Brigadier-General Higgins’ reinforced attack down the Eindhoven-Boxtel road went in at 14:00, although part of the 3rd Battalion 502nd Parachute Infantry attacked without orders and ahead of schedule. Despite this the push south along the road down the road was an overwhelming success, with the presence of the 15th/19th Hussars’ tanks being the decisive factor. A party of seventy-five Germans surrendered to the 502nd Regiment’s 3rd Battalion virtually as it moved off rising to over a hundred before the attack was fully underway, and the tanks flushed numerous other prisoners from the roadside ditches and vegetation as they moved on. After the previous two days’ bitter fighting Kampfgruppe Rink and 59 Infanterie Division succumbed to a ‘festering disintegration’ and the advance to the canal thus reverted to a mopping-up operation, although not all the Germans appear to have been happy with their comrades’ behaviour; Lieutenant-Colonel Chappuis reported seeing some would-be prisoners being machine-gunned by their own side as they moved to surrender to his men from the 2nd Battalion. The sheer number of prisoners became a problem for the attackers as the advancing paratroopers lacked the numbers to guard them and continue on. The 2nd Battalion had taken 700 prisoners by 16:00 for example, and the 3rd Battalion was obliged to press its cooks, messengers and other supernumerary personnel into an emergency guard detail under the Battalion executive Officer, Captain Frank Lillyman, until sufficient Military Police could be mustered. A total of between 1,100 and 1,400 prisoners were taken, between 300 and 600 German dead were counted on the battlefield and while Best remained in German hands, the virtual destruction of Generalleutnant Poppe’s 59 Infanterie Division bolstered the security of the 101st Airborne Division’s western flank. In a neat postscript Lieutenant Wierzbowski and the survivors of his platoon also finally made it back to friendly forces, having persuaded the German medical personnel at the aid post where they had been receiving treatment to surrender.11
The two Battalions from the 327th Glider Infantry Regiment, again bolstered by tanks from the 15th/19th Hussars, had simultaneously pushed through and cleared the Zonsche Forest, including a cluster of buildings at the southern edge, and advanced up to the bank of the Wilhelmina Canal. The process was again aided by poor German morale that enabled the glider soldiers to persuade most to surrender; in some instances captured German NCOs were despatched forward to bring groups of their countrymen out; some of the prisoners were fleeing from the 502nd Parachute Infantry Regiment’s parallel advance down the Eindhoven–Boxtel road to the west. The operation netted 159 prisoners and the US units involved did not suffer a single casualty.12 Five miles to the west of the Zonsche Forest Lieutenant-Colonel Patrick Cassidy’s 1st Battalion 502nd Parachute Infantry Regiment was busy defending the crossroads town of St. Oedenrode against elements of 59 Infanterie Division and a scratch force made up of reserve and internal security units. On the southern sector Company A rebuffed two German attacks. A patrol led by Lieutenant Maurice LeGrave probed a German bataillon position near Donderdonk three miles to the south-west before engaging a German patrol and returning to the Battalion perimeter with a prisoner.
The most serious fighting of the day occurred to the north of St. Oedenrode and again involved British armour, albeit under somewhat different circumstances. After being warned by the Dutch Resistance of an impending early morning attack Captain Fred Hancock, commanding Company C, despatched a pre-emptive fighting patrol up the Schijndel road led by Lieutenant Harry Larson. Larson succeeded in blocking the initial German advance but was then attacked in turn by a reinforced enemy detachment and at 11:00 was obliged to withdraw; the whole of Company C was then drawn into the ensuing fight. With his Battalion already stretched to man its perimeter Lieutenant-Colonel Cassidy had no reinforcement to offer Captain Hancock but the day was saved by Sergeant Patrick McCrory, whose Sherman had dropped out of the Irish Guards Group due to a mechanical malfunction as it passed through St. Oedenrode. Although his tank was restricted to moving at walking pace, Sergeant McCrory readily agreed to help and set off up the Schijndel road with Private John J. O’Brien serving as a temporary loader and Sergeant Roy W. Nickrent riding on the rear deck as an observer. Arriving just as the Germans were preparing to assault Company C, Sergeant McCrory knocked out three 20mm guns pinning down Captain Hancock’s men at 150 yards range, a camouflaged gun position of some kind and a German ammunition truck that tried to escape; in the process Sergeant Nickrent was obliged to jump off the rear deck by small-arms fire and took three Germans prisoner and Private O’Brien was killed while firing a borrowed Sten gun from the turret hatch. The Sherman then led Company C forward for around 500 yards until Lieutenant-Colonel Cassidy, wary of being drawn into a larger fight, ordered Captain Hancock’s Company to reoccupy its initial roadblock positions. The paratroopers were subsequently reinforced by three Cromwell tanks from the 15th/19th Hussars, allowing Sergeant McCrory to return to awaiting REME assistance. On being thanked for his vital contribution he replied ‘When in doubt, lash out’, an axiom that the 1st Battalion subsequently adopted as an unofficial motto. The fight on the Schijndel road cost the Germans thirty dead and fifty-three captured; US casualties are unclear.13
Tuesday 19 September 1944 was also supposed to see the arrival of the 101st Airborne Division’s third lift, although that did not occur as planned. The third lift was scheduled to include 385 Waco CG4 gliders divided into ten separate serials carrying 2,310 men from the 1st Battalion 327th Glider Infantry Regiment, Division Artillery HQ, 321st Glider Field Artillery Battalion, 377th Parachute Field Artillery Battalion, 907th Glider Field Artillery Battalion and the confusingly named 81st Airborne Anti-aircraft Battalion, half of which was equipped with 57mm anti-tank guns. In addition to personnel, the gliders were loaded with 136 Jeeps, sixty-eight guns, seventy-seven trailers of ammunition and over 500 jerrycans of fuel. The lift was to follow the southern route across the mouth of the English Channel and across Belgium and began taking off at 11:30 into ‘barely passable’ flying conditions that led to the final serial being recalled after take-off. Despite the recall and a cloud ceiling of 700 feet, two CG4s collided whilst approaching the emergency glider landing area at Membury in Berkshire, killing all on board both machines. Visibility dropped to zero as the preceding serials approached the British coast, obliging the glider pilots to use the tilt of their tow-rope and telephone links with the tugs for guidance; some tugs extended visibility slightly to around half a mile by dropping to an altitude of a hundred feet once over the open sea. Seventeen CG4s were obliged to ditch and a further thirty-one were released or suffered broken tow-ropes after making landfall over Belgium. Some combinations strayed outside the safe corridor and were greeted with intense flak and small-arms fire that downed seventeen C47s at altitudes too low for the crews to escape by parachute; approximately half the CG4s from the shot-down tugs reached LZ W. In addition, 170 tugs returned to their UK airfields with extensive battle damage and a further five were so badly shot up they had to be scrapped after making emergency landings at Brussels. One tug squadron released fifteen gliders ten miles short of the LZ, a further twenty-six gliders disappeared without trace over the Continent and eighty-two combinations were unable to locate the LZ and returned to their airfields in England.
As a result of all this only 209 gliders landed on LZ W, where eleven men were killed in landing accidents and a further eleven injured. Just 1,341 men were delivered as scheduled, the largest contingent of 554 belonging to the 1st Battalion 327th Glider Infantry Regiment while the 907th Glider Field Artillery Battalion suffered the worst losses with only twenty-four men arriving safely and without any of their twelve 105mm Howitzers because the entire serial carrying the guns had turned back; only forty guns arrived at the LZ along with just seventy-nine Jeeps. The gliders that had returned to England were not despatched again until 23 September, although the artillery complement was expanded in the interim; a Battery from the 377th Parachute Field Artillery Battalion was dropped in the following day. Badly depleted as they were, the glider gun
s were a welcome addition to the 101st Airborne Division’s firepower. The infantry component that had made up the first two lifts was badly in need of artillery support and anti-tank weapons as the fight for the Airborne Corridor developed.14 The 1st Battalion 327th Glider Infantry Regiment ‘spent the night unloading the gliders and protecting the piled equipment from bands of marauding Germans’.15
In the 82nd Airborne Division’s area of responsibility Major-Generals Browning and Gavin greeted the Grenadier Guards Group in person at the Grave bridge at 10:00 and at some point before the GARDEN force arrived Browning reversed his position to inform Gavin that the ‘Nijmegen bridge must be taken today. At the latest tomorrow’; again, it is interesting to speculate on what the invariably correct US commander made of this latest volte-face.16 The link-up with the GARDEN force was celebrated in some style with Browning being a Grenadier himself, and the commanders of the 1st and 2nd Grenadier Guards Battalions, Lieutenant-Colonels Edward Goulbourn and Rodney Moore respectively, were swept off to a venue at Overasselt three miles toward Nijmegen where they were joined by the commanders of the 5th Guards Armoured Brigade and the Guards Armoured Division, Brigadier Norman Gwatkin and Major-General Allan Adair. After a brief situation report from Gavin and Browning the assembled officers discussed plans for an attack to seize the Nijmegen bridges before the Airborne and Grenadier commanders departed for Gavin’s Command Post near Groesbeek to finalise the attack plans.17 Maintaining the 82nd Airborne Division’s huge perimeter stretched the Division’s infantry force to the full, and this was exacerbated by losses incurred in the fighting; by nightfall on 19 September Company A from the 1st Battalion 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment had been reduced to two Officers and forty-two Other Ranks, for example.18 Gavin had intended to make up the shortfall with the 325th Glider Infantry Regiment, but that unit’s arrival was postponed and then cancelled because of the same bad weather that had played havoc with the 101st Airborne Division’s glider lift.
With the arrival of the GARDEN force Gavin nevertheless felt secure enough to deploy his Division reserve for an attack toward the Nijmegen bridges and Lieutenant-Colonel Benjamin Vandervoort’s 2nd Battalion 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment was mated with elements of the Grenadier Guards Group for a two-pronged attack, scheduled to commence as soon as possible that afternoon. The two columns were to be guided by members of the Dutch Resistance who assured their liberators that Nijmegen was lightly held by the Germans, who would likely surrender at the sight of the Grenadier’s tanks; in the meantime the 1st Grenadier Guards temporarily became the 82nd Airborne Division’s reserve in exchange for Vandervoort’s Battalion.19 In addition, Gavin took the opportunity presented by Tuesday’s period of relative calm to rationalise his deployments, most noticeably by ordering Colonel Reuben E. Tucker to move the bulk of his 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment north-east from Grave to relieve the 2nd Battalion 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment holding the Jonkerbosch woods overlooking the Honinghutie bridge. Tucker left a Company from the 2nd Battalion to guard the Grave bridge while his 3rd Battalion was directed to an area near Malden to become the Division reserve; it is unclear if this was in addition to, or as a replacement for, the 1st Grenadier Guards. Colonel William E. Ekman’s 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment enjoyed a similarly quiet Tuesday, patrolling around its positions on the south-eastern sector of the Divisional perimeter.
The most fraught day was endured by Colonel Roy E. Lindquist’s neighbouring 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment holding the eastern sector of the Division perimeter on Ekman’s left. The 508th Regiment’s 1st Battalion held the landing zone north-east of Groesbeek for the aborted glider lift until 18:00 and cleared and held a stretch of high ground overlooking the main Nijmegen–Cleve road near Wyler, while the 3rd Battalion did the same along the stretch running north-west to Ubbergen. In the course of the day the 508th Regiment was rejoined by its 2nd Battalion come hotfoot from the north-western tip of the Division perimeter, which occupied a stretch of the Berg-en-Dal feature on the 508th Regiment’s right flank overlooking the landing area and the Wyler road. The Regiment was also reinforced with a platoon from Company D, 307th Airborne Engineer Battalion, which was used to reinforce the 3rd Battalion’s roadblock near Beek.20
***
Fifteen miles north of the 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment’s roadblock near Beek, enemy activity around the British perimeter at the north end of the Arnhem road bridge largely fell away with the onset of darkness on Monday 18 September, bringing a measure of respite to beleaguered Airborne soldiers within. The exception to this was the Van Limburg Stirum School on the east side of the embanked bridge ramp, held by elements of the 1st Parachute Squadron RE and C Company, 3rd Parachute Battalion. After their attempts to eject the Airborne defenders failed, as mentioned earlier the Germans set fire to two knocked-out half-tracks on the Bleckmanslaan slip road at 19:30 and ninety minutes later set the adjacent Red School ablaze as well. It is unclear if this was intended to illuminate any British attempts at reinforcement or simply to burn the defenders out, but embers quickly spread the blaze to the roof of the neighbouring Van Limburg School. It took until 23:50 to bring the fire under control, in part by extinguishing the burning vehicles with demolition charges.21 Forty minutes later the Germans mounted a determined attack on the north and east sides of the school, lobbing grenades through all the ground-floor windows and firing rifle-grenades into those on the first floor, and in the confused fight that followed the attackers manhandled a machine-gun onto a windowsill and swept the room and hallway with fire. The Germans were not driven back until 01:15, and the paratroopers then abandoned the school’s ground-floor rooms, barricading the doorways leading into the central hallway and knocking loopholes through partition walls to allow fire from room to room if necessary. At 02:00 the south-west corner of the school was hit at first-floor level by what was likely a Panzerfaust launched from the bridge ramp, which blew away sections of the south and east walls along with part of the floor and roof. The violence of the detonation left those within stunned for several minutes but the Germans did not follow up with an immediate assault and the defenders were able to reorganise and move their wounded to the relative safety of the cellar without interference.
An hour or so later an estimated sixty German troops gathered in the darkness under the south wall of the school, talking casually and making no effort at concealment. Their error is frequently attributed to them becoming disoriented in the darkness but this is doubtful given the Van Limburg School’s isolated location and the still-burning Red School next door, and it is more likely that the Germans took the lack of British reaction to the Panzerfaust as a sign that the building had been abandoned. Whatever the reason, Major Lewis and Captain Mackay stealthily had their men manning the south-facing second- and third-storey windows prepare to use grenades, while Lieutenant Dennis Simpson from B Troop organised a human chain to pass more grenades and Gammon bombs back from the men covering the unthreatened north side of the school. On command they then rained the grenades down onto the Germans below. Lieutenant Len Wright from C Company recalled Major Lewis ‘running from one room to another, dropping grenades and saying to me that he hadn’t enjoyed himself so much since the last time he’d gone hunting’.22 Not all the grenade throwing went as planned, however. After moving into a passageway with a barricaded but unmanned window, Lance-Sergeant Norman Swift ‘threw a 36 grenade through the window: ‘At least that was my intention. Imagine my horror when the grenade hit the wooden crosspiece of the window, bounced back and landed amongst the piled-up furniture!’ Fortunately, Swift was alone in the corridor and managed to dive through a doorway with a warning shout before the grenade went off.23 The defenders then poured fire from rifles, Stens and at least six Bren guns into the unfortunate Germans, in some instances standing on window sills to get a clearer shot, to the accompaniment of the 1st Parachute Brigade’s ‘Waho Mohammed’ war cry. An estimated eighteen to twenty Germans were killed or wounded in the storm of grenade
fragments and small-arms fire and the rest fled into the darkness. The defenders do not appear to have suffered any casualties in the incident, and it brought German activity around the Van Limburg School to a halt for the rest of the night.24
The German concentration upon the Van Limburg School was likely the result of the building’s relative isolation, and their general quiescence elsewhere around the bridge perimeter during the night of 18-19 September was probably due to a shortage of manpower – and exhaustion. Kampfgruppe Brinkmann had been in the fight since around 20:00 on 17 September for example, while Major Knaust’s Panzer-Grenadier Ersatz und Ausbildungs Bataillon ‘Bocholt’ had borne the brunt of the fighting on the east side of the perimeter throughout the 18th. The latter was likely the more in need of rest and reorganisation given that it had been obliged to attack without support from weapons of sufficient calibre to make an impression on the substantial buildings occupied by the British. The only heavy weapons available up to this point appear to have been two 100mm or 150mm artillery pieces deployed in the direct fire role against the 2nd Parachute Battalion’s HQ building on the Eusebiusbinnensingel from the traffic island just north of the bridge ramp. Lieutenant-Colonel Frost recalled the impact of the shells and the serious damage they inflicted on the fabric of the building as being a ‘rude shock’ to those on the receiving end. Fortunately for the defenders, the guns quickly came under counter-fire from the 2nd Battalion’s 3-inch mortars, which killed several crewmen and possibly damaged one of the guns; Lieutenant-Colonel Frost reported one piece being towed to safety around a corner from where ‘it troubled us no more.’25
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