Major Sherriff’s first inkling that 16 Platoon was in trouble came when he was fired on from the woods in the direction of the work camp while moving forward to explain his plan to Captain Gourlay. On receiving word of this development Lieutenant-Colonel Payton-Reid ordered C Company at the south-western side of the perimeter to despatch a Platoon onto the DZ to engage the enemy in the area of the work camp, but the effectiveness of this was partially nullified by the long range and rolling terrain and resultant dead ground. Major Dinwiddie’s men were not the only Airborne soldiers moving about on the DZ. Lieutenant Hugh Ashmore and 3 Platoon from the 21st Independent Company had left their overnight position at Reijers-Camp Farm in the early morning to mark DZ Y for the arrival of the 4th Parachute Brigade, which was scheduled for 10:00.137 The work of setting up the EUREKA beacon, pegging out the day-glo marker panels and placing of the coloured smoke markers for the individual unit RVs by the 4th Parachute Brigade’s advance parties was hampered by German fire from the east side of the drop zone; the markers were subsequently used as convenient aiming points by the strafing German fighters later in the morning.138 In the meantime, at 07:00 pressure of time obliged Major Sherriff to give up on 16 Platoon, bypass the work camp and manoeuvre north through the eastern woods and across the Amsterdamseweg to attack his original objective from the north-east. However, moving into the woods cut D Company’s radio link with Battalion HQ and brought it into contact with elements of SS Wacht Bataillon 3, and the resultant confused fighting went on for the remainder of the morning and into the afternoon. By 09:00 the sound of battle emanating from the eastern woods suggested that the Germans were advancing south, raising the unwelcome possibility of them dominating the DZ when the 4th Parachute Brigade arrived and decimated the descending paratroopers. After several unsuccessful attempts to contact Major Sherriff to clarify the situation, Colonel Payton-Reid despatched his sole remaining reserve into the woods in the wake of D Company, a composite platoon drawn from Support Company led by its commander, Major Henry Hill. Hill reappeared two hours later and reported inflicting a number of dead and wounded on German infiltrators encountered, taking personal credit for two.139
Colonel Payton-Reid was obliged to rely on Major Hill’s composite platoon because B and C Companies were also engaged, on the north-western and south-western sectors of the drop zone perimeter respectively. The Germans were initially unaware of the presence of Major Forman’s B Company and an attached 6-Pounder anti-tank gun commanded by Sergeant George Barton knocked out at least one half-track among a group of vehicles heading back toward Ede on the Amsterdamseweg; the SS who escaped from the stricken vehicle or vehicles were finished off by a Vickers MMG detachment in a nice example of attached Support element co-ordination.140 When another group of SS were subsequently spotted digging mortar pits north of the Amsterdamseweg Captain John Walker from the 1st Airlanding Light Regiment, who was acting as a forward observer with 7th KOSB, swiftly organised a shoot by No.1 Battery. The resulting salvoes of 75mm fire prompted a hasty withdrawal and no further activity was noted from that area.141 Fire support also assisted Lieutenant Donald Murray’s 5 Platoon after some SS closed in using the surrounding scrub for cover and wounded two men deepening their trench in the open before launching an assault. An unnamed Sergeant commanding a nearby 3-inch mortar detachment noted the situation and rapidly dropped a score of mortar bombs onto the attackers, who promptly broke off their attack. The feat was especially noteworthy because the distance to the target was only half the 500 yards usually considered the minimum for safety, and firing at such close range involved jacking up the mortar’s bipod with sandbags to elevate the tube sufficiently.142
Despite being a Platoon understrength ‒ as the gliders carrying Lieutenant Charles Doig’s 7 Platoon appear to have aborted while still over Britain ‒ B Company was not content to remain passive in the face of German pressure. Major Forman despatched a six-man patrol from 6 Platoon under Sergeant Edward Shaw equipped with the Platoon’s 2-inch mortar to deal with a German machine-gun firing from the direction of Ede, just over a mile to the west. After locating a number of likely positions Sergeant Shaw fired off his entire supply of mortar bombs before withdrawing to the relative safety of the perimeter. The mortar gunner, Private Alexander McKay, was killed when his last bomb exploded prematurely after striking an overhead branch.143
The fighting also involved Major Buchanan’s A Company, deployed along the Amsterdamseweg two miles or so to the east of the main Battalion perimeter. 4 Platoon at the eastern end of the line again came under sustained pressure from German infantry with support from heavy weapons, which eventually obliged Lieutenant Strang to withdraw to the main Company perimeter at the rather too aptly named Planken Wambuis.144 The latter rebuffed German troops pursuing the beleaguered 4 Platoon, inflicting heavy casualties on the attackers as they made repeated attempts to breach the Company perimeter, and took a number of prisoners in the process. At some point the Company second-in-command, Major John Coke, was despatched to reconnoitre the route for the Company’s scheduled move back to the main landing area and returned with the heartening news from Brigade HQ that part of the 1st Parachute Brigade had secured the north end of the Arnhem road bridge.145
Thus by mid-morning the situation at the landing area was fairly stable, with the defenders holding firm and maintaining control over LZs X and S and more especially DZ Y as ordered. However, although the second lift was scheduled to arrive at 10:00, ‘Unfortunately, the aircraft did not appear at their appointed time,’ as the 7th KOSB War Diary drily noted.146 Because the men on the ground in Holland lacked communication with the airfields and higher HQs in Britain they had no idea whether the lift had been delayed or even abandoned altogether. As the aircraft might appear at any moment they had no option but to continue to hold in the face of steadily increasing German pressure and by the early afternoon the scales had begun to tip against the 7th KOSB holding DZ Y. Sturmbannführer Paul Helle had deployed most of SS Wacht Bataillon 3 in the attack against Ginkel Heath, keeping just Obersturmführer Johannes Bronkhorst’s 1 Kompanie and his heavy weapons element commanded by a Hauptscharführer Einenkel in reserve; Helle himself set up his HQ in the Zuid Ginkel café at the north edge of the landing zone.147 The SS had pressed south through the eastern woods from the hutted work camp, were holding the line of the Amsterdamseweg and had pushed the glider soldiers back and overrun the north-eastern corner of the drop zone. The German advance appears to have forced part of Major Forman’s B Company to fight its way out of near encirclement, with elements of the 1st Airlanding Light Regiment being also caught up in the fighting. Captain John Lee from the Regiment’s A Troop was attached to B Company and lost his Jeep trailer in the breakout, and Lieutenant Keith Halliday and a party from B Troop accompanying the 7th KOSB’s HQ element was obliged to revert to the infantry role in defence of its allotted sector of the perimeter.148 By the early afternoon of Monday 18 September 1944 the question was thus rapidly becoming not when the 4th Parachute Brigade would arrive, but whether or not there would be a drop zone for it to use when it did.
9
D Plus 1
14:00 to 16:00 Monday 18 September 1944
Operation MARKET’s second lift was scheduled to deliver the second increment of units to all three of the Allied airborne divisions, utilising 1,676 parachute transports and glider tugs, and 1,205 assorted gliders. Although the total of powered aircraft was around 300 lower than the first lift, the glider total was almost triple and overall the second lift was therefore larger, with a combined total of 2,501 machines. The 1st Airborne Division’s share amounted to 455 aircraft and 296 gliders, with the latter lifting infantry from the 1st Airlanding Brigade and guns, vehicles and supplies for a variety of other units; it also included fifteen of the massive Hamilcar gliders, three of which were carrying trailers pre-loaded with ammunition as a resupply experiment.1 Twenty-five gliders, likely all Horsas, carried loads that had aborted from the first lift. Of the thirteen Horsas car
rying elements of the 7th King’s Own Scottish Borderers (KOSB) for example, only the five carrying the Battalion MT Section and a single machine carrying a platoon from C Company were originally slated for the second lift.2 Of the remainder, ten Horsas carried an advance party for the 1st Polish Independent Parachute Brigade consisting mainly of the Brigade Anti-tank Battery, and four Horsas carried men and equipment from two RAF radar teams. The gliders were again towed by a mixture of Albemarles, Halifaxes and Stirlings from No. 38 Group and Dakotas from No. 46 Group. The parachute portion of the Division’s second lift, principally Brigadier John Hackett’s 4th Parachute Brigade, was again carried exclusively in USAAF aircraft, specifically 123 C-47s and three visually identical C-53s drawn from the 314th and 315th Troop Carrier Groups based at Saltby in Lincolnshire and Spanhoe in Northamptonshire respectively. Finally, thirty-three Stirlings from Nos. 295 and 570 Squadrons based at RAF Harwell in Berkshire were slated to carry out the first routine supply drop for the 1st Airborne Division onto the as yet unused LZ L, half a mile or so east of LZ S.3
All the aircraft slated for the second lift appear to have been loaded and ready to fly by the evening of Sunday 17 September. The 4th Parachute Squadron RE despatched working parties the six miles or so from its billets at Glaston and Uppingham to RAF Spanhoe to load containers onto the C-47s from the US 315th Troop Carrier Group that would be carrying them to DZ Y the following day at 17:30.4 In addition to the routine infantry stores the containers were loaded with engineer-specific supplies and equipment including mines, mine detectors and explosives. The Squadron commander, Major Æneas Perkins, later recalled that loading the containers was problematic because it was ‘difficult to decide exactly what should be taken in view of our rather indefinite tasks’.5 At RAF Blakehill Farm in Wiltshire 5 Flight from D Squadron, No. 1 Wing The Glider Pilot Regiment spent part of the morning loading their Horsas with 6-Pounder guns and Jeeps belonging to the 1st Airlanding Anti-tank Battery RA, supervised by the Flight commander, Captain Alexander Morrison. This involved driving or pushing the Jeeps and guns up a ramp to the glider’s side door and then physically manhandling them through ninety degrees into the fuselage where they were secured. With the back-breaking job completed in around thirty minutes, the Glider Pilots were free for the rest of the day and some took the opportunity to ‘personalise’ their gliders with cartoons, mottos, lewd comments or similar; Morrison returned from checking his unit’s gliders to find his own Horsa decorated rather restrainedly by one of his Staff-Sergeants with the Flight badge, a winged Roman numeral five, as a recognition feature.6 After watching RAF No. 46 Group’s Dakotas taking off towing the first lift from RAF Down Ampney in Gloucestershire, Private Albert Blockwell and the rest of the 7th KOSB’s MT Section repaired to a recreation tent at around 14:00 to hear about the landings in Holland on the radio. They were then put to the more typically prosaic military work of cleaning up the Battalion’s tented camp of the mess left behind by the first lift.7
With the lead element of the second lift scheduled to arrive at the landing area in Holland at 10:00 on Monday 18 September, take-offs had to begin soon after dawn and aircrew and troops were roused at around 05:00. After groping their way through the pre-dawn darkness to the cookhouse tent, Private Blockwell and his comrades were disappointed to find that the ‘wonderful big pre-invasion meals’ they had heard about were not forthcoming and that they would have to make do with the standard breakfast fare of bacon, bread and jam.8 At Blakehill Farm Captain Morrison made a more worrying discovery on leaving his billet at 05:00 after showering and shaving. The airfield, along with many others across southern England, was blanketed in mist and low cloud, obliging 1st Allied Airborne Army HQ to postpone take-off until conditions improved. Consequently, the 4th Parachute Squadron RE did not leave its billets for RAF Spanhoe until 09:00, while the Glider Pilots Regiment’s B Squadron at RAF Manston in Kent commenced its final briefing at the same time.9 Back at Blakehill Farm Captain Morrison and his men spent a hopeful hour in the cockpits of their Horsas parked around the perimeter track on the basis of early meteorological reports suggesting the mist would lift, before receiving word that take-off had been postponed until midday.10
The mist actually cleared around four hours after dawn and the postponement was lifted at 11:00, making the timings roughly the same as the previous day. At RAF Down Ampney the first Dakota from No. 48 Squadron, piloted by Squadron-Leader Peter Duff-Mitchell, took off at precisely 11:00 followed by the remainder of the Squadron at one- or two-minute intervals; all twenty-six Dakotas and their Horsas from the Glider Pilot Regiment’s E Squadron, No.2 Wing were aloft by 11:36.11 It is unclear precisely what time Captain Morrison and 5 Flight took off from Blakehill Farm, but the remainder of D Squadron, consisting of 8 and 22 Flights commanded by Captain Barry Murdoch and Captain Iain Muir respectively, began taking off from RAF Keevil at 11:26, while the Short Stirlings from Nos. 190 and 620 Squadrons towing G Squadron from RAF Fairford started four minutes later.12 At RAF Manston the Armstrong Whitworth Albemarles from Nos. 296 and 297 Squadrons towing B Squadron’s gliders began taking off a little later, at 12:15, because their start point in Kent was a hundred miles or more closer to Holland than the other glider bases. All three units were normally based at RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire but had moved temporarily to Manston for the MARKET lift.13 The parachute transports from the US 52nd Troop Carrier Wing followed a similar timetable. The C-47s from the 314th Troop Carrier Group carrying the 156 Parachute Battalion from RAF Saltby began taking off at 11:00 for example, while the aircraft from the 315th Troop Carrier Group carrying the 4th Parachute Squadron’s parachute echelon began taking off from RAF Spanhoe at 12:10; the Squadron’s glider element took off from RAF Keevil at 11:45.14
Once again, the take-off phase went relatively well. One Horsa, probably from A Squadron, crashed on take-off after the tug aircraft lost power and a further seven Horsas and a single Hamilcar aborted while still over England.15 The latter, from C Squadron based at RAF Tarrant Rushton, was carrying a 17-Pounder gun from the 2nd Airlanding Anti-tank Battery RA and landed safely at RAF Chilbolton in Hampshire after its Halifax tug developed engine trouble.16 Staff-Sergeant Proctor’s Horsa from B Squadron also landed safely at Ashford in Kent shortly after taking off from nearby Manston,17 and another Horsa from D Squadron piloted by a Staff-Sergeant Stocker and Sergeant Allen force-landed at the US fighter base at RAF Martlesham Heath in Suffolk after the towline parted; according to some sources their Stirling tug from 299 Squadron piloted by a Flight-Lieutenant B. H. Berridge or Barridge also landed there, reattached the towline and joined up with a Dakota stream, although the Squadron War Diary refers to Stocker and Allen moving over to the third lift.18 The remainder of the seven aborts also appear to have landed safely and all were reportedly carried over to the third lift.19 The parachute transports got away without mishap apart from one aircraft leading a three-aircraft vic from the 314th Troop Carrier Group’s 50th Squadron carrying men from 156 Parachute Battalion, which had a lucky escape when a malfunction prematurely deployed a parachute attached to a container stowed in the cargo cells in the underside of the aircraft’s fuselage. The unexpected drag seriously affected the machine’s trim and releasing the container resulted in the errant parachute canopy becoming entangled with the aircraft’s tail wheel. The unknown pilot calmly landed at a convenient airfield in East Anglia with the container streaming behind like a drogue, had the canopy cut free and resumed the flight to Holland with the glider stream after failing to catch up with his original serial.20
Originally the intention was to despatch the entire second lift via the Southern Route employed by the aircraft carrying the 101st Airborne Division the previous day, which made landfall near Ostend and ran over Allied-held Belgium. However, during the postponement reports of heavy cloud and rain over Belgium prompted 1st Allied Airborne Army HQ to switch to the shorter Northern Route, which ran south-east for a hundred miles from Aldeburgh before crossing the Dutch coast near the islan
d of Schouwen; a desire to make up time lost to the postponement may also have been a factor. The change of route obliged some rapid redrawing of flight plans and the Operations Record Book of at least one of No. 46 Group’s constituent squadrons lists the original coded waypoints and grid references for the Southern Route but refers to crossing the Dutch coast near Schouwen in the subsequent mission précis.21 Two replacement Dakota crews drafted in to assist No. 575 Squadron at RAF Broadwell did not receive word of the change at all and ended up flying alone across Belgium with the cloud base forcing them progressively lower until RCAF Flying Officer Edward Henry’s machine was hit by German anti-aircraft fire on approaching the front line. The flak killed Henry and wounded his navigator, Flying Officer Harry McKinley, a US citizen serving with the RCAF. Despite there being no second pilot aboard, after consulting with the glider crew McKinley agreed to continue the mission with the assistance of Warrant Officer Bert Smith, even though neither man had undergone any formal flying training. This courageous decision had to be abandoned when the Horsa, likely from No. 2 Wing’s F Squadron, lost an aileron to more flak but McKinley and Smith succeeded in towing the damaged glider back to friendly territory where it landed safely near Bourg Leopold. Its passengers included the commander of the 1st Battalion The Border Regiment, Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas Haddon, who had force-landed shortly after take-off the previous day; undeterred by this second glider failure in twenty-four hours, Haddon and his party set out for Arnhem under their own steam. Meanwhile McKinley and Smith managed to keep their Dakota aloft despite McKinley’s wound and a large hole in the port side of the cockpit. After an attempt to land at Brussels had been thwarted by low cloud, they finally arrived over Martlesham Heath after a flight lasting two hours and ten minutes. After an unsuccessful attempt to persuade Smith and the aircraft’s radio operator to bail out, McKinley performed a bumpy landing that saw the Dakota trundle off the end of the runway and roll unscathed through a row of parked P-47 fighters before coming to rest. The 356th Fighter Group treated these latest in a series of unscheduled visitors to a hero’s welcome, after which McKinley found himself the sole occupant of a hospital ward set aside specifically for MARKET casualties near Swindon in Wiltshire.22
Arnhem Page 41