Arnhem

by William F Buckingham

  Of the main formation, two more gliders were lost over the North Sea. Chalk No. 457, a Horsa from D Squadron carried over from the first lift piloted by Lieutenant Norman Adams and an aptly named Sergeant Waterman, ditched and all aboard were swiftly picked up by rescue launches patrolling the route, apart from Lieutenant Adams, who was posted missing presumed drowned.23 The second was a Hamilcar carrying a 17-Pounder gun and prime mover from the 2nd Airlanding Anti-tank Battery RA, which was cast off when its Halifax tug experienced engine trouble. The giant machine broke up on impact with the sea and again all aboard were rescued bar one unfortunate: Lieutenant Robert McLaren, commanding the Battery’s F Troop, was trapped by the gun and drowned.24 Another Horsa from D Squadron, Chalk No. 596 piloted by Staff-Sergeant Black and Sergeant Hudson, appears to have made landfall safely after casting off over Schouwen due to slipstream problems. Crossing the Dutch coast added German anti-aircraft fire to the existing hazards, as Captain Morrison noted: ‘My Second Pilot called out “coast ahead” and there we were passing over the yellow sand dunes of Holland. Our route took us past Schouwen Island...suddenly, five miles ahead, all hell broke loose. German anti-aircraft guns both on the ground and in flak-ships had opened up on the leading aircraft carrying the parachute companies and within seconds they were completely engulfed by angry black puffs.’25 Unlike the previous day, the second lift placed the parachute drop ahead of the glider landings, with the 314th Troop Carrier Group leading the aircraft stream trailed by the 315th Troop Carrier Group. Both formations passed safely through the coastal anti-aircraft fire unscathed, again in contrast to the first lift. In part this was due to the flak suppression effort mounted by RAF and USAAF fighter-bombers, which appears to have continued right up to the landing area. Glider pilots dug in near 1st Airborne Division HQ after landing with the first lift reported seeing ‘Mustangs, Thunderbolts and Spitfires’ overhead in the mid-afternoon of 18 September shortly before the second glider lift arrived.26 On the other hand, pilots from the 315th Troop Carrier Group specifically reported seeing no friendly fighters at all after reaching their Initial Point (IP) for the run in to the DZ, when they were at their most vulnerable.27 The fighters may therefore have been held up dealing with anti-aircraft positions farther back along the route, given that the co-pilot of the C-47 from the 310th Troop Carrier Squadron carrying Brigadier Hackett recalled seeing RAF Typhoons strafing flak positions on offshore islands and P-47s shooting up German trucks.28

  The parachute element’s luck continued largely intact until the lead flights reached the vicinity of the River Waal, around twenty miles from the drop zone. As they had passed their Initial Point for the run-in to the drop zone the C-47s were forbidden from taking evasive action and were descending to their jump height of 600 feet, throttling back toward their jump speed of around ninety knots. At this point the formation ran into a concentration of anti-aircraft fire not noted during the first lift. The guns may have been moved in as a result of the same German intelligence windfall that had despatched the Luftwaffe fighters to the 1st Airborne Division’s landing area at 11:00, as one source suggests.29 Whatever the origin of the guns, their fire was accurate and at least four transports were shot down in quick succession. Captain Leonard A. Ottaway’s C-47 from the 50th Troop Carrier Squadron, which had moved up to replace the aircraft with the malfunctioning container parachute over Suffolk, took a hit in the port wing that set the engine and fuel tank ablaze. On being informed of the damage by an accompanying aircraft, Captain Ottaway jettisoned his containers and went into a steep dive, possibly in an attempt to extinguish the flames. Its passage was noted by Major John Waddy, commanding 156 Parachute Battalion’s B Company standing in the door of his own C-47,30 and 1st Lieutenant Walter D. Nims piloting another C-47: ‘He [Ottaway] headed for the ground as if to make a forced landing. His gear came down and he was apparently ready to land but he seemed to be unable to flare out his approach and went right on into the ground, hitting very tail high, buckling the gear and skidding to a stop on its belly…When the plane hit, the gas tank seemed to explode and one wing came half off…The cockpit and cabin were not badly cracked but was on fire when I last saw it.’31 In addition to Captain Ottaway the C-47 was carrying five crew and eighteen paratroopers from 156 Parachute Battalion’s MMG Platoon, all of whom were killed.32

  The passengers in Captain Warren S. Egbert’s C-47 from the 61st Troop Carrier Squadron were more fortunate when it, too, sustained a hit to the port wing; Egbert held the burning aircraft steady while his stick from the 11th Parachute Battalion and two of his crew jumped, but he was killed in the subsequent crash along with his co-pilot and navigator, Lieutenants Jacob Feldman and Horace M. Jerome respectively. One of the paratroopers, Private John Barton, also appears to have been killed by a parachute malfunction in spite of Captain Egbert’s gallantry.33 Captain Frank King, commanding the 11th Parachute Battalion’s Support Company, was travelling in the other shot-down 61st Squadron C-47, piloted by Captain George Merz. The stick were making their immediate pre-jump checks when the aircraft was hit and King only became aware of how badly on looking out the door: ‘I was horrified to see how low we were – no more than 250 feet. I then put my head out, into the slipstream, and saw that the whole port wing was on fire. I shouted to Sergeant-Major Gartland…and told him to open the little door into the pilot’s compartment, which he did, and we saw a mass of smoke and flames.’ King promptly ordered the stick to jump even though the light was red, which was considered a serious disciplinary offence, and all but the final three made it through the door barely high enough for their parachutes to open: ‘I was told afterwards that one man fell in the doorway and the man behind him jumped over him, but his parachute didn’t open. Probably the last men…decided they were too low and stayed with the plane.’34

  The crash appears to have been witnessed by the 11th Battalion’s Medical Officer, Captain Stuart Mawson, who was third in his stick behind Battalion Commander Lieutenant-Colonel George Lea and his batman: ‘Then another nearby aircraft started to bank slowly out of formation, dragging a wing with dirty yellow flame and black smoke trailing from the engine, and with horrible inevitability spiralled slowly earthwards…It was…halfway to the ground before men appeared, jettisoning themselves with hopelessly slow precision…the last few had no time, and as the Dakota hit the ground and burst into flames a man was still framed in the doorway.’35 The stricken C-47 crash-landed in a field just north of the Lower Rhine between Rhenen and Wageningen. Navigator Lieutenant Russell C. Stephens and Radio Operator Technical-Sergeant William Buckley were killed trying to bale out from the forward door but Merz and his co-pilot, Lieutenant Ernest W. Haagensen, escaped from the burning wreck via the roof hatch and assisted one of the 11th Battalion men suffering from burns and possibly Crew Chief Corporal Richard Eastman; King reported the latter killed by the flak hit but in a post-war interview Merz referred to him being captured and executed by Dutch SS at some point after the crash. Both pilots were spirited away from the crash site by the Dutch Underground, who also rescued Lieutenant Frederick Hale, pilot of the sole C-47 lost by the 62nd Troop Carrier Squadron on 18 September. Hale baled out via his aircraft’s roof hatch with barely enough height for his canopy to deploy, but three members of his crew were killed and it is unclear how many of his stick of paratroopers managed to jump, if any. Having survived a night-time ditching off Sicily during Operation HUSKY following a mid-air collision, the crash was Merz’s second lucky escape and he, Haagensen and Hale were sheltered by their Dutch saviours until ferried to safety over the Lower Rhine during Operation PEGASUS on the night of 22-23 October.36

  The 315th Troop Carrier Group did not suffer as badly as their forebears from the 314th, losing just two C-47s shot down in quick succession to anti-aircraft guns defending the railway yard at s’Hertogenbosch, approximately sixteen miles from the drop zone; the town marked the point where the stream divided into three sub-streams heading for the three divisional landing areas. Lieutenant Thomas
T. Tucker’s aircraft from the 34th Troop Carrier Squadron was hit first and began to burn; after quickly assessing the situation Tucker ordered his stick and crew to jump before following himself. The stick was probably from No. 4 Platoon, A Company, 10th Parachute Battalion and included Sergeant Keith Banwell, who said only eight men managed to exit the stricken aircraft and their passage to the door was hindered by a number of dead and wounded paratroopers.37 All landed safely and Lieutenant Tucker and his crew made it safely to Allied territory four days later; the crew’s only casualty was crew chief Technical Sergeant Woodrow W. Durbin who suffered a sprained ankle.38 Lieutenant James H. Spurrier from the trailing 43rd Troop Carrying Squadron was not so fortunate. Lieutenant Spurrier’s co-pilot, Lieutenant Edward S. Fulmer, had just noted Tucker’s aircraft burning in the formation ahead when their C-47 was hit by a series of 20 or 37mm rounds that set fire to the starboard engine and punched holes in the inner wing and fuselage. At least one round exploded in the navigation compartment behind Spurrier’s seat, killing him or rendering him unconscious. The same explosion wounded Fulmer in the leg and back and ignited the fuel tank under the cockpit floor:

  I was flying the plane at the time and was listening out on the VHF radio set and Spurrier was connected to the crew chief on the intercom set. I reached over and shook Spurrier, wanting him to get the fire extinguisher as smoke and flames were coming inside the cockpit. Spurrier sort of slumped over in his seat and I couldn’t rouse him. I held the ship level and pulled out of the formation to give my paratroops and other crew men time to get out. I felt the slight jar as the troops left the ship and the flames were burning my face and left side, shoulder and back.39

  Back in the C-47’s troop compartment the stick of paratroopers from B Company, 10th Parachute Battalion were hooked up ready to jump, with Sergeant Albert Spring in the door and crew chief Corporal Russell L. Smith on the intercom, standing by for the green light. Another hit had just shot away the jump light and nearby container-release lever when the aircraft’s radio operator, Corporal William T. Hollis, opened the cockpit door to reveal a mass of smoke and flame. Already alerted by the intercom going dead, Smith reacted quickly: ‘I ordered the paratroopers to jump. There was some confusion while these men were jumping as one trooper got his foot fouled in the lines. Before they were all out, we had been hit numerous times by small arms and flak, and were rapidly losing altitude. I ordered the radio operator to jump and I followed.’ Lieutenant Fulmer tried to belly land the burning C-47 near Opheusden between the Waal and Lower Rhine but appears to have lost control after clipping a power line. Spurrier was killed but the wounded and badly burned Fulmer escaped through a side window after failing to unlatch the roof escape hatch and was carried away from the crash site by a local farmer called Willemsen and his two sons; the pilot was subsequently awarded the Distinguished Service Cross and knighted by Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands for his courage. Corporal Smith hit the ground just 200 yards from the wreck, injuring his ankle in the process, but Corporal Hollis and one of the 10th Battalion paratroopers, Private Alfred Penwill, were killed by parachute malfunction. The exits were noted by another pilot in the formation:

  The enemy had been firing for about thirty seconds when I noticed Lt. Spurrier’s plane nose down slightly and pass below our ship…It was during this time the paratroopers started jumping out…the plane started a slight turn to the left and I noticed one man jump out. His parachute had just started to come out of the pack when he struck the ground. At the same time, a second man jumped out and his chute was hanging in a trail position but I do not believe it had opened enough to check his fall. These last two men used the white type chutes carried by crew members.40

  The survivors were again sheltered and treated by the Dutch Underground until they could be evacuated to Allied-held territory.41

  Arrival at Ginkel Heath revealed another unwelcome change from the previous day’s drop: as one US pilot put it, ‘I could tell before we got to the drop zone that they [the British] were going to be in big trouble. You could see the mortar bursts hitting the ground all over the drop zone. It was not just one or two, it was multiple mortars. It could have been mortars or guns, probably both. You could see it peppering the ground all around.’42 The throb of hundreds of Wright Cyclone aero engines became audible to the south before the aircraft themselves were visible, and the sound prompted differing reactions at the drop zone. The immediate reaction of some of the German attackers was caught for posterity by an SS Propagandakompanie film cameraman, and included riflemen and machine gunners with MG42s and captured Bren guns on anti-aircraft mounts improvised from hastily stacked fruit boxes firing into the sky, backed by a half-track-mounted four-barrelled 20mm Flakvierling.43 One source refers to the Germans aiming specifically at the C-47’s doors in an effort to hit the first man in the stick and block the exit for the rest, although this would have been a tall order for even a skilled marksman at the range and speeds involved.44 Mortar bombs set fire to vegetation at the northern end of the drop zone, although it is unclear whether this was accidental or deliberate. For the British Airborne soldiers charged to protect the drop zone the approach of the parachute transports was the signal to trigger their EUREKA beacon, ignite the coloured smoke pots to indicate wind direction and rally points for the various incoming units, and to launch their last-ditch effort to suppress German interference with the landing. Thus the 7th KOSB’s HQ and Support Companies launched a counter-attack on the German troops firing on the aircraft from the woods and the unfinished motorway embankment at the south and south-eastern edges of the drop zone, co-opting Lieutenant Keith Halliday’s attached party from the 1st Airlanding Light Regiment to make up the numbers. At the opposite end of the DZ Captain Brian Carr led the 10th Parachute Battalion’s advance party forward into the teeth of the German attack in an effort to secure the Battalion rally point near the Zuid Ginkel café.45

  The precise time the jump commenced is unclear. One source says 15:09, but this is around an hour later than the times cited in the various unit War Diaries; the 7th KOSB referred to the drop taking place ‘between 14:00 and 15:00’ and to ‘all parachutists being down’ within the time.46 156 Parachute Battalion reported the jump commencing at 14:00, the 4th Parachute Squadron RE at 14:20 and the 11th Parachute Battalion at ‘approx. 14:30’, while the 4th Parachute Brigade HQ does not give a time but refers to the drop being six minutes late. Given all this, it is probably safe to assume that the drop actually began at a few minutes after 14:00, which fits with the approximately three hours-plus flying time of the first lift along the same route.47 The US transports were flying in a compact formation and the drop was complete with an estimated 1,914 paratroopers being delivered on or near DZ Y in well under thirty minutes; this again accorded with the first parachute lift, which was complete in eighteen minutes. Seven men reportedly failed to jump due to wounds from ground fire or losing their footing as their aircraft took evasive action.48 Not all the US pilots were happy about giving such passengers another chance by going round again. As one pilot put it: ‘I just wanted to get the mission over with. I always told the crew chief that if anyone freezes in the door, you kick him out. I never wanted to go back over the DZ again.’49 Not all US aircrew appear to have subscribed to this philosophy, however. Corporal David Jones’ stick from B Company, 156 Parachute Battalion was delayed when ‘one of the relatively new men in the battalion refused to jump and froze in the doorway. An RAF despatcher would have given him a boot in the rear, but the American crew chief didn’t, and there was a long delay before he was pulled away.’50 Whatever their individual philosophies regarding going round again, once their passengers were gone the transport pilots wasted no time getting clear, as described by Captain Bernard Coggins, a navigator with the 43rd Troop Carrier Squadron, 315th Troop Carrier Wing: ‘With the green light, all of the paratroopers left the plane without hesitation. I always had a lot of respect for paratroopers, but it was never higher than when they dropped into that pr
eview of hell. There was no hesitation on our part, either. When the last man was out the door, the throttles were pushed to the firewall and we dove for the deck.’51

  Despite the German ground fire the majority of the paratroopers were unscathed, although many had narrow escapes. One Private from 156 Battalion saw tracer rounds passing close by as he descended and heard one of the other men in his stick being hit, but was prevented from going to his aid on landing by Regimental Sergeant Major Dennis Gay, who correctly if cold-bloodedly ordered him off to join the rest of his Platoon instead. Signalman Arthur Winstanley from the 4th Parachute Brigade Signals Section had an even closer shave. A box containing a carrier pigeon and bag of feed attached to his equipment was half shot away during the descent and as he braced for landing about fifty feet up a mortar bomb exploded to his front right, killing another man from the stick as he touched down.52 The 10th Parachute Battalion’s Quartermaster-Lieutenant Joseph Glover also had an avian-oriented descent. Glover owned a pet chicken named Myrtle he had carried on six training jumps during the summer, on several occasions releasing her during the descent to land under her own steam. In recognition of this Myrtle had been awarded the rank of Parachick and a set of parachute wings worn on an elastic strap about her neck, and Glover had decided that Arnhem would be Myrtle’s first combat jump. Both man and Parachick landed safely, the latter in a zippered canvas pouch attached to Glover’s parachute harness. Myrtle was then handed over to Glover’s batman, Private Joe Scott, for safekeeping before both men began making their way through the confusion to the column of green smoke marking the 10th Battalion’s RV at the north-eastern corner of the DZ.53 Corporal Frederick Jenkins, also from the 10th Battalion, landed in the burning portion of the DZ and avoided being hit by fire from five German machine-guns before almost being killed when heat began to detonate abandoned mortar bombs scattered nearby; a piece of shrapnel wounded the man next to him in the face and Jenkins rendered first aid before helping him off the DZ.54