Arnhem
Page 84
Lieutenant Young and 2 Troop reached Driel around an hour after Captain Wrottesley. According to one source he was despatched following a summons from Wrottesley, but another gives the strong impression that all three Troops left the Nijmegen bridgehead either simultaneously or in succession; the hour gap suggests that Young may have been scouting an alternate route and homed in on Driel after receiving Wrottesley’s situation report.12 Whichever, Young reported passing knocked-out German tanks near Elst, presumably victims of the fighting with the 2nd Welsh Guards at Oosterhout in the early evening of Thursday 21 September.13 The reconnaissance vehicles also picked up a number of aircrew who had force-landed south of the Lower Rhine, and machine-gunned a number of Germans spotted on the north bank of the river while travelling along the elevated riverside road near Heteren on the final stretch into Driel.14 The good luck enjoyed by Wrottesley and Young did not extend to Lieutenant Hopkinson’s Troop, bringing up the rear with C Squadron HQ in tow. The concealing mist lifted whilst the Troop was on the move and it immediately came under fire from German armoured vehicles, possibly the tanks spotted by Lieutenant Bereda-Fialkowski’s patrol, or a rocket launcher of some description, depending on the account. The lead vehicle, a Daimler Dingo scout car, was hit by at least one round that killed the driver, Trooper Harold Read from the Life Guards, and set the vehicle ablaze. Lieutenant Hopkinson dismounted from his own vehicle and attempted to render assistance, but the intensity of the blaze drove him back and the surviving British vehicles were obliged to retire the way they had come, still under German fire. According to one account the retiring armoured cars forced the Jeep carrying Brigadier Hubert Essame, commanding 214 Infantry Brigade, off the embanked road paralleling the River Waal; their haste was presumably due to the fact that German guns located in nearby Oosterhout had a clear view of the road.15 The indirect route to Driel was thus closed and unusable in broad daylight, although the success of Captain Wrottesley and Lieutenant Young showed it was possible at night or in reduced visibility.16
Welcome as the arrival of the 2nd Household Cavalry patrols at Driel was, they weren’t going to shield the Polish Brigade from German attention. At 09:00 Sosabowski ordered Captain Siudzinski’s Transport and Supply Company to gather in the unrecovered containers from the drop zone, in part because the commander of the Brigade’s Engineer Company, Captain Piotr Budziszewski, reported that some of his containers contained USAAF rescue dinghies that he had obtained through unofficial channels. In addition, 2nd Lieutenant Arkady Bandzierz from the 4th Company was ordered to ascertain the contents of up to thirty containers spotted in the open fields to the west of Driel, drop shorts from the 1st Airborne Division’s supply lifts. This attracted the attention of German observers on the north bank of the Lower Rhine, and Lieutenant Bandzierz was eventually compelled to abandon his mission after being repeatedly pinned down by very accurate mortar fire.17 In the meantime Captain Siudzinski’s men gathering in the Brigade’s containers on DZ K also came under German attack, but in a more direct manner. Having played a major role in recapturing the Arnhem road bridge, Kampfgruppe Brinkmann had been ordered south by II SS Panzerkorps at midday on 21 September to help block the Allied incursion over the River Waal, along with Kampfgruppe Knaust; both units were intended to act as a collective local contingency reserve located in the vicinity of Elst. However, during the night of 21-22 September II SS Panzerkorps issued new orders for an attack upon the new parachute landing near Driel, a task that was in turn devolved to Kampfgruppe Brinkmann, in part as its armoured cars and half-tracks were less likely to damage the Betuwe’s fragile road network than Kampfgruppe Knaust’s tanks.18 The order was easier said than done and not just because of the poor going on the waterlogged polder that comprised much of the Betuwe. Brinkmann’s vehicles had travelled to the area of Elst via the main Arnhem to Nijmegen road but moving on Driel involved crossing the embanked railway line paralleling the road to the west; the only crossing appears to have been in Elst proper and was thus unusable due to the proximity of British troops after the Guard’s Armoured Division’s abortive attempt to push on to Arnhem on Thursday 21 September. Passing even relatively light armoured cars and half-tracks over the embanked railway line presented a major challenge, overcoming which a German senior signals NCO from a unit stationed on the embankment considered an ‘amazing achievement’ in itself.19 As a result of all this Hauptsturmführer Brinkmann was not able to begin his attack on Driel until 10:00 on Friday 22 September.20
The German approach was concealed by the river mist and the SS were thus able to close up unseen on Captain Siudzinski’s recovery party, which had been augmented by a group from the Brigade Signals Company led by 2nd Lieutenant Zdzislaw Detko, complete with a captured German horse and cart. The recovery party were pinned down by a sudden deluge of German machine-gun fire, some seeking shelter in a convenient roadside ditch, but the mist proved to be a two-edged sword and many of the Polish paratroopers were able to use it as cover to regain the safety of the Driel perimeter. They included Private Piotr Wawiorko who braved the fire in order to free the terrified horse from its traces. Some of the paratroopers were so badly scattered by the German attack and the mist that they did not regain the Polish perimeter until the early afternoon.
The two 3rd Battalion platoon outposts were rolled up in a similar fashion to the recovery party. The outpost to the south-east of Driel commanded by 2nd Lieutenant Richard Tice, a US volunteer serving with the Polish Brigade, was overrun after the attackers infiltrated through an orchard at the rear of the farm, calling out in English to confuse the defenders. Tice was hit in the chest in the initial storm of automatic fire and died shortly afterward, and his men were obliged to withdraw under heavy fire from machine-guns and mortars. The other outpost to the south, commanded by 2nd Lieutenant Waclaw Urbanski, came under direct attack from six half-tracks advancing north from Elst; having nothing to counter such a threat the paratroopers promptly withdrew into the main Driel perimeter, which came under intense mortar bombardment as they arrived. The attacking vehicles closed to within a hundred yards of the 2nd Battalion’s perimeter before being temporarily halted by a torrent of small-arms fire that hit a number of the dismounted SS. It was at this point that Sosabowski arrived on his commandeered lady’s bicycle leading Lieutenant Young’s Daimler Armoured Car, having persuaded the reluctant British officer that his primary mission of simply reporting via the radio would be somewhat impeded if the Germans overran the village. A few rounds from Young’s 2-Pounder gun deterred the lightly armoured half-tracks from advancing further, and the attackers paused to take stock of the situation while continuing the mortar bombardment.21
Meanwhile Sosabowski had also been sending out patrols to ascertain the strength and dispositions of the enemy around Driel, possibly in line with requests from the 43rd Division relayed via the Household Cavalry patrols.22 At 11:00 Lieutenant Albert Smaczny was ordered to take his forty-nine-strong 8th Company west to Heteren to ascertain if the village were held by the enemy, with the secondary mission of freeing a party of British prisoners reportedly held there. Thirty minutes later the parachute component of the Brigade Anti-tank Battery was sent off in the opposite direction to reconnoitre to the riverbank and establish German strength in the vicinity of Elden. Both patrols returned safely. Lieutenant Smaczny reported that there were no enemy forces in Heteren, where he and his men had received the usual rapturous reception from the local civilian population with the unusual twist of a mayoral speech and being presented with the ornate key to the town hall; the Dutch also informed Smaczny that British prisoners were hidden in the town but were best left in concealment until after dark in order to avoid revealing the identity of those involved from German collaborators. The Anti-tank detachment returned with a captured German officer, an RAF NCO, two men from the 1st Airborne Division and confirmation that the area east of the Arnhem‒Nijmegen railway embankment was ‘strongly held by the enemy’.23
***
As we have seen t
he arrival of the Polish Brigade at Driel and the Allied capture of the Nijmegen bridges had shaped a major German reorganisation south of the Lower Rhine, and it also led to a re-appreciation of the effort against the 1st Airborne Division north of the river. II SS Panzerkorps’ orders to 9 SS Panzer Division on 22 September instructed Obersturmbannführer Harzer to maintain the existing strategy of concentric attacks against the British in order to ‘annihilate them as soon as possible’. Sperrverband Harzer was thus to ‘operate offensively’ from its blocking line in the Betuwe to prevent any link up between Allied forces advancing out of the Nijmegen bridgehead while the units investing the British perimeter at Oosterbeek were to intensify their efforts; it was considered ‘particularly important that the remaining British forces north of the river Rhine are quickly destroyed, and the enemy bridgehead there cleared’.24 Harzer therefore opted to modify the pattern that had developed piecemeal as the German forces had tightened their grip on the corralled 1st Airborne Division into a deliberate strategy of concentric attack all along the British perimeter, attacking during the hours of daylight with infantry, armour and artillery while pounding it with mortars and artillery fire during the hours of darkness.
Responsibility for attacking the western face of the British perimeter had been devolved from von Tettau to Standartenführer Michael Lippert, commanding SS Unterführerschule ‘Arnheim’. Additional responsibility did not equate to additional reinforcement however, and Lippert was still principally reliant upon SS Bataillonen Eberwein and Schulz from his own unit, the Luftwaffe Bataillon Worrowski and the part-Dutch SS Bataillon Helle, supported by the remaining Panzer B2 (f) tanks from Panzer Kompanie 224. The axis of advance of attack was once again eastward along the Utrechtseweg toward the Koude Herberg crossroads, and then south-east through the wood toward the Lower Rhine. Kampfgruppe Bruhn remained responsible for the northern face while the four SS kampfgruppen formed from elements of 9 SS Panzer Division continued to attack from the east. Kampfgruppe Harder was tasked to push along the riverbank to the municipal gasworks near the Heveadorp ferry terminal, and thus prise the British enclave away from the Lower Rhine; Kampfgruppe von Allwörden was to continue battling to penetrate the British line between the Oosterbeek Old Church and the Utrechtseweg–Stationsweg crossroads; Kampfgruppe Möller was to continue to press west along the Utrechtseweg; and Kampfgruppe Spindler to push against the British line along the Stationsweg between the Utrechtseweg–Stationsweg and the Stationsweg‒Dennenkampweg‒Cronjéweg crossroads.25 Finally, the recently created ArKo 191 was augmented with SS Werfergruppe Nickmann, consisting of two batteries of Nebelwerfer multi-barrel rocket launchers drawn from SS Werfer Abteilung 102, commanded by Hauptsturmführer Alfred Nickmann.26 The weapons were noted for not only their fearsome explosive effect but also the psychological impact of their noise, which led to them being dubbed ‘Moaning Minnies’ by British troops; Rottenführer Wolfgang Dombrowski from Kampfgruppe Möller recalled British Airborne prisoners emerging from cellars ‘with their nerves shot to pieces’ by exposure to Nebelwerfer fire.27
The 1st Airborne Division was also reorganising as well as its increasingly meagre resources allowed. The rationalisation of the north-facing sector of the Division’s perimeter, ordered by Major-General Urquhart in the evening of 21 September, was carried out in the period between the late evening of that day and the very early hours of Friday morning.28 After some confusion over its precise destination, the 7th KOSB, which now had sole responsibility for the north-facing sector, began moving back to the shorter and more defensible line along the Ommershoflaan at 21:30. The other two units manning the sector did not move until the early hours of the following morning. Despite receiving orders reassigning it to the 4th Parachute Brigade at some point after 18:00 on 21 September, Major Bernard Wilson and the 21st Independent Company did not begin to withdraw from its Ommershof position until 01:00; the delay may have been due to Wilson’s dissatisfaction at being ordered to abandon a position he considered to be ‘indefinitely’ defensible. Be that as it may, the move was not completed without incident. One man refused to leave the security of his slit trench until his Section sergeant ‘persuaded’ him at pistol point while Private Maurice May disappeared during the move, presumably becoming separated in the pitch darkness. The Company reached the vicinity of Hackett’s HQ at 02:30, where they were permitted to rest before moving up to their new position on the eastern face of the perimeter at around 05:00.29 The second unit was Captain Henry Brown and his approximately thirty-five-strong detachment from No. 3 Troop, 4th Parachute Squadron RE, which was destined to become the 4th Parachute Brigade’s reserve. The initial order to withdraw to Division HQ at the Hotel Hartenstein was not relayed by the disgruntled Major Wilson until 01:30 and Brown was also initially reluctant to abandon his ‘securely dug in’ position, although he subsequently acknowledged the wisdom of the order.30 After holding a hurried O Group and instructing Captain James Smith to oversee the burial of Captain Thomas and the other fatalities incurred in the Ommershof fighting, Brown made his way back to the Hotel Hartenstein accompanied by Lance-Corporal Dai Morris. There he was informed that his party was not to rejoin the rest of the 4th Parachute Squadron on the western face of the perimeter but was to remain under command of the Division CRE, Lieutenant-Colonel Edmund Myers, whilst being seconded to act as reserve for Brigadier Hackett. He was then directed to Hackett’s HQ just east of the Hartenstein on the Pietersbergseweg from where he was led to a new location midway between the two HQs by Captain Reginald Temple, a former member of the Squadron serving with the 4th Parachute Brigade staff. The move was completed by 04:00 although the Sappers were advised not to dig in until dawn, when daylight would aid the selection of effective fire positions.31
The 7th KOSB was fully established in its new position on the line of the Ommershoflaan forming the northern face of the Oosterbeek perimeter by 01:00, with individual Companies responsible for maintaining contact with their neighbours and patrolling to keep their frontages clear. Strongpoints were established in houses supplemented with slit trenches where necessary, although with the Battalion’s strength standing at around 150, some buildings could only be garrisoned by two men. After stand-to at 04:30 Lieutenant-Colonel Payton-Reid spent two hours inspecting the perimeter and ordering modifications where necessary; the most significant of these involved C Company despatching CanLoan Lieutenant James Taylor and 12 Platoon to occupy a narrow strip of woodland just to the Company’s front. The positions then received a second inspection from Brigadier Hicks, who warned Colonel Payton-Reid that he might be facing a ‘trying day’ and informed him that 30 Corps might well be across the Lower Rhine during the night. In the event, Hicks’ warning proved to be unfounded; ‘Contrary to expectations this day passed off more quietly than we have become accustomed to.’32 The quiet time was presumably due to a combination of the drubbing meted out to Kampfgruppe Bruhn on the Graaf van Rechterenweg and around the Hotel Dreyeroord/White House the previous day, and the resultant, understandable caution in closing up to the KOSB’s new positions after the Battalion’s surreptitious relocation. Artillery and mortar fire increased over the course of the day, however, as the Germans pinpointed the KOSB’s new positions, and the tiled roofs of the British-occupied houses were targeted with 20mm fire, presumably from the light flak guns co-opted by Kampfgruppe Bruhn and employed with deadly effect on the Dreijensweg on 19 September. On this occasion the weapons were not judged especially effective despite their ‘alarming noise’ and the KOSBs assumed the fire was intended to curtail observation, but it might also have been intended to allow tracer rounds to set fire to exposed roof timbers or flammable material stored in attics and dormer rooms. The German fire prompted many inhabitants of the hitherto untouched suburb to abandon their homes, although contact with German ground troops did not occur until the late afternoon or early evening, when B and C Companies drove off what were likely reconnaissance probes. At 19:00 the Battalion began to shift to its night dispositions, whic
h were intended to prevent enemy infiltration into the Battalion’s thinly spread positions. Fighting patrols were despatched to roam the area outside the perimeter and pairs of men were posted in every house along the Ommershoflaan to act as sentries; the sentry posts were to be visited at regular intervals by internal patrols, which could be alerted to any enemy attempts to penetrate the perimeter.33