptsturmführer Karl-Heinz Euling’s Kampfgruppe which had been ordered south to Nijmegen in the late afternoon of 17 September but was delayed for over twelve hours after becoming embroiled with Frost’s 2nd Parachute Battalion as it secured the northern approaches to the Arnhem road bridge. The first reinforcements actually to reach Nijmegen appear to have been a party of dismounted tank crewmen from SS Panzer Regiment 10 led by the Regimental commander, Sturmbannführer Leo Reinhold, and the advance party of a detachment from SS Panzer Pionier Bataillon 10 commanded by Untersturmführer Werner Baumgärtel. The precise time these units arrived at Nijmegen is similarly unclear, but the evidence suggests that it may have been in the late evening of Sunday 17 September and that they may have been the last German units to cross the Arnhem road bridge before the 2nd Parachute Battalion sealed it off; a number of heavy vehicles were heard passing over the bridge while the British Airborne troops were reorganising beneath the north ramp.116 Reinhold had been tasked to oversee the defence of the Waal crossings presumably by Obersturmbannführer Otto Paetsch, commanding 10 SS Panzer Division in Brigadeführer Harmel’s stead while the latter visited Berlin. After receiving a situation report from Oberst Henke, Reinhold established his command post just north of the road bridge and had his men dig in on the north bank of the river as a backstop position.117 The advance guard from SS Panzer Pionier Bataillon 10 crossed the river to assist Henke’s scratch force and its arrival was presumably that heard by Captain Adams, who referred to the sound of German troops hurriedly unloading from trucks located in the streets on the other side of the Keizer Karel Plein being audible throughout the initial stages of the firefight there.118 Adams attempted to push Lieutenant George D. Lamm’s 2nd Platoon forward to replace his badly hit lead platoon but was thwarted by the darkness and confused close-quarter fighting; the situation was finally stabilised by Millsaps’ Company B occupying a three-storey building overlooking the Keizer Karel Plein, from where it successfully rebuffed a dawn counter-attack with the assistance of two 81mm mortars emplaced on the building’s flat roof.119
Meanwhile, Lieutenant-Colonel Warren had received reports from the Dutch Resistance that the control point for demolition charges rigged on the road bridge was located in Nijmegen’s main post office, a few blocks north of the Keizer Karel Plein. After two consultations at Warren’s command post Captain Adams was ordered to despatch a patrol to filter around the traffic roundabout, seize and destroy the control point and then move on to the road bridge; Adams was to follow with the rest of his Company if the route was clear. Adams assigned the mission to Lieutenant Lamm’s 2nd Platoon but at the last minute decided to lead the patrol himself, apparently in frustration because time was growing short and because he did not trust Lamm’s competence; Adams’ post-action report referred to Lamm being seemingly incapable of understanding verbal instructions even with the aid of a map.120 The problem was that Adams did not inform his superiors or subordinates of his last-minute decision, and the remainder of his Company was left essentially leaderless until 1st Lieutenant John P. Foley assumed command on the morning of 18 September. Whatever his reasoning, Adams successfully led the patrol to the post office, dodging a first encounter with a Panzerfaust on the way. Lieutenant Lamm and six men managed to enter the post office where they killed a number of Germans and smashed what they assumed to be the demolition switches before rejoining the main group with the loss of one man. For his part, Adams suspected that the post office was merely a German HQ of some description rather than a demolition control post, and that the destroyed apparatus were merely light switches. Given that the road bridge does not appear to have been rigged for demolition until the following morning by SS Panzer Pionier Bataillon 10, Adams’ suspicions were likely justified.121 The idea of continuing to the bridge was abandoned when the patrol could not make contact with Warren or the remainder of Company A via its SCR 536 radio and also presumably because they were carrying two badly wounded men. The patrol therefore started to move back to its start point but this plan had to be abandoned owing to increasing German activity and the approach of daylight. By dawn avoiding contact with the Germans appears to have driven the patrol to within half a mile of the railway bridge, and Adams and his men were obliged to take shelter with sympathetic Dutch civilians. They remained in hiding for two days, until the area was liberated by troops from the Guards Armoured Division in the morning of Wednesday 20 September.122
The fighting at the city centre end of the Groesbeekseweg waxed and waned from 22:00 through to around 08:00 the next morning, and the pre-dawn German attack frustrated Lieutenant-Colonel Warren’s final attempt to get the advance on the road bridge moving again.123 The block at the Keizer Karel Plein therefore marked the end of Gavin’s first, partly illicit attempt to secure the Nijmegen bridges. The immediate reason for the lack of success was Lindquist’s seeming failure to pick up on Gavin’s subtle promptin
g and consequent tardiness in despatching Warren’s Battalion, but this was in turn directly attributable to Browning’s insistence that securing and holding the Groesbeek Heights be accorded a higher priority than seizing the Waal bridges; without this, Gavin would have been able to dispense with the subterfuge and move on the bridges with a stronger force immediately after landing. Browning’s edict was therefore ultimately responsible for squandering the window of opportunity in the first few hours after landing, when the Waal bridges could and should have been seized, before the German defences were properly established. The 82nd Airborne Division, Guards Armoured Division and by extension the 1st Airborne Division were to pay a high price for Browning’s faulty prioritising over the coming days.
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