***
The 101st Airborne Division’s share of the second lift also totalled 450 CG4 gliders, towed by C-47s from the 53rd Troop Carrier Wing and was once again assigned to LZ W, tucked between the previous day’s parachute drop zones just west of the Son-St. Oedenrode road. Unlike Gavin, Major-General Taylor chose to leave his Division’s artillery component for the third lift, and most of the second lift gliders were assigned to carry the bulk of Colonel Joseph P. Harper’s 327th Glider Infantry Regiment, consisting of the regimental HQ, Lieutenant Roy L. Inman’s 2nd Battalion and Lieutenant-Colonel Ray Allen’s 1st Battalion, 401st Glider Infantry Regiment.112 The lift also carried part of the Division Artillery HQ, an advance party from the 377th Parachute Field Artillery Battalion, the remainder of the 326th Airborne Engineer Battalion, the Division Signal Company and Division Medical Company, and elements of the 426th Quartermaster Company and the 801st Ordnance Maintenance Company. The second lift consisted of 2,656 troops, 156 Jeeps, 111 trailers and two bulldozers.113 Take-off began at 11:20 with the lead C-47 piloted by Colonel William B. Whitacre, the commander of the 434th Troop Carrier Group, towing a CG4 piloted by Lieutenant Victor B. Warriner. The lead glider was also carrying the second lift’s most illustrious passenger, the 101st Airborne Division’s deputy commander, Brigadier-General Anthony C. McAuliffe; McAuliffe had specifically requested the services of both pilots and travelled in the CG4’s co-pilot seat.114
At least ten CG4s were obliged to abort while still over England, apparently due to towline failure. Three more ditched in the North Sea with all their passengers being picked up by the waiting rescue launches and another was obliged to make a forced landing on Schouwen as a result of stability problems; all aboard were captured. A further eight CG4s went astray over Holland en route to the LZ and those that reached their destination had their fair share of adventures. Technician 4th Class Andrew E. Rasmussen from the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment had been grounded by an ankle injury incurred in Normandy and volunteered to fly into Holland as co-pilot in a CG4 loaded with an ammunition trailer and a supply of maps. He was unimpressed by the brief five-minute tutorial on how to fly the machine and the smell of whiskey on the pilot’s breath, and his discontent increased when the latter appropriated both the available flak jackets for himself, wearing one and using the other as a seat cushion. Rasmussen emerged unhurt after a landing that involved a near collision with another glider, crashing through a wooden fence and skidding across a drainage ditch; he walked away from the machine vowing ‘it would be a cold day in Hell before he ever climbed into another glider.’ Flight Officer Roy C. Lovingood found himself wrestling to counteract a left wing so heavy that it took all his strength to keep the machine level. The reason for the problem became apparent shortly after making landfall over Holland when a flak shell passed clean through the wing without exploding and a large quantity of water gushed out of the resulting hole. The trim problem resolved itself instantly and it transpired that the wing had filled with rainwater after an inspection cover had been left off during a pre-flight check.115
Eventually 428 CG4s reached the landing zone, beginning at approximately 14:30.116 The machine carrying Technical Sergeant Robert M. Bowen from the 1st Battalion 401st Glider Infantry Regiment’s Company C was struck repeatedly by small-arms fire near Eindhoven: ‘There was a loud crack beside my head. I flinched and looked at Frank McFadden, one of my scouts who was pressed up against me. The bullet had torn through the fabric on the side of the glider, whistled between our heads and exited out the roof…Bullets were now ripping through the wings and…ailerons [and] through the glider’s honeycombed wooden floorboard and glanced off the two cloverleaves of 81mm mortar ammunition that we were carrying tied down to the flooring.’ In the event Bowen and his companions landed safely after their CG4 ‘hit the ground with a crash, bounced a few times and streaked across the field with the brakes locked and tearing up turf’ before coming to a halt.117
The glider carrying the 101st Airborne Division’s deputy commander had an equally interesting fly-in. Colonel William Whitacre’s C-47 received a hit during the run-in to the release point that set the starboard engine on fire. When the understandably alarmed Warriner relayed the fact via the telephone line woven into the tow line, the usually calm and considered Whitacre responded with a testy ‘Warriner, I know that goddamned engine’s on fire. Now you just fly your glider and let me fly this airplane.’ Warriner was equally discomfited to notice that Brigadier-General McAuliffe had slept through the emergency, only waking after Warriner had cast off as the glider made its final approach. More by luck than good judgement the CG4 came to a rest just fifty yards from the spot McAuliffe had indicated in the pre-flight briefing, and Warriner managed to keep a straight face as the General congratulated him on the accuracy of his landing.118
The second lift delivered 2,579 men, between 146 and 151 Jeeps, 109 trailers and both bulldozers to LZ W, at a cost of fifty-four dead or missing and twenty-three injured. According to the 101st Airborne Division’s semi-official history, the lift was considered to have been ninety-five per cent successful.119 The subsequent resupply drop by 121 bombers was deemed less successful, with less than half the supplies being recovered.120
Thus by the late afternoon of Monday 18 September 1944 the second lift for all three of Operation MARKET’s airborne divisions was safely on the ground in Holland. This left the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions lacking just their organic glider infantry and artillery components respectively, while the 1st Airborne Division was present in its entirety apart from the Divisional tail. While the latter’s third lift was scheduled to deliver the 1st Polish Independent Parachute Brigade to DZ K, south-east of the Arnhem road bridge, and the Brigade’s glider-borne elements and the US 878th Airborne Aviation Engineer Battalion to LZ L on D+2, those units were attachments rather than organic elements of the Division. With the bulk or all of their strength on the ground, the MARKET airborne divisions were now free to concentrate on attaining those primary objectives that had not been secured on 17 September.
10
D Plus 1
16:00 to 23:59 Monday 18 September 1944
Although the 7th KOSB had been fighting to hold DZ Y since dawn on Tuesday 18 September, the fact could not be relayed to higher HQs and airfields in Britain owing to the lack of communications; consequently the parachute increment of the 1st Airborne Division’s second lift remained blissfully unaware that a battle was raging at their destination, an unwelcome surprise to both the aircrew from the US 314th and 315th Troop Carrier Groups and their passengers from the 4th Parachute Brigade. Captain Bernard Coggins, a navigator with the 315th Troop Carrier Wing’s 43rd Squadron, recalled later: ‘I don’t know what hell looked like [sic], but I got a preview. Earlier groups had already dropped, and there were explosions all over the drop zone, which was now host to a large brush fire.’1 The shock was much more immediate for the paratroopers, and the experience of Captain Stuart Mawson, the 11th Parachute Battalion’s Medical Officer, doubtless spoke for many:
Then I looked down quickly because, although after leaving the plane there had been an immediate healing contrast of quiet, I could now again hear the sound of explosions, and I looked in horror as the piece of ground on which I was shortly to land erupted in tulips of black smoke. ‘Oh, my God,’ I found myself shouting out loud, ‘they’re shelling the DZ.’2
Unsettling as descending into the middle of a battle might have been for the parachute soldiers, the arrival of the 4th Parachute Brigade had an even more profound impact on their German opponents. Despite being roughly handled and rebuffed repeatedly through the previous night, by the afternoon of 18 September SS Wacht Bataillon 3 was beginning to make progress in its attack against the Ginkel Heath perimeter, but the arrival of an additional 2,000 British paratroopers in a matter of minutes reversed that at a stroke. At the south-eastern edge of the DZ 6 Kompanie was scattered and its commander, Obersturmführer Hugo Fernau, was captured, likely by the 7th
KOSB’s Support Company. Obersturmführer Hermann Kuhne’s 5 Kompanie, deployed around the hutted work camp in the woods east of the DZ, disintegrated after Kuhne lost his nerve and abandoned his men in panic, while Hauptsturmführer Ernst Bartsch’s 4 Kompanie and Obersturmführer Karl Hink’s 3 Kompanie, which had been pressing onto the north-eastern portion of the Heath, were overwhelmed and destroyed by a tide of paratroopers intent on reaching their rally point. At the northern edge of the drop zone Obersturmführer Bronkhorst’s 1 Kompanie put up a brief fight from a farm near the Zuid Ginkel café before retreating hastily westward toward Ede, possibly covered by fire from Hauptscharführer Einenkel’s heavy weapons detachment; the latter reportedly engaged the advancing paratroopers with its 20mm guns and mortars until it was in danger of being outflanked, upon which it conducted a fighting withdrawal northward. The disintegration of SS Wacht Bataillon 3 was hastened by a literal and metaphorical absence of leadership, for Sturmbannführer Paul Helle had decided that the middle of a battle was an appropriate time to take a sleep on a convenient table in the Zuid Ginkel café. He awoke to find his temporary HQ under attack by paratroopers from Lieutenant-Colonel Kenneth Smyth’s 10th Parachute Battalion, which had been allotted the café as its RV. Helle promptly fled the scene and turned up alone at the Ede HQ of a supporting formation, Sicherheit Regiment 42, later that day.3
The SS presence on and around the drop zone appears to have had most impact on the 10th Parachute Battalion due to the presence of Helle’s HQ, reserve kompanie and support element on or adjacent to its RV; as the commander of the Battalion Advance Party, Captain Brian Carr later drily pointed out, ‘Our Battalion R.V. was actually in the hands of the enemy and had to be cleared before the battalion could rendezvous. That was one exercise that we had not practised.’4 Carr led a last-minute counter-attack that drove the SS back and allowed a slightly relocated RV point to be established, marked as prearranged with a green smoke marker; Brigadier Hackett noted it burning near the Amsterdamseweg approximately ten minutes after landing.5 Some of Lieutenant-Colonel Smyth’s men went into action immediately on landing including a Sergeant Shaw, who rounded up a party of twenty men and attacked a German position that had fired on him while descending, killing a number of SS and leading ten prisoners to the Battalion RV. Lieutenant Patrick Mackey, commander of A Company’s 4 Platoon, had been the third man to jump and rallied a number of his men including Sergeant Banwell, despite German machine-gun fire. The group set about stalking one of the German weapons spotted near an abandoned woodcutter’s cart located just off the DZ. Lieutenant Mackey was killed along with his Platoon Sergeant Frank Bennett whilst charging the gun. Command of 4 Platoon then devolved to Sergeant Banwell as the Platoon ‘successfully secured their revenge’.6 Back at the relocated Battalion RV Lieutenant-Colonel Smyth was among the first to arrive, having jumped in the Battalion’s lead chalk along with his Intelligence Officer, Captain John Henry. He was swiftly joined by members of Henry’s Intelligence Section and the Battalion deputy commander, Major George Widdowson, followed shortly thereafter by Major Francis Lindley, OC Support Company, with Medical Officer Captain Gareth Drayson, Lieutenant Joseph Glover with Myrtle the Parachick and a number of other HQ personnel. Next came the bulk of Support Company; the latter was completed, bar the absence of two MMG teams and part of the Anti-tank Platoon, by the arrival of Lieutenant Roy Dodd from the Mortar Platoon with four Jeeps that had come in by glider. Lieutenant-Colonel Smyth reported the 10th Parachute Battalion ready to move within ninety minutes of landing, but the fight to clear the north-east corner of DZ Y went on for some time and the area remained dangerous, not least owing to the thick smoke from the burning gorse; Liaison Officer Lieutenant Harold Roderick was killed in the process of reporting the securing of the 10th Battalion’s RV to 4th Parachute Brigade HQ, for example.7
The experience of the remainder of the 4th Parachute Brigade appears to have been less fraught. 11th Parachute Battalion reported that the ‘drop and assembly went according to plan’, while Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Richard Des Vœux’s 156 Parachute Battalion laconically noted that ‘opposition was encountered’; he also reported being assembled at the Battalion RV at the north-western corner of the drop zone by 14:30, with ‘two officers and 100 men missing as casualties and stragglers’.8 The Brigade HQ advance party appears to have gone astray in the confusion given that Brigadier Hackett despatched Captain Robert Temple from his Brigade staff to mark its RV with a blue smoke pot, while the 4th Parachute Squadron RE rallied without loss apart from six jump casualties including the Squadron commander Major Æneas Perkins, who suffered a dislocated shoulder. The Sappers lost most of their carefully packed containers.9 The most problematic unit was Lieutenant-Colonel William Alford’s 133 Parachute Field Ambulance, which had a third of its parachute component dropped astray north of the DZ. The two missing sticks included the unit second-in-command Major Brian Courtney, a surgeon, two medical officers and a number of orderlies.10 Despite this Alford assembled his remaining four sticks and set up a Brigade Main Dressing Station (MDS) at the Zuid Ginkel café once the 10th Battalion had cleared the area; their presence at that location was eventually reported to Hackett by Captain Colin Harkess, the Brigade RASC officer, at some point after 15:15. By that time the 10th, 11th and 156 Parachute Battalions were in radio contact with Hackett’s Forward Brigade HQ and contact was subsequently established with the 4th Parachute Squadron RE. According to Hackett ‘By 1530 hrs, [4th Parachute] Bde was a going concern ‒ 75 to 80 per cent strong.’11
The collapse of SS Wacht Bataillon 3 had an equally serious knock-on impact on the southern prong of Kampfgruppe von Tettau’s attack, which had made good headway against the 1st Airlanding Brigade in the area of Renkum and Heelsum. Elements of SS Unterführerschule ‘Arnheim’ had penetrated between the 1st Border’s A and D Companies on the western edge of the LZ and shot up at least three Horsas as they landed; it took a partial redeployment of C Company from the east side of the perimeter and supporting fire from the Battalion’s organic mortars and the 1st Airlanding Light Regiment RA to suppress the infiltrators. However, the primary focus of the German effort was against the 1st Border’s B Company in the eastern outskirts of Renkum by Schiffsstammabteilung 6/14 and elements of SS Unterführerschule ‘Arnheim’. The German troops had inadvertently closed around the British positions during the night while deploying to attack LZ X and B Company announced its presence by opening fire on its unsuspecting neighbours shortly after daylight. The resultant fight raged on through the morning but by 14:00 all the Company’s Jeeps and those belonging to the attached elements from 2 MMG Platoon and the 2nd Airlanding Anti-tank Battery had been damaged or destroyed and fire had forced the glider soldiers out of some of their buildings. Permission to retire toward the main Battalion location was sought via the radio link with D Company as the field telephone line laid by Lieutenant Hardy the previous night had been cut. By the time permission was granted the Company was all but surrounded in the area of Major Armstrong’s HQ, but fortuitously the latter backed onto the riverbank, and a riverside path several feet lower than the surrounding land offered a perfect concealed escape route. Major Armstrong therefore instructed the MMG Platoon to break down its Vickers guns to be man-packed out and ordered the Airlanding Battery detachment to spike their anti-tank guns in place, as moving them was impossible without Jeeps. A rear guard organised from 11 Platoon and commanded by Lieutenant Stanley Barnes held off the German attackers with the assistance of Lieutenant Hardy and Sergeant Hendry Burr while the rest of the Company made their way down to the riverside in small groups and then away to the east along the concealed path.
Sergeant Burr was killed but the remainder of the rearguard succeeded in slipping away just before the Germans made their final assault. Hearing the volume of enemy fire increase, Lance-Corporal Albert Wilson from the rearguard climbed the riverbank to investigate and ‘nearly had a heart attack’ at the size of the German force assaulting his erstwhile position. The rearguard
rejoined B Company safely and after reorganising, Armstrong led his men north-east toward Heelsum and the main Battalion location, enduring some mortaring near the southern outskirts of the town en route at around 17:00.12 The eight-hour battle cost B Company at least four dead and an unknown number of wounded. Lieutenant Hardy was awarded a Military Cross and Sergeant McClusky a Military Medal for their gallantry during the action. The fight at Renkum had a more significant impact than Major Armstrong or his men realised however, for their stand effectively prevented the southern prong of Kampfgruppe von Tettau’s attack from interfering with the arrival of the second lift gliders onto LZ X. Nor were the attackers able to capitalise on their eventual success in clearing Renkum, for by the time it was complete the collapse of SS Wacht Bataillon 3 to the north-west had left them with a dangerously exposed left flank. Generalleutnant von Tettau was therefore obliged to order Standartenführer Lippert and SS Unterführerschule ‘Arnheim’ to hold in place and cover their northern flank while Sicherheit Regiment 26, commanded by a Major Knoche, moved up to replace Helle’s unit and complete its mission of clearing Ginkel Heath and the woods bordering its eastern edge. The attack was therefore suspended, to be resumed on Tuesday 19 September.13 Although von Tettau and his staff had no way of knowing it, their attack would be moving into a vacuum because with the second lift safely on the ground, the 1st Airlanding Brigade was scheduled to move east to its Phase II locations.14
Back at DZ Y Brigadier Hackett was making the unwelcome discovery that the formation he had raised in Egypt twenty-one months earlier was to be dismembered.15 Despite the lack of communication with Lathbury and Urquhart, by the morning of 18 September Lieutenant-Colonel Mackenzie, the 1st Airborne Division’s Operations Officer, had divined that the 1st Parachute Brigade had run into difficulties and he therefore persuaded Brigadier Hicks, the Division’s newly installed temporary commander, to despatch reinforcements. Lieutenant-Colonel McCardie’s understrength 2nd South Staffords were thus detached from the 1st Airlanding Brigade and moved off toward Arnhem in the mid-morning with orders to advance through Wolfheze and into Arnhem along the TIGER/Utrechtseweg route.16 However, word came through at 14:20 that McCardie had been held up by strong opposition. This was indeed the case. The South Staffords had run into the German blocking line that had held up the 1st Parachute Battalion in the early hours of the morning. Hicks therefore issued a revised set of orders at 14:30 which assigned additional reinforcements from the second lift to assist the 1st Parachute Brigade’s stalled advance. Thus the second increment of the 2nd South Staffords was directed to join McCardie as soon as it arrived, and Brigadier Hackett was to detach Lieutenant-Colonel Lea’s 11th Parachute Battalion to act in support.17 According to one source, Hackett received word of the impending removal of one of his battalions from his Brigade Major, Major Bruce Dawson, who had come in with the Brigade HQ Advance Party in the first lift.18 However, while Hackett’s War Diary account refers to the arrival of the ‘BM’ at his HQ shortly after landing, it does not refer to him passing on any such news, and Dawson appears to have been involved in the effort by the 7th KOSB’s HQ and Support Companies to clear the south-eastern portion of the DZ; it is therefore difficult to see how he could have been privy to a decision taken at Division HQ while the 4th Parachute Brigade’s drop was underway.19 Either way, Hackett received official notification of Hicks’ orders from Mackenzie, who left Division HQ at 15:00 and arrived at Hackett’s location thirty minutes later, after calling in at the 1st Airlanding Brigade’s HQ to pass on the order despatching the 2nd South Staffords second lift toward Arnhem.20 On arrival at Hackett’s Tactical HQ Mackenzie informed him that Hicks was now commanding the Division in Urquhart’s unexplained absence before passing on Hicks’ order transferring the 11th Parachute Battalion to the 1st Parachute Brigade with immediate effect. The order not only directed the 11th Battalion to move immediately to Division HQ for further instructions, but also appears to have instructed Hackett to abandon his pre-existing movement plan and dictated his order of march from the DZ along the Arnhem‒Ede railway line.21
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