Arnhem

by William F Buckingham

  Major Pott and A Company were thus walking into a carefully sited and camouflaged defensive line more than twenty-four hours in the making, supported by over a dozen armoured vehicles and manned by more personnel than 156 Parachute Battalion’s total strength. The scene was therefore set for a rerun of the 1st Parachute Brigade’s experience just over two miles to the south-east. 4 Platoon got as far as the approaches to the Dreijenseweg when three machine-guns located just west of the road opened fire. Lieutenant Watling’s men immediately charged forward through the crossfire and reached the road but were then obliged to seek cover in the shallow roadside ditch. Major Pott set about organising a left-flanking attack using 5 Platoon’s riflemen and Captain Muir’s Glider Pilots as the assault group covered by Lieutenant Delacour’s Bren Groups, but the Bren gunners found it difficult to locate targets among the foliage, as Sergeant Andrew Thorburn discovered:

  It was far too quiet. We were behind little heaps of cut logs. You couldn’t see anything but the trees, and I was certain there were snipers hidden in them. I wanted to spray the trees ahead of us before we started, but before I could do so, Lieutenant Delacour was hit by the first shot fired…I told him to lie still but he jumped up…He was immediately hit again, right across the middle. All hell let loose then. I opened fire with the Bren, firing off about five magazines, spraying the trees, but I couldn’t see any effect of my fire.118

  Lieutenant Delacour had been hit initially in the neck and had jumped up to shout a warning; according to Sergeant Thorburn his exact words were ‘Major Pott. Fix bayonets. Charge!’ Whatever the wording, Delacour paid a high price for his impetuosity, as he bled to death while the battle raged around him. Major Pott’s assault group had also been drastically reduced by a German machine-gun post positioned in a hollow on the left flank that pinned down the Glider Pilot platoon, wounding Captain Muir and mortally wounding one of his Section commanders, Lieutenant Sydney Smith.119 Sergeant Louis Hagen, a German Jew serving under the pseudonym Lewis Haig, closed to within twenty yards of the German position in a single-handed attempt to silence it before being obliged to seek cover, and then spent some time listening to the crew bickering before making his escape.120

  Major Pott pressed home the attack with 5 Platoon under Sergeant Charles Gilmour, crossing the Dreijenseweg before pivoting right and assaulting along its axis, rolling up German positions on both sides of the road in a series of brutal encounters with bayonets and grenades. The task was complicated by one or more half-tracks on the right firing down the line of the roadway and along the shallow bordering ditches, inflicting more casualties on 4 Platoon sheltering there; this fire may have killed Lieutenant Watling as he attempted to lead his men over the Dreijenseweg to join the assault and the Company second-in-command, Captain Terence Rogers, was also killed while mopping up German positions east of the road.121 The half-tracks pulled back when the paratroopers closed on their location but continued to lay down fire, and Pott lost more men attempting to stalk the vehicles with grenades in lieu of PIATs. Private Martin Carney succeeded in locating and bringing forward a 4 Platoon’s Bren team but the gunner, Private Alfred Trueman, was killed trying to lay down suppressive fire on a half-track, and Sergeant George Sheldrake was badly wounded whilst doing the same with a 2-inch mortar.122 The British attack finally ebbed with the Glider Pilots pinned down west of the Dreijenseweg and 4 Platoon pinned down in the roadside ditch, both with numerous wounded, while 5 Platoon was extended south along the road in pursuit of the elusive and deadly half-tracks.123 The sheer ferocity of the British response nonetheless came as a most unpleasant surprise for their opponents as noted by Sturmann Alfred Ziegler, a motorcycle despatch rider from SS Panzerjäger Abteilung 9 attached to Bruhn’s HQ: ‘I was with Bruhns [sic] when the [German] position first showed signs of cracking. In some places our men had to adopt isolated “hedgehog” positions with all round defence, while some small groups of enemy managed to infiltrate through our lines.’ Thoroughly alarmed and unaware that his force outnumbered the attackers, Bruhn urgently despatched Ziegler toward Arnhem in search of reinforcements.124

  In the meantime Colonel Des Vœux had decided to enact the third stage of his plan without waiting for confirmation of A Company’s progress to the Lichtenbeek feature. Major Waddy and B Company were thus despatched at 09:00 to move around A Company’s left flank, across the Dreijenseweg and on to the Koepel ridge. At this point A Company was still moving through the woods prior to making contact and Des Vœux appears to have assumed that Major Pott had secured his objective with little to no resistance, given that he assured Waddy that there were only a ‘few snipers about’. That this was far from the case became increasingly apparent as B Company moved up the firebreaks in A Company’s wake, in part from the increasing volume of fire audible from the fight on the Dreijenseweg but also from more graphic evidence noted by Waddy: ‘When we moved up, it was obvious that A Company had received tremendous casualties; there were wounded coming back in Bren carriers and dead chaps lying at the side of the ride, and I passed a complete platoon headquarters all killed.’125 This was likely Captain Muir’s HQ group, given that at that time B Company appears to have come within range of the well-camouflaged German positions west of the road at around the same time. As Private Ronald Atkinson put it ‘we walked right into it, fire from above, from our flanks and even from behind’.126 The result was also similar as Bren gunner Private Edward Reynolds discovered on going to ground: ‘I couldn’t see where the Germans were and had to fire at where their fire seemed to be coming from. Things got quite bad. One of the first to be hit was the Number Two on my Bren, Private Ford. Suddenly he was laid on the ground, stone dead, with three little bullet holes in the throat…The platoon lost four or five men.’127 There was also the added distraction of a Glider Pilot emerging from the undergrowth offering to guide the lead platoon to the German positions before disappearing whence he came. Private Atkinson considered him lucky not to have been shot by both sides. His sudden appearance raised suspicions of a German plant and no one followed, the paratroopers being leery of a trap. In fact the mysterious Glider Pilot was Sergeant Hagen, who, having escaped from under the German machine-gun post, was looking to eliminate it; he was eventually able to pass his information on to an officer from 156 Battalion, although it is unclear if it was acted upon.128

  Having reached the point where the Battalion had run into the German outpost line the previous night, B Company began pushing up the firebreak toward the Dreijenseweg with a platoon deployed either side, closely followed by Major Waddy and his HQ group. The advance covered another 500 yards or so, accompanied by the growing sound of heavy engines, the rattle and squeal of tracks and shouting from the road ahead and in the trees on the flank. These were not the vehicles from SS Panzer Aufklärungs Abteilung 9 that had interfered with Major Pott and his men. In his search for reinforcements Sturmann Ziegler came upon an SS light flak unit equipped with an undisclosed number of half-tracks mounting single and quad 20mm weapons, which he led back to the Dreijenseweg; they were joined by a similarly equipped Heer unit, although it is unclear if it came up with Ziegler or arrived subsequently. Bruhn immediately deployed the half-tracks in hastily surveyed locations to bolster his defensive line and the shouting noted by the advancing paratroopers was these vehicles being manoeuvred into position by their crews. From a German perspective the flak vehicles arrived in the nick of time and as the two lead British platoons approached a clearing just short of the Dreijenseweg they came under murderous crossfire from numerous 20mm weapons. From his trail position Major Waddy noted the German weapons were ‘firing high-explosive shells, and these had a deadly effect, bursting in the trees and flinging out small splinters, so that even though…men were on the ground trying to crawl forward, they were still getting killed or wounded’.129 One of those wounded was Private Atkinson, as he assisted a wounded stretcher bearer with a casualty: ‘Then it happened. Something struck me at the back of my neck; it felt like a back heel from a ca
rt horse. I remember feeling to see whether I still had a head on my shoulders and then looking at my hands and tunic sleeves covered in blood ‒ my own blood! I dashed to the rear, to the first-aid post, moaning and groaning all the way.’130

  Despite the casualties Waddy immediately set about organising a renewed push across the clearing and appears to have been joined in the process by Battalion HQ and Captain Thomas Wainright’s Support Company, which had moved from Point 565 at 09:30.131 It is unclear whether Colonel Des Vœux had ordered the move believing he was following in the wake of a progressing advance, or because B Company had been stalled. Whichever, Waddy launched a dash across the clearing to coincide with the arrival of fighter aircraft overhead, which he assumed to be RAF but proved to be Luftwaffe, part of the wide-ranging strafing attack that occurred at around 11:00; interestingly, while the 156 Battalion War Diary refers to the strafing inflicting heavy casualties on B Company, this does not figure in Waddy’s account.132 The renewed attack got across the clearing but was stalled again just short of the Dreijenseweg by a wall of German fire, which obliged around thirty survivors to seek cover. Waddy then became drawn into an attempt to stalk one of the flak half-tracks, accompanied by Captain Wainright and some men from B Company. They succeeded in closing to within a few yards of the vehicle. The man next to Waddy was preparing throw a phosphorous grenade when he was shot through the head by a German sharpshooter covering the half-track from a tree above their heads. Waddy had left the captured MP40 he routinely carried as a personal weapon with his HQ Group and attempted to engage the sharpshooter with his .45 automatic pistol but was shot in the groin for his trouble and fired at again as he attempted to crawl away. He was subsequently carried to safety by Private Ben Diedricks, one of a score of Rhodesian soldiers serving with 156 Battalion, and was eventually ferried by Jeep to 181 Airlanding Field Ambulance’s MDS at the Hotel Tafelberg.133 The Battalion War Diary, incidentally, incorrectly reported that Waddy had been fatally wounded.134

  Thus by mid to late morning on Tuesday 19 September one of the 4th Parachute Brigade’s two available battalions was fully engaged with Hauptmann Bruhn’s force on the Dreijenseweg, and the second was rapidly following in its wake. Lieutenant-Colonel Smyth’s 10th Parachute Battalion had left its overnight position near the Hotel Buunderkamp at some point between 03:00 and 04:30, with Captain Cedric Horsfall and D Company in the lead.135 According to the unit’s semi-official history, the Battalion was at seventy per cent of its strength with the absent portion including two officers killed and four more missing. ‘The woods behind them were ablaze,’ presumably resulting from the activities of the Battalion patrols.136 In line with Hackett’s new orders the Battalion was heading for a point roughly a thousand yards west of the junction between the Amsterdamseweg and the Dreijenseweg, where it was to establish a firm left flank for the Brigade’s advance on the Koepel ridge. The three-mile approach march, which took around five-and-a-half hours, went to plan and D Company reached the Battalion’s designated position at 10:00. However, instead of establishing a defensive perimeter, Colonel Smyth pushed on down the Amsterdamseweg toward Arnhem. It is unclear why Smyth appears to have carried on with his original mission of advancing into Arnhem rather than conforming to Hackett’s revised orders. One account suggests that it may have been due to an unrecorded order by Hackett, but this is unlikely given that the latter’s account shows he was under the impression that the 10th Battalion was in place in its flank position as late as midday.137 Smyth was unable to clarify matters as he died on 26 September from wounds sustained five days earlier. Whatever the reason, D Company led the Battalion on along the Amsterdamseweg toward Arnhem, keeping to the right-hand side of the road while the Battalion transport closed up along a track from the south. Captain Horsfall’s lead platoon was moving abreast of La Cabine water pumping station on the opposite side of the road, approximately 300 yards short of the junction with the Dreijenseweg and the first Jeep in the transport column was negotiating its way onto the main road when the advance ran into the northern end of Hauptmann Bruhn’s blocking line.

  Intense machine-gun fire from the German outposts covering the road drove D Company to ground and a Panzerjäger IV sited to fire along the line of the Amsterdamseweg scored a direct hit on the lead Jeep, Colonel Smyth’s personal vehicle driven by Glider Pilot Captain Barry Murdoch. The shell was presumably an armour-piercing round as it set the vehicle ablaze rather than demolishing it as a high-explosive projectile would have done; Murdoch miraculously escaped unharmed. Captain Horsfall immediately launched the standard left-flanking attack obliging Lieutenant John Procter and 9 Platoon to ‘get across the road first, but there was a self-propelled gun firing straight down it from time to time. It seemed fairly quiet, so we put one man across to see what it was like. The SP fired just then, and the shell blew the man’s head off, a most unlucky shot for him. The rest of us lined up and galloped across without any more casualties.’138 In the meantime A Company deployed in the woods north of the Amsterdamseweg, while B Company moved up in reserve. The German automatic fire penetrated back to the Battalion HQ group, as noted by Adjutant Nicholas Hanmer:

  We had been moving fairly quickly, and it happened suddenly…The company ahead may have tried to outflank the opposition…but the fire was so heavy that they had to dig in, and so did we. You dig rather quickly in those circumstances. Quite a lot of the fire was coming through to us. The CO couldn’t do much at that stage because the fire was so heavy.139

  Digging in proved fortuitous, for D Company’s attempt to outflank the German outposts provoked a heavy mortar barrage, possibly including fire from multi-barrel nebelwerfer rocket launchers, which inflicted a number of casualties including Lieutenant Procter, who was struck in the upper arm by a fragment that broke the bone. Procter had been wounded previously while serving in North Africa and again in Italy and his somewhat jocular passage to the aid post under his own steam was witnessed by Lieutenant John Clarke, the Battalion Signals Officer, who was conferring with Colonel Smyth and Captain Hanmer: ‘Grinning, he [Procter] called out “I’m sorry about this. It always happens to me. I’ve lost my sense of humour about getting wounded. I’m not laughing any more”.’140 The Germans appear to have walked their mortar fire along the line of the Amsterdamseweg and a horse pulling a cart commandeered by the Signals Platoon to carry the spare radio batteries bolted in panic from a near miss; it is unclear if the batteries and a portion of the Battalion’s ammunition reserve, which had also been loaded onto the cart, were recovered.141

  Rather than immediately launching a flanking attack, Lieutenant-Colonel Smyth instructed D Company to maintain contact with the enemy and despatched his Intelligence Section to scout the extent and location of the German positions. He then ordered Lieutenant Roy Dodd’s Mortar Platoon to suppress the German fire and went forward with his HQ Group to D Company’s line; Corporal Harry Dicken from the Intelligence Section was with Smyth opposite the pumping station when one of its buildings was demolished, likely by a salvo from a nebelwerfer: ‘I was about ten yards from Colonel Smyth in this action…From my position I could see across the road to a two-storey pumping station with a tiled roof. While we were looking in this direction, there was a double explosion, and the tile roof lifted, and over a period of almost a minute the tiles cascaded to the ground. Colonel Smyth drily remarked “The landlord won’t like that”.’142 Lieutenant Dodd’s 3-inch mortars made some impression on the enemy but the effort rapidly depleted the ammunition supply. The drawn-out firefight between D Company and the German outposts also appears to have drawn in elements of B Company. The experience of Private George Taylor from 8 Platoon illustrates the intensity of the firefight:

  We were held up by some Germans…and we kept exchanging fire with them. The [Bren] barrel got so hot that we had to urinate on it to cool it down before we could change it; the hot urine spurted back on to me. We were in shallow shell-scrapes on the edge of a wood about fifty to seventy-five yards from the Germans and w
e eventually decided that we had to move out. It was just then that Nick Walter, the Number One on the Bren was killed ‒ just the one hit in the temple…I had to take the Bren from him and leave him; he was still in the firing position.143

  The Intelligence Section’s reconnaissance appears to have prompted Colonel Smyth to try and bypass the German units blocking passage along the Amsterdamseweg to the north after seeking and receiving authorisation from 4th Parachute Brigade HQ. According to Hackett’s War Diary account, Smyth also intended to disengage before executing his move.144 The move was to be led by the Battalion second-in-command Captain Lionel Queripel and A Company from the north side of the Amsterdamseweg: A Company’s commander, Major Patrick Anson, had been aboard one of the C-47s lost in the run-in to the DZ the previous day, likely that piloted by Lieutenant Thomas T. Tucker from the 34th Troop Carrier Squadron.145 However, the flanking movement does not appear to have developed beyond A Company preparing to move on the north side of the road and the despatch of a three-man patrol led by Sergeant Keith Banwell to scout the area immediately to A Company’s front. The patrol returned safely, albeit after almost being cut off by German troops, and reported spotting five tanks and four trucks including two fuel tankers in a compound east of the pumping station.146 The delay in executing the flanking movement was due to the arrival of German light flak vehicles on the 10th Battalion’s frontage, which Smyth appears to have erroneously assumed were attempting to push along the Amsterdamseweg through the British line. This was not the case, as Corporal Dicken recalled: ‘We were told ‒ Battalion HQ at least ‒ to line the road to ambush them but not to fire until ordered. The enemy stopped short of the wood, spread out and began to plaster us with every weapon they had.’147 Rather than attempting to move down the Amsterdamseweg the Germans were likely modifying their approach to take advantage of the relatively open ground between the woods occupied by the paratroopers and the north end of the Dreijenseweg, in order to avoid being stalked, as had occurred in the fight with 156 Parachute Battalion to the south. Once again, the heavy-calibre German automatic fire pinned the paratroopers in their hastily dug shell scrapes or other cover and effectively prevented any attempt to break contact.