In fact, 1 Fallschirmjäger Armee was mistaken in its assertion that the British had achieved a breakthrough. The Irish Guards Group had been on the verge of so doing when it entered Valkenswaard at around 20:00, as the British attack had fully pierced the German force blocking the Eindhoven highway and pushed the units flanking the road aside. Consequently, when 30 Corps stopped the advance for the night there was effectively no organised German presence between Valkenswaard and Eindhoven, the suburbs of which lay just six miles or so to the north. However, in the course of the night surviving elements of the blocking force made their way north, in some instances avoiding British troops on the fringes of the breakthrough, and regrouped at Aalst, three miles north of Valkenswaard. Thus by dawn on Monday 18 September 1944 the remnants of two of Fallschirmjäger Ausbildungs Regiment Hoffmann’s bataillonen were deployed along the southern edge of Aalst, supported by a light flak platoon equipped with 20mm guns and, according to one source, eleven PaK 40 75mm anti-tank guns without prime movers. It is unclear where these pieces came from, as all eight of Regiment Hoffmann’s anti-tank guns had been destroyed south of Valkenswaard by the British opening bombardment, and British accounts do not refer to encountering such equipment at Aalst. They may have belonged to SS Panzerjäger Abteilung 10, which brought up to a dozen PaK 40s from Hasselt on or around 6 September 1944, although how they arrived in Aalst without prime movers is unclear. The new blocking position was also supported by one or possibly two surviving Jagdpanzer IV tank destroyers from SS Panzerjäger Abteilung 10, which were deployed east of the highway covering the approach to Aalst. Command of this depleted band devolved to Major Kerutt, as Oberstleutnant von Hoffmann had been killed during the previous day’s fighting.5
The renewed British advance north from Valkenswaard did not have any pre-planned artillery preparation and bad weather precluded close air support. The Irish Guards Group was again assigned to lead off at 07:00, although interestingly 30 Corps’ records refer to the advance beginning an hour earlier.6 In the event neither time was correct because the only element of the Guards Armoured Division to move off at or around the allotted time seems to have been the Division’s reconnaissance force, the 2nd Household Cavalry Regiment; Lieutenant Wilson recalled their armoured cars passing through Valkenswaard’s main square at some point after 07:00.7 Whatever time the Household Cavalry left Valkenswaard, Major A. W. P. P. Herbert’s C Squadron appears to have been detailed to scout ahead of the Irish Guards Group toward Aalst.8 In the meantime the Irish Guards Group was somewhat tardier in resuming the advance. After being roused from their billets Lieutenant Wilson and the rest of the 3rd Irish Guards climbed aboard their troop-carrying vehicles, which had been brought forward and marshalled in Valkenswaard’s main square and adjacent streets. The Battalion appear to have been ready to move at 07:00 but was delayed by the late arrival of the 1st Dorsets, who were to take over responsibility for the town’s defence.9 The Dorsets had resumed the advance at first light moving first to the village of Hoek, just east of the Eindhoven highway opposite the 2nd Devons at Heuvel, four miles south of Valkenswaard and on the line it was supposed to have reached the previous day. As a result, the 1st Dorsets did not reach Valkenswaard until 09:25, although the records suggest that the 3rd Irish Guards actually moved off twenty-five minutes before the Dorsets finally arrived.10 The delay may have been the result of a ‘considerable traffic jam’ on the small bridge over the River Dommel a mile south of Valkenswaard. Recognising that this was likely to become a recurring problem, Lieutenant-General Horrocks issued orders for another bridge to be constructed at the site, with the stipulation that Guards Armoured Division’s assets were on no account to be diverted to the task.11
The Sherman tanks of the 2nd Irish Guards also appear to have been ready to leave Valkenswaard as planned at 07:00 but their advance was delayed by reports from the 2nd Household Cavalry that Aalst was occupied by German self-propelled guns and a Jagdpanther; the report was confirmed by a telephone call to the station master at Aalst, who claimed to have seen the armoured vehicles near the village church.12 The self-propelled guns were presumably Hauptsturmführer Roestel’s surviving Jagdpanzer IVs but the provenance of the Jagdpanther is unclear, not least because German sources do not refer to the presence of such a vehicle in Aalst or the vicinity at that time. It is therefore possible that the 2nd Irish Guards were influenced, consciously or unconsciously, by the experience of the 1st Coldstream Guards at the hands of the first Jagdpanther encountered by the Guards Armoured Division during the fighting at Heppen ten days earlier.13 Whether or not they were, the 2nd Irish Guards’ No.2 Squadron did not move off from Valkenswaard until 10:00, three hours after the advance was supposed to have begun, and the timing accords with German reports of British armoured columns appearing in front of Aalst at 10:20.14 The ubiquitous Lance-Sergeant Cowan from No.2 Squadron added to his previous day’s tally by knocking out another German self-propelled gun, while the 3rd Irish Guards pushed Major Kerutt and the remnants of Fallschirmjäger Ausbildungs Regiment Hoffmann out of their positions in the southern outskirts of Aalst. In the process the 2nd Irish Guards were able to spare Lieutenant William MacFetridge’s Troop of Shermans to carry Lieutenant Wilson’s platoon to a flanking position guarding a decrepit bridge on the eastern fringe of Aalst, where they spent an uneventful morning; Wilson was able to enjoy a wash and shave courtesy of a Dutch housewife, and watched British artillery reducing a church-like building to rubble, presumably in support of the main advance.15
Aalst appears to have been cleared by the late morning but further advance was blocked when armoured cars from the 2nd Household Cavalry’s C Squadron ran into four 88mm guns, possibly from FlaK Brigade 18, emplaced around a bridge over the River Dommel just north of the town. Artillery was called down but by midday the German guns had proved impervious and Major Herbert was instructed to reconnoitre a route for the Irish Guards Group to bypass the block to the east, while the 2nd Irish Guards’ No.2 Squadron ‘exchanged shots with the 88s’.16 In the meantime, two additional moves to speed up the advance were initiated. The Grenadier Guards Group was ordered to bypass Aalst and Eindhoven to the west and move directly to Son, while the 32nd Guards Brigade was instructed to move to Leende, four miles east of Valkenswaard, and then advance north to Helmond via Heeze and Geldrop. The Grenadier’s route was scouted by Major F. E. B. Wignall’s B Squadron, 2nd Household Cavalry and so successfully that one two-vehicle patrol reached the Wilhelmina Canal at 12:30 and made contact with the platoon from the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment guarding the Son bridge site. The paratroopers were accompanied by a platoon from the 326th Airborne Engineer Battalion which had been tasked to prepare the site for the arrival of the British relief force. They were able to provide the Household Cavalrymen with details of the gap, bank conditions and bridging equipment necessary to effect repairs, which was relayed back to 30 Corps; the latter in turn ordered a Bailey bridge unit forward from the bridging train concentration area at Bourg Leopold to Valkenswaard in readiness to move to Son as soon as the route was secured.17 The Grenadier Guards Group were not so fortunate. The area to the west of the Eindhoven highway was riven with numerous small watercourses and while the bridges across them were capable of supporting light armoured vehicles many were unable to support the weight of a Sherman tank, which severely retarded the rate of advance; it took until late afternoon for the Grenadier Guards Group to reach a point level with Aalst. The Welsh Guards Group led the attempted by-pass to the east and appears to have advanced for six miles or so through Heeze before finding Geldrop ‘strongly held’ by the Germans. This and Dutch civilian reports that Helmond was also ‘well garrisoned’ led Guards Armoured Division HQ to order the 32nd Guards Brigade to abandon the eastern loop and return to the main axis of advance north from Valkenswaard.18
Thus by the afternoon of 18 September the Guards Armoured Division had taken seven hours, over half the available daylight, to push forward around two miles. This might have been understan
dable had the advance encountered stiff German opposition as 30 Corps’ War Diary claimed, but this does not appear to have been the case.19 As we have seen the Guards Armoured Division was faced by the remnants of a single battalion from a Fallschirmjäger replacement training unit, up to ninety per cent of whom were partially or untrained Luftwaffe ground personnel pressed into the infantry role, supported by two Jagdpanzer tank destroyers and possibly a handful of SS troops, a single alleged Jagdpanther and up to a dozen towed anti-tank guns, the majority of which had been mauled by the initial British attack, the crews of which had spent a sleepless night withdrawing north to Aalst. Perhaps understandably Major Kerutt’s men no not appear to have put up especially stubborn resistance, considering that the British advance had passed through Aalst to bump the German gun emplacements covering the Dommel crossing north of the town within two hours of the 2nd Irish Guards tanks finally moving off from Valkenswaard at 10:00. Neither do the defenders appear to have inflicted any losses on their assailants, for the 3rd Irish Guards War Diary does not record any casualties for 18 September, although the numbers of killed, wounded and missing appear at the end of daily entries before and after that date.20 Similarly, the 2nd Irish Guards War Diary does not record any casualties or tank losses for that day, although the Guards Armoured Division War Diary refers to a single, unspecified tank casualty.21 It is difficult to reconcile all this with the urgency of the situation, and it is equally difficult to avoid concluding that collectively the Guards Armoured Division did not really try very hard in the morning and early afternoon of Monday 18 September.
***
Having spent a rainy night at Bokt, a mile south of the Wilhelmina Canal, Colonel Sink’s 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment resumed the advance on Eindhoven under clear skies in the early morning of 18 September. Lieutenant-Colonel Horton’s 3rd Battalion took the lead with Companies H and I deployed on either side of the Eindhovenseweg and despite coming under German small-arms fire within six hundred yards of the start line the paratroopers made good progress for two miles or so, pushing back or overrunning and killing several small groups of German troops. However, as Horton’s men approached the suburb of Woensel their progress was halted by two 88mm guns emplaced among the houses firing directly along the line of the Eindhovenseweg. The guns were part of Kampfgruppe Koeppel from FlaK Brigade 18, which appears to have been tasked to defend Eindhoven and deployed a number of infantry and mortars to cover the guns. A sniper lodged in Woensel church tower shot and killed Captain John W. Kiley, the 3rd Battalion’s Intelligence Officer before being despatched by a bazooka rocket.22 Deciding that a frontal assault on the German position was likely to be too costly, Sink ordered Lieutenant-Colonel Strayer’s 2nd Battalion to move out to the left and continue the advance into Eindhoven, and to try to flank the German guns holding up the 3rd Battalion in the process.
Lieutenant-Colonel Strayer assigned the task of attacking the guns to his Company F, which in turn delegated it to its lead element, Lieutenant Russell Hall’s 2nd Platoon, via the Battalion Executive Officer, Captain Charles G. Shettle, who also introduced Russell to a Dutch local who had offered to act as a guide. On the Dutchman’s advice Lieutenant Hall infiltrated his men through a block of houses without being detected, capturing three Germans in the process. While crossing a street, Staff Sergeant John H. Taylor and Private Robert W. Sherwood found themselves facing one of the enemy guns located at a crossroads 150 yards away. Taylor emptied his M1 Garand at a party of six Germans approaching the gun, wounding two before the 88mm put three rounds into the building in which the two Americans had gone to ground. After finding a new firing position Sherwood responded with two rifle grenades, one of which landed just five yards behind the gun, followed by another fired by Private Homer Smith from 2nd Squad across the street. In order to remain behind cover Smith was obliged to fire from the shoulder rather than bracing his rifle butt against the ground as recommended, but the grenade scored a direct hit on the gun. The rifle grenadiers were then joined by mortar squad leader Sergeant Frank D. Griffin, who scored another direct hit on the gun with his 60mm mortar despite lacking a bipod and firing with the tube braced between his knees. This blew a German officer off his feet. Taylor then shot the officer in the leg as he scrambled into a nearby house. Another rifle grenade from Sherwood wounded all ten Germans sheltering within. In their haste Lieutenant Hall’s men were unaware they were actually facing two guns, until the second pumped three rounds into nearby buildings as the first was knocked out. However, Lieutenant Robert Pardue and the 2nd Squad had spotted the new threat and were already manoeuvring to deal with it. Private Smith fired several rifle grenades and while none actually hit the gun, they were close enough to persuade the gun crew to abandon their weapon after trying to blow the breech with a hand-grenade. Several of the fourteen-strong crew were shot by the pursuing paratroopers as they attempted to flee across nearby sugar beet fields. In addition to the two 88mm guns, the fight cost the German defenders thirteen dead and forty-one prisoners; there were two US casualties.23
Overwhelming the gun position was complete by mid-morning. In the meantime the 2nd Battalion had continued pressing into Eindhoven while the rest of the 506th Regiment paused in Woensel. At 11:30 Colonel Sink’s signallers, who had set up their equipment in the bazooka-damaged tower of Woensel church, established contact with 30 Corps and learned that the Guards Armoured Division was still bogged down north of Valkenswaard, the first definite word the US airborne troops had received on the progress of the ground advance. At around midday Major-General Taylor arrived from his HQ in Son and on learning of the contact he instructed Sink to inform 30 Corps of the destruction of the Son bridge and request that Bailey bridging equipment be added to the head of the ground column, before enquiring about the 506th’s progress into Eindhoven. Colonel Charles H. Chase, Sink’s Executive Officer ensconced with the signallers in the church tower, responded by relaying Lieutenant-Colonel Strayer’s reply: ‘We hold the center of town and we are sitting on the four bridges over the Dommel River.’ Taken aback by the unexpected confirmation that his Division’s initial mission had been completed with such relative ease, Taylor insisted on climbing the church tower and getting confirmation from Strayer in person.24 Despite fears of a large German presence in Eindhoven the 2nd Battalion encountered only scattered resistance, largely from individuals armed with rifles. One of them did manage to seriously wound Lieutenant Robert Brewer from Company E in the throat as he unwisely exposed his officer status at the head of his Platoon.25 Kampfgruppe Koeppel maintained a running commentary to FlaK Brigade 18 as the US paratroopers pressed into the city, which stopped abruptly after reporting that contact had been lost with an unnamed unit and requesting orders for Panzerabwehr Gruppe Grunewald.26 Colonel Sink therefore lost no time moving the 1st and 3rd Battalions of the 506th Regiment into the city where, as liberators of the first Dutch city to be freed from German occupation, they received an even more frenzied reception from the local populace. There was also a palpable difference in the atmosphere, as one US officer noted: ‘The reception was terrific…[but the]…air seemed to reek with hate for the German.’27 In addition to Taylor’s surprised approval, the icing on the cake for Sink’s Regiment at this point was its first physical contact with the GARDEN relief force, in the shape of the two-vehicle patrol from the 2nd Household Cavalry that arrived at the demolished Son bridge at 12:30.
Five miles west along the Wilhelmina Canal daylight brought little comfort to Lieutenant Wierzbowski and his eighteen-strong band from the 3rd Battalion 502nd Parachute Infantry Regiment, who had dug in between the Canal dyke and a parallel road after an unsuccessful attempt to reach the bridge carrying the Eindhovenseweg Zuid road the previous night. The position was alongside an area of loading derricks while the bridge, a 100-foot-long single-span concrete affair, lay sixty yards to the west, with what Wierzbowski identified as a barracks, surrounded with occupied trenches, situated just twenty yards south of the bridge. Worse, an 88mm gun emp
lacement was visible 150 yards east up the canal with an ammunition and spares dump located nearby, and more German troops were dug in eighty yards to the north on the other side of the road; the latter fired on any attempt to move toward the bridge. At 10:00 a German soldier accompanied by a man in civilian clothing were spotted approaching the south end of the bridge. The paratroopers allowed the pair to go unmolested as they could not get a clear shot, and they remained in the area for around twenty minutes. In the event the pair were probably setting the timer on a pre-placed demolition charge, for at precisely 11:00 the bridge erupted in a huge explosion that forced the paratroopers down into their foxholes and showered the position with large pieces of debris.
In the course of the morning more enemy troops were also seen moving through the woods beyond the German position to the north; although Wierzbowski had no way of knowing, these were stragglers from the fighting near Best, the sound of which was clearly audible by the canal. A large group approached Wierzbowski’s position at one point and an estimated thirty-five were killed after the paratroopers allowed them to close to within fifty yards before opening fire. A rather less welcome but more spectacular manifestation of the fight for Best was a strafing by USAAF P-47 fighter-bombers called in to provide close air support, although the paratroopers escaped unscathed. After the bridge had been blown Wierzbowski despatched Sergeant James Hoyle and Private First Class Joe E. Mann, his point man of the previous night, with the platoon’s Bazooka and its five rockets to deal with the ammunition dump and 88mm gun. It is unclear whether Wierzbowski was motivated by concern over the threat posed by the 88mm gun or was seeking to keep his men motivated after the destruction of the bridge, but Mann destroyed the ammunition dump with several rockets and the pair then shot six Germans who tried to interfere. Mann was hit twice in the ensuing firefight but Hoyle succeeded in hitting the 88mm gun with possibly the last remaining Bazooka round before helping Mann back to the relative safety of the main position.28
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