Arnhem

by William F Buckingham

  The 7th KOSB’s night move allowed it to escape the resumption of the German mortaring and shelling around dawn, but the bombardment fell heavily on other units, those manning the perimeter and within it. At 07:30 the ill-starred 1st Airlanding Brigade HQ was struck again by a salvo of German fire which caused a number of casualties including the Brigade RASC Officer, Captain Leslie Lockyer, and Lieutenant Ralph Schwartz from the 2nd South Staffords, who was acting as Brigade GSO III; both officers were evacuated to the Hotel Schoonoord, where Captain Lockyer’s left leg was amputated. It is unclear if Brigadier Hicks was present or visiting his units at the time, but the incident prompted a relocation of the HQ at 09:00 to a site in woods around 500 yards south of the Hotel Hartenstein, complete with a detachment of Glider Pilots and two 6-Pounder guns from the South Staffords for close protection; a platoon from the 9th Field Company RE that had been held at Brigade HQ for the latter purpose was released at the same time to rejoin its parent unit on the west side of the Division perimeter.34 The German barrage on the 1st Border’s positions on the south-west face of the perimeter recommenced at 05:45. The pounding from artillery, mortars and direct fire from self-propelled guns swiftly destroyed all the vehicles in the vicinity of Battalion HQ with the exception of two Jeeps and a motorcycle, and at 09:10 a direct hit set fire to the Battalion ammunition dump. A party of men led by Regimental Sergeant Major (RSM) Albert Pope and Company Sergeant Major (CSM) Leslie Fielding managed to save a quantity of small-arms ammunition and mortar bombs before the flames detonated a stock of explosives. The resultant explosion stripped leaves and branches from the surrounding trees and mortally wounded RSM Pope, who died after being removed to the Battalion RAP.35 German mortars then used the residual burning and smoke as an aiming mark, ‘so that any movement from slit trenches resulted in casualties’.36

  The 1st Border’s B Company had been virtually wiped out on the Westerbouwing Heights by Bataillon Worrowski in the morning of 21 September and as a result the Battalion’s left flank was held by a handful of men scattered across three locations. These were an ad hoc group patrolling north of the Benedendorpsweg led by Major Richard Stewart from Support Company and two surviving elements from B Company, Lieutenant Arthur Royall’s 12 Platoon and a composite platoon formed from survivors commanded by Lieutenant Stanley Barnes. The B Company men were located south of the road, with Barnes’ party occupying the grounds of a large house called the Dennenord a few hundred yards east of the B Company’s original position, and 12 Platoon was dug in just east of the municipal gasworks to block passage along the riverbank. At 12:00 the 1st Border’s acting second-in-command, Major Charles Breese, was despatched to take command of the 1st Airlanding Brigade’s left flank accompanied by two depleted platoons from A Company commanded by Lieutenant Robert Coulston and a Sergeant Davidson, along with a small group of B Company stragglers commanded by Lieutenant Patrick Stott. Breese was also allotted a party of thirty men detached from the 2nd South Staffords earlier that morning, commanded by CanLoan Lieutenant Arthur Godfrey; it is unclear if the party was originally intended to assist in protecting Division HQ, act as part of the Division reserve, or was intended to reinforce the 1st Border from the outset.37

  The new grouping was dubbed BREESE Force in honour of its commander, and may not have initially included 12 Platoon. According to the 1st Border’s semi-official history it took Lieutenant Royall some time to discover BREESE Force was occupying the woods north of the Benedendorpsweg and after doing so, he ‘went across from time to time to exchange information’.38 It is unclear if he realised it but Lieutenant Royall was also assisted by two more elements. The remnants of the 11th Parachute Battalion had been redeployed as a back-stop south of the Benedendorpsweg facing south-west toward the municipal gasworks at 11:00 on the orders of 1st Airlanding Brigade HQ, from where it beat off a number of German attacks from the area of the gasworks, despite the most intense enemy mortar fire the Battalion had yet experienced. A subsequent Airlanding Brigade order at 15:00 for Lieutenant James Blackwood and B Company to attack and clear a group of German-occupied farm buildings near the gasworks was countermanded by Major Breese when he learned of it. The attack was intended to be the first step in a BREESE Force effort to retake the Heveadorp ferry terminal to assist the ferrying of the 1st Polish Independent Parachute Brigade across the Lower Rhine, but was cancelled at 21:45 owing to difficulties registering the fall of shot for a covering artillery fire plan.39 The second element was a party of anti-tank gunners from the 1st Independent Polish Parachute Brigade who had also been redeployed to cover the rear of the 1st Border’s line with their two remaining 6-Pounder guns in the early morning of 22 September. One, located at the junction of the Benedendorpsweg and Kneppelhoutweg, was knocked out by a marauding Sturmgeschütze but the other spent the morning using high-explosive shells to keep the Germans from establishing machine-guns in a small copse overlooking the polder running down to the Lower Rhine. The gunners switched to armour-piercing rounds when the Germans turned their attention to a brick building near the municipal gasworks for the same purpose, and had virtually demolished it by the afternoon. The gun and surviving gunners were withdrawn to a position near the Oosterbeek Old Church at sundown.40

  Fortunately, given its depleted nature, Major Breese’s section of the 1st Border perimeter enjoyed a relatively peaceful Friday, in part due to the efforts of the 11th Parachute Battalion and the Polish anti-tank gunners and because Bataillon Worrowski was reorganising after its rough handling the previous day. This, however, was not the case along the rest of the 1st Border’s frontage. Captain William Hodgson and D Company spent the entire day under mortar and shell fire. Lieutenant Alan Green was sharing a slit trench with Private Len Powell when a mortar bomb fell into the trench, striking Powell on the back of the leg before coming to rest without detonating; Powell gingerly lifted it from the floor of the trench and threw it clear. The bombardment was backed with continuous pressure against the Company’s positions along the Van Borsselenweg, likely from SS Bataillon Schulz, which had almost surrounded D Company by 16:00 and reduced it to thirty-five men led by Captain Hodgson and a lightly wounded Lieutenant Green. The Battalion War Diary proudly noted, ‘There was no withdrawal.’ On the right at C Company’s position around the Koude Herberg junction on the Utrechtseweg and A Company to its north also stood firm against SS Bataillon Eberwein and in some instances took the fight to enemy. Lieutenant Alan Roberts from C Company’s 16 Platoon and Sergeant W. C. Thompson were notable in leading patrols into the surrounding woods, the former returning from one foray with two captured German machine-guns and a quantity of ammunition after his patrol had killed their former owners. A Lance-Corporal Cavaghan from the Signals Platoon also distinguished himself by laying a telephone line through enemy-occupied territory to Battalion HQ after the Company’s radio link failed. The German attacks died away after 19:30, although harassing fire from mortars continued through the night; this was fortunate given that ammunition, along with food and other supplies, were described as ‘non-existent’ by this point.41

  The situation was especially problematic for the 1st Border’s Medical Officer, Captain John Graham-Jones, who was unable to evacuate his wounded to the Divisional Main Dressing Station (MDS) in Oosterbeek due to the German bombardment and had to deplete his meagre stock of medical supplies instead. This became an official arrangement after Colonel Graeme Warrack, the Divisional Assistant Director of Medical Services, informed Graham-Jones that there would be no further medical evacuations from the front line because the MDS was no longer able to provide better treatment than the RAPs and there were no longer any Jeeps available for casualty transport anyway.42 There was no Friday supply drop, the reason for which is unclear. Seventy-three Stirlings and up to sixty-six Dakotas were fully loaded and ready to depart by midday, but take-off was cancelled for the day by Airborne Corps Rear HQ at 12:15, with the aircraft ordered to remain loaded and await further orders.43 One source suggests the cancellation was based o
n the assumption that the arrival of the GARDEN ground force on the south bank of the Lower Rhine rendered it superfluous, although the hiatus may also have been connected to mounting RAF concern at the number of aircraft being lost on the resupply missions; to that end the commander of No. 46 Group, Air Commodore Lawrence Darvall, flew to Brussels on Friday 22 September in an unsuccessful attempt to have fighter aircraft drop supplies ferried in to Brussels by his Dakotas.44

  In line with rest of the Airborne soldiers manning the Oosterbeek pocket the 1st Border’s men were left reliant on whatever rations they had left or whatever food they could scavenge. Lieutenant Joseph Hardy from the Battalion Signals Platoon released his sole remaining carrier pigeon with a jocular message for 1st Airborne Corps Rear HQ to prevent it being killed and eaten; his ploy was successful as the pigeon survived to deliver its message to Moor Park where it became a ‘nine days wonder’. A scrawny-looking chicken Hardy saw wandering by in search of food was not so lucky. The unfortunate fowl was swiftly despatched, gutted, plucked and deposited in a galvanised bath along with whatever scraps of ration-pack biscuits, bully beef, concentrated oatmeal and other food and water the troops involved could muster before being set to cook, garnished liberally with sand and grass thrown up by the bombardment. The garnish and ring of soap suds around the rim of the bath did not put off the hungry contributors, who considered the end result to be ‘the epitome of home cooking’.45

  Pressure was maintained along the northern sector of the western perimeter by the partly Dutch SS Bataillon Helle. E and F Squadrons from No.2 Wing, The Glider Pilot Regiment reported holding their positions despite constant and heavy mortar and artillery fire throughout the day, although ‘Continual casualties caused…[the]…line to become dangerously thin.’ E Squadron, on the 1st Border’s right flank, was reinforced with a 6-Pounder anti-tank gun of unknown origin and Lieutenant-Colonel John Place relocated No.2 Wing HQ at 19:00 hours to a location on the Hartensteinlaan or Nassaulaan just north of the Hotel Hartenstein.46 The relocation may have sparked an incident recalled by then thirteen-year-old Henke Capelle, who, it will be recalled, had been sheltering for several days with the rest of his family and the neighbouring Mager family in the cellar of his home, No. 35 Nassaulaan:

  One dark evening all the inhabitants of the houses at the end of our street were ordered by the Englishmen to leave their cellars and prepare to leave our fighting zone. There we stood in the middle of the street, I guess some twenty people with a few bags and cases, looking helplessly around – nobody knew in which direction to go. Suddenly a British officer turned up, ‘What the hell are you people doing here?’ ‘We were told to assemble and leave, but have no idea where to go.’ Our answer obviously amazed him. ‘Back to your cellars on the double! Standing here is life-threatening, for you, too. There is absolutely no possibility for you to get out of here. We are all in this precarious foothold.’ I now believe that it was just a rumour or misinterpretation that caused this episode.47

  The unit on No. 2 Wing’s right flank, Captain John Cormie’s 4th Parachute Squadron RE, dug in near the Sonnenberg, was attacked by some of Panzer Kompanie 224’s flame-throwing tanks at 09:10. Fortunately for the Sappers, the tanks were not adequately protected by Bataillon Helle and experienced some difficulty in identifying the British positions among the trees and undergrowth. One of the vehicles, likely Kompanie commander Oberleutnant Alfred May’s personal Somua S35, ran over a daisy chain of twelve No. 75 Hawkins Anti-tank Grenades that were set off by Sapper William Coulsting. The resultant explosion killed some of the crew and the vehicle was totally destroyed when flames from the subsequent fire detonated its ammunition.48 The attack was repulsed by 11:15 at a cost of five British casualties; another vehicle which was observed firing its flame gun on the Squadron frontage twenty minutes later was reportedly crippled by a PIAT. The Germans then fell back on pounding the British positions with artillery and mortars until launching an infantry attack at 16:10.49 According to Lance-Corporal Maurice Weymouth and Sapper Arthur Ayers some of the attackers may have donned Denison smocks and maroon berets as a ruse to allow them to close on the British positions, although another eyewitness pointed out that SS camouflage smocks and helmet covers appeared very similar to British Airborne kit. Some recalled the Germans calling out claiming to be Poles.50

  Be that as it may, the German attack was repelled by concentrated fire from six Bren guns, although one group of SS managed to outflank the Sappers’ position by infiltrating through the woods south of the Sonnenberg and came within ten yards of the position occupied by Sappers Philip Hyatt and J. Bromilow before being spotted. Bromilow called a warning and threw a grenade, but the explosion drove some of the Germans forward rather than back. Hyatt left his slit trench to attack a German machine-gun team with a pistol and hand grenades, killing several and driving off the remainder. Hyatt then took possession of the abandoned weapon and dragged one of the enemy wounded to the relative safety of the British perimeter; the wounded prisoner died before he could receive treatment but Hyatt was subsequently awarded the Military Medal for his part in the episode.51 Like their Glider Pilot neighbours, the 4th Parachute Squadron positions held firm until the German attacks died away with the onset of darkness. Although the Airborne soldiers had no way of knowing, they had also claimed a high-level SS scalp, albeit not actually on the battlefield. Sturmbannführer Paul Helle, the commander of Bataillon Helle, had begun a less than spectacular performance by narrowly escaping capture while sleeping in the Zuid Ginkel café during the fight against the 4th Parachute Brigade’s drop onto DZ Y in the afternoon of 18 September, and matters did not improve thereafter; as Standartenführer Lippert noted at the time: ‘Helle was not a field officer of any experience, and had little idea of his own situation, never mind that of the enemy.’52 Helle’s lack of competence was unsurprising given that SS Wacht Bataillon 3 had been formed primarily to administer and guard the concentration camp system in Holland, but the losses sustained by his unit and probably more importantly by Panzer Kompanie 224 led to Lippert relieving Helle of his command on 22 September. The decision was confirmed by Helle’s superior, Obergruppenführer und General der Polizei Hanns Rauter, who also removed SS Wacht Bataillon 3 from the Arnhem fighting; Bataillon Helle was disbanded and its surviving personnel were integrated into SS Bataillon Eberwein.53

  Events followed a similar pattern on the east face of the Divisional perimeter. The German bombardment on LONSDALE Force’s positions by the Oosterbeek Old Church resumed at 06:30, followed thirty minutes later by platoon-strength infantry attacks from Kampfgruppe Harder on the 1st and 3rd Parachute Battalions’ positions. These attacks were repulsed without loss but both units were attacked again by infantry reportedly supported by two tanks, at 09:00 and 11:00 respectively. The armoured vehicles, probably StuGs from Sturmgeschütze Brigade 280, were driven back by anti-tank guns while the supporting infantry were repulsed with small-arms and accurate 3-inch mortar fire directed by Sergeant Harold Whittingham from the 1st Battalion’s Mortar Platoon.54

  The remnants of the 11th Parachute Battalion were pulled out of the line at 09:00 for a ‘much needed rest, clean up and food’ at the Oosterbeek Old Church. As we have seen, the rest lasted until 11:00, when 1st Airlanding Brigade HQ ordered the Battalion redeployed south of the Benedendorpsweg as a backstop to BREESE Force, facing south-west toward the municipal gasworks, where it spent the day rebuffing German infantry attacks from the vicinity of the municipal gasworks.55 The 2nd South Staffords’ position near the Laundry also came under mortar and artillery bombardment from early on, although this did not prevent Captain John Dickens gathering the party of thirty men under CanLoan Lieutenant Arthur Godfrey, also destined to be reinforcements for BREESE Force.56 For his part, Major Cain again armed himself with a PIAT and resumed his tank stalking activities when the Germans turned their attention to the Laundry position and had another lucky escape whilst tackling what was reported as a Tiger tank but was again likely a StuG, as the only Tige
r unit in the area had been despatched south to Elst. Whatever the target vehicle, on Cain’s sixth shot the bomb detonated prematurely as it left the PIAT and the resultant explosion knocked him out and ruptured both his eardrums. On recovering consciousness he nonetheless insisted on returning to his command after basic first aid, with his sole concession to his damaged ears being to stuff them with strips torn from a field dressing.57

  The 1st Airlanding Light Regiment continued to provide artillery support from its gun positions located just behind LONSDALE Force despite the German bombardment, although responsibility for 1 Battery’s guns had to be divided up between 2 and 3 Batteries due to officer casualties. All twenty-one of the Regiment’s guns remained in action and the link with 64th Medium Regiment remained extant. The guns were controlled by Major James Linton from 2 Battery and Captains John Lee and Raymond Stevens from 1 Battery and No. 1 Forward Observation Unit respectively. 2 Battery was menaced by a German armoured vehicle in the afternoon, but the threat was nullified by a tank-hunting party of Glider Pilots led by Major Robert Croot from G Squadron, which reportedly destroyed one vehicle.

  Not all the RA casualties occurred at the Light Regiment position. Major Arthur Norman-Walker was present at the 1st Airlanding Brigade HQ in the late afternoon, although it is unclear in precisely what capacity: the Brigade HQ War Diary refers to him commanding 1 Battery as the Brigade’s dedicated battery, while the Light Regiment records refer to him commanding 3 Battery at this point. Major Norman-Walker was killed at around 17:00 during a particularly fierce bout of German mortar fire, ironically just as the Brigade HQ’s new command post with overhead protection was being completed. He was replaced by Captain Basil Taylor from 2 Battery and Captain Christopher McMillen from No. 1 Forward Observation Unit, McMillen carrying a radio set.58