Arnhem

by William F Buckingham

  Whenever it moved forward, the 10th Battalion was attacked by a rested, regrouped and reinforced Kampfgruppe Möller supported by assault guns from Sturmgeschütze Brigade 280 and possibly two armoured half-tracks from SS Panzer Pionier Abteilung 9.90 The attacks began at around 08:00 according to QM Lieutenant Glover and followed the usual pattern, with German infantry infiltrating around buildings on foot and bringing up StuGs to batter British strongpoints as they were discovered. The German vehicles were understandably wary of British 6-Pounder guns dug into the floor inside buildings for protection.91 Sturmgeschütze Brigade 280 was also handicapped by the quality of some of their reinforcements, as recalled by Rottenführer Wolfgang Dombrowski:

  A Sturmgeschutz III was attached to my section. It had a motley crew, there was a Wehrmacht NCO in charge, a Luftwaffe man – probably the loader – and two other army men. We were making really good progress…until we eventually came under fire from infantry supported by an anti-tank gun. The crew…panicked when the vehicle was hit. Even though the damage was only superficial the gun abruptly reversed into a side street where the crew baled out over the rear and fled. Only the NCO remained with us – somewhat disgusted.92

  This was not quite the end of the story. Major Warr called across and suggested that Glover investigate, as he had served for twelve years as a ranker in the Royal Armoured Corps, and the QM Lieutenant and some of his men duly braved the winnowing fire and gained possession of the abandoned vehicle. In a fraught period that saw the assault gun fired on by friend and foe alike, Glover managed to start the engine and elevate and depress the main gun, to the alarm of Dombrowski and the vehicle’s erstwhile commander, while one of his companions employed the machine-gun mounted on the roof. However, Glover noted a fuel leak and, more importantly, was unable to engage the gear to move the vehicle; he also had his false teeth knocked out by the concussion from hits on the vehicle’s armour before giving up the vehicle for the relative safety of the disused restaurant.93 The StuG remained where it had been abandoned, a potential threat to both sides until the Germans overran the area again in the early evening and it was towed away for repair.94

  The defenders were able to keep Dombrowski and his comrades back for a while, at some points reportedly with the assistance of artillery fire from the 64th Medium Regiment; but before long another assault gun was brought up and began pumping shells into the British-occupied buildings; one shell saw QM Lieutenant Glover unceremoniously dumped into the ground floor after a hit caused the upper floor of his building to give way. In the early afternoon the pounding and pressure from German infantry compelled a partial withdrawal from the Voskuil house back to the crossroads to regroup, under cover of smoke and fire from QM Lieutenant Glover’s group. Major Warr continued playing a deadly cat-and-mouse game between the houses with his party until badly wounded in the thigh, when he was taken down into the relative safety of the Voskuil cellar. According to Lance-Corporal George Wyllie, Colonel Smyth was in the meantime visited by Brigadier Hackett who stressed the importance of holding the corner houses.95 This appears to have been the catalyst for a counter-attack led by Major Francis Lindley and accompanied by Colonel Smyth; Lindley last saw him wounded and ‘lying in the road beside a garden gate’. Lieutenant Saunders may have been killed in the same action.96 Smyth had been paralysed from the waist down after being shot in the stomach, and was also removed to the Voskuil cellar. The Germans entered the Voskuil house and killed or drove out the remaining paratroopers after a vicious hand-to-hand fight that was clearly audible to the terrified civilians sheltering below. They then tossed two grenades down the steps into the cellar. Mrs Voskuil was saved by Private Albert Willingham, who lay over her as she was tending Major Warr: he was killed, Mrs Voskuil was hit in the legs. Major Warr was wounded again in the shoulder and a number of civilians were also wounded including Mrs Voskuil’s husband and nine-year-old son. The Germans then entered the cellar and took the paratroopers present prisoner while Mrs Voskuil harassed the Germans into providing a doctor to treat Smyth; he subsequently died of his wounds on 26 October.97 The Germans then turned their attention to QM Lieutenant Glover’s position despite a charge by the paratroopers that briefly recaptured the Voskuil house. Glover was wounded in the hand shortly afterward and departed for the MDS when the heavy bleeding could not be staunched; he was wounded again en route, this time in the right calf.

  The survivors of QM Lieutenant Glover’s party had to withdraw to the east side of the Utrechtseweg–Stationsweg crossroads at around 20:00 after the disused restaurant was blasted and set ablaze by fire from a StuG; a Private Banks reportedly continued firing a Bren from the upper storey until the building collapsed beneath him.98 The withdrawal took place at about 20:10 and was covered by a shoot from the 64th Medium Regiment targeted upon the Utrechtseweg east of the junction and the woods to its north-east; the Gunners had broken up an attack against the 1st Border’s section of the western perimeter an hour earlier, dropping shells as close as 100 yards to the glider soldiers’ front.99 Precisely where the 10th Battalion’s survivors came to rest is unclear, but it was likely two buildings to the east of the MDS area, and it is also unclear whether they were located to the north or south of the Utrechtseweg. The 10th Parachute Battalion numbered around fifty all ranks by this point, led by Captain Peter Barron from the 2nd Airlanding Anti-tank Battery and FOO (Forward Observation Officer) Lieutenant Kenneth White from the 2nd Airlanding Light Battery, as all the 10th Battalion officers had been killed or wounded severely enough to be evacuated out of battle. Some of those remaining on the line were also nursing wounds; Captain Barron had been wounded in the shoulder and hand on Wednesday 20 September, for example. The 10th Battalion survivors were out of contact with 4th Parachute Brigade HQ, which prompted Brigadier Hackett to despatch a night patrol from the Brigade HQ Defence Platoon in an effort to locate them. The patrol failed to locate any sign of the survivors but Hackett ‘still had hope’ for his missing Battalion.100

  On the south-eastern section of the British perimeter Kampfgruppe Harder resumed its push along the line of the riverside Benedendorpsweg at 09:00 when approximately a kompanie of German infantry accompanied by three tanks appeared on the polder near the destroyed railway bridge. They approached the right-hand sector of the 1st Parachute Battalion’s line dug in along the dyke south of the road, held by Lieutenant Albert Turrell and T Company. The attackers were rebuffed with small-arms and artillery fire called down by Captain William Caird from No. 1 Forward Observation Unit RA. The Germans responded with an intense ninety-minute nebelwerfer barrage, the effect of which, whilst ‘highly unpleasant’, was largely nullified by the Battalion’s deep trenches and thus inflicted few casualties; though liaison officer Lieutenant Alastair Clarkson was killed.101 The Germans also pushed along the Benedendorpsweg proper, close to the Airlanding Light Regiment’s gun positions near the Oosterbeek Old Church. B Troop’s commander, Lieutenant Keith Halliday, was killed by tank fire at 11:00 while manning an observation post, A Troop’s Command Post was engaged by a StuG an hour later and 1 Battery had to clear German infiltrators located in houses overlooking its gun pits.102

  In the early afternoon the Germans turned their attention to Major Robert Cain and his approximately eighty-strong contingent from 2nd South Stafford’s deployed at the Laundry just north of the Oosterbeek Old Church; the remainder of the Staffords, around fifty men under CanLoan Lieutenant Philip Hart, were dug in closer to the Old Church protecting the Airlanding Light Regiment’s gun positions.103 As had become his SOP, Major Cain immediately commandeered a PIAT and set about stalking two German armoured vehicles accompanied by an unnamed private, who was presumably employed as an ammunition bearer. Cain’s fire was initially directed by Lieutenant Ian Meikle from the Light Regiment’s B Troop, who was acting as a forward observer from a nearby upper storey until he was killed by a shell from the lead vehicle. Cain held his position despite almost being crushed by a toppling chimney pot, which scared off his companion. He eve
ntually disabled the StuG after being wounded by return fire from its machine gun. He was then injured when a PIAT bomb detonated prematurely while stalking the second vehicle: ‘It blew me over backwards, and I was blind. I was shouting like a hooligan. I shouted to somebody to get onto the Piat, because there was another tank behind. I blubbered and yelled and used some very bad language. They dragged me off to the Aid Post.’104 In the event Cain’s vision cleared shortly after arrival and he insisted on returning to the front line against medical advice.105

  Despite the best efforts of the 2nd South Staffords the Gunners had a rough time of it, especially B Troop. The latter lost a number of men including Command Post Officer Lieutenant Christopher Fogarty to the tank attack from the east that killed Lieutenant Meikle. The vehicle Major Cain was stalking when he was wounded was knocked out by one of the Light Regiment’s guns firing over open sights, possibly that commanded by a Sergeant McBain from F Troop, and the Gunners also came under fire from German infiltrators in the woods to the west of the gun positions. As the casualty toll included all of B Troop’s officers killed, Battery Captain Basil Taylor and Command Post Officer Lieutenant Carmel Leitch had to be drafted in from 2 Battery, along with a number of men, to make up numbers. In the late afternoon Captain Anthony Harrison from 3 Battery led a patrol to suppress an enemy machine-gun post established in the municipal gasworks west of F Troop’s gun positions; the patrol appears to have failed in its objective, given that Captain Harrison spent twenty minutes pinned down by German fire before being obliged to dash back to 3 Battery’s lines.106 With Kampfgruppe Harder rebuffed to the east and Bataillon Worrowski to the west, the southern extremities of the 1st Airborne Division’s perimeter remained intact but were pressed almost back to back. The Oosterbeek pocket was thus on the brink of being prised away from the Lower Rhine and its sole remaining potential avenue for relief and reinforcement.

  16

  D Plus 4

  16:00 to 23:59 Thursday 21 September 1944

  While the 7th KOSB were counter-attacking to regain their positions on the Graaf van Rechterenweg and the South Staffords were stalking Sturmgeschütze in the vicinity of the Laundry north of the Lower Rhine, the first of two aerial events to take place on 21 September occurred. Unlike the previous day’s effort, Thursday’s resupply drop was concentrated into one late afternoon increment, albeit with take-offs staggered to spread the arrival of aircraft over the drop zone across two-and-a-half hours. Curiously, the 1st Parachute Battalion and Division HQ War Diaries refer to supply drops occurring at 11:00 and 12:45 respectively, even though the first take-off only commenced three minutes after the former time and the latter was between fifteen and forty-five minutes short of the minimum flying time from the UK airfields to Oosterbeek.1 Be that as it may, the supply effort involved sixty-three Stirlings and fifty-five Dakotas, totalling 118 aircraft. The Dakota contingent included No. 233 Squadron and No. 437 Squadron RCAF, which had been diverted from supply flights to Belgium in lieu of Nos. 512 and 575 Squadrons; the substitution appears to have been made in the late morning due to the low number of serviceable aircraft available from the RAF units based at Broadwell.2 First away were twenty-one Stirlings from Nos. 295 and 570 Squadrons from Harwell at 11:03, followed thirty-seven minutes later by the same number of Stirlings from Nos. 196 and 299 Squadrons flying from RAF Keevil. The third increment of Stirlings, fifteen machines from Nos. 190 and 620 Squadrons, took off from RAF Fairford at midday, six machines following at 16:00; the reason for the staggered take-off is unclear. The first increment of twenty-five Dakotas from Nos. 48 and 271 Squadrons took off from Down Ampney at 13:10, followed twenty minutes later by twenty-five machines from Blakehill Farm belonging to the co-opted Nos. 233 Squadron and 437 Squadrons RCAF; five Dakotas took off from Blakehill Farm at 13:40, two of which aborted with load problems, although these may not have been involved in the Airborne resupply effort, given there is no reference to the event in the Operational Record Books of the Squadrons involved.3 According to one source 1st Airborne Division HQ had requested the supply drop be targeted on the Hotel Hartenstein, but the Dakotas of Nos. 48 and 271 Squadrons at least were still briefed to drop on DZ V, which had never actually been in British hands and by now lay the better part of a mile outside the Oosterbeek perimeter.4

  The flight was uneventful until the final leg up the Airborne Corridor, where a significant gap had developed in the protective fighter cover, which No. 48 Squadron referred to as being ‘very scarce and very late’.5 This was due in part to USAAF fighters being tasked to cover other missions including bombing raids on the synthetic oil plant at Ludwigshafen and railway marshalling yards at Mainz and Koblenz, and in part to bad weather over eastern England that grounded approximately half of the UK-based RAF contingent. The resupply mission could have been escorted by fighters from RAF 2nd Tactical Air Force squadrons based on the Continent, but the commander of the 1st Allied Airborne Army, USAAF Lieutenant-General Lewis H. Brereton, had forbidden those units from operating over the Airborne Corridor to avoid control issues.6 German fighters from 3 Jagd-Division were thus able to shoot down around half-a-dozen Stirlings on the fly-in without interference, carrying on their attacks until in sight of the Oosterbeek perimeter where FlaK Brigade Svoboda took over; as No. 48 Squadron reported ‘Very heavy flak and tracer was met over and near to the DZ, also at HERTOGENBOSCH, BOXTEL and KEELSAN [sic].’7 The transports were not solely at peril from flak and fighters. An RASC despatcher fell to his death from one of No. 233 Squadron’s Dakotas presumably as it took evasive action, while one of No. 48 Squadron’s machines, possibly that flown by RCAF Warrant-Officer David Webb, was brought down over Oosterbeek after being struck on the wing by a supply pannier dropped by another aircraft; most of the crew were killed.8 Another container packed with 6-Pounder ammunition free-dropped onto the 1st Airlanding Brigade’s HQ after a parachute malfunction, and the resultant explosion wounded a number of men from the Brigade Provost Section.9 The German fighters pounced again as the transports flew the return leg across Holland after delivering their loads, shooting down several of the slower Dakotas. These included one piloted by future show-business personality Flight-Lieutenant Jimmy Edwards from No. 271 Squadron, who elected to crash land on learning two of his RASC despatchers had been too badly wounded to bail out, and two machines from No. 48 Squadron flown by Flying-Officer Finlay and Flight-Sergeant Webster.10 The surviving machines landed at their home bases between 18:15 and 20:15. Fourteen Stirlings and nineteen Dakotas failed to return to base, although two Stirlings landed elsewhere in the UK and two Dakotas landed at Brussels. In all, thirteen Dakotas were subsequently verified as being lost due to enemy action.11 Once again the majority of the supplies dropped into German hands; Major-General Urquhart referred to the Germans using the captured ground marking instructions translated by Hauptsturmführer Schleffler from 9 SS Panzer Division HQ, and possibly employing a captured EUREKA beacon too.12

  The second aerial contribution was on a much grander scale. In the East Midlands the 1st Polish Independent Parachute Brigade had spent another restless night in its billets around Stamford and Peterborough, and likely none more so than Brigade commander Major-General Stanislaw Sosabowski. Unhappy with the near total lack of information on the situation in Holland and increasingly suspicious that his formation was to be sacrificed to reinforce failure, Sosabowski had contemplated refusing to allow his Brigade to take-off without written confirmation of his orders; he had also written letters of protest addressed to Lieutenant-General Brereton and Major-General Browning. Having failed to contact Brereton directly by radio, Sosabowski informed Lieutenant-Colonel George Stevens, the Polish Brigade’s British liaison officer that he would not take off for Driel without an accurate situation report. Stevens returned from Moor Park at 09:00 on 21 September and handed Sosabowski a signal purportedly from the 1st Airborne Division timed at 04:30 confirming that the Heveadorp ferry was in British hands.13 This was not the case, for as we have seen Captain Heggie’s deta
chment from the 9th Field Company RE had abandoned the ferry at around midnight on 20 September, and 1st Airborne Division HQ had been aware of the fact from 03:40 on 21 September, when Lieutenant Heaps reported the failure of his resupply mission. Furthermore, there is no reference to any such signal in the 1st Airborne Division HQ or Division Signals War Diary. While Urquhart had been in communication with Moor Park at 04:15, 05:45 and 06:25, none of these signals explicitly mentioned the ferry, although the 06:25 message did erroneously refer to positions being unchanged; the only signal referring to holding the ferry prior to the Polish drop was sent thirteen hours earlier at 15:05 on Wednesday 20 September.14 The Division Signals War Diary only lists losing contact with a No. 22 set issued to Captain Heggie’s party at 03:45 on 21 September.15 The signal would therefore appear to that from the previous day presented as a current situation report. It is unclear if Stevens or Brereton were complicit in the deception, although the latter telephoned Sosabowski shortly after Stevenson handed over the signal. Whether that was the case or not, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that Sosabowski was deliberately handed inaccurate information to allay his objections and ensure his Brigade dropped into Holland. Subsequent events were to confirm his suspicions that his formation was indeed being sacrificed to reinforce failure.