Although it was not apparent to the beleaguered US Airborne troops, their German opponents were suffering problems of their own, due to the variable quality and training of the units committed to the attack. At one point Generalleutnant Scherbening was obliged to despatch his adjutant Major Rasch to take command of a stalled unit commanded by a Hauptmann Gruenenklee attacking toward Groesbeek; these may have been the troops encountered by Lieutenant Sickler and his men near Voxhill. Whether or not, Major Rasch discovered that his new temporary command was a replacement unit made up of overage men:
These were all old boys lying here, veterans of the First World War, who had just been called up to relieve the younger soldiers manning POW camp battalions. Now they too had been put into the front line. Somebody in the line called out to me ‘Captain, we’ve already stormed the Craoneer Heights in 1914!’. ‘Ja’ I was able to answer. ‘Can’t you see that it’s up to us old boys to run the whole show again.’
Rasch’s subtle chiding did the trick and he was to hand the unit back to its original commander shortly thereafter before returning to Scherbening’s HQ.70 Nonetheless, by 11:00 the attack had either bypassed or simply pushed back the US units protecting both landing zones by sheer weight of numbers and German troops were occupying large portions of both; some had re-manned a number of 20mm flak guns abandoned the previous day, which by some oversight the US paratroopers had failed to disable. The 1st Battalion 508th Regiment was on the way back from Nijmegen at Colonel Lindquist’s order by just after 11:00 to clear LZ T in an effort to rectify the situation, and Gavin set similar counter-measures in motion. First, he ordered the 505th Regiment to attack and clear LZ N, prompting Colonel Ekman to deploy his sole reserve, the understrength Company C, to the western edge of the landing zone. Gavin then gathered up Company D of the 307th Airborne Engineer Battalion, which was guarding the Divisional Command Post near Groesbeek, and personally deployed it on the western edge of LZ T in an effort to seal the gap that had opened up in the Divisional perimeter between the 505th and 508th Regiments.71 The question was now whether the counter-attack had sufficient strength to clear the landing zones, and whether it could be done before the glider lift arrived at 13:00 and a massacre ensued.
***
Daylight on Monday 18 September saw the north end of the Arnhem road bridge wrapped in a cold mist from the Lower Rhine thick enough to conceal anyone moving in the streets and as a result Private James Sims from the 2nd Parachute Battalion’s Mortar Platoon found himself stealthily trailing his Platoon Commander with a roll of signal wire. Sims had spent the night in his slit trench on a small traffic island at the junction of the Weertjesstraat and Eusebiusbinnensingel,72 overlooked from the north by the house containing the rest of the Mortar Platoon and Battalion HQ and just west of where the Weertjesstraat ran under the bridge ramp and became the Westervoortsedijk; in the process he had earned the respect of his veteran companion by resisting all efforts to rouse him during a sudden firefight during the night. Lieutenant Woods had summoned Sims to assist in setting up an observation post in a warehouse occupied by the Machine Gun Platoon on the corner of the Kade Straat overlooking the river:
The mist enveloped us like a cloak ‒ the island had already vanished ‒ but he [Lieutenant Woods] seemed to know where he was going so all I had to do was stick close to him and keep paying out the line…The closer we came to the Machine Gun Platoon the thicker grew the mist, for we were quite near the Rhine…We seemed to be making a hell of a noise with our boots and at every step I expected to be cut down by a panzer grenadier. We were eventually challenged by an alert sapper sentry, who gave as much gen as he could on the position ahead.
The pair eventually reached their destination via a barricaded back door after cutting through an enclosed yard and scaling a six-foot wall, during which the aerial of the radio Lieutenant Woods was carrying became entangled in a line of some kind. The barricade was so effective it took five minutes for the machine-gunners to make a gap big enough for the visitors to pass through. The mission eventually proved futile as their field telephone refused to function and they were unable to make clear contact with the No. 18 set Woods was carrying. The telephone was abandoned in disgust along with the wire Sims had painstakingly reeled out. Both men returned to the Mortar Platoon location.73
By this time the equivalent of just over a parachute battalion had gathered around the north end of the Arnhem road bridge, of which only around 385 were infantrymen. The bulk of these were from the 2nd Parachute Battalion’s HQ Group, HQ Company, A Company, B Company minus part of 4 Platoon and Support Company, totalling 340 men; the remaining forty-five or so belonged to two incomplete platoons and HQ element from the 3rd Parachute Battalion’s C Company. Of the remaining 350 or so, 110 were from 1st Parachute Brigade HQ, the 1st Parachute Squadron RE and 9th Field Company RE provided seventy-five and thirty men respectively, forty were from the 1st Airlanding Anti-Tank Battery’s HQ, B and C Troops and a further forty were from 3 Platoon, 250 (Airborne) Light Composite Company RASC. The remainder consisted of twelve men belonging to forward observer elements from the 3rd Airlanding Light Battery RA; two US personnel from a Jedburgh Team; Major Gough and seven men from the 1st Airborne Reconnaissance Squadron; seventeen Glider Pilots; six men from the 1st (Airborne) Divisional Field Park RAOC; five men each from the 1st (Airborne) Divisional Workshop REME and 1st (Parachute) Field Security Section, Intelligence Corps; and two or possibly three Military Policemen from the 1st (Airborne) Divisional Provost Company CMP. In all, this added up to around sixty officers including thirteen majors and 680 Other Ranks, totalling approximately 740 men.74
Lieutenant-Colonel Frost oversaw deployment of this force into a perimeter anchored on a 250-yard stretch of the Lower Rhine centred on the road bridge, defended on the eastern side by elements of the 2nd Parachute Battalion’s B Company and C Company 3rd Parachute Battalion, the former’s Medium Machine Gun Platoon and part of the Brigade HQ Defence Platoon. The western side of the perimeter, defended by other elements of B Company, elements of the 2nd Battalion’s HQ and Support Company and the 9th Field Company RE, ran north from the riverside Rijnkade and across the Weertjesstraat for almost 200 yards before curving north-east for just over 100 yards enclosing a right-angle stretch of the Prinsenhof and the city mortuary, which was defended by the RASC platoon. It then ran for 250 yards due east just short of the prison, bisected the Eusebiusbinnensingel that paralleled west side of the landscaped embankment carrying the Nijmeegseweg up to the bridge, the lower end of the embankment itself and the Eusebiusbuitensingel that paralleled the east side of the embankment, before curving south for another 300 yards or so back down to the Lower Rhine. The west side of the embankment was defended by part of the Brigade HQ Defence Platoon, while the east was covered by part of the 3rd Battalion’s HQ element and part of a platoon from C Company along with the 1st Parachute Squadron’s HQ and A Troop, all occupying the Van Limburg Stirum School. This position also closely overlooked an access slip road from the Nijmeegseweg. The rest of the eastern perimeter including a bulge to the east from the Westervoortsedijk running from the bridge underpass to the riverbank was held by another element of the Brigade HQ Defence Platoon and C Company’s 8 Platoon. The remainder of Frost’s force was deployed in buildings toward the centre of the perimeter, along the Kadestraat and the parallel Oostraat, the Weertjesstraat, the Prinsenhof and the Eusebiusbinnensingel, mainly to the west of the bridge ramp.75
The shape of the British perimeter had been defined the previous night, with the exception of the north-east corner where Captain Eric Mackay and eighteen Sappers from A Troop 1st Parachute Squadron RE had occupied a building known as the Red School on the east side of the embankment at 23:00; Lieutenant Denis Simpson and another twenty-five Sappers from B Troop were ensconced in the Van Limburg Stirum School twenty yards to the south, while a party of ten from HQ Troop and twenty signallers under Lieutenant Donald Hindley occupied a house on the opposite side of the Eusebiusbuitensingel. Obse
rvation and fields of fire from the Red School proved to be severely restricted by trees and within fifteen minutes of Mackay’s party moving in German troops closed in undetected and threw hand-grenades through the windows before raking the building with machine-gun fire, wounding several Sappers. A confused, half-hour firefight followed, which underlined the vulnerability of the position and Mackay therefore ordered a withdrawal to the Van Limburg Stirum School at 23:45, after he and five Sappers cleared the grounds of the Red School with grenades and Sten fire.76 The B Troop contingent in the Van Limburg School were not overjoyed at the arrival of their new companions as Sapper George Needham discovered: ‘They objected and said “Bugger off, go find your own place,” but Captain Mackay, being the man he was, persuaded them in no uncertain terms to let us in, and we started fortifying some of the empty rooms.’77 According to Lance-Corporal Arthur Hendy from B Troop, the hostility was the result of intense rivalry between the Squadron’s three Troops, which was in turn a spin-off from the Troops being semi-permanently attached to individual parachute battalions.78 The A Troop contingent were all safely in the Van Limburg School by just after midnight, and an attack following the same pattern was repulsed at some point between 02:00 and 03:00.79 Shortly after that Major Lewis and fifteen men from the 3rd Parachute Battalion’s HQ group and 9 Platoon including Captain Wilfred Robinson and Lieutenant Len Wright received a similarly chilly reception; the remainder of the C Company contingent, Lieutenant Gerald Infield and 8 Platoon, occupied the south-eastern portion of the perimeter south of the Westervoortsedijk with elements of the Brigade HQ Defence Platoon.80 The reason is unclear but there appears to have been bad blood between Major Lewis and Captain Mackay. Although the former was the senior officer present there was no interaction between them, their respective units appear to have operated in isolation despite their proximity, and neither officer mentioned the presence of the other or their men in their War Diary entries or post-battle accounts.81 While the Airborne troops were busy preparing their perimeter for defence, removing glass and inflammable materials from windows, barricading doorways and stockpiling water in baths and sinks, their opponents were making preparations to dislodge them.
Initially however, the German upper command echelons were handicapped by the same kind of confusion that had reigned in the immediate aftermath of the British ground assault south of Eindhoven. In the early hours of 18 September II SS Panzerkorps erroneously informed Heeresgruppe B that the Arnhem road bridge had been cleared and was passable to traffic, for example. This was subsequently corrected but with a major underestimation of British strength, considered to be only 120 men. At 04:00 Hauptsturmführer Heinrich Brinkmann, the officer tasked to clear the bridge, received the first increment of reinforcements from Wehrkreis IV. Panzer-Grenadier Ersatz und Ausbildungs Bataillon ‘Bocholt’ commanded by Major Hans-Peter Knaust, a one-legged veteran of the Eastern Front, was a four-company-strong replacement training unit for infantry in the final stage of convalescence following wounds, and Brinkmann immediately set Knaust to relieving the elements of Kampfgruppe Euling deployed north of the bridge ramp so they could continue their journey to Nijmegen. By this time Brinkmann’s own unit, SS Panzer Aufklärungs Abteilung 10, appears to have been deployed to the north and east of the British perimeter while SS Panzergrenadier Regiment 21’s fifty-strong 3 Kompanie, fresh from pedalling the twenty-five miles from Deventer, was deployed to the west.82 The former was therefore likely responsible for the attacks on the 1st Parachute Squadron at the Red and Van Limburg Stirum Schools, and the latter for the firefight with the 2nd Battalion’s Support Company that had failed to rouse Private Sims. In the meantime Private Sims and Lieutenant Woods set up their observation post in the attic of a building on the corner of the Kadestraat and Weertjesstraat. Dubbed the White House by the paratroopers, it was occupied by A Company and not only provided an excellent view over the rooftops to the southern approaches to the bridge, but also allowed clear radio contact with the Platoon’s mortar pits on the traffic island where Sims had spent the night.83 The same process was taking place 100 yards to the north where Major Denis Munford used the attic of the building occupied by Brigade HQ on the Eusebiusbinnensingel west of the bridge embankment to register the guns of 3 Battery via Bombardier Leo Hall’s piggybacked No. 22 and No. 68 radio sets. 3 Battery had relocated to the vicinity of Oosterbeek Old Church at 05:00 to be within range of the bridge, and Munford used six rounds to register the south end of the bridge as target Mike One.84
The first intrusion into the airborne perimeter was a municipal refuse lorry loaded with dustbins that drove south past Brigade HQ and turned left onto the Weertjesstraat. It was promptly riddled with fire from both sides of the road and came to stop a few yards from the bridge underpass by the staircase leading up the embankment; the driver and any passengers were probably killed. Next came two trucks carrying troops from SS Panzer Aufklärungs Abteilung 10, following in the wake of the dustbin lorry along the Eusebiusbinnensingel west of the ramp. They may have been part of a concerted German attack, but as they were reportedly moving slowly they may have simply been lost. Whatever the reason for their presence, the lead truck tried to accelerate when the paratroopers opened fire and passed the dustbin lorry before slewing at right-angles across the road almost beneath the underpass; the other vehicle, a captured US Dodge ¾-ton Weapons Carrier, attempted to reverse back up the Eusebiusbinnensingel but was brought to a stop outside the building occupied by Brigade HQ.85 Most of the passengers in these vehicles were killed or wounded before they could exit and those who did were shot down in the roadway. Private Sims recalled the road being carpeted with German dead, and of one badly wounded SS man being shot by a 2nd Battalion sniper from the White House after dragging himself all the way to the top of the embankment. He also reported another German attack from the same direction using a civilian ambulance filled with SS. After being halted by a burst of Bren fire that earned the gunner a rebuke from an officer, ‘the back doors of the ambulance sprang open and a dozen fully armed SS men came tumbling out firing automatic weapons from the hip. They charged straight at us…But the Brens and rifles were already at their grim work and not a man survived that desperate attempt. One SS man actually reached the front door of the White House before collapsing on the steps, riddled with bullets.’86
The next set of intruders, who appeared after a short but intense German mortar barrage, were less hesitant and more powerful. A group of armoured vehicles which had formed up in the industrial area to the east of the bridge attempted to push along the Westervoortsedijk and under the bridge underpass. British accounts refer to armoured half-tracks led by one or possibly more tanks, but there do not appear to have been any German tanks in the area of the Arnhem bridge at this point. While Wehrkreis IV had despatched an armoured unit drawn from Panzer Ersatz Regiment 6 ‘Bielefeld’ to Arnhem at the same time as Knaust’s Bataillon ‘Bocholt’, those vehicles did not arrive in Arnhem until the morning of Tuesday 19 September.87 The ‘tank’ was therefore likely one of the French-built Panhard 178 armoured cars operated by the Obersturmführer Karl Ziebrecht’s kompanie from SS Panzer Aufklärungs Abteilung 10, designated Panzer Spähwagen P204 (f) in German service.88 Whatever it was, the vehicle got as far as the bridge underpass before coming under fire from a 6-Pounder anti-tank gun, possibly Sergeant Cyril Robson’s gun from C Troop stationed at the western end of the Weertjesstraat. The first round not only missed the target but the recoil sent the weapon skidding backwards across the cobbled surface because the spades at the end of the gun trails had not been dug in; the inadvertent movement injured two crewmen. By the time the gun had been manhandled back to its firing position, reloaded and the crew casualties made up by co-opting the Battery clerk, the armoured car had begun to emerge into the open from the gloom of the underpass. The second shot scored a direct hit, slewing the vehicle across the road and setting it ablaze. This brought the following vehicles to a stop, giving the paratroopers ensconced in the buildings on either
side of the bridge the opportunity to pour fire into them. It is unclear if any more were knocked out before the SS withdrew, but at least one crewman survived in the burning armoured car and fired on any British movement. Despite shouted appeals to surrender from the paratroopers the gunner refused to bail out and was burned to death as the fire spread through the stricken vehicle.89
All this took place in the first two hours or so after sunrise, which occurred at 06:15.90 There followed a brief period of calm; at this stage Frost reportedly felt that ‘everything was going according to plan, with no serious opposition yet and everything under control.’91 The calm did not last long, and this time the threat came from the other side of the Lower Rhine. Hauptsturmführer Viktor Gräbner had raced south to Nijmegen with the bulk of SS Panzer Aufklärungs Abteilung 9 in the evening of 17 September, only to find the bridges there defended by Oberst Henke’s scratch force and no sign of Allied activity. After detaching two armoured half-tracks to assist the defence, Gräbner returned to Elst at some point between 20:00 and 22:00; his move may have been prompted by reports of the firefight at the Arnhem road bridge from vehicles left at Elst as a radio relay station. By dawn on 18 September he and his men were back in the vicinity of the Arnhem bridge having left six half-tracks, some or possibly all of which were Sd.Kfz 251/9s mounting short 75mm guns, in Elst as a blocking force.92 Gräbner watched Kampfgruppe Brinkmann’s unsuccessful attack through his binoculars, and then began to marshal his force to join the fray, even though it ran counter to his orders. This may have been his intention in moving north from Elst or he may have been prompted by the sight of his opposite numbers from the Frundsberg being roughly handled, but Gräbner’s decision was both unilateral and typically Waffen SS, and came as no surprise to his superiors; as Hauptsturmführer Wilfried Schwarz, 9 SS Panzer Division’s Chief-of-Staff, later commented, ‘This was typical of Gräbner ‒ always the first to get stuck in!’93 Whether he intended to dislodge the British interlopers or merely to rush through the British perimeter to rejoin his parent formation is unclear. Whatever his intention, Gräbner marshalled his twenty-odd vehicles on the approach to the bridge, placing five Sd.Kfz. 234 eight-wheeled armoured cars in the van. Next came eight Sd.Kfz. 250 armoured half-tracks, followed by eight assorted trucks armoured with sand-filled oil drums, one towing a trailer of some kind, and a solitary Sd.Kfz. 10 unarmoured half-track.94 According to one source there was also a captured British Humber scout-car that Gräbner was using as a personal vehicle.95
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