Arnhem

by William F Buckingham

  ***

  Fifteen miles or so south of Arnhem the Germans were busy organising a new defensive line on the River Waal, prompted by the loss of the Nijmegen bridges in the evening of Wednesday 20 September. The German units that had finally overcome Lieutenant-Colonel Frost’s force holding the east end of the Arnhem road bridge were despatched southward from midday on Thursday 21 September, in compliance with orders from II SS Panzerkorps. Obergruppenführer Bittrich, already concerned at the Allied incursion across the River Waal, who decided that the arrival of the 1st Polish Independent Parachute Brigade at Driel in the late afternoon of 21 September was part of a pincer movement to isolate 10 SS Panzer Division. He therefore reorganised priorities and unit boundaries to meet both the perceived new threat and that developing from Nijmegen. Brigadeführer Heinz Harmel’s 10 SS Panzer Division was ordered to establish a blocking line from which to counter-attack the Allied lodgement north of the Waal. The line was to run west from Bemmel, four miles north-east of the Nijmegen road bridge, to Oosterhout and then north to Elst on the main road to Arnhem, with Elst forming the boundary with 9 SS Panzer Division. The line was manned by the surviving Sturmgeschütze III and Panzer IVs from Sturmbannführer Reinhold’s II Bataillon SS Panzer Regiment 10, a roughly half-strength SS Panzergrenadier Regiment 22 and the approximately battalion-strength Kampfgruppe Hartung, made up of Heer reservists. Additional reinforcement from SS Panzergrenadier Regiment 21 arrived in the course of the day and from the mid- to late afternoon the western end of the line could also call upon the armoured units belonging to 9 SS Panzer Division redeployed to Elst following the fight at the Arnhem bridge; it is unclear who had direct control over these units.49

  Obersturmbannführer Walther Harzer’s orders involved extending 9 SS Panzer Division’s responsibilities south of the Lower Rhine, initially by establishing a defensive line south of the Arnhem road bridge centred on Elden. This was subsequently extended to setting up an east-facing blocking position along the length of the railway line running between Arnhem and Nijmegen, to be manned by a new ad hoc formation dubbed Sperrverband (blocking group) Harzer. Confusingly, the new formation was actually commanded by a Heer officer, Oberst Egon Gerhard, as Harzer was fully occupied with 9 SS Panzer Division’s ongoing fight against the 1st Airborne Division at Oosterbeek; Gerhard also brought his existing HQ from Panzergrenadier Ersatz Regiment 57 with him to his new appointment. This formal sub-division of 9 SS Panzer Division’s responsibilities was ordered by Heeresgruppe B as a deliberate command streamlining measure, and Sperrverband Harzer was consequently tasked to take control of all units belonging or assigned to 9 SS Panzer Division operating south of the Lower Rhine. These initially included Hauptmann Otto Schörken’s Grenadier Ersatz und Ausbildungs Bataillon (motorisiert) 60, MG Bataillon 41, Kampfgruppen Kauer and Köhnen from the Luftwaffe and Kriegsmarine respectively and a Dutch Waffen SS unit, III Bataillon, Grenadier Regiment 1 ‘Landsturm Nederland’. Commanded by Hauptsturmführer Adalbert Stocker, the Dutch unit had been placed in reserve by Harzer on arrival in Arnhem on 20 September after pedalling the seventy miles from its training base at Hoogeveen in northern Holland.

  The southern end of Sperrverband Harzer’s line was assigned to two units that had played the major role in clearing the British foothold at the north end of the Arnhem road bridge. Kampfgruppe Brinkmann, built around the armoured cars and half-tracks of SS Panzer Aufklärungs Abteilung 10 and augmented with elements from SS Panzergrenadier Regiment 21, had been involved in the fight at the Arnhem bridge from the outset, was reinforced with the surviving elements of SS Panzer Aufklärungs Abteilung 9, which had been marooned south of the Arnhem road bridge since the evening of 17 September. Kampfgruppe Knaust had originally consisted of Major Hans-Peter Knaust’s Panzer-Grenadier Ersatz und Ausbildungs Bataillon 64 ‘Bocholt’ augmented with Panzer Kompanie Mielke from Panzer Ersatz Regiment 6 ‘Bielefeld’, which had been reduced to six Panzer IIIs in the course of the fight at Arnhem. However, by the time it moved south at around midday on Thursday 21 September Knaust’s unit had been substantially reinforced, being assigned schwere Panzer Kompanie Hummel with its dozen Tiger I tanks and eight Panther tanks belonging to the recently re-equipped I Bataillon SS Panzer Regiment 10.50 Kampfgruppen Brinkmann and Knaust thus collectively comprised the most powerful armoured unit available to II SS Panzerkorps, and were deployed in the vicinity of Elst as a local contingency reserve but during the night of 21-22 September new orders directed an attack against the new parachute landing at Driel. The task was allotted to Kampfgruppe Brinkmann, according to one source because its light armoured vehicles would not impose too much strain on the fragile road network of the Betuwe, as the locals referred to the lozenge-shaped island between the Lower Rhine and the Waal; the fact that Knaust’s tanks were better employed facing a prospective Allied armoured advance from Nijmegen rather than chasing down lightly armed paratroopers also likely played a role in the allocation.51 The terrain and tactical situation made redeploying Kampfgruppe Brinkmann’s vehicles toward Driel a difficult and time-consuming process, and the attack was delayed until the late morning of the following day as a result.52

  On the British side of the Nijmegen bridgehead 30 Corps had also issued fresh orders for operations on 21 September. In addition to establishing security for the Nijmegen bridges, the Guards Armoured Division was instructed to ‘Advance earliest possible…at maximum speed’ for Arnhem in line with the original GARDEN concept and in order to bring ‘assistance’ to the 1st Airborne Division; this was an interesting order of priority in the circumstances, albeit one that continued the general lack of emphasis on the Airborne end of the operation that had characterised the Guards Armoured Division’s orders and behaviour from the outset. The designated axis of advance was oriented along the line of the Arnhem‒Nijmegen railway line through Ressen, just under five miles north of the bridges, with ‘operational traffic’ permitted to use the main road running north through Elst. If enemy resistance on the designated axis proved too stiff, the Division was also authorised to sidestep to the west and make contact with the 1st Airborne Division directly across the Lower Rhine.53 In the event, security for the bridges was provided by pushing two companies from the 3rd Battalion Irish Guards over the Waal soon after the bridge had been secured, followed at 03:00 on 21 September by a Squadron of tanks from the 2nd (Armoured) Battalion Irish Guards. The newcomers discovered an abandoned German map detailing enemy positions and despite the armoured cars of the 2nd Household Cavalry Regiment probing around the perimeter, the new bridgehead remained unmolested apart from ‘fairly heavy’ artillery and mortar fire as 10 SS Panzer Division concentrated upon erecting its blocking line.54

  The order to attack did not percolate down to the Irish Guards Group slated to carry it out until the late morning of 21 September, and the projected start time of 11:00 did not impress when it did. Lieutenant-Colonel John Vandeleur, who had his own reservations about the advance, nonetheless issued the attack order to Captain Roland Langton, commanding No. 1 Squadron, 2nd Irish Guards, in person at 10:40, just twenty minutes before the attack was scheduled to commence with the injunction to ‘go like hell and get on up to Arnhem’. For his part Langton could not believe that ‘they were actually going to launch this thing in twenty minutes’ and not merely because of the extremely short notice; he was also concerned that the only briefing materials were a single captured map and an aerial reconnaissance photograph of an anti-aircraft site near Elst, and there was also a paucity of support.55 In contrast to previous days, the attack was to be supported by a single artillery unit, the 153rd Field Regiment RA from the Guards Armoured Division’s Support Group, equipped with Sexton self-propelled 25-Pounders.56 However, while the short notice and paucity of support may have been a surprise, it is difficult to see why the advance order should have been, given the prevailing circumstances and especially given the fact that the Irish Guards Group had been in place on the north bank of the River Waal for at least seven and possibly
up to eleven hours.

  Much is made of the fact that the Guards Armoured Division’s tanks and infantry were in need of rest and replenishment after the fight to reach and secure the Nijmegen bridges, but this refers to the Grenadier Guards Group, which had been involved in that fight for two days; the Irish Guards Group had been in Division reserve since reaching the Son bridge on 18 September.57 Nor do the Irish Guards appear to have been involved in actively protecting the bridges once across the Waal. Lieutenant-Colonel Reuben Tucker’s 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment had deliberately pushed forward to establish a perimeter around a mile from the bridges to create space to marshal a further advance and Lieutenant Brian Wilson from the 3rd Irish Guards 2nd Company recalled crossing the Nijmegen road bridge and setting in close to the bridge near the Grenadier Guards tanks that had rushed the bridge, along with a troop of M10 Achilles anti-tank guns from the 21st Anti-Tank Regiment RA. Wilson also recalled patrols of US paratroopers constantly roaming through his location while ‘for our part, we just sat in our positions all night.’58 The Irish Guards Group’s reconnaissance seems to have been limited to observing the area after daylight and unanimously deciding that the terrain was ‘a ridiculous place to try to operate tanks’.59 D Squadron, 2nd Household Cavalry Regiment, carried out what reconnaissance was undertaken after crossing the Waal at some point shortly after 04:30. Household Cavalry patrols thus scouted the main road toward Elst, where four 88mm guns were pinpointed, and Bemmel to the north-east and Valburg to the west. Progress on all axes was dammed up because 10 SS Panzer Division had managed to erect a blocking line, as detailed above, by daylight on 21 September.60

  This had not been the case earlier, however, as for several hours after the capture of the bridges there were only two coherent German positions between Nijmegen and Arnhem; Sturmbannführer Leo Reinhold’s recently relocated Kampfgruppe HQ in Bemmel, four miles north-east of the bridges, and a single battery and HQ from Hauptsturmführer Oskar Schwappacher’s SS Artillerie Ausbildungs und Ersatz Regiment 5 in Oosterhout, four miles west of Bemmel.61 As Brigadeführer Heinz Harmel later put it: ‘The English drank too much tea…The four panzers who crossed the bridge made a mistake when they stayed in Lent. If they had carried on their advance, it would have been all over for us.’62 Harmel’s assessment was arguably a little pessimistic given that SS Panzer Regiment 10’s II Bataillon, equipped with a dozen Panzer IV tanks and four StuG IIIs, was being ferried across the Lower Rhine from the night of 18-19 September.63 Furthermore, reaching Arnhem would also have brought the Irish Guards Group into contact with the Tiger tanks of schwere Panzer Kompanie Hummel. On the other hand, a determined thrust might at least have disjointed the implementation of II SS Panzerkorps’ defensive plan in the Betuwe, prevented Sperrverband Harzer from interfering with the 1st Polish Independent Parachute Brigade and thereby expedited a more rapid and concentrated relief effort across the Lower Rhine to the Oosterbeek Pocket. None of that happened because the Irish Guards Group remained immobile for the hours of darkness and beyond, as the Guards Armoured Division had collectively and consistently done since Operation GARDEN commenced; as Lieutenant Wilson put it, ‘The situation at Arnhem remained desperate. Yet the GAD did not move.’64 In a replay of events north of the Lower Rhine on the night of Sunday 17 September, the opportunity to maintain the initiative by pushing on toward Arnhem again ebbed away in inactivity while the Germans used the windfall respite to organise their blocking line.

  The attack order from 30 Corps was not implemented for over two hours after the designated 11:00 start time, allowing Harmel and his men around six hours of daylight to fine-tune their defensive preparations. The Irish Guards Group finally attacked at 13:30 with No. 1 Squadron in the lead followed by the remainder of the 2nd Irish Guards carrying infantry from the 3rd Irish Guards on the decks of their Shermans.65 The advance up the line of the Arnhem-Nijmegen railway proceeded well for around two miles, until the lead tanks approached Ressen and came into range of the German blocking line.66 At that point at least three of the lead tanks were knocked out in rapid succession; Captain Langton, travelling further back in the column in his Daimler scout car, saw ‘a Sherman sprocket wheel lift lazily into the air over some trees up ahead’.67 The advance then came to an abrupt halt. The 3rd Irish Guards infantry deployed from their tanks but were pinned down by German machine-gun, mortar and artillery fire, as were Captain Langton and his Battalion commander Lieutenant-Colonel Giles Vandeleur when they moved forward to investigate. Artillery support from the 153rd Field Regiment proved ineffective as two of the Regiment’s three batteries were en route to new positions, and for reasons that are unclear no Forward Observer team was travelling with the advance either; a developing shortage of artillery ammunition may also have contributed to the poor artillery response.68 The slack ought to have been taken up by close air support and some Typhoon fighter-bombers were overhead despite bad weather closing a number of the 2nd Tactical Air Force’s forward airfields in Belgium. However, the Irish Guards Group was unable to communicate with the aircraft because the radio set in the only available Tentacle forward air control vehicle was unserviceable. Even if that had not been the case, the Typhoon’s utility would have been limited because Allied air activity north of the Waal was prohibited in the afternoon to avoid interfering with the 1st Polish Independent Parachute Brigade’s drop at Driel.69

  Semi-official and secondary sources give the impression that an afternoon of hard fighting followed the advance being stalled, constrained by terrain that prevented tanks from manoeuvring or indeed leaving the roads, while the infantry’s attempts to advance or outflank the German defences were pinned down and rebuffed.70 However, the official records cast a different light on proceedings: ‘At 1330 hours the advance started and at 1350 hours it finished.’71 Much is made of the unsuitability of the terrain in both participant and historical accounts, typified by Lieutenant-Colonel Giles Vandeleur in an exchange with the commander of the Irish Guards Group: ‘If we send any more tanks up along this road it’s going to be bloody murder.’72 Ironically, given the Guards Armoured Division’s proven preference for halting operations at dusk and not restarting until the following midday or early afternoon, the Division’s semi-official history refers to the German defences being insuperable due to the dearth of artillery, air support and ‘without cover of darkness’.73 The terrain was undoubtedly difficult but the repetitive and uniform manner in which it is cited to excuse the lack of progress raises suspicions of protesting too much, not least because German armoured vehicles, both those with narrower tracks and thus inferior flotation and those that weighed a great deal more than the Guards’ Shermans, ‘were able to deploy off road to good effect’.74 As ought to have been abundantly clear from daylight observation, the terrain required an infantry-led approach, but there were insufficient infantry on hand to implement it. The Guards Armoured Division’s semi-official history gives the impression that the 2nd Irish Guards tanks may have only been accompanied by a single infantry company from the 3rd Irish Guards, with the remainder of the Battalion presumably still deployed to guard the north end of the Nijmegen bridges.75 Even had that not been the case, the atypical Guards Armoured Division practice of pairing armoured and infantry battalions by regimental cap badge meant only a single infantry battalion would have been available for a task that ultimately required the better part of a brigade. As a result, apart from an abortive attempt to outflank the German positions to the east by a company commanded by Major J.S.O. Haslewood, the rest of the afternoon passed in something of a stand-off until 18:30, when the Irish Guards Group predictably pulled back to a night harbour area 1,000 yards from the scene of the day’s action. Infantry reinforcements were available from the 1st Welsh Guards, which spent the period from 13:00 to 17:00 sitting on the tanks of the 2nd Welsh Guards lined out on the Nijmegen road bridge but they were not called upon, again presumably due to the self-imposed habit of only operating units with the same cap badge. The Welsh Guards Group was eventu
ally ordered forward toward Oosterhout on the Irish Guards’ left flank at 17:00, presumably as a nod to the 30 Corps’ instruction to sidestep to the west if the direct route to Arnhem proved too strongly defended. The move was equally short-lived, as the Welsh Guards were also ordered back to a harbour area near the Nijmegen road bridge at dusk, after a brief fight that reportedly saw three German tanks knocked out. The clash was likely with Panzer Kompanie Mielke from Kampfgruppe Knaust, which reported losing two Panzer IIIs in Oosterhout in the late afternoon or early evening of 21 September.76

  The Irish Guards Group did not try particularly hard on the afternoon of Thursday 21 September, despite clear orders from 30 Corps and the urgency of the situation, although this was entirely consistent with the pattern of late starting and ceasing operations promptly at dusk adhered to by the Guards Armoured Division from the beginning of Operation GARDEN. Arrival at Nijmegen appears to have added another dimension to this unhurried attitude however, which underlay the uniform protests from the Guards Armoured Division’s senior commanders that the terrain between Nijmegen and Arnhem was unsuitable for tanks. The Division commander, Major-General Allan Adair, commented that ‘to get along that road was obviously first a job for infantry’, while Lieutenant-Colonel John Vandeleur made pretty much the same point to Captain Langton when ordering him to hold in place after the advance was stopped in the early afternoon.77 The clear inference was that the Guards Armoured Division had done enough and that it was time for another formation with more infantry to take over, specifically the 43rd Division, which was making its way up the Airborne Corridor from the Neerpelt bridgehead.