Mist and low cloud also delayed the glider lift’s planned 07:45 take-off at Down Ampney, Keevil and Tarrant Rushton, an initial two-hour postponement was extended until the weather cleared sufficiently to commence take-offs at around midday.113 The lift consisted of forty-three gliders, thirty-five of which were Horsas carrying elements of Sosabowski’s Brigade. Ten of them were loaded with 6-Pounder guns and fifty-three gunners from the Anti-tank Battery under Lieutenant Jerzy Halpert; Battery commander Captain Jan Kanty Wardzala and the remainder of the Battery personnel were parachuting in while Halpert was flying in Chalk No. 131 with Bombardiers Nosecki and Roman Kabat. The remaining nine gliders, eight Horsas and a single Hamilcar, were carry-overs from the second lift flown by Glider Pilots from A, B, D and E Squadrons.
Five machines, all Horsas, were lost before making landfall on the Continent. Staff-Sergeant Howard and Sergeant Davy returned to base shortly after take-off when their tug became unserviceable while Staff-Sergeant Aldridge and Sergeant Wright force-landed near Little Marlow, 100 miles or so east of Keevil; Aldridge broke a leg and ankle and was taken to Taplow hospital. Chalk No. 1026 also force-landed at Manston in Kent, although in that instance Staff-Sergeant Stocker and Sergeant Allen emerged unscathed, while Staff-Sergeant Baake and Sergeant Garratt came down in the sea; both men were rescued and returned to base the following day. Staff-Sergeant Henry Blake and Sergeant Lee in Chalk No. 144 were carrying Sergeant Boleslaw Nachman, Lance-Corporal Marian Boba, Cadet Sergeant Edward Holub and presumably a Jeep, given that Nachman and Boba were Sosabowski’s drivers. The tow-rope parted when Blake lost station with his tug while flying through cloud and the Horsa just made landfall near Ostend, clipping a roof before crashing to earth and injuring Holub.114 A further seven gliders were lost in the flight across Holland, six due to their tow-ropes being severed by shrapnel and one after a flak shell scored a direct hit on the Horsa’s Perspex nose, killing both pilots and causing the machine to disintegrate in mid-air.115 Another shell burst beneath Lieutenant Halpert’s Horsa, ‘sending splintered pieces of the floorboards and shrapnel into the ceiling and tearing Nosecki’s trousers. Seeing the bombardier’s smoking and torn pants, Halpert called to him, and asked if he was hurt. Nosecki felt around and as he replied that he was okay, the glider’s pilot let out a groan and grabbed his chest. Putting his bloodied hands back on the control column the pilot insisted that he would get the glider down safely.’116
Only an estimated thirty of the forty-three gliders reached their release point at around 16:00, twenty-eight carrying Poles and two with carry-overs from the second lift; both the latter were likely carrying men from the 7th KOSB.117 Their arrival thus coincided with that of the supply flight, which appears to have attracted the bulk of the anti-aircraft fire. The gliders cast off at the standard 2,500 feet but their rapid descent quickly carried them well below the supply aircraft’s 900-foot drop altitude, where they were screened from many guns by buildings and trees. A number of gliders were nonetheless hit by light flak and small-arms fire, and one was shot down just short of the LZ as witnessed by an inhabitant of Oosterbeek: ‘There was an explosion ‒ the nose of the glider seemed to have been shot off ‒ and I saw soldiers and items of equipment, a jeep perhaps and other items, all falling out. It was a terrible sight.’118 The same incident may have been witnessed by Polish War Correspondent Marek Swiecicki, who had come in with the second glider lift, although he identified the culprit as a German fighter rather than flak. Swiecicki was awaiting the gliders on the railway embankment that formed the southern edge of LZ L near a group of dug-in KOSBs, admiring the peaceful view over the empty field and especially the ‘cool and quiet wood’ at the other side of the LZ. This bucolic idyll vanished abruptly with the appearance of the gliders, when Swiecicki saw his cool and quiet wood ‘erupt in fire. Everything: mortars, machine guns, and even individual rifles…it was very bad…this beautiful field became a curse to those on it.’119 Most of the Polish gliders made good landings despite suffering numerous hits on the way down; Sergeant Ronald Driver from A Squadron put his Horsa down safely despite having part of its landing gear shot away, for example. Not all were so fortunate. Swiecicki saw one Horsa nose into the ground; this was probably the same incident involving a Horsa piloted by Staff-Sergeant John West and Sergeant James Bonham from C Squadron witnessed by Sergeant Driver:
The pilot made a perfect touchdown, but suddenly its nose dug in, throwing up a wave of earth that obscured the fuselage, so that only the tail could be seen sticking up at a crazy angle…We started frantically to dig away the soil, clods of earth, pieces of plywood and Perspex etc., until we came across a piece of uniform and pulled out one of the pilots. He was, of course, dead. We redoubled our efforts to find the other but were unsuccessful.120
What happened next was largely dependent on which part of the LZ the individual glider came to rest. Staff-Sergeant Ralph Bishop found the ‘crackle of small arms fire’ the only overt sign of enemy activity while his Horsa’s tail was detached and the Jeep within unloaded.121 The experience of others was more fraught, however. After assisting in the uneventful unloading of a Jeep and trailer from Chalk No. 120, Lieutenant Waldemar Grabowski despatched Bombardier Jozef Oprych on a motorcycle to spread a rally order; a strafing Messerschmitt 109 shot the motorcycle from under Oprych, badly wounding him in the leg and leaving him pinned down by fire from the woods to the north. Lieutenant Halpert and Bombardier Nosecki’s Chalk No. 131 ended up near the north edge of the landing zone with Nosecki firing a Bren at German troops in the nearby woods while Halpert tended the wounded pilot. Nosecki also heard Oprych’s cries for help and after dealing with the Germans firing on the wounded man was able to direct a passing Jeep carrying British medical orderlies to Oprych’s location.122
Arguably the most unfortunate were the two Horsas carrying the British carry-overs from the second lift. Through an oversight the glider pilots had not been issued with amended flight plans and came down as originally intended on German-held LZ S. Sergeant Jock Macdonald’s Horsa from E Squadron, likely carrying part of the 7th KOSB Mortar Platoon, was immediately surrounded and all aboard were taken prisoner; as Sergeant Macdonald put it later, ‘It was just a damned debacle; we were just sitting ducks waiting to be plucked.’ The occupants of the other glider appear to have managed to reach friendly territory.123 Back on LZ L the initial stage of the landing progressed reasonably well despite the German strafing and ground fire, and the withdrawal of the 10th Parachute Battalion across the landing area does not appear to have been particularly problematic either. As Captain Nicholas Hanmer noted: ‘The gliders were coming in from the south, but it was a large piece of ground, and there was no need to get out of their way.’124 The situation was considered sufficiently secure for part of the 7th KOSB’s B and D Companies to leave their positions on the south-eastern and north-eastern edges of the LZ respectively to assist with unloading the gliders. The 7th KOSB War Diary noted, ‘From the Bn’s point of view there was nothing, at this time, to indicate that we had more than a temporary check, nor that any change of plan was imminent.’125 All that changed when elements of Kampfgruppe Krafft emerged from the woods lining the north side of the landing zone.
After its fights with the 1st Airborne Reconnaissance Squadron near Wolfheze and the 3rd Parachute Battalion column west of Oosterbeek in the afternoon and evening of 17 September, Bataillon Krafft had been withdrawn north to Deelen airfield to reorganise. At some point Krafft’s 2 Kompanie was transferred to Kampfgruppe Möller in exchange for two Kriegsmarine units, Flottenstamm Regiment 1 and Marine Regiment 642, and 10 Kompanie from Polizei Regiment 3. The expanded unit was also upgraded to Kampfgruppe status and moved to a north-western suburb of Arnhem before being tasked to advance on Kampfgruppe Bruhn’s right flank in the afternoon of 19 September 1944. According to one source, Krafft’s initial objective was the line of the Amsterdamseweg, after which he was to exploit southward to the Arnhem–Ede railway line, although another refers to the latter bei
ng the objective from the outset.126 Whichever, the advance began in mid to late afternoon and Krafft’s men reached the Amsterdamseweg at some point before 16:00 before pushing into the 500-yard-wide strip of woods on its southern boundary. The 7th KOSB’s A Company was deployed on the north-west sector of the landing area perimeter but the German line of advance appears to have passed between it and D Company in the north-east corner and Krafft’s men were thus able to engage the withdrawing 10th Parachute Battalion and then the gliders as they appeared from the south; Krafft ordered his 4 Kompanie and Obersturmführer Günther Leiteritz’s 9 Kompanie to move forward and attack immediately. The emergence of the German troops onto the landing zone caused considerable alarm, not least because they were accompanied by at least one vehicle, as witnessed by Captain Hanmer: ‘I saw a German wheeled vehicle come out of the trees, right up to one glider, and it fired straight into the glider; it all looked pretty horrific.’127
Responsibility for marking the landing zone lay with Lieutenant David Eastwood and No. 1 Platoon from the 21st Independent Parachute Company, which had spent the night at the Company’s overnight location, a large house called St. Paulastichting just south of the Arnhem–Ede railway line, approximately 500 yards west of the Oosterbeek Hoog station. Staking out the marker panels, deploying the wind-indicator smoke pot and setting up the EUREKA homing beacon was complete by 09:30, thirty minutes before the gliders were scheduled to arrive, with operator Private Tommy McMahon and another Pathfinder using a convenient dung heap as camouflage for the beacon. The Platoon then dug trenches inside the woods bordering the LZ, apart from Sergeant Ronald Kent and No.1 Section, which established an outpost on the northern edge; this was handed over to an unidentified scratch force of KOSBs shortly before the gliders arrived.128 The Pathfinders were also tasked to guide the Poles off the landing zone, but this proved less than straightforward. While the Poles may have been expecting some ground fire, they were not expecting to land in the midst of a fighting withdrawal with enemy troops and vehicles debouching onto the LZ, and they can therefore be forgiven for sometimes shooting first and asking questions later.
Interestingly, the 21st Independent Company accounts make no mention of such occurrences despite referring to members of No. 1 Platoon ‘haring around’ among the surviving Poles and pilots directing them south to the strip of woodland bordering the railway line.129 Company Sergeant Major Lashmore from the 10th Parachute Battalion’s Support Company was last seen running toward a group of Poles waving a yellow silk identification panel, and Cholewczynski refers to some Poles firing on men from the KOSB as they came forward to assist in unloading, while others ran toward Krafft’s men in search of cover.130 The language barrier compounded the problem as many of the Poles were unable to understand advice and instructions shouted by their British counterparts; a group of Glider Pilots interviewed by Cholewczynski years later remembered being fired on by Poles after shouting for them to ‘come’ in a cod-Polish accent, without realising how similar this sounded to the German ‘komm’.131 Nor was the friendly fire all Pole-on-British or vice versa. The 10th Battalion’s QM, Lieutenant Joseph Glover, who was organising a water point on the LZ, saw Lieutenant Paddy Radcliff from the Battalion’s MMG Platoon killed by one of his own guns.132 This may have been troops moving near the 4th Parachute Brigade’s Forward HQ shooting wildly in response to intense German fire from the north, as noted by Hackett.133
The Germans did not have it all their own way. Obersturmführer Leiteritz was killed with a large number of his men by concentrated fire from the 7th KOSB’s D Company and Battalion HQ after pushing 9 Kompanie too far out into the open LZ; the KOSB War Diary refers to Major Alexander Cochran and Drum-Major Tait personally killing twenty Germans with Bren guns while another account refers to Provost-Sergeant Andrew Parker making good use of a Vickers.134 The Pathfinders of No. 1 Platoon also wrought ‘considerable execution’ among the advancing Germans with their three Bren guns, and Lieutenant Eastwood despatched Sergeant Ron Kent and Private Paddy Gamble to try and raise a counter-attack from British troops seen withdrawing west along the line of the railway; their request was refused by an unidentified officer who insisted his orders were to ‘get back to Wolfhezen [sic] and regroup and that’s where we’re going’.135
In the absence of assistance Lieutenant Eastwood therefore held on until it was clear the Germans were about to launch a major attack on his location, then withdrew directly south across the railway embankment to the relative safety of the dense woods between the railway line and the Utrechtseweg. A Polish officer attempted to co-opt some of the Pathfinders into manhandling a 6-Pounder onto the embankment; he was disabused of the notion when they pointed out that there was no ammunition for the gun – and it was missing a breechblock. Eastwood headed east toward Oosterbeek after conferring with an unnamed officer heading for Wolfheze in a Jeep and regained the Independent Company’s main position on the Graaf Van Rechterenweg shortly after nightfall.136 Predictably, Krafft’s self-serving after-action report referred to the unfortunate Leiteritz meeting a hero’s death after suffering ‘some very bad luck with his tactics’, and again exaggerated the British strength ranged against him in order to cover the fact that his attack did not push as forcefully as it could have; the KOSB’s fire was not part of a series of ‘concentric counter-attacks on both flanks’ as claimed, but was actually the precursor to a British withdrawal west across the landing area in the wake of the 10th Parachute Battalion.137 Nonetheless, Krafft’s attack had done a good job of interfering with the glider landing. Of the eight 6-Pounder guns that made it to the landing area, only three and a total of five Jeeps were unloaded from the estimated twenty-eight gliders that put down on LZ, and one of the guns was commandeered from Lieutenant Halpert by a British officer before leaving the landing area.138 The remaining gliders were abandoned to be looted and some burned by the SS, who remained active on the LZ until dusk.
The understandable concentration on the drama and confusion of the Polish glider landing has obscured the more important question of precisely how the 4th Parachute Brigade found itself in the extremely vulnerable position it did, especially as Hackett had worked out the details of the withdrawal across the Arnhem‒Ede railway line with Urquhart relatively well in advance. The reasons lie in the manner in which the withdrawal was implemented. The initial catalyst for it was information ‘received from Div about 1500 hrs [that] indicated some reverse or at least threats of such in [the] area south of ry [railway]’, to quote Hackett’s War Diary account.139 But the Division HQ War Diary makes no mention of such a message and the western side of the Divisional perimeter remained quiet until about 19:00. Hackett’s immediate reaction to this information was based on two things: his understandable concern that neither the Wolfheze nor Oosterbeek Hoog railway crossings were in British hands, and Reconnaissance Squadron reports of enemy activity in the area of Renkum and Heelsum on the 1st Airlanding Brigade’s front. Based on this, he ordered ‘10 Bn to disengage forthwith and make for WOLFHEZEN [sic] ry crossing, seize and hold it for Bde to cross if necessary’.140 This was not a new idea, for Hackett had raised it in his discussion with Urquhart and filed it away as a backstop option in case the mysterious 1st Airlanding Brigade attack failed to secure the Oosterbeek Hoog crossing.
The problem here is that Hackett’s War Diary account does not provide timestamps for specific events and more importantly, appears to leaven abbreviated notes taken at the time with material gleaned after the event. Separating these elements reveals two different narratives. While some parts seem to show he was aware of the 10th Parachute Battalion’s situation, other parts and the course of events strongly suggest that this was not the case, and that Hackett was under the erroneous impression that the 10th Parachute Battalion was passively occupying its assigned blocking position on the Amsterdamseweg around a thousand yards west of the Dreijenseweg in the face of light opposition, rather than pinned down and under serious attack near La Cabine pumping station. Hackett’s War D
iary cites the map reference for the former location and explicitly mentions the 10th Parachute Battalion three times prior to ordering it to Wolfheze, saying it had suffered ‘a few cas ‒ but [was] holding [its] own and consolidating’, secondly that ‘10 Bn reported enemy attacks from NE by some inf and normal SP’ and thirdly, ‘156 and 10 reported continuation of fire by one or two SP guns which had been intermittent since about 0830. 10 Bn reported 5 tracked vehs probably SP guns’.141 None of these observations reflect the gravity of the 10th Parachute Battalion’s situation, and the picture of relative quiet it paints would explain why Hackett felt it appropriate to issue a snap order for immediate execution. The reality was that it took at least an hour for the 10th Parachute Battalion to break contact and commence its move, and that delay led to it becoming entangled in the order for the implementation of the general Brigade withdrawal across the Arnhem‒Ede railway line.
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