Arnhem

by William F Buckingham

  Although they had no way of knowing it, the two groups of paratroopers had become entangled in a tactical withdrawal by the southern section of the German blocking line. The British presence in the vicinity of the St Elizabeth Hospital was too close to the German positions to permit timely response to renewed British attacks, so Spindler ordered SS Panzer Artillerie Regiment 9, Kampfgruppe Harder and elements of SS Panzergrenadier Regiment 20 to withdraw to a new line located at the eastern end of a stretch of scrub-covered ground sloping up from the riverside Onderlangs road to the Utrechtsestraatweg, just short of the harbour area and pontoon bridge site. Approaching the new line thus involved crossing half-a-mile of open ground covered from the north by elements of Kampfgruppe Möller and probably SS Panzer FlaK Abteilung 9 deployed on the Utrechtsestraatweg and along the far side of the railway cutting running along atop the slope, and from the south by the automatic weapons emplaced in the brickworks on the other side of the Lower Rhine. Any British attack would therefore be channelled into a funnel 250 yards wide at most, every inch of which was exposed to fire from automatic weapons and mortars. The deadly tactical efficiency of the German redeployment would not become apparent until the 1st and 3rd Parachute Battalions attempted to resume their attack in the early hours of Tuesday 19 September.

  Deane-Drummond and Dickson thus represented the furthest penetration by the bulk of the 1st Parachute Brigade toward the Arnhem road bridge at this time, but at least two other Airborne contingents were even closer to that objective. A group of eleven men from 4 Platoon, B Company, 2nd Parachute Battalion under Lieutenant Hugh Levien were holed up in a house on the Bakkerstraat just outside the bridge perimeter, having become separated when the remainder of B Company moved into the perimeter from the pontoon bridge site just before dawn. Levien had been able to speak to his Company commander, Major Douglas Crawley, via the civilian telephone network but was unable to move because their location was surrounded by German troops. The other group was Lieutenant Wilfred Morley’s fifteen-strong No.1 Section 1st (Airborne) Divisional Provost Company, which had been occupying Arnhem’s main police station half-a-dozen blocks north of the bridge perimeter since around 23:00 on 17 September. The MPs were accompanied by Sergeant Harry Parker and Private Robert Peatling from the 3rd and 2nd Parachute Battalions respectively, who had been picked up on the march into Arnhem. Twenty German POWs were locked securely in the cells and a number of enthusiastic Dutch policemen were in attendance. Sergeant Henry Callaway was left in charge after Lieutenant Morley and Lance-Corporal Jock Keddie departed for the Arnhem bridge at around midnight. The pair successfully reached 1st Parachute Brigade Main HQ and met up with a Dutch interrogation officer as planned, but the Dutchman was shot on the return journey and German fire drove Morley and Keddie back into the bridge perimeter, where they were assigned to the Brigade HQ defence force.

  Back at the police station the remainder of No. 1 Section settled down to sleep after sharing their cigarette and chocolate rations with the Dutch police, who had been starved of such luxuries under German occupation. Overall there was an air of optimism, as Lance-Corporal Jack Coates noted: ‘It was quiet in the town and it seemed we had cracked it. All we had to do was dig in and hold out for a couple of days.’ The optimism evaporated at dawn with the sound of the 1st and 3rd Parachute Battalions’ battle to the west and the appearance of large numbers of SS troops in the streets around the police station. Sergeant Callaway promptly deployed his little band in defensive positions around the building and after surreptitious reconnaissance by the Dutch police had established that the surrounding streets were also full of SS it was decided that the policemen should depart for their own safety, although some may have returned briefly during the day with updates on German activity. The Germans made no effort to enter the station through the closed front doors, although two opportunist SS men broke in after smashing a window and made off with an unattended small pack, fortunately without spotting the owner lurking nearby, and at least one other SS man was deterred from interfering with the police cars parked in the station courtyard by a burst of Sten fire, which again elicited no further response. Callaway initially told his men to stand by to leave at midnight and preparations were set in hand including wrapping ammunition boots in strips of blanket to deaden their sound. The move was abandoned however, possibly after Callaway had visited the bridge perimeter in search of Lieutenant Morley, and No. 1 Section and their hungry and increasingly truculent POWs settled down for their second night in the police station.97

  At the Arnhem road bridge Private James Sims had an eventful afternoon in the White House on the corner of the Kadestraat and Weertjesstraat. Ordered to prepare a stew from the dehydrated meat and biscuits in their ration packs by Lieutenant Woods, Sims ventured out to collect water from a standpipe in the yard amidst a full-scale firefight, to the cheers from paratroopers occupying the surrounding buildings, and then set to work with a mess tin and hexamine cooker. The subsequent concoction proved inedible however, to the extent that Lieutenant Woods poured it away after a single mouthful in favour of sharing a bar of ration chocolate with the crestfallen Sims. A fire order on a German mortar position detected behind a nearby building proved more successful, with the enemy weapon and its crew being ‘tossed into the air’, possibly by a secondary explosion, but the pair were then obliged to abandon their attic observation post by German counter-fire that blew out the rear windows and sent shrapnel tearing through the roof tiles. On descending they discovered Sergeant McCreath from the Mortar Platoon attempting to set up a radio, who reported that the remainder of the Platoon were still happily ensconced in their house and mortar pits across the Weertjesstraat. Shortly thereafter, at around 16:00, they were joined by Lieutenant-Colonel Frost on a tour of inspection. As well as speaking individually to the White House defenders, Frost had someone check the condition of some barges, presumably located along the riverside Rijnkade; the report came back that the barges were too badly damaged for use, prompting Frost to comment ‘That’s that, then, we’ll stay where we are.’98

  By this point the reality of being under siege had tempered Frost’s earlier optimism, not least because German artillery, mortar and small-arms fire had made movement between the British-occupied buildings a hazardous undertaking. Frost was also becoming concerned over a developing shortage of ammunition. The scales carried by the paratroopers were being rapidly depleted in the close-range, house-to-house fighting and the small reserve carried into the perimeter by the contingent from 250 (Airborne) Light Composite Company RASC had been distributed by nightfall; under normal circumstances a resupply would then have been drawn from Division stocks but that source was still situated on the wrong side of the Oosterbeek Laag underpass. To conserve the available ammunition as far as possible Frost therefore prohibited sniping and engaging targets of opportunity by ordering that firing be restricted to defending against direct assaults at close range.99 Food supplies were also running short as the paratroopers only carried ration packs for forty-eight hours, and the houses in the perimeter yielded nothing more than a small number of fresh apples and pears, although this may have varied between buildings and the guile and scrounging abilities of the men occupying them; Private Sims for example recalled the house occupied by the Mortar Platoon was ‘simply bursting with preserved foods, sweets, chocolates and drinks of all kinds’.100 In the midst of all this Frost found himself elevated to a somewhat truncated command of the 1st Parachute Brigade after Brigade Major Hibbert reportedly learned from Dobie that Lathbury was missing, presumably in the early evening. Hibbert therefore formally requested Frost to assume command of all units in the bridge perimeter and Frost duly handed command of the 2nd Parachute Battalion contingent to his second-in-command, Major David Wallis, before moving next door to the Brigade HQ building on the Eusebiusbinnensingel. At 18:30, following a radio report that the 1st and 3rd Parachute Battalions were held up near the St Elizabeth Hospital, he made his only effort to exert control over the elements of the B
rigade outside the bridge perimeter with his abortive instruction for Dobie to despatch a flying column to the bridge.101

  There was little overt German activity on the western side of the bridge perimeter at this point, presumably because the German units there were preoccupied with establishing a watertight block to the 1st and 3rd Parachute Battalions’ advance. Venturing out into the open on the western side of the bridge ramp remained hazardous though, as Private Sims discovered when Lieutenant Woods left briefly to confer with Frost. Sergeant McCreath promptly ordered him to fetch his small pack from the Mortar Platoon house. Unable to refuse a direct order, Sims dropped to the Kadestraat from a six-foot-high window to retrieve McCreath’s pack, his fall cushioned by a handy German corpse, and attempted a high-speed dash across the Weertjesstraat but was greeted by the ripping snarl of a German machine-gun as soon as he emerged into the open: ‘My legs seemed to turn to water, for the rate of fire was so rapid that it appeared as if the bullets were tearing up the ground behind me faster than I could possibly run.’ Fortunately, he was able to dive headlong into a mortar pit dug into the traffic island before the machine-gunner adjusted his aim, interrupting the mortar crew drinking a brew from a liberated fine china tea service. Sims’ explanation for his interruption prompted a forthright ‘the Scotch bastard, why didn’t he go himself?’ and gained him a share of the hot, sweet tea before the crew gave him a collective boost out of the mortar pit for the final leg to the safety of the Mortar Platoon house. The errant small pack was located despite the fumes from a host of hexamine stoves. Sims was not destined to deliver it. Travelling back to the White House via the slit trench where he had spent the previous night, he was waylaid by Sergeant Joe Hamilton, who was disinclined to listen to Sims’ explanation and ordered him to remain in the trench on pain of being shot. Sims and Sergeant McCreath’s small pack consequently stayed put.102

  The Germans remained more active on the eastern side of the perimeter. Kampfgruppe Brinkmann, or more likely elements of Major Knaust’s Bataillon ‘Bocholt’, finally succeeded in overrunning one of the three buildings held by Lieutenant Infield’s 8 Platoon from the 3rd Parachute Battalion on the south side of the Westervoortsedijk; this appears to have then obliged the men from the Brigade HQ Defence Platoon to withdraw from another building on the north side of the road.103 The pressure was also maintained against the elements of the 1st Parachute Squadron RE and C Company 3rd Parachute Battalion holding the Van Limburg Stirum School at the north-eastern tip of the perimeter. In the mid-afternoon German troops stationed in the houses on the Eusebiusbuitensingel began firing into the School’s east-facing rooms, initiating a duel with the Bren gunners stationed on that side of the building that went on through the afternoon. The paratroopers had designs on machine-guns, food and cigars spotted in the Sd.Kfz. 250 half-track knocked out on the Bleckmanslaan by Sapper Emery that morning, but the Germans had other ideas. At 19:30 tracer ammunition was used to set light to the unarmoured Sd.Kfz. 10 half-track resting against the Van Limburg Stirum School’s west wall while a flame-thrower did the same to the armoured Sd.Kfz. 250. Ninety minutes later the Red School was also set ablaze after the Germans had made the rooms on the north side of the Van Limburg School temporarily untenable by firing light mortar bombs through the windows. Sparks and embers from the Red School spread the fire to the roof of the Van Limburg School and the heat from the burning vehicles damaged the west wall, but the fire was brought under control by 23:50 despite ‘spasmodic’ German machine-gun fire; the burning vehicles were finally extinguished with demolition charges. By this point, defence of the Van Limburg School had cost the Parachute Engineers two dead and twelve wounded; The 3rd Parachute Battalion contingent’s casualties are unclear.104

  Apart from their effort against the Van Limburg School German activity appears to have fallen away with nightfall and the Airborne soldiers took full advantage of the lull. At this point the bridge force was still in fairly good order, apart from the looming ammunition shortage, having lost an estimated ten dead and thirty wounded. Frost redeployed part of the 2nd Battalion’s B Company from the west to the east side of the perimeter in response to the German incursion along the Westervoortsedijk.105 He also organised what he dubbed a ‘mobile storming party’ around Major Gough’s two Reconnaissance Squadron Jeeps and the 2nd Battalion’s Bren Carrier as a further countermeasure, and when no new German incursion was forthcoming Gough was given an even more hazardous mission. The 1st Polish Independent Parachute Brigade was scheduled to land on DZ K, just south of the road bridge, the following day, and fearing a massacre Frost detailed Gough to lead his storming party across the bridge to greet them. Gough was understandably less than enthusiastic about undertaking what Frost himself characterised as a suicide mission that might win Gough his family’s fifth Victoria Cross.106

  There was also more overtly aggressive British activity. As Private Sims recalled, with the onset of darkness ‘our lads came to life; out went the riflemen, cocky and confident, looking for Jerry. At night we had moral, if not material, superiority.’107 The Airborne soldiers also needed light for their prowling and defence. The burning Red School illuminated the east side of the bridge ramp and Frost ordered a small building on the corner of the Eusebiusbinnensingel and Weertjesstraat to be set alight to illuminate the west side. The flames spread to the adjacent Brigade HQ building and possibly that occupied by the 2nd Battalion HQ too, before being brought under control. Though they did provide sufficient illumination for the defenders to see ‘to shoot at two hundred yards’.108

  In addition to partially redeploying to the east side of the perimeter, B Company also mounted a twelve-strong standing patrol on the bridge. Consisting mainly of the 4 Platoon contingent that had reached the bridge at dawn, the patrol was led by Company second-in-command Captain Francis Hoyer-Millar, because all B Company’s Platoon commanders were dead, wounded or missing. Lieutenant Peter Cane from 6 Platoon had been killed the previous night at Den Brink, Lieutenant Levien was holed up behind German lines on the Bakkerstraat with his group from 4 Platoon and Lieutenant Colin Stanford had been wounded in the head in the afternoon while surveying the area around 5 Platoon’s position with binoculars; Hoyer-Millar had been present when Company Sergeant Major William Scott had somewhat indelicately announced, ‘Mr Stanford’s had his chips.’ Wary of venturing into the pool of intense darkness beyond the top of the ramp, Hoyer-Millar led the way with a fragmentation grenade and was surprised and gratified when five SS men, three of them wounded, came forward to surrender; Private Donald Smith discovered another SS man lurking beneath a knocked-out vehicle and took him prisoner as well.

  Moving around in the darkness was of course a dangerous business. A nervous Bren gunner loosed a burst at the patrol, possibly as Hoyer-Millar deployed it on either side of the bridge, and he responded with an annoyed ‘Stop firing that bloody Bren gun. It’s only me!’109 Major David Wallis, the recently installed commander of the 2nd Battalion, was not so fortunate. Approaching the rear of a building on the south side of the Weertjesstraat while checking his positions, he was challenged and then hit in the chest by a burst from a Bren belonging to the 9th Field Company RE, possibly because his response was insufficiently clear. Major Wallis was killed instantly and his passing obliged Frost to appoint Major Tatham-Warter, the commander of A Company, in Wallis’ stead over the head of B Company’s Major Crawley, who was senior in rank.110 Frost noted some resentment from the latter but selected Tatham-Warter because of his greater familiarity with the bridge perimeter positions.111

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  Sixty miles or so south of Arnhem the Grenadier Guards Group’s attempt to by-pass the fighting in Aalst by following the route scouted by the 2nd Household Cavalry was obstructed by a series of water crossings that were unable to bear the weight of their Sherman tanks. As a result the Grenadiers had only drawn level with Aalst by nightfall, at which point they received word that the 101st Airborne Division had secured Eindhoven. The flanking move appears to have
then been abandoned and the Grenadier Guards Group moved back onto the Valkenswaard–Eindhoven road and on to Son, although the precise timing of the move is unclear owing to 30 Corps’ embargo on movement on the main axis of advance during the hours of darkness. In the meantime, the Irish Guards Group’s problem with the German roadblock on the River Dommel north of Aalst resolved itself just after 17:00, when the gunners manning the four 88mm guns abandoned their positions and thereby left the road to Eindhoven open.112 The Irish Guards column then motored up to the city, arriving at around 18:00 and reaching the blown bridge at Son at 19:00.113 The column was led by elements of the 2nd Household Cavalry and the 2nd Irish Guards tanks, with the lead infantry element being Lieutenant Brian Wilson’s Platoon from the 3rd Irish Guards travelling on the decks of Lieutenant William MacFetridge’s Troop of Shermans. The infantrymen had been abruptly shaken from their bucolic bridge guard near Aalst shortly after being stood down, and Wilson noted the signs of recent combat along the road, which gave way to US paratroopers and then a tumultuous welcome from Eindhoven’s civilian inhabitants: ‘The long street was packed with people, jostling, pushing, waving, hysterical with happiness. Above their heads was a moving sea of waving handkerchiefs, hats, hands, little flags, paper streamers.’114