Arnhem

by William F Buckingham

  As we have seen, the order for the withdrawal was issued via an O Group and radio message at 16:00, around an hour after Hackett discussed and finalised the details with Urquhart. The problem in this instance was not the withdrawal per se, but the speed with which it was to be carried out: 156 Parachute Battalion was ordered to move within fifteen minutes of receipt of the withdrawal order and the 7th KOSB within half an hour. These were very short lead times by any measure, let alone for units in close proximity to, or in contact with, the enemy and the 7th KOSB’s deadline actually meant starting to abandon the landing zone before the third glider lift was down and clear, given that the gliders only began to land after 16:00. The haste again appears connected to the alleged message from Division HQ regarding the reverse or threat thereof on the western side of the Divisional perimeter, and again seems based on an assumption of relative calm. To be fair, the 7th KOSB’s situation was calm when Lieutenant-Colonel Payton-Reid left Johannahoeve for Hackett’s O Group, but on returning to his HQ he found ‘D and A Coys had been strongly attacked and close and fierce fighting was still in progress’, courtesy of Kampfgruppe Krafft.142 For his part, Hackett appears to have also been unaware of 156 Parachute Battalion’s true situation, for while his War Diary account records ordering the Battalion to consolidate at Point 565 as it had ‘shot its bolt’, it then refers to promising its support to Hicks for the attack to secure the Oosterbeek Hoog crossing, it records intermittent fire from self-propelled guns and, most curiously of all, that the situation was ‘noticeably satisfactory E toward ARNHEM’.143 This was far from reality for a Battalion reorganising after having two of its three rifle companies decimated by a superior enemy who was preparing to counter-attack; the 156 Battalion War Diary refers to being attacked by enemy patrols, presumably from Kampfgruppe Bruhn, at the time the withdrawal order was received.144 Implementing Hackett’s order thus obliged the 7th KOSB and 156 Parachute Battalion to replicate the 10th Parachute Battalion’s ordeal by compelling them to withdraw whilst in contact with the enemy.

  This then was the series of assumptions, misconceptions and errors of judgement that placed the 4th Parachute Brigade in the worst possible position, with all its constituent units and support elements withdrawing simultaneously at short notice in the face of a fully functioning, and in some instances advancing, enemy. As an unnamed, experienced and angry participant put it, ‘You just can’t get up and rush away from the enemy in daylight like that…You just can’t bloody well do it.’145 The fight to break contact on the Amsterdamseweg and subsequent enemy fire and clashes while moving across the LZ reduced the 10th Parachute Battalion to around a third of its strength, while the German patrols harassed 156 Parachute Battalion’s withdrawal from Point 565 at around 16:15 and may have pursued the paratroopers westward; whether or not, the confusion generated by the urgency of the situation led to 156 Battalion becoming divided in two.146 The 7th KOSB’s C Company made ‘an orderly and comparatively easy withdrawal’ from Point 565 without incident, but Battalion HQ and D Company then suffered casualties in the fight with Obersturmführer Leiteritz’s 9 Kompanie. A Company was lost virtually in its entirety for Major Buchanan was unable to withdraw south via the LZ as ordered, presumably because of Krafft’s presence, so after breaking contact reportedly moved east instead. Caught in the open between areas of woodland, the bulk of the Company and the attached 10 Platoon from C Company was obliged to surrender, with only around thirty men from the rearguard managing to escape.147 As the Battalion War Diary presciently noted at the time, ‘What occurred on the A Company front is shrouded in mystery since no representatives of that Coy appeared at the [Battalion] RV and it can only be assumed that they…were overrun by superior numbers.’148

  The most serious problems seem to have been connected to the 4th Parachute Brigade’s transport elements, the bulk of which appear to have been channelled along the track paralleling the north side of the railway line near Hackett’s Forward HQ. The track became jammed with Jeeps and trailers interspersed with the occasional Bren Carrier and high German fire from the fight on the LZ prompted some wild firing in response, especially when German skirmishers approached the south edge of the LZ. Colour-Sergeant Tony Thomas from 156 Parachute Battalion recalled it was ‘a good old jam, like Piccadilly Circus at its worst. Some men were abandoning their vehicles and climbing over the embankment, but that was foolish because they stuck out like a sore thumb and were easy targets.’149 Matters came close to descending into outright panic and Brigade HQ officers had to be sent out in an effort to restore order; as Hackett himself put it, the HQ officers were obliged to employ ‘great energy and even violence…to prevent some confusion’.150 According to Urquhart’s account the ‘confusion’ may have spread as far south as Division HQ:

  There were small parties of hurrying soldiers, obviously uncontrolled, and then twenty or more, under a young officer, dashed across the lawn in front of the Hartenstein shouting ‘The Germans are coming!’ With Mackenzie, I moved to intercept them. They were young soldiers whose self-control had momentarily deserted them. I shouted at them, and I had to intervene physically…We ordered them back to the positions they had deserted, and I had a special word with the tall young officer who in his panic had set such a disgraceful example.151

  The 4th Parachute Brigade only avoided being overrun and destroyed on and around LZ L principally because the Germans lacked the strength and application to press home their advantage. The fact that British discipline held firm in the overwhelming majority of instances was also crucial, as were the sterling efforts of Major Æneas Perkins and the 4th Parachute Squadron RE. Perkins had carried out a personal reconnaissance of the railway embankment most of the way to the Wolfheze crossing immediately after Hackett’s O Group and ascertained that it was too steep for vehicles to negotiate apart from two points: a brick and concrete drainage culvert running under the embankment 250 yards east of the Wolfheze crossing which was just wide enough for a Jeep, and a livestock track running up the embankment fortuitously close to where Captain Henry Brown’s No. 3 Troop was dug in on the south edge of the LZ. Perkins therefore ordered Lieutenant James Cormie’s No. 2 Troop to secure the south end of the culvert and No. 3 Troop to supervise the north end and the farm track; Captain Brown chose to remain at the latter and despatched Lieutenant Norman Thomas and half the Troop to the culvert. At around this time Perkins was informed that the Wolfheze crossing had been secured, possibly by elements of the 10th Parachute Battalion. The crossing should have been in German hands but SS Bataillon Eberwein had been badly strafed by Luftwaffe fighters as it approached Wolfheze proper around 16:00 and the resultant confusion significantly delayed the German advance; some of the 7th KOSB’s transport passed unscathed through the village via the level-crossing after overshooting the improvised crossing points at around this time.152 Perkins ordered Captain James Smith’s No. 1 Troop to take charge of the Wolfheze crossing and sent the Bren Carriers and heavier anti-tank guns there while directing the bulk of the Brigade’s Jeeps to the livestock track and culvert. Progress was slow at the culvert as the opening was barely wide enough for a standard Jeep. Those fitted with stretchers proved particularly problematic as the casualties and side-mounted stretchers had to be unloaded, and the delay was compounded by a number of vehicles becoming bogged in the sandy soil at the north end. Captain Brown’s party passed half a dozen Jeeps and two 17-Pounders over the livestock track, using eight men to bounce their wheels over the individual rails, and some especially intrepid Jeep drivers managed to coax their vehicles across individually at less steep stretches of embankment.153

  Major Perkins’ Sappers were principally protected in their work by the 7th KOSB’s B Company. Lieutenant-Colonel Payton-Reid had assigned the task to Major Michael Forman as his unit was closest to the crossing sites. The remainder of the Battalion successfully broke contact and withdrew across the LZ as ordered shortly after the 16:30 deadline, although in the confusion some elements crossed the railway immediately rath
er than proceeding west to the Wolfheze crossing as ordered.154 B Company engaged the German skirmishers from the wood where the 4th Parachute Squadron RE had dug in the previous night. Lance-Corporal O’Neill Berry from Lieutenant Charles Doig’s 7 Platoon opened fire with a Bren on a loaded farm cart parked near the track because he ‘believed it could be shielding the enemy so…I opened up with a heavy burst of fire. The next instant all I could see was a blinding, hot, searing flash, followed by a deafening explosion. I ducked as bits of trailer and wheels showered among us. I could feel them clattering on my helmet.’ Reacting quickly, Lieutenant Doig then led a counter-attack that drove the surviving Germans out of the wood.155 The cart was actually the one commandeered the previous day by Captain Brown to carry No. 3 Troop’s allotment of Hawkins Mines, and contained in the region of 120 pounds of high explosive. Ironically, the blast almost did for Brown as he stood atop the embankment nearby supervising the livestock track crossing: ‘Suddenly there was a terrific explosion and I was blown off my feet backwards on to the rails. I was stunned and I think momentarily knocked out…Fortunately my steel helmet protected my head as it hit the railway line. I pulled myself together feeling rather groggy and looked for my team of men.’156

  Major Forman’s B Company was not alone in covering the withdrawal, for others also turned to fight on their own initiative. The Polish 6-Pounder and crew taken from Lieutenant Halpert’s depleted Battery was commandeered by Captain Peter Barron from the 2nd Airlanding Anti-tank Battery, who appears to have ordered the Poles to dig in close to the railway embankment near the Wolfheze crossing; according to Hackett the gun was abandoned and Barron ‘put a useful scare-the-crows shoot against the advancing Bosche’.157 It is unclear if he was acting on orders, on his own initiative or was simply cut off, but Captain Queripel and a group from the 10th Parachute Battalion’s A Company occupied another finger of woodland projecting into the landing zone midway between Major Forman’s position and the Wolfheze crossing, where they were joined unbidden by a number of men from other units. Wounded in the face during the earlier battle on the Amsterdamseweg, Queripel was wounded again in both arms in the ensuing fight, likely by German mortar fire, and on at least one occasion returned a German stick-grenade thrown into the drainage ditch being used as a makeshift trench by the paratroopers. When the position became untenable Queripel ordered the survivors of his little band to withdraw without him despite their protests, and was last seen providing covering fire with his automatic pistol and hand grenades gathered from the remainder of the group. He was posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross for his gallantry.158 The ferocity of the British resistance and the onset of darkness concealed what was happening from Generalleutnant von Tettau to the west and Hauptmann Bruhn and Hauptsturmführer Krafft on the spot, and the opportunity to destroy the 4th Parachute Brigade and push into the virtually undefended heart of the 1st Airborne Division’s area thus slipped away unnoticed. Krafft did not miss the opportunity for more self-aggrandisement however, and wrote up what can be described as a hesitant pursuit and harassment at best as a daring action against a superior force that had to be broken off due to ‘concentric [British] counter-attacks on both…flanks’.159

  Whilst Forman, Barron and Queripel’s little bands and doubtless other sadly unrecorded groups and individuals stubbornly battled the Germans on the landing zone, much of the remainder of the 4th Parachute Brigade slipped across the railway to temporary safety in the woods to the south. Despite the confusion and urgency of the situation the crossing was also carried out relatively quickly. Hackett stayed back to supervise the evacuation accompanied by his Intelligence Officer, Captain George Blundell, and a detachment from the Brigade Defence Platoon under Captain Edmund James. The remainder of Brigade HQ was despatched to establish a defensive perimeter at Point 232, a track junction 200 yards or so south of the railway; the move was complete by dusk.160 The 2nd Airlanding Anti-tank Battery lost three guns and a large number of personnel including the commander of X Troop, Lieutenant George Paull, but four 6-Pounders from G and H Troops reached Oosterbeek safely, along with two of X Troop’s 17-Pounders. The latter were probably those bounced across the rail tracks by Captain Brown’s party. Another 17-Pounder was reportedly abandoned atop the embankment when the crew was hit by German machine-gun fire, and one source refers to a fourth using the Wolfheze crossing.161

  The infantry units were in a more sorry state. Lieutenant-Colonel Smyth arrived in the fortuitously unoccupied Wolfheze with around eighty men from the 10th Parachute Battalion including Major Peter Warr and Captain Benjamin Clegg from B Company and Quartermaster Lieutenant Glover. They were joined by a party led by Major George Widdowson and Adjutant Captain Hanmer, which swelled Smyth’s force to about 250 including a number of men from other units, and another group led by Captain Cedric Horsfall from D Company turned up near Point 232 in the small hours of the following morning. Smyth set about preparing the village for defence while Major Warr drove around the streets in a Jeep warning the residents to take shelter; many preferred to move out into the surrounding woods.162 Lieutenant-Colonel Des Vœux led 156 Parachute Battalion over the embankment near the livestock track but a mix-up led to half of B Company, a platoon from C Company and the whole of Support Company continuing along the railway line to Wolfheze, where they fell in with the 10th Parachute Battalion. The remainder, around 270 strong, reached Point 232 at around 19:00 and were ordered to dig in along a line running north to the railway line, where they endured intermittent mortar fire and rebuffed several German patrols.163 After successfully breaking contact on the northern edge of the LZ, the 7th KOSB headed for a pre-arranged rendezvous in the woods south of the railway line about a mile east of the Hotel Wolfheze, although there was again confusion in crossing the embankment and C Company appears to have used the Wolfheze crossing. The latter was nonetheless present at the RV by c. 17:30 along with D Company, reduced to two Platoons, and a few men from B Company. On being informed that Major Forman and the bulk of B Company were located nearby, Colonel Payton-Reid conducted an unsuccessful personal search that almost ended in him being cut off by German patrols. The object of the search had in fact rallied to the Hotel Wolfheze proper, where they remained awaiting orders until the afternoon of the following day. In the meantime Colonel Payton-Reid had also been unsuccessful in another quest to locate Hackett’s Brigade HQ for further instructions and at that point he decided to cut his losses. Despatching Battalion second-in-command Major John Coke ahead to contact 1st Airlanding Brigade HQ for orders, he led his depleted Battalion eastward through the woods, arriving at Division HQ without further enemy contact at 19:00.164

  This suggests that it may have been feasible for the remnants of the 4th Parachute Brigade to move straight back to the Divisional perimeter rather than spending the hours of darkness isolated in Wolfheze and the woods east of the town. It is unclear who was responsible for the decision to halt. Hackett’s War Diary account suggests the decision came from Division HQ:

  I discussed at some length with Div by RT advisability of moving during the night towards our final location. I wanted to get integrated into the Div & fear anie [sic] Cooper business in the trees. I was quite happy to stay but would have preferred to move to a villa near final location at say 2300 hrs, by then 10 Bn would be fit to do so in good order. Div deprecated a move but said I was to send recce parties in by night and follow at first light. I saw nothing to be gained out of recce parties in the dark and it was agreed in the end that I should move the Bde at first light.165

  However, while Urquhart’s account refers to Hackett organising his brigade ‘for a march at first light into the divisional area’ there is no mention of such a discussion or, more importantly, any issuing of instructions.166 This is also the case with the official records, with the only reference to the 4th Parachute Brigade in the Division Signals record being routine notations regarding radio contact and signal strength taken mid-morning and late evening.167 More pertinently, the Division HQ War Dia
ry does not refer to such a discussion either, only to the 4th Parachute Brigade being unable to disengage at 19:25 after crossing the Arnhem‒Ede railway line and that the opposition encountered ‘would prevent movement during darkness’; a second entry four-and-a-half hours later reported that Brigade HQ and 156 Parachute Battalion had succeeded in reaching an unspecified ‘pre-arranged area’, presumably Point 232 east of Wolfheze, but were out of touch with the 10th Parachute Battalion.168 This contradicts Hackett’s version, particularly with regard to the 10th Battalion being ready to move by 23:00, as do the Battalion accounts; the 156 Parachute Battalion War Diary specifically refers to being ordered ‘to leaguer for the night in a Bde perimeter’ at 19:00, and the 10th Parachute Battalion account states that it was not in place until midnight.169 This all suggests that the remnants of the 4th Parachute Brigade were actually in no fit state to move again after the initial withdrawal from LZ L, and that Hackett was likely guilty of wishful thinking and attempting to put the best face on a bad situation. Be that as it may and apparently unavoidable as it was, holding in place near Wolfheze was to have serious repercussions the following day.