Arnhem

by William F Buckingham

  Suddenly a badly wounded paratrooper uncovered a Sten gun he had kept hidden ready to blast the Germans as they appeared. He was quickly overpowered by the equally badly wounded men on either side of him…he first to enter the cellar was an officer wearing a greatcoat and steel helmet…He looked tired and drawn, and was obviously shocked by what he saw…He rapped out orders…More and more German troops appeared. They picked up the wounded with great care and began to clear the cellar.177

  The evacuation came in the nick of time. Colonel Frost was waiting for his batman to procure a stretcher but a German NCO decided the situation was too urgent for such niceties and half-carried and half-dragged him out of the cellar and through the burning building, assisted by some British battle-shock casualties.178 Private Sims had a closer call: ‘A huge Canadian press photographer was in the cellar with us…He lifted me as though I were a child and carried me upstairs. The ground floor was well ablaze and the whole building was about to cave in. As the Canadian stepped outside…he had to jump to one side, for a massive piece of flaming timber hurtled down from the roof. Large chunks of brickwork and concrete were also coming down, adding to the danger of the evacuation.’179 The casualties were carried across the Eusebiusbinnensingel and laid out on the grass embankment of the bridge ramp in readiness for transport to the St Elizabeth Hospital, among other destinations. The whole area was lit up like daylight by the burning buildings. Sims recalled a German machine-gun team dug into the embankment successfully demanding some of the casualties be moved from their line of fire, and was amazed ‘to see the change in the [surrounding] area…All the houses and warehouses we had held were completely destroyed by fire.’180 Frost, now on a stretcher next to Major Crawley, watched the burning 2nd Battalion HQ building collapse in spectacular fashion before commenting ‘Well Doug, I’m afraid we haven’t got away with it this time,’ to which Crawley responded ‘No sir, but we gave ’em a damn good run for their money.’ Frost also noted the German prisoners who had been incarcerated in the British-held buildings gathered nearby were ‘not seemingly overjoyed at their liberation’.181 Their lack of enthusiasm was likely due to their SS liberators intent to rearm them as a handy source of reinforcement, although at least some managed to evade this fate. Leutnant Joseph Enthammer and his V2 rear party were able to use their status as members of a Kriegsentscheidenden Waffen (Decisive Weapons) unit as inscribed on their pay books to justify immediate return to their parent unit. Enthammer observed, ‘We were lucky, therefore, not to be recruited into the ranks of the SS!’182

  While rendering assistance with the wounded, the Germans also looked to turn the truce to their advantage where possible. They swiftly appropriated around ten Jeeps that had survived in working order behind the Brigade HQ building despite Major Gough’s protests, claiming the vehicles were necessary to shuttle the wounded to hospital.183 Colonel Frost saw them being used for this purpose, although the skill of the new owners was sometimes less than optimal.184 Private Sims and his companions ‘had a few laughs at their efforts…with the Jeep, which bucked all over the road like a mustang, to ribald shouts of Ride him, cowboy!’ At the other side of the British perimeter Major Hibbert was almost run down by another German-driven Jeep near the prison.185 At the other end of the scale the Germans also took at least one Bren Carrier in working order, as witnessed by Sims; in this instance the driver’s proficiency led his audience to assume that Private George Hines, a particularly skilled driver from the Mortar Platoon, had been pressed into service, until Hines identified himself among the wounded.186 The Germans also took the opportunity to reconnoitre the British positions in readiness for the resumption of hostilities. To this end Rottenführer Trapp from SS Panzergrenadier Regiment 21 ‘walked with a companion through the British positions right up to the bridge. There we saw the result of Graebner’s attack.’ This was probably the first inkling the Germans fighting at ground level had of the carnage wrought upon SS Panzer Aufklärungs Abteilung 9 on the morning of Monday 18 September.187

  The Germans attempted to persuade the Airborne soldiers to give up, with one greatcoated officer circulating among their slit trenches handing out cigarettes likely obtained from a British supply container while doing so. The SS also simply moved some of their men into more advantageous positions. In one instance Major Tatham-Warter despatched B Company’s German-speaking second-in-command, Captain Francis Hoyer-Millar, to protest: ‘I found an officer in a long dark leather coat…I warned him that if his men continued, we might have to open fire. He, in turn, kept stressing that there was no hope for us and that we should surrender. I told him there was no chance of that and that we were confident our ground forces would soon be up to relieve us.’188

  Despite their protests, the British were indulging in similar behaviour themselves, for they were virtually at the end of their tether when the truce was called. Major Hibbert indicated the moment when he thought the game was up: ‘At 8 o’clock I realised that our little battle was finished. We just didn’t have the ammunition. When the other side can run tanks right up to your front window with no chance of you retaliating, there comes a moment where you can’t go on.’189 Frost had discussed the idea of relocating the men still capable of fighting to another location with Gough the previous day, although it is unclear whether the final decision was made before or during the truce.190 The 2nd Battalion was allotted the task of holding in place by the bridge ramp while the remainder of the able-bodied troops, most if not all of whom came from the 1st Parachute Brigade HQ column, were to move to a convent school just north of the existing perimeter under cover of the truce, from where they were to break out toward the main Division position; Major Hibbert was carrying out a personal reconnaissance of the location when he was almost run down by the German-driven Jeep.191 As the group numbered around 120, the troops presumably made their way to the school individually or in small groups to avoid attracting attention, and Major Gough was present at one point to give the would-be evaders a few words of encouragement, as recalled by Corporal Dennis Freebury: ‘Major Gough, with his arm in a sling…gave us a pep talk. It was a bit like Hollywood. He said, “I want you to go out, do your best and see if you can get back to our own forces – and just remember that you belong to the finest division in the British Army.” Nobody cheered or anything like that, but it made one feel good.’192 The evaders were then left with Major Hibbert. Gough had elected to return to the bridge perimeter and remain with the 2nd Battalion party.

  Back at the bridge, the Germans began carrying the British wounded across the ramp to the shelter of the east side, in parallel with moving small groups away in the commandeered Jeeps. The move was presumably in readiness for the end of the truce, although it may also have been prompted by an unknown Bren gunner in a cellar by the collapsed White House firing on a group of German troops drawn up on the Eusebiusbinnensingel. The burst not only scattered the Germans but came close to hitting the British wounded laid out on the embankment, drawing a chorus of shouted British protests that appears to have stopped him. Despite this and the bitter no-quarter nature of the fighting, the Germans remained strictly correct in their behaviour and in many instances went further. Colonel Frost referred to the SS being ‘very polite and complimentary’, while Sims exchanged anecdotes with a decorated Normandy veteran. Sims also recalled being given hot coffee, bread and sausage, and a share of a captured British can of condensed milk by three different SS men. The truce appears to have come to an end as the last of the wounded were lifted over the embankment, given that Frost saw the SS moving off ‘to take up positions for battle again [and] heard weapons being loaded and orders being given’. Once on the other side of the ramp Frost and a number of other stretcher cases were loaded aboard a German half-track for transit to the St Elizabeth Hospital. British trust of the Germans nonetheless had its limits. Sims turned down the offer of a stretcher from a smiling German NCO, ‘as all the stretcher cases were being carried down a road leading to the river. I declined his offer, lest I
be dumped in the Rhine…Two other wounded paratroopers hung my arms round their necks and we struggled along under the northern end of the bridge.’193 While their wounded comrades limped or were driven away for treatment, the remnants of the 2nd Parachute Battalion were settling in for the last act. Captain Hoyer-Millar’s thoughts at the time illustrate the general feeling as the truce wound down: ‘I was as scared that night as at any time. How could it have been otherwise – completely surrounded by burning buildings and enemy…But there was indeed a strange feeling of exhilaration mingled with pride and bitterness. We were still there after three full days and nights and, incredibly enough, alive and in one piece – though it seemed improbable that we would remain thus for much longer.’194

  It was around this time that the last British radio message was transmitted from the bridge perimeter. The operator was presumably Gough, given that Ryan refers to him using a radio after the evaders had departed, and that the radio Private Sims saw Gough using on the stairs of the Brigade HQ building before the truce appears to have been the only functioning set left in the bridge perimeter. The transmission does not appear to have been picked up by 1st Airborne Division HQ or 30 Corps, but it was noted by monitors at 9 SS Panzer Division HQ in the north-eastern outskirts of Arnhem. According to Obersturmbannführer Harzer, the last two sentences were ‘Out of ammunition. God Save the King’.195

  The truce marked the effective end of organised British resistance at the Arnhem road bridge. It is unclear whether it was due to a resumption of the bombardment, German infiltration up to and into the British perimeter, or a combination, but the 2nd Parachute Battalion contingent was unable to hold or in some instances even reoccupy their pre-truce positions. Major Tatham-Warter attempted to counter this by dividing his force with Major Francis Tate from HQ Company and dispersing for the night outside the perimeter, with the intention of reoccupying their positions at dawn. According Ryan the plan originated with Gough, who intended to re-concentrate ‘in a half-gutted building by the riverbank’, presumably in the area of the Rijnkade and Kadestraat.196 The tactic backfired as German infantry began systematically quartering the area in the early hours of Thursday morning and eliminated the isolated pockets of paratroopers as they came on them. Major Tate and a number of his men were killed in one such clash and others, such as the group led by Lieutenant Thomas Ainslie from HQ Company, were trapped and called on to surrender: ‘Some of my group had already been hit, so I yelled back in German “Don’t shoot. There are wounded in here.” And we walked across the street into captivity.’ His captors then distributed presumably looted Dutch cigars and both groups engaged in what Ainslie referred to as a ‘matey chat’.197 A few men attempted to evade on their own but all appear to have been captured. These included Major Gough, who was apprehended by a German patrol near the municipal waterworks after attempting to hide beneath a woodpile. He too was congratulated when interrogated by a German officer shortly after capture, who also praised the Airborne troop’s skill and experience in street fighting; Gough responded drily ‘No, this was our first attempt. We’ll do much better next time.’198 The approximately 120-strong party of evaders from the Brigade HQ Column fared no better after leaving the convent school. The party divided up into groups of ten, each headed by an officer, stealthily exiting the school at intervals. Lieutenant Todd from the US Jedburgh team led the way at 02:00 on the morning of Thursday 20 September. Major Hibbert led the last group out of the school before dawn, including Major Munford and Major Tony Cotterell, a reporter from the Army Bureau of Current Affairs. It is unclear what became of the others but Hibbert’s group only made the 300 yards or so to the vicinity of Arnhem cathedral before it became apparent that the German cordon was impenetrable and Hibbert therefore ordered them to hide, presumably intending to try again after dark. Some men were barricaded into the bedroom of a convenient house, two hid in a tool shed in the yard, Munford fastened himself inside a wooden crate and Cotterell and Hibbert climbed into the outside coal bin. All were discovered and taken prisoner.199

  Thus ended the 1st Parachute Brigade’s epic battle to hold the north end of the Arnhem road bridge. Of the approximately 740 men who had reached the bridge on the evening of Sunday 17 September, around eighty-one had been killed or mortally wounded, equivalent to eleven per cent of the total force. Almost half these deaths, thirty-seven in total, occurred in the final twenty-four hours of the battle when the Brigade’s attached anti-tank guns had been knocked out and the supply of PIAT bombs had been expended, leaving the Airborne soldiers effectively pinned in their positions by German armour and artillery fire with no effective means of response.200 Approximately 280 men had been wounded, and had the Germans not agreed to the truce on the evening of Wednesday 20 September a good number of them would likely have joined the death toll. Nor was the killing confined to the battleground around the north bridge ramp. While the SS behaviour toward their opponents was almost always exemplary, there were nonetheless lapses. Private James Sims saw a badly burned member of the Dutch resistance dragged from the British column and summarily executed while being marched away from the bridge, and shortly afterward witnessed an altercation when an unknown paratrooper refused to hand over his wallet during a search: ‘His searcher pulled out a pistol and shot him dead. He then looked through the wallet and, finding nothing of military importance, carefully replaced it on the dead body.’201

  Nonetheless, the Airborne troops had held the north end of the Arnhem road bridge for just over three days, a full day longer than tasked, and in so doing had complicated and slowed the flow of reinforcements and materiel south to the main German blocking position at Nijmegen for another twelve hours or more: the first German unit to use the recaptured Arnhem road bridge, Kampfgruppe Knaust, was not able to cross until the early afternoon of Thursday 21 September, and the area around the north end of the bridge was not considered fully cleared until the early evening of that day.202 The number of German casualties is unclear, in part due to the ad hoc nature of the units involved and the piecemeal manner in which they were fed into the fighting, but the British destroyed at least thirty German vehicles including eight armoured half-tracks, at least one armoured car and two Panzer IV tanks, and damaged an undetermined number of other tanks, including a fifty-six ton Tiger I.

  British discipline and morale remained firm to the end, although there was some understandable frustration at not managing to hold on until relieved. Frost referred to the failure as ‘desperately disappointing’, while Private Sims recalled: ‘the thought that we had fought for nothing was a natural one…The hardest thing to bear was the feeling that we had just been written off.’203 Given 30 Corps’ and more specifically the Guards Armoured Division’s unhurried performance, such feelings were both understandable and arguably justified, but it is not usually appreciated that a significant portion of responsibility lay closer to the Airborne home. As we have seen, Brigadier Lathbury’s plan for securing and holding the Arnhem bridges was more akin to a peacetime training exercise, as it debarred the 1st Parachute Brigade’s three battalions from providing mutual support, with one battalion isolated on high ground to the north of the city and the other two spread across three widely spaced bridges and a German HQ in the city centre. In the event, Frost’s defence of the north end of the Arnhem road bridge was hamstrung by a lack of manpower as the approximately 740 men to hand were insufficient to establish a properly defensible perimeter; this would have also been the case had Lathbury’s plan unfolded as envisaged, given it would have spread two battalions over at least four and possibly seven separate locations, seven if troops were deployed at each end of the three bridges. In addition, Lathbury was responsible for nullifying the fortunate turn of events that permitted Frost to concentrate on defending a single bridge by preventing more troops from reaching the road bridge, with his order halting the 3rd Parachute Battalion on the western fringes of Oosterbeek for the night of 17-18 September. With the 3rd Battalion present at the bridge, it might have been
possible to expand the defensive perimeter to more tactically advantageous positions farther from the bridge. On the other hand, it is also relevant to consider that the British defence was assisted to an extent by their opponents, specifically their prioritising the erection of blocking lines to the south and west above properly protecting and then recapturing the Arnhem road bridge. Had the Germans deployed a proportion of the men and equipment despatched south, to the River Waal at Nijmegen or west to the outskirts of Arnhem, then Frost’s party may well not have been able to hold out as long as they did.

  The defence of the Arnhem road bridge can nonetheless be justifiably labelled as a military epic, and it is fitting to give the final word to the man who commanded the last stage of the defence, Major Digby Tatham-Warter: ‘The [2nd Parachute] Battalion had fought with the utmost gallantry, in inconceivably difficult conditions, and had denied the use of the vital Bridge to the enemy for 80 hours.’204