***
The Guards Armoured Division’s initial objective was the town of Valkenswaard, seven miles from the Start Line, and despite intense fighting with Fallschirmjäger Ausbildungs Regiment Hoffmann and Luftwaffe Strafbataillon 6, Shermans from the 2nd Irish Guards’ No. 3 Squadron had almost reached a small bridge across the River Dommel a mile short of the town just after 16:00 on 17 September. However, the advance was then delayed for an hour-and-a-half while the British lead elements withdrew 500 yards to permit the final stage of the artillery barrage to be repeated to cover the advance across the final 300 yards of open ground, and the bridge was not secured until 18:30. The 2nd Irish Guards Nos. 1 and 2 Squadrons then passed across the bridge and pushed on into Valkenswaard, entering the partially burning town an hour later at dusk to an ecstatic reception from the locals.140 There does not appear to have been any serious resistance, although the commander of the leading Troop was, perhaps understandably, reluctant to push too far in the gathering darkness; Lieutenant Brian Wilson from the 2nd Company 3rd Irish Guards was travelling with his Platoon on the decks of a Troop of Shermans and overheard a running commentary on his vehicle’s radio that reflected the reticence of the lead Troop commander being ‘equalled by the insistence of his commanding officer to get a move on’.141 According to the 2nd (Armoured) Battalion Irish Guards War Diary its Shermans reached the main square at 20:30, capturing a half-track and thirty prisoners in the process.142
Lieutenant Wilson and the 2nd Company had started the advance travelling in their trucks at the rear of the Irish Guards Group column. After taking a detour around five knocked-out Shermans, Wilson picked up Lieutenant Edward Ryder from his Battalion and five of his men who had been travelling on one of the knocked-out tanks. The column then came to a stop at some point after 17:00 on a stretch of open road near four abandoned 88mm FlaK 36 guns belonging to schwere FlaK Abteilung 602 and Wilson watched with interest as a Lieutenant Isitt from the 2nd Irish Guards inadvertently fired one of the pieces while trying to remove the breech block to prevent it being put back into action. The gun was fortunately pointing in a safe direction but the recoil struck one of Isitt’s men, injuring him in the face and shoulder and the report caused some alarm at the nearby 2nd Battalion HQ.143 At some point around dusk Wilson and his men transferred onto the rear deck of a number of Shermans, possibly from the 2nd Irish Guards 3rd Squadron, for the final stage of the journey to Valkenswaard and in addition to the exchange between the lead Troop Commander and his commander he also overheard the commander of the 2nd Irish Guards, Lieutenant-Colonel Giles Vandeleur, cancelling an artillery barrage on Valkenswaard because the Gunners were allegedly ‘too bloody slow’. Although they were untroubled by the enemy, Wilson’s journey proved eventful when his tank ran off the road on the approaches to a bridge and became stuck on an embanked incline. Concerned lest he become separated from the remainder of his Platoon and spurred on by shouted instructions from his Company commander to get a move on, Wilson tried unsuccessfully to flag down other vehicles in the darkness, including a half-track carrying the Division’s CRA, which gave him short shrift. In the meantime the tank crew managed to regain the road by piling rocks and earth beneath their vehicle’s right track, and Wilson was soon reunited with the remainder of his Company digging in on the north side of Valkenswaard’s main square.144 In all, the day’s fighting had cost the 2nd Irish Guards eight dead, an undetermined number of wounded and missing and nine tanks; the 3rd Irish Guards lost eight killed and eighteen wounded.145
Wilson need not have been worried about being left behind because despite having covered only around half the scheduled distance by nightfall on 17 September, Guards Armoured Division HQ ordered the Irish Guards Group to halt for the night at Valkenswaard and duly informed 30 Corps HQ of its intention. The Corps commander, Lieutenant-General Brian Horrocks, approved the decision, ostensibly because the Guards Armoured Division ‘had had a tough fight’.146 The order went out to the 2nd Irish Guards at 22:00, with the rider that the advance was to be resumed at 07:00 the following morning.147 Leaving aside that only part of the Guards Armoured Division had been involved in the fighting and that nine tanks and sixteen fatalities spread across two separate Battalions was arguably not especially compelling evidence of a collective ‘tough fight’, the most immediate reason for the halt was the failure of the attached units from the 50th Division, the 1st Dorsets and 2nd Devons, to move up and take over responsibility for Valkenswaard from the Irish Guards Group as planned.148 The 2nd Devons had crossed the start line with the 2nd Irish Guards at 14:35, with half the Battalion deployed on each side of the axis advance. The increment deployed on the western side of the Hasselt–Eindhoven highway made good progress and had reached its initial objective, the hamlet of Heuvel eight miles from the start line and five miles short of Valkenswaard, by 17:30. However, the eastern increment became bogged down clearing woods on their side of the road with the assistance of tanks from the 15th/19th Hussars and as the task was only partially complete by dusk, both halves of the Battalion dug in for the night at their separate locations. The 1st Dorsets remained in their positions near La Colonie until 17:00, when it was supposed to move up to a junction on the Eindhoven road near Heuvel to pass though the 2nd Devons and lead the way into Valkenswaard. Severe traffic congestion prevented the head of the Battalion column from reaching the junction until 18:30, and the tail did not arrive until 21:00 and the Battalion commander was obliged to use a motorcycle to navigate his way through ‘double and treble banked traffic’ to report the situation to the Irish Guards Group HQ. As further forward movement was virtually impossible in those conditions, the 1st Dorsets were ordered to dig in for night ready to resume the move at daylight on 18 September, in the meantime providing security for 90 Field Regiment RA, which was also caught in the traffic jam moving forward to a new firing location.149
The decision to halt for the night in Valkenswaard puzzled friend and foe alike. 1 Fallschirmjäger Armee HQ, fully aware that it had no means to block the British from continuing their advance on Eindhoven, found the hiatus ‘incomprehensible’.150 Lieutenant Wilson from the 3rd Irish Guards expressed similar sentiments writing fifty-four years after the event: ‘It is a sad reflection that we should never have stayed the night in Valkenswaard…Having broken the crust of German opposition…and achieved surprise with the speed of advance, it made no sense to stop, bearing in mind the distance yet to be covered to Arnhem and the river crossings ahead. Another opportunity lost.’151 Lieutenant-General Horrocks subsequently justified the halt on the grounds that 30 Corps’ tanks required maintenance owing to previous hard fighting, but this was highly questionable.152 Horrocks was presumably referring to the 2nd Irish Guards, given that unit had seen the bulk of the action on 17 September, but Lieutenant-Colonel Vandeleur’s unit had been withdrawn across the Albert Canal on 12 September and had thus had the better part of a week to carry out maintenance before GARDEN commenced.153 In addition, the US-built M4 Sherman tank with which they were equipped was famously reliable with minimal upkeep and should have been more than capable of operating for forty-eight hours without significant crew maintenance.154
There was a little more to it, however. The Guards Armoured Division’s halt in Valkenswaard was not made of its own volition. Major-General Alan Adair was in fact conforming to Operational Instructions issued by 30 Corps on 15 September, which specifically forbade movement on the main axis of advance after dark, and it is worth quoting the relevant paragraph in full:
There will be NO movement on the main axis during the hours of darkness. The only exceptions to this rule will be i. tactical necessity [or] ii. when a Group Commander is satisfied that his Group can complete its move without disrupting traffic arrangements within two hours of last light. Groups leaguering for the night will probably have to do so on the main road owing to the nature of the ground, though it may be possible for them to pull off into fields adjacent in some places. If units leave the road for leaguering they
will leave a representative on the road to indicate the point at which the tail of the column was when it started to leave the road. Following serials will NOT pass this point except under provision of i. and ii. Above [original emphasis].155
The order was not disseminated solely to units directly involved in the drive north to Arnhem but also to those operating in a support of the main attack; a copy appears in the War Diary of the 15th/19th Hussars, the British 11th Armoured Division’s reconnaissance regiment tasked to secure the right flank of the advance, for example.156 The existence and widespread acceptance of this instruction explains the seeming equanimity with which the 1st Dorsets and 2nd Devons simply settled down in place with the onset of darkness, despite being collectively well short of their objectives. It also casts a different light on the Guards Armoured Division’s rather optimistic 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’.157 This would have required the Irish Guards Group to fight through around fifteen miles of German-occupied territory within five hours to link up with the 101st Airborne Division. Despite its uncompromising wording it may have been intended more as a best-case scenario rather than a concrete statement of intent, with the implicit assumption that the advance would simply be temporarily curtailed whenever darkness fell en route.
This is supported by the behaviour of the Irish Guards Group on arrival in Valkenswaard. As we have seen, when Lieutenant Wilson caught up with his parent 2nd Company, all ranks were busy setting in for the night in the town’s main square amidst the usual crowd of Dutch civilians enthusiastically greeting their liberators. The crowd steadfastly ignored Wilson’s suggestions to take shelter indoors for their own safety until someone noticed that an abandoned German horse-drawn wagon was loaded with bread, butter, cigars, flour, potatoes and sausages; it was swiftly looted and the crowd dispersed rapidly with their booty while Wilson liberated a few loaves of gingerbread for his men. Wilson then retired to the house selected for his Platoon HQ and enjoyed a short sleep in an armchair before being woken by his servant on the arrival of hot food, presumably prepared by the Battalion cooks. Nor was this atypical. Wilson was roused some time later by his Company OC and ordered to take his Platoon across the town to reinforce the Battalion’s 3rd Company, which was allegedly under pressure from German troops equipped with half-tracks. On arrival he reported to the 3rd Company HQ to find that the officers ‘had obviously decided that there was no further threat. They had just finished dinner and invited me to join them. The bottles were empty, however, and I declined as this was not a moment to be convivial.’ With his presence unnecessary, Wilson led his men back to their original positions in the main square where they were finally able to settle down and sleep at 03:30.158 This does not suggest a unit unexpectedly stymied and looking to push on urgently to the aid of beleaguered Airborne troops, but rather a unit carrying out a routine and possibly pre-planned stop for the night.
Horrocks’ thinking in issuing the no move after dark order is curious, although he was merely reflecting the British dictum that tanks only fought by day and used the hours of darkness for maintenance, rearming and crew rest. The origins of this practice are unclear but it dated back to at least January 1941, when Major-General Richard O’Connor, commanding the Western Desert Force, complained of the ‘disinclination of [British] armoured forces to take any action at night’. O’Connor’s criticism was prompted by an unauthorised night halt by the 4th Armoured Brigade that permitted the Italian Brigata Corazzata Speciale to escape from a planned trap near Mechili in Libya.159 As Horrocks held three separate Corps commands in North Africa between August 1942 and June 1943, he presumably became familiar with the practice at that time. Whenever it began, the cessation was virtually standard operating procedure in Normandy,160 although there were numerous counter-examples on both sides of the fence by that time. Panther tanks from SS Panzer Regiment 12 spearheaded an attack on Canadian troops holding the village of Bretteville l’Orgueilleuse on the night of 8 June 1944 for example, which was stalled owing to a lack of infantry after the Panthers succeeded in penetrating the Canadian defensive perimeter.161 On a larger scale, Operation TOTALIZE successfully launched four armoured columns assembled from elements of the Canadian 2nd Division and 51st Highland Division along narrow fixed lines of advance against German positions on the Verrières Ridge south of Caen at 23:30 on 7 August 1944; and more pertinently still, the 11th Armoured Division carried out a night advance to Amiens on the night of 30 August 1944 during the breakout from the Vernon bridgehead across the River Seine.162 Significantly, the Guards Armoured Division had adhered to the fight by day and halt by night dictum during its own advance from the Seine across Picardy and the Pas de Calais to Brussels.
To be fair, Horrocks had never worked with Airborne Forces and his injunction may have resulted from an imperfect understanding of the realities and urgency of Airborne operations. Whatever his motivation, with dusk at around 19:00 and dawn at around 06:30, he was in effect imposing a mandatory twelve-hour halt in every twenty-four hours on the British advance. This was much more in line with a standard, business-as-usual advance as executed by the Guards Armoured Division in its advance to the Albert Canal and thence the Meuse-Escaut Canal, rather than one to relieve beleaguered Airborne troops before they were overwhelmed. It is therefore difficult to reconcile Horrocks’ order with MARKET GARDEN generally and more specifically with his stated intent that 30 Corps should reach Arnhem within forty-eight hours made at his 16 September briefing in the cinema at Bourg Leopold, although his ‘if possible’ rider is more significant than was realised at the time or thereafter.163 With 30 Corps hobbled in this way, time was to be an even more crucial element in an operation that already hinged on that factor.
The Irish Guards Group was an hour and eleven miles behind schedule when its tanks rolled into Valkenswaard’s main square at 20:30 on the night of 17 September, and Horrocks’ no movement after dark order extended this shortfall to twelve hours at a stroke. It remained to be seen if the Guards Armoured Division would prove capable of moving the following day with sufficient despatch to make up at least some of the lost time.
8
D Plus 1
07:00 to 14:00 Monday 18 September 1944
While the Guards Armoured Division was halted for the night in Valkenswaard and along the road leading north from the Neerpelt bridgeheads, the Germans facing them were busy trying to create some order. Their task was complicated by the fact that not all British units may have been as quiescent as the Guards. Hauptsturmführer Friedrich Richter’s 150-strong portion of Kampfgruppe Heinke had been ordered to withdraw six miles east to the village of Budel in the late afternoon of 17 September, after finding itself isolated on the eastern fringe of the British breakout. At 04:30 the following morning British infantry accompanied by four Sherman tanks penetrated the village past sleeping SS sentries while other tanks moved east around Budel to cut the line of retreat to the east. The ensuing fight allegedly lasted for several hours and cost the SS sixty-four killed, wounded and missing before the survivors eventually broke contact and reorganised a mile or so outside Budel before withdrawing a further seven miles east to Weert.1
Despite being well aware of the British preparations for the coming blow, the speed and violence of the assault created near total confusion on the German side, worsened by a general shortage of communications equipment. Kampfgruppe Walther lost both its internal communication links and contact with 1 Fallschirmjäger Armee almost immediately, and the latter was therefore unable to effectively control its subordinate units or form a clear picture of the developing situation. Thus it was not until 04:15 on the morning of 18 September that 1 Fallschirmjäger Armee felt able to inform Heeresgruppe B that ‘there is no doubt about it, the enemy has broken through’.2 As we have seen, the SS units making up Kampfgruppe Heinke had been obliged to withdraw eastward away from the British corridor forming around th
e Eindhoven highway, apart from the surviving Jagdpanzer IVs from Hauptsturmführer Franz Roestel’s SS Panzerjäger Abteilung 10, which had withdrawn north from Borkel in the face of the British advance; they may have been accompanied by the survivors of Hauptsturmführer Segler’s Kampfgruppe from SS Panzergrenadier Regiments 19.3 On the other side of the highway Fallschirmjäger Regiment 6’s east flank was left hanging wide open, prompting Oberstleutnant von der Heydte to withdraw west in an effort to establish contact with Generalleutnant Kurt Chill’s Kampfgruppe from 85 Infanterie Division; he was accompanied by the remnants of Luftwaffe Strafbataillon 6 and Fallschirmjäger Ausbildungs Regiment Hoffmann’s II Bataillon, which had become separated from its parent formation. The withdrawal was made without authorisation, however, and at 08:52 on 18 September Chill was ordered to take von der Heydte’s unit ‘firmly in hand’ and deny him the opportunity for any further such withdrawals. Fallschirmjäger Regiment 6 and its accompanying survivors were formally placed under Chill’s command later that day.4
Arnhem Page 34