***
While the fight for the Nijmegen bridges was in full swing, events thirty miles to the south came close to severing the Airborne Corridor near its base. As we have seen, the advance of Major Berndt-Joachim Freiherr von Maltzahn’s Panzer Brigade 107 had been blocked in the late afternoon at Nuenen, five miles east of Eindhoven, by a hasty defence conducted by Company E 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment and Cromwell tanks from the 15th/19th Hussars. Seeking to bypass the blocking force Major von Maltzahn side-stepped his line of advance to the north-west, into the area bounded on the right by the Wilhelmina Canal and, wary of running into strong Allied forces, elected to lead with a reconnaissance in force intended to secure the bridge at Son in order to establish a foothold north of the canal. The Brigade thus concentrated in the woods around Molenheide, four miles east of Son, from where a reported six Panther tanks from Panzer Abteilung 2107 supported by infantry from Grenadier Regiment 1034 from 59 Infanterie Division were despatched along the Wilhelmina Canal toward Son at or a little before 17:00.219
Reports of German armour ‘massing to the southeast’ reached Major-General Maxwell D. Taylor’s Division HQ at Son at around 17:00; according to one account Taylor was alerted by Panthers firing on the town church tower and the school being used as Division HQ among other targets.220 Taylor promptly despatched his Adjutant Lieutenant-Colonel Ned D. Moore to investigate, accompanied by Lieutenant Frederick Starrett, an aide to Deputy Division Commander Brigadier-General Anthony McAuliffe (who had just arrived at the HQ in McAuliffe’s Jeep), Lieutenant Rodney B. Adams from the 502nd Parachute Infantry Regiment, Dutch Liaison Lieutenant Dubois, ten men from Division HQ and a Bazooka team from the 506th Regiment platoon guarding the Bailey bridge consisting of Private J. J. McCarthy and an unnamed companion. The patrol crossed to the south bank and travelled around 200 yards before a camouflaged Panther burst from the trees onto the Canal tow-path 300 yards further on and opened fire on the bridge, trapping Lieutenant-Colonel Moore’s patrol between the advancing Germans and the bridge defences. The attack began at around 17:15 as a column from the Guards Armoured Division’s A Echelon was crossing the bridge and a Panther round hit a truck from Q Battery, 21st Anti-Tank Regiment RA; this broke the column and set the truck ablaze on the bridge, lighting up the surrounding area in the gathering dusk and the attackers subsequently increased the illumination by setting fire to a barn and haystack fifty yards south of the Canal. Private McCarthy fired off all three of his Bazooka rounds, scoring an ineffectual hit on a Panther before his assistant gunner was killed and he and Lieutenant-Colonel Moore were forced to take shelter in a convenient hole, where they were trapped as an oblivious German platoon dug in around them. The pair remained there until the illumination dimmed sufficiently to allow them to crawl through the German position to safety at around 22:00. Some of the patrol, including Lieutenant Adams, leapt into the canal to escape. Adams was drowned in the attempt, while Lieutenant Starrett gathered the remainder and established a defensive line along the road after also ineffectually attacking a Panther with a hand-grenade in the nearby woods and escaping the vehicle’s retribution. This party also managed to regain safety at around 22:00 but not before being fired upon by the paratroopers on the north bank, who mistook the patrol for Germans in the light from the burning truck, obliging Starrett to despatch a messenger over the bridge to clarify the situation. To add insult to injury, the attackers also pushed Brigadier-General McAuliffe’s Jeep into the Canal.221
Meanwhile one of the Panthers began firing on the school housing Division HQ from across the Canal. One shell destroyed the field telephone switchboard, although radio communications were maintained unbroken by Technician Fifth Class Gordon B. Gissenass, who remained at his post throughout the fight. The Division HQ personnel and Signal Company were organised into a hasty defensive perimeter augmented by men from the 326th Airborne Engineer Battalion and Battery C 377th Parachute Field Artillery, while Major-General Taylor drove up to the nearby landing area where he gathered up a party from the 1st Battalion 327th Glider Infantry Regiment, which was engaged in unloading the gliders from that day’s lift and, more crucially, a 57mm anti-tank gun from the 81st Airborne Anti-aircraft Battalion’s Battery B. The gun was deployed on the north bank of the canal in time to engage the Panther firing on the Division HQ school and scored a hit that blew off the vehicle’s spaced armour plates and penetrated the hull, leaving it burning and slewed at an angle across the canal tow-path.222 A second Panther was knocked out at close range by a Bazooka team and also began to burn, and the momentum of the German attack then fell away. Leaving behind covering groups that periodically exchanged small-arms fire with the paratroopers through the night, the Panthers withdrew toward their jumping-off point at Molenheide, while some elements of Grenadier Regiment 1034 withdrew northward to rejoin 59 Infanterie Division north of the Wilhelmina Canal. Behind them the men of the 101st Airborne Division were left relieved but puzzled as to why the Germans had not pushed their advantage and seized the bridge. The German side of the matter is unclear, although the darkness, unfamiliar terrain and unexpected arrival of reinforcements are cited as contributory factors; for their part Taylor’s intelligence section put it down to Panzer Brigade 107, having been slated for service on the Eastern Front, being ‘a little bit skittish about its return to combat on the Western Front’.223 Whatever the underlying reason for the failure to press home the attack on the night of 19 September, the 101st Airborne Division would be seeing more of Major von Maltzahn’s formation, and perhaps sooner than expected.
13
D Plus 3
00:01 to 12:00 Wednesday 20 September 1944
The night passed slowly for the men of the 1st Airborne Division holding out in the buildings around the north end of the Arnhem road bridge, punctuated by occasional periods of light rain and the random tolling of a church bell swinging free in the warm breeze created by the nearby fires. Some took the opportunity to rest as best they could while some of those on watch or whose duties required them to remain alert resorted to the issued Benzedrine tablets.1 These were necessary because the Airborne soldiers were by this point verging on exhaustion, having been moving and fighting virtually non-stop for over sixty hours, and food was running out. The forty-eight-hour ration the troops had landed with and the immediate unit resupply were all but gone, obliging them to fall back upon what could be found in the buildings they occupied. The Mortar Platoon house proved to be well stocked with preserved foods, fruit and chocolate liqueurs for example, whereas the Brigade HQ building, as mentioned earlier, held only a few apples and ‘some particularly juicy pears’ according to Lieutenant-Colonel Frost; another house also yielded sufficient water to keep the defenders going for another day or so.2 Ammunition was running critically short, despite Frost’s order the previous day prohibiting firing at targets of opportunity or sniping; Lance-Sergeant Harold Padfield in the Van Limburg School was down to a handful of rounds for his Browning pistol, for example.3 Although Frost referred to patrols again being despatched to probe and harass the surrounding German positions, the majority of the defenders appear to have remained ensconced in their buildings, not least because the fires lit up the streets like daylight, making movement in the open extremely hazardous even in the temporary absence of German mortar and artillery fire. Frost himself spent the night prowling the Brigade HQ building, monitoring the Brigade signallers as they attempted to make contact with Division HQ. At one point he discussed the deteriorating situation with Major Gough in the now roofless attic, specifically the best direction for a breakout to prevent the growing number of wounded from becoming involved in a fight to the finish. He later broke his own injunction on random firing by shooting at a pair of indistinct figures in the darkness with a borrowed rifle.4
Frost’s concern for the casualties was justified for while the lightly wounded remained with their units to continue the fight, by this point the bridge perimeter was also housing around 200 more seriously wounded men, some
of them critically. Conditions permitting, battlefield casualties from conventional British Army units followed a three-stage evacuation process, from Battalion-level Regimental Aid Post (RAP) to Casualty Clearing Station (CCS) to Advanced Dressing Station (ADS) and thence on to field or permanent military hospitals or military wings located within civilian establishments dependent on the severity of the injury. However, the isolated nature of airborne operations obliged Airborne units to employ a truncated, two-stage process that began with evacuation to a battalion-level RAP followed by despatch to a Main Dressing Station (MDS) run by a Parachute or Airlanding Field Ambulance; these had doctors, surgical teams and nursing personnel to provide care until relieved by ground forces.5 16 Parachute Field Ambulance had established an MDS at the St Elizabeth Hospital to serve the 1st Parachute Brigade plan, but circumstances obliged the bridge perimeter to rely upon Captain James Logan and the 2nd Parachute Battalion RAP, assisted by the 1st Parachute Brigade’s Medical Officer Captain David Wright; it is unclear if the latter was posted to the Brigade on a permanent basis post or if he was on a temporary secondment from 16 Parachute Field Ambulance. The cellars under the Brigade HQ building on the corner of the Eusebiusbinnensingel and Weertjesstraat were pressed into service as a combined triage, operating theatre and hospital ward, as described by Private James Sims:
The scene was a grim one. The floors were carpeted with dead and badly wounded airborne soldiers…The two medics set me down on a table in…the room adjoining the cellars and reported my arrival to Captain Logan who…came over and examined me…[My] wound was cleaned and I was given an injection while an orderly scribbled details of my treatment on a tie-on label which he attached to my camouflage jacket. As Captain Logan applied a shell dressing he seemed to recede from me with astonishing rapidity and I passed out…When I came to I found myself in a very small vault off the main cellar. It must have been some sort of archway because my head and feet nearly touched the brick. There was no direct illumination, only a ghastly half-light which filtered in from the main cellar.6
Up at ground level the Germans resumed the attack against the British perimeter, shortly after a damp and drizzly dawn, with artillery and mortar bombardment. When the direct fire attacks began they were initially focussed on the hitherto lightly treated west side of the bridge ramp rather than to the east. Captain William Gell and his men from 250 (Airborne) Light Composite Company RASC holding buildings on the Prinsenhof at the north-western tip of the bridge perimeter had been largely screened from direct fire by the imposing prison wall to their front, but daylight revealed the Germans had blown down a section of the wall at some point during the night. The RASC men braced themselves for an infantry assault but the Germans began firing an artillery piece through the gap instead, as witnessed by Driver James Wild: ‘The first shot hit the corner of the roof. It didn’t explode there because the only resistance it had was the slates on the roof, but it left a hole nearly two yards across…I think one man was killed and one wounded. We decided to get out, down to the ground floor, when the second shell exploded against the front wall of the room we had been in; we would all have been killed if we had still been there.’7 The house held by Lieutenant Patrick Barnett and part of the Brigade HQ Defence Platoon on the Eusebiusbinnensingel by the bridge ramp received similar treatment from an unidentified tank, possibly Feldwebel Barneki’s Tiger I from schwere Panzer Kompanie Hummel. The paratroopers were rapidly disabused of the notion that the sound of tank engines heralded the arrival of 30 Corps when the first shell punched into the corner of their building, and they were soon obliged to abandon their position as the house was systematically demolished around them; one man was killed, Lieutenant Barnett was seriously wounded in the head and US Jedburgh officer Lieutenant Harvey Todd was blown out of his position but otherwise unhurt.8 The incident was likely that witnessed by Sturmann Horst Weber: ‘The roof fell in, the top two storeys began to crumble…the whole front wall fell into the street revealing each floor on which the British were scrambling like mad. Dust and debris soon made it impossible to see anything more. The din was awful, but even so above it all we could hear the wounded screaming.’9
The fighting was therefore well underway again when 1st Parachute Brigade HQ finally established contact with 1st Airborne Division HQ at the Hotel Hartenstein. It is frequently assumed that the contact was made via radio although this is emphatically denied by Bombardier Leo Hall from the 1st Airlanding Light Regiment’s 3 Battery, who was manning his jury-rigged No. 22 and No. 68 sets in the attic of the Brigade HQ building; on the other hand, an entry in the 1st Airborne Division Signals War Diary does refer to contact being established ‘with 1st Para Bde for a few minutes’ at 08:40.10 The main contact between the two HQs occurred twenty minutes earlier and was made via the civilian telephone network rather than by radio. The Division HQ War Diary refers to a report from Brigade Major Tony Hibbert, and implies he was speaking to a HQ functionary. In fact, the conversation appears to have been between the Division commander and Major Gough after Gough had identified himself to an understandably sceptical Urquhart as the ‘man who is always late for your “O” groups’, to which the Division commander responded with a somewhat unsettling ‘My goodness! I thought you were dead.’ Gough reported that the north end of the Arnhem road bridge was in British hands, that it was intact albeit blocked by shot-up enemy vehicles and covered by fire. He used a town plan to clarify which buildings were British-held and urgently requested reinforcements and a surgical team. Urquhart’s response was not encouraging: after attempting to explain the gravity of the situation at Oosterbeek without going into detail, Gough was informed that there was little prospect of assistance from the remainder of the Division. According to Urquhart’s account his exact words were ‘I’m afraid you can only hope for relief from the south. For the moment we can only try to preserve what we have left.’ Gough responded by pointing out the situation at the bridge was ‘pretty grim’ but that the defenders would do their best.11 The 1st Parachute Brigade made another report at 09:25, presumably again using the civilian telephone network, informing Division HQ that the bridge perimeter was under continuous tank attack and that the whole area around the north end of the bridge had been ‘devastated’.12 The report was probably delivered in this instance by Frost, who refers to a conversation with Urquhart in his personal account.13
Although the Germans had opened a new front against the British perimeter opposite the prison, their main effort came once again from the industrial area east of the bridge ramp. Observers in the Van Limburg Stirum School noted German activity around the crossroads formed by the junction of the Westervoortsedijk and Eusebiusbuitensingel for two hours after 07:00 and a major German attack began from that quarter at 09:15.14 The Germans had augmented their firepower by emplacing artillery to the south bank of the Lower Rhine, which was engaged by the 1st Airlanding Light Regiment from its new emplacements around the Oosterbeek Old Church on several occasions from 07:00, directed by Major Munford in the attic of the Brigade HQ building.15 According to Urquhart, the British fire was so accurate that the Germans turned their light flak guns against nearby church steeples on the assumption that they harboured observer teams.16 The Germans also deployed at least one large-calibre gun in the direct fire role against the east side of the British perimeter, as noted by Rottenführer Rudolf Trapp from SS Panzergrenadier Regiment 21: ‘An artillery piece was trundled into our street from the Battalion Knaust behind us…It was the biggest gun I’ve ever seen, and was manhandled up along the side of the Rhine.’17 The gun appears to have been brought into action against the buildings backing onto the bridge underpass held by elements of Major Douglas Crawley’s B Company, likely those on the corner of the Nieuwekade and Ooststraat. Trapp covered the gun ‘by shooting up the British positions along the street with long protracted bursts from my machine-gun…It fired seven to eight shots directly at it’; the SS then stormed the ruins and found ‘the occupants, about a platoon strong, all dead lying in
slit trenches and prepared positions’.18 The German attack thus overran the British enclave on the Ooststraat and pushed the survivors, a group from 1st Parachute Brigade HQ, augmented with half a dozen men from 1st (Airborne) Divisional Field Park RAOC led by Captain Bernard Briggs, back to a makeshift barricade beneath the underpass.19 By 09:40 the Germans were therefore back in possession of the bridge underpass for the first time since the evening of Sunday 17 September and they promptly set about rigging it for demolition, presumably with the intention of dropping the overpass section of the bridge in order to block access from the south.20
Up to this point the German intent had been to recapture the bridge intact in order to use it as a conduit to channel reinforcements south to the fight on the River Waal at Nijmegen, in line with the operations order issued by Feldmarschall Model via II SS Panzerkorps HQ at 17:30 on 17 September. Demolishing even a small section of the bridge, one relatively easy to repair, was therefore a major change of tack, which was presumably prompted by the attack toward the Nijmegen road bridge by the Grenadier Guards Group and the 2nd Battalion, 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment, in the late afternoon of 19 September.21 Although this tied in with Model’s other injunction that the Allied forces at Arnhem and Nijmegen were to be prevented from linking up at all costs, the change is nonetheless curious because there does not appear to be any mention of it in German accounts; and in view of the fact that the SS defending the approaches to the Nijmegen bridge comprehensively rebuffed the afternoon attack. It must also have been apparent to their counterparts at the Arnhem road bridge that the British defenders were reaching the end of their tether. On the other hand, Urquhart refers to an SS officer captured and interrogated by Frost’s men claiming to have been tasked to destroy the bridge, and British sources are absolutely clear that the Germans began preparing the overpass for demolition as soon as they took possession.22
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