Arnhem

by William F Buckingham

  B Company’s location overlooking the Heveadorp ferry remained unmolested apart from the ever-present mortar fire, although it received reinforcement of a kind during the afternoon in the shape of Captain Maurice Heggie and approximately fifteen Sappers from the 9th Field Company’s No. 3 Platoon. Detailed to protect the Heveadorp ferry, Heggie’s men dug in 500 yards west of B Company’s location and in the evening ferried Captain Douglas Green, the Adjutant of the 1st Airborne Division’s Royal Engineers HQ, across the Lower Rhine to carry a situation report to 30 Corps.80 Captain Green left the Hotel Hartenstein at 17:40, apparently escorted by Divisional Operations Officer Lieutenant-Colonel Charles Mackenzie; the 9th Field Company’s commander, Major John Winchester, may also have been present given that he visited 1st Airlanding Brigade HQ at 18:30 to ascertain if the ferry were still in British hands and departed to reconnoitre it on learning that was the case.81 Captain Green either reached the ferry or crossed the river at 19:55; the War Diary wording is unclear.82 A subsequent medal citation refers to Captain Green being obliged to swim back to the north bank after the ferry was sunk partway across by enemy fire and finally completing the crossing in a small rowing boat.83 There is no mention of this in the 9th Field Company War Diary, although the Royal Engineers HQ Diary says that the ferry was ‘still running but enemy starting to dispute ground’ at 21:10.84 Either way, Captain Green eventually made contact with friendly forces north of Nijmegen early the following morning after traversing ten miles of German-held territory, and successfully passed his sitrep to 30 Corps’ HQ.85

  On the north face of the Division perimeter on the Graaf Van Rechterenweg the German attacks against the 4th Parachute Squadron detachment had died away by 15:00 and the Sappers promptly took the offensive themselves. Captain Henry Brown, who had been elevated to command of the detachment following the death of Captain Thomas, authorised Lieutenant Kenneth Evans from 1 Troop to lead a fighting patrol to deal with a self-propelled gun observed in the woods 100 yards to the west. The patrol returned after waiting vainly in ambush for an hour. Lieutenant Evans enjoyed more success on a subsequent patrol north to the railway embankment at 18:00. After spotting a company or more of Germans north of railway line, the patrol shot up another group gathering recently dropped supply panniers for no loss and passed the location of the German dump on to Division HQ via 21st Independent Parachute Company’s HQ at the Ommershof on returning. Shortly afterward the Sappers heard ‘the sound of an artillery salvo screaming overhead and exploding in the vicinity of the dump, to our great satisfaction’.86

  Captain Brown had overseen the dispersal of a group of Germans on the detachment frontage with a well-aimed PIAT bomb fired by Sapper William Grantham, and then dealt with two visitors to his small corner of the perimeter. The first was Major-General Urquhart, who had determined ‘to maintain physical contact with as many of the units in the perimeter as I could, partly in the hope that my presence might help morale and also because I wanted to get the picture absolutely right’.87 He therefore travelled up the Oranjeweg in a Jeep driven by his ADC, Captain Graham Roberts, in search of Major Wilson’s HQ in the Ommershof. However, the north end of the Oranjeweg lay in the no-man’s-land between the 4th Parachute Squadron’s lines and SS Bataillon Eberwein, and the officers were forced to seek shelter in the roadside ditch after shouted warnings from Brown and his men. While Urquhart made his way to the Ommershof on foot, Captain Roberts set about turning the Jeep for the return journey by driving up to the junction with the Graaf Van Rechterenweg, as witnessed by Captain Brown:

  He drove down the sloping narrow track turned right and over-accelerated. The jeep swung into an uncontrollable skid on the sandy roadway and came to a shuddering halt with a massive thump as the front wheels slammed into a boulder. Graham was catapulted over the windscreen hitting it with his forehead and knee as he flew through the air…I shouted for him to get clear because of sniping and he limped to the five strand wire fence, hopped over and disappeared to join the General in the house.88

  There Roberts reported the loss of the Jeep with the immortal words ‘I’m afraid, sir, that it’s a complete write off,’ before being despatched to the MDS at the Hotel Schoonoord to have his head and leg injuries treated; Urquhart presumably returned to the Hotel Hartenstein on foot.89

  Back on the Oranjeweg the call went out to recover Urquhart’s maps and other papers from the wrecked Jeep and Captain Brown arranged covering fire to allow CSM James Stewart from the 21st Independent Company to cross the fence and do the retrieving; the Division Signals War Diary revealingly refers to the vehicle’s radio also being salvaged and repaired.90 At some point before 15:00 Brown received his second visitor, Lieutenant Norman Thomas from 3 Troop. Thomas had been despatched from the main 4th Parachute Squadron location at the Sonnenberg in the late morning to gather situation reports from CRE Lieutenant-Colonel Edmund Myers at Division HQ and Captain Brown.91 The visit to the Ommershof detachment was also a reconnaissance for a visit by the Squadron commander, Major Perkins, planned for the following day; for his part Captain Brown reported back that his detachment was short of ammunition and running even shorter of food, as the forty-eight-hour rations the Sappers had jumped in with were all but gone.92 Although Captain Brown’s account makes no mention of it, the Squadron War Diary refers to the Germans renewing the attack at nightfall and continuing for around an hour before retiring into the darkness. German casualties are unclear, while the Sappers lost an unnamed Other Rank.93 At some point during the afternoon the 21st Independent Company wiped out a group of around fifty fully armed Germans that emerged from the woods in front of their positions, apparently after a shouted exchange with Corporal Hans Rosenfeld, a German Jew serving with the Independent Company under the alias John Peter Rodley and known to his comrades as Max. It is unclear if the Germans emerged after being duped into believing the Pathfinders wished to surrender or were looking to surrender themselves, and the shooting may have begun with a Bren gun firing from the Glider Pilot positions on the Company’s flank, although testimony from members of the Independent Company make it clear they were only holding their fire until all the enemy were clearly in view. Whatever the truth of the matter, most of the German party were hit and only a few survivors were seen crawling back into the woods. As the Independent Company’s semi-official account put it, ‘the whole thing was somehow unsatisfactory.’94

  While the 7th KOSB at the eastern end of the Graaf Van Rechterenweg does not appear to have been directly attacked during the afternoon, a general firefight that involved all the Battalion’s weapons continued throughout the afternoon, with PIATs being employed to good effect as an anti-sniper weapon. However, the enemy tactic of deliberately targeting the houses inside the KOSB perimeter by shelling and/or burning began to tip the scales against the glider soldiers. Shells from a German self-propelled gun sited out of the view of the Battalion’s 6-Pounders forced Major Gordon Sherriff’s D Company HQ and other elements to evacuate their building for example; as communications difficulties rendered him unable to act as a forward observer, Captain John Walker from the 1st Airlanding Light Battery volunteered to join the fighting and was pressed into service as D Company second-in-command. The German tactic also caused Lieutenant-Colonel Payton-Reid and Medical Officer Captain Brian Devlin some concern in light of the growing number of casualties housed in the Battalion RAP, which had already been evacuated from the Hotel Dreyeroord/White House during the morning. It was therefore decided to relocate the RAP again, under the Red Cross flag, to a house outside the Battalion perimeter, beginning with the walking wounded. The party ran into a German patrol and were captured; the haul included Captain Devlin and Battalion second-in-command Major John Coke, who had been wounded in the leg during the first evacuation. The capture appears to have gone unobserved from the main Battalion location. The stretcher cases had to remain within the Battalion perimeter with all the dangers that entailed.

  Colonel Payton-Reid called an O Group in the late afternoon to
issue orders for the night. As well as tightening the perimeter positions these included patrolling the gaps between Company locations, and C and D Companies were also tasked to despatch fighting patrols to the south and north of the Battalion location respectively. C Company was considered secure due to a four-foot wire fence running across its frontage, but D Company’s position was more problematic, partly because it was overlooked from the nearby woods and semi-illuminated by burning buildings, and partly because it was dominated by the abandoned White House. Major Sherriff favoured pulling well back from the latter and establishing a shortened line, but while Colonel Payton-Reid was willing to sanction this during daylight to ease the burden on his understrength B Company, he insisted that the White House and existing line be held during the hours of darkness; Major Sherriff thus had no option but to comply, and Captain Walker volunteered to occupy the deserted hotel with a small party. Payton-Reid inspected the Battalion perimeter in person after dark, accompanied by his Intelligence Officer, Lieutenant Alexander MacKenzie, presumably in lieu of Major Coke and while doing so they received a graphic illustration of the Battalion’s vulnerability to infiltrators. They were discussing matters with Major Sherriff inside D Company’s perimeter when they were approached in the darkness by a soldier who addressed them in German. Major Sherriff immediately ‘jumped at his throat’ and the ensuing struggle prevented his companions getting a clear shot until both groups jumped back to avoid a German grenade. There was then a flurry of shots, one of which hit Lieutenant MacKenzie in the leg while Sherriff ‘eliminated’ his opponent unaided. The firing was followed by ‘a fearful wailing, as of somebody in death agonies...on investigation, it was found that someone had shot a goat!’95

  The Germans maintained the pressure against LONSDALE Force on the Benedendorpsweg at the south-east corner of the perimeter. On the left flank the 11th Parachute Battalion was obliged temporarily to abandon its positions around the junction of the Acacialaan and the Hogeweg at around 15:00 as a German self-propelled gun located behind a ridge to the east systematically demolished the houses; when the shelling ceased the paratroopers moved back, with B Company occupying the garden of the demolished house at the crossroads while A Company occupied a group of farm buildings east along the Hogeweg.96 The vehicle may have been the one stalked by Captain Frank King and two men from Support Company on Major Lonsdale’s orders, in the course of which King was wounded while trying to take a German infantryman covering the vehicle from an adjacent house prisoner:

  He astonished me. He was rather fat and was carrying his rifle at the trail; he didn’t look particularly dangerous. But he was a good soldier and was fooling me. He just tilted the rifle up and fired it one-handed, hitting me in the chest…I did what I had been trained to do aiming at ‘the centre of the visible mass’ – which was quite extensive – and killed him.

  Captain King’s companions had meanwhile despatched two more Germans in an upper room and discovered that ‘they could look down on top of the SP gun…There was a young German officer with his head out of the hatch. We dropped a Gammon bomb on to it, killing the officer and causing the SP to withdraw rapidly.’ The trio then withdrew themselves but in the process Captain King was wounded again in the leg by splinters from a grenade that also badly wounded one of his companions.97 B Company remained unmolested but at around 18:00 the Germans attacked the farm after infiltrating between the company locations and setting fire to some haystacks, forcing the A Company contingent to withdraw into a nearby field.98

  Down on the Benedendorpsweg Lieutenants Curtis and Turrell from the 1st Parachute Battalion were obliged to lead another patrol to clear infiltrators at 1500, and an hour later the Germans emplaced an infantry gun in a defilade position near the StuG knocked out that morning. The gun ‘made things most unpleasant’ for the 3rd Parachute Battalion until fire from a 3-inch mortar forced its withdrawal. This may have been connected to a ‘heavy attack’ against the 1st Battalion section of the line at 16:30 involving several armoured vehicles supported by intense enfilading fire from machine-guns emplaced on the embankment running up to the destroyed railway bridge; this caused the paratroopers ‘considerable casualties’ including Lieutenant Curtis, who was killed.99 Lance-Sergeant John Baskeyfield from the 2nd South Staffords Anti-tank Group was also a fatality that afternoon. He had continued to man his 6-Pounder despite the remainder of his crew being killed or wounded and being wounded in the leg. Baskeyfield refused to be evacuated for medical treatment and his fire kept the German vehicles at bay; when his own gun was damaged by enemy fire he crawled across and took over Lance-Sergeant Mansell’s unmanned 6-Pounder on the other side of the road and continued to fire single-handed while shouting encouragement to the men manning nearby positions until he was killed. He was awarded a posthumous Victoria Cross.100 At around 18:00 the Germans infiltrated a machine-gun team and a number of riflemen into a house in the 3rd Battalion’s forward positions; these were dealt with by a well-placed shell from a 6-Pounder followed by an assault led by Lieutenant Alastair Clarkson, the 1st Parachute Battalion’s Liaison Officer, which cleared the interlopers at the cost of two wounded. The 18:00 attack that drove the 11th Battalion’s A Company out of the farm buildings at the east end of the Hogeweg extended across the 1st and 3rd Battalion’s frontage, with several of the houses occupied by the 3rd being set ablaze in the process.101

  After a full day of fighting the Benedendorpsweg‒Acacialaan position had become untenable and Major Lonsdale therefore asked Lieutenant-Colonel Thompson for permission to withdraw. It is unclear precisely when the request was made but it appears to have been before 18:00, given that 1st Airlanding Brigade HQ reported the 11th Parachute Battalion had been ordered to establish a post west of the Acacialaan at 18:15. The order resulted from Brigadier Hicks visiting the 11th Battalion, presumably in response to Major Lonsdale’s request, while making the rounds of his Brigade units beginning with the 1st Border at 15:00 and then the 7th KOSB and an unnamed group of Glider Pilots, possibly from D or G Squadrons. He then called in at Division HQ where he reported that he was ‘not confident of the OOSTERBEEK area as 11 Para Bn are in a very nervous state’.102 Lonsdale was granted permission to withdraw and the 1st and 3rd Parachute Battalions moved south-west across the Benedendorpsweg into the open polder at 19:00 and 18:45 respectively, the former under covering fire from a 6-Pounder and a Vickers MMG. The 11th Parachute Battalion moved at around the same time but eastward toward Oosterbeek Old Church, with the two Company groups moving in covering bounds. All three units successfully broke contact without the enemy realising that a withdrawal was taking place and the 3rd and 11th Parachute Battalions did so without incurring any casualties; the 1st Parachute Battalion reported losing approximately thirty casualties in the course of the day including three killed, but it is unclear if any of these were sustained during the withdrawal.103 The 1st Parachute Battalion took up position behind a dyke running south-east from the Benedendorpsweg to the river with Lieutenant Alastair Clarkson and HQ Company in the centre, R and S Companies on the left under QM Lieutenant Thomas Brown, and Lieutenant Albert Turrell and T Company on the right. The remainder of the night was ‘spent in digging deep trenches in water-logged ground’. The 3rd Parachute Battalion contingent took up position farther along the dyke to the south-east and were similarly occupied.104 The 11th Parachute Battalion, the remnants of which were now ‘thoroughly mixed’, appear to have been located in the area of Oosterbeek Old Church; according to Middlebrook it had been selected to act as Lonsdale’s reserve, although there is no reference to this in the 11th Parachute Battalion War Diary. If it were the case, then Hicks may have had a hand in the matter, given the concerns he expressed to Division HQ about the Battalion’s morale.105

  Wednesday 20 September thus saw extensive combat around much of the coalescing British perimeter in spite of Obergruppenführer Bittrich’s intention of using the day to permit Harzer and von Tettau’s units to close up to Oosterbeek. Harzer’s men nonetheless missed the
virtually undefended gap of around 1,000 yards on the eastern side of the British perimeter astride the Utrechtseweg; according to Lonsdale the gap was to be plugged by the 4th Parachute Brigade, but none of Hackett’s units were available until the mid to late afternoon.106 The sole German foray into the centre of this gap came in the late morning, likely led by at least one of Sturmgeschütze Brigade 280’s vehicles, possibly one of those allocated to Kampfgruppe Harder. The vehicle moved along the Utrechtseweg as far as the crossroads with the Stationsweg where 181 Airlanding Field Ambulance’s transit location at the Hotel Schoonoord had become a centralised Division MDS by default, gathering in other medical units and personnel in the process. The Schoonoord itself housed Lieutenant-Colonel Arthur Marrable’s command post, a reception centre, an operating theatre complete with pre and post-operative wards and a minor injury treatment centre with its own ward located in the garage building at the rear of the hotel, while Section Officer Captain James Doyle established a centre for non-surgical casualties in an adjacent school on the Paasbergweg. Lieutenant-Colonel Alford’s 133 Parachute Field Ambulance also set up a surgical centre in an adjacent building, while the glider-borne element of 16 Parachute Field Ambulance established a facility for the less severely wounded in the Hotel Tafelberg, a few hundred yards south of the Schoonoord on the Pietersbergseweg.107 Although the buildings appear to have been displaying the Red Cross the German vehicle fired four rounds into the Hotel Schoonoord’s upper storey where two wards had been set up; the shells blew off part of the roof and turned wards into an ‘absolute shambles’ according to Colonel Marrable. The casualties included 181 Airlanding Field Ambulance’s Padre, Captain Bernard Benson, who was severely wounded in the right arm and head; he died of his wounds a week later.108