Arnhem

by William F Buckingham

  By dawn on 18 September the northern section of the Sperrlinie, running west along the Amsterdamseweg from a point north of Wolfheze to the Dreijensweg and then south along the latter to the Arnhem‒Ede railway line, was manned by elements of Bataillon Krafft, a Heer panzergrenadier unit dubbed Kampfgruppe Bruhn, 140 men from SS Panzerjäger Abteilung 9 again reinforced with 100 Kriegsmarine personnel, the detachment of armoured half-tracks from SS Panzer Aufklärungs Abteilung 9 and the patrol from 213 Nachrichten Regiment, all collectively designated Kampfgruppe von Allwörden. The central section, commanded by Spindler in person, ran south from the Amsterdamseweg along the Diependaalschelaan past the Diependaal (‘city district’) to the southern spur of the Arnhem‒Ede line, then east around Den Brink to the area of the St Elizabeth Hospital. This was manned by elements of Bataillon Krafft located on the Amsterdamseweg, with Hauptsturmführer Hans Möller’s 100-strong kampfgruppe from SS Panzer Pionier Abteilung 9 holding the Diependaal and Den Brink features and the line of the Klingelbeekseweg and Utrechtsestraatweg, with Obersturmführer Heinz Gropp and his eighty-five men from SS Panzer FlaK Abteilung 9 deployed as a backstop in the area of the railway marshalling yard just north of the St Elizabeth Hospital. The southern segment blocking the Utrechtsestraatweg and running down to the Lower Rhine was occupied by SS Panzer Artillerie Regiment 9 with Kampfgruppe Harder deployed as a further backstop as detailed above. Finally, the large brickworks on the south bank of the Lower Rhine opposite the Onderlangs and the steep, scrub-covered bank rising to the Utrechtsestraatweg and the Municipal Museum was occupied by the remnants of SS Panzer Aufklärungs Abteilung 9 after its abortive attempt to force the Arnhem road bridge.115 Given the volume of fire subsequently reported from this location there may also have been light flak and other German elements stationed there as well. Spindler’s Sperrlinie totalled in excess of 1,000 men equipped with various types of armoured half-tracks, two Jagdpanzer IVs, an 88mm flak gun and several 20mm pieces, although these were spread along a frontage of around 9,000 yards.116

  It was at this point that the British advance began to go awry. Lieutenant Cleminson’s short withdrawal to B Company’s main location was spotted by Kampfgruppe Spindler, which reportedly sent forward an armoured vehicle to investigate; the 3rd Parachute Battalion War Diary refers to B Company coming under ‘accurate 88mm fire’ and being subsequently attacked by self-propelled guns.117 The Germans did not close in but were content at this stage to stand off and fire upon any movement on the Utrechtsestraatweg, and attempts to move from the rear of the houses along the river’s edge were blocked by machine-gun fire from the brickworks across the Lower Rhine. The paratroopers were thus relatively safe if they remained indoors, although ammunition began to run short as the stalemate continued. The halt permitted the Battalion signallers successfully to establish radio contact, first with Major Lewis’ Company at the road bridge and later with the remainder of the 3rd Parachute Battalion column back down the lower Klingelbeekseweg near the Oosterbeek Laag underpass.118

  In the meantime the 1st Parachute Battalion had come under harassing fire from mortars and artillery as it approached the underpass after taking the stalled portion of the 3rd Battalion column under command at 07:00. The subsequent advance east through the underpass and up the Klingelbeekseweg road appears to have begun at around 08:00 and was supported by the 3-inch mortars and Vickers guns co-opted from the 3rd Battalion column and fire from the 1st Airlanding Light Regiment’s 3 Battery; the latter were controlled by the Regiment’s commander, Lieutenant-Colonel William ‘Sherriff’ Thompson, who had come forward to the 1st Battalion’s location, possibly accompanied by Captain Harrison and Lieutenant Antony Driver, commander of the Battery’s E Troop.119

  The 1st Battalion’s advance was led by Major Christopher Perrin-Brown’s T Company, spearheaded by Lieutenant Jack Hellingoe’s 11 Platoon. The paratroopers soon came under heavy fire from automatic weapons emplaced on Den Brink on the left and a reported four armoured cars, an unidentified tank, and infantry ensconced in houses and a factory on the right between the Klingelbeekseweg and the Lower Rhine.120 11 Platoon was obliged to take shelter in houses on the right of the road and Lieutenant Hellingoe accompanied one of his gunners into a roof space:

  Private Terrett, the Bren gunner, bashed some slates off with the Bren and put the gun down on the rafters pointing through the hole. We could see straight away where the fire was coming from, from the houses and gardens up on the higher ground, only 150 to 200 yards away…I told Terrett to get firing and I think he got a couple of mags off at least before the Germans got onto him and a burst hit him. It took the foresight off the gun, took the whole of his cheek and eye away, and we both fell back through the rafters, crashing down into the bedroom below.121

  With movement on the Klingelbeekseweg impossible, Major Perrin-Brown then tried to move his men through the back gardens, but the chain-link fencing and concrete panel walls dividing the plots slowed progress, and machine-gun fire from the factory buildings closer to the river slowed it yet further and caused numerous casualties; some unfortunates who took shelter behind the concrete panel walls were wounded when the panels proved to be hollow. By about 09:00 the 1st Battalion also became bogged down in an inconclusive firefight, like Fitch’s Battalion just a mile or so further up the road.122

  While the 1st and 3rd Parachute Battalions were battling their way into the outskirts of Arnhem, the remainder of the 1st Airborne Division was looking either to follow in their wake or hold landing areas for the second lift, led by the armed Jeeps of the 1st Airborne Reconnaissance Squadron. Commanded by Captain David Allsop in Major Gough’s absence, the bulk of the Squadron was tasked at 06:30 to ensure the Utrechtseweg was clear toward Heelsum before following the road east through Oosterbeek to scout a secure route for Division HQ’s move into Arnhem in the wake of the 1st Parachute Brigade. The exception to this was Captain John Hay’s understrength C Troop, which, in light of the casualties it had suffered in its extended contact with Bataillon Krafft the previous day, was assigned to assist the 2nd South Staffords holding LZ S around Reijers-Camp Farm. Moving in a Squadron column led by Captain John Park’s D Troop, the move east commenced at 07:00 and proceeded without incident for the hour it took to pass almost all the way through Oosterbeek. At that point D Troop came under machine-gun fire at the junction of the Utrechtseweg and Grindweg, around 700 yards short of the underpass beneath the railway spur running south to the Oosterbeek Laag station. There were no casualties apart from an unfortunate German motorcycle despatch rider who drove into the line of fire, but the dismounted investigation and resultant clashes north of the Utrechtseweg went on until the afternoon, drew in A Troop and cost the Squadron two seriously wounded casualties while repeatedly failing to locate a clear passage eastward. As Squadron Adjutant Captain Geoffrey Costeloe put it, ‘Everywhere we went, we “bumped” [the enemy].’123 At 16:00 Squadron QM Lieutenant Collier set up a Rear HQ location close to the Hotel Hartenstein to which the Squadron rallied over the next few hours, all being present and digging in by 22:30; according to the Squadron War Diary this was the first opportunity the troops had for a hot meal that day.124

  While the Reconnaissance Squadron was trying and failing to locate a route for Division HQ, measures were underway to clarify command arrangements at the latter. Urquhart had been absent from his HQ for over twelve hours at this point and the Division Operations Officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Mackenzie, decided it was time to address the situation. As Lathbury was also out of contact the appointment thus fell upon Urquhart’s next choice, the commander of the 1st Airlanding Brigade, Brigadier Philip Hicks. Mackenzie therefore set off by Jeep to inform him of Urquhart’s delegation at some point between 07:00 and 09:00.125 The problem was that Hicks was unaware of this arrangement because Urquhart had dealt with the matter off-the-cuff on the steps of his Horsa, rather than in the administrative period of the planning phase when it should have been addressed. Hicks would thus have been perfectly justified in reg
arding the matter not as an executive order from his superior but as merely a suggestion or proposal from a HQ functionary of lower rank. There was therefore no guarantee that he would step up to take command of the Division and perhaps more importantly, no mechanism to force him to do so. An outright refusal on Hicks’ part was not beyond the bounds of possibility because his Brigade was tasked to protect the parachute and landing zones slated for use by the second lift, which was scheduled to begin at 10:00 and Hicks would arguably have been justified in declining command of the Division in favour of the potentially greater responsibility for ensuring the safe arrival of the remainder of the formation. In the event Mackenzie persuaded Hicks to assume command of the Division and after handing over to his Deputy Brigade Commander, Colonel Hilaro Barlow, Hicks moved to Division HQ at approximately 09:15; interestingly, the 1st Airlanding Brigade HQ War Diary records the change occurring almost two hours later, at 11:00,126 and the transfer does not appear to have been made official until then.127

  Whatever the precise timing, Mackenzie was also able to persuade Hicks to authorise reinforcements for the effort to reach the Arnhem road bridge, which he appears to have deduced had run into difficulties. Despite the risk in weakening the landing area defences, Hicks’ first act as Division commander was therefore to despatch Lieutenant-Colonel Derek McCardie’s under-strength 2nd South Staffords toward Arnhem to reinforce the 1st Parachute Brigade, although there is some confusion as to the precise time the 2nd South Staffords moved off.128 The Battalion column was led by Major John Phillp’s intact D Company followed by Major John Buchanan’s depleted Support Company, Colonel McCardie’s Tactical HQ and the equally depleted B Company under Captain Reginald Foot. Buchanan was missing half his complement of Vickers guns and all his mortars and anti-tank guns, while B Company was missing its commander, Major Robert Cain, and Lieutenant Roland Sharp’s 14 Platoon in its entirety: Cain’s Horsa had aborted shortly after take-off and landed safely near Canterbury, while Sharp’s glider had force-landed behind German lines near Tilburg.129 The Staffords were also accompanied by Major Ian Toler, the commander of B Squadron, No. 1 Wing The Glider Pilot Regiment with Captain Angus Low’s forty-strong 20 Flight. Major Toler had lost contact with his other Flight after landing and decided that accompanying McCardie’s Battalion offered the best prospect of establishing contact with Division HQ.130

  Brigadier Hicks could have been forgiven for refusing Mackenzie’s request, for his Brigade was having problems of its own. The day began quietly for Captain Hodgson and D Company 1st Border, deployed in houses around the crossroads just west of Heelsum at the south-western corner of the Division perimeter, but German probes to ascertain the Company’s strength and location began shortly thereafter. Lieutenant Alan Green’s 20 Platoon became involved in a long firefight after a German patrol was spotted moving in front of its perimeter. Lance-Sergeant Stanley Sears and Bren gunner Private Joe Walker were killed in the exchange and Lieutenant Green and his runner Private Len Powell were obliged to seek cover in a fortuitously located hen house, part of which was shot away from around them.131 Another group of ten Germans were spotted moving in on 21 Platoon’s position by Corporal Alan Fisher, who allowed them to close within a hundred yards before ordering his section to open fire. A subsequent attack by a larger group appears to have penetrated the Platoon perimeter but Lieutenant Philip Holt rallied his men and drove the Germans back with the assistance of the Battalion’s mortars emplaced at Johannahoeve Farm and artillery support from 1 Battery, 1st Airlanding Light Regiment.132 Although D Company had no way of knowing, these small-scale probes, interspersed with mortaring, did not develop into anything more significant during the morning because they were only the northern fringe of Kampfgruppe von Tettau’s dawn attack by Schiffsstammabteilung 6/14 and elements of SS Unterführerschule ‘Arnheim’. The main focus was upon Renkum, a mile or so south-west of Heelsum overlooking the Lower Rhine.

  As a result Major Tom Armstrong’s B Company, the most far-flung of the 1st Border’s units dug in just east of Renkum, unwittingly found itself directly in the path of the German attack. Armstrong’s men had been in intermittent contact with the enemy through the night and daylight revealed German troops occupying houses on the edge of Renkum proper approximately 200 yards from B Company’s positions. Further investigation by Armstrong and his recently co-opted second-in-command, Battalion Signals Officer Lieutenant Joe Hardy, showed that the German presence had inadvertently cut the Company off from the remainder of the Battalion. An enquiry to Battalion HQ via the field telephone link strung by Hardy the previous night elicited a curt instruction from the Battalion’s temporary commander, Major Stuart Cousens, to fight their way out. Up to this point the Germans were oblivious to the presence of the glider soldiers, but while Armstrong and Hardy were debating their next move a German motorcycle combination drew up in the yard of one of the German-occupied houses and a number of men from Schiffsstammabteilung 6/14 poured out and gathered around it. The opportunity was too tempting to miss and several Bren guns and a dozen rifles opened fire, hitting a number of the sailors and driving the rest back into cover. At around the same time a column of Germans led by an officer was spotted marching out of Renkum toward the brickworks by Private James Longson, manning a Vickers gun from 2 MMG Platoon emplaced in the hayloft above the brickwork’s stables. Longson’s gun opened fire when the column closed to within 200 yards, again leaving dead and wounded scattered around in the open while the survivors sought cover in the houses flanking the roadway.

  However, by opening fire the glider soldiers revealed their presence and the immediate eruption of fighting around the Company perimeter showed that the Kriegsmarine troops were in fact deployed in strength all around the glider soldiers. The attached Vickers guns and mortars were instrumental in rebuffing a German attack launched from a nearby paper mill, but the Germans soon identified the location of the British support weapons and laid down accurate suppressive fire in return. Private Longson’s gun came under attack from what was assumed to be a sniper who hit the tripod with a round that ricocheted and wounded Longson in the face and another crewman in the shoulder; both men returned to duty after being patched up by the Company Medical Orderly. In order to avoid additional casualties the MMG Platoon’s commander, Lieutenant John McCartney, gave permission for the gun to be redeployed to the riverbank.133 This involved passing the weapon, ammunition and associated equipment out of a back window and across the roof of an adjoining outhouse because German fire made it impossible to use the main front door to the stable. The German fire also prevented the glider soldiers from rescuing three horses fastened in the stalls beneath the hayloft after a German tracer round ignited the hay. The unfortunate animals burned to death, the sound of their passing providing an unearthly aural backdrop to the crump of mortar bombs and the pop and rattle of small-arms fire. The pressure on B Company increased steadily as the morning wore on. German mortar fire destroyed or seriously damaged all the Company’s Jeeps, many of the British-occupied houses caught fire and the field telephone link to Battalion HQ was severed, leaving B Company again reliant on radio messages relayed via neighbouring D Company.134

  In comparison with the situation at Heelsum and Renkum, the remainder of the 1st Border enjoyed a rather less fraught Monday morning, although they did not escape entirely unmolested. At 11:00 a reported thirty German fighters strafed LZ Z, killing seven men from A Company at the north-west corner of the landing area and wounding fourteen more according to Lieutenant Patrick Baillie, commanding the Company’s 7 Platoon; the men had apparently assumed the fighters were friendly and moved into the open to deploy their yellow Celanese (acetate) recognition panels.135

  The other seat of the action lay to the north-east of the main landing area at DZ Y located on the Groote Heide south of the Amsterdamseweg near the Zuid Ginkel café. Usually referred to as Ginkel Heath in British sources, the drop zone was protected by the thinly spread 7th KOSB. Although dispersion and radio communication
problems had prevented Lieutenant-Colonel Payton-Reid from closely monitoring German activity around his Battalion’s extensive perimeter, he divined the German presence at the unprotected northern end of the drop zone. At 06:00 he therefore ordered Major Charles Sherriff’s D Company, all but one platoon of which was deployed along the southern and south-eastern aspects of the DZ as Battalion reserve, to attack and clear a small wood overlooking it on the north side of the Amsterdamseweg. Major Sherriff intended to use Lieutenant Peter Mason’s 16 Platoon as a firm base around which to manoeuvre the remainder of the Company; Mason’s Platoon, accompanied by the Company second-in-command Captain George Gourlay, had spent an uneventful night dug in a few hundred yards east of the DZ around a hutted work camp, which turned out to be partially occupied by Dutch civilians. However, Obersturmführer Hermann Kuhne’s 5 Kompanie from SS Wacht Bataillon 3 had surrounded the work camp undetected during the night and opened heavy fire on 16 Platoon during the dawn stand to. As the Platoon’s radio communications with Company and Battalion HQ were down Captain Gourlay was unable to call for support or indeed issue any warning of the attack, but despite being seriously outnumbered and hampered by the presence of the Dutch civilians, the glider soldiers held out until mid-morning when they were finally overwhelmed and the survivors taken prisoner. By that point seven men including the Platoon sergeant were dead or dying and a further six were wounded, including Captain Gourlay and Lieutenant Mason.136