The 43rd Division’s Tactical HQ passed through 130 Infantry Brigade in the vicinity of Uden, approximately seventeen miles south-west of Nijmegen, at 03:45 on 21 September and presumably arrived in the area of the city with or before that formation at some point before 08:30; the remainder of Division HQ arrived at 20:30.90 The Division was thus in place to receive orders for the following day from 30 Corps, instructions to secure the Arnhem road and ‘with maximum speed to contact 1 Airborne Div area Oosterbeek ferry…subsequently passing one brigade group over Nederrijn’.91 Major-General Thomas responded by issuing his own orders at 22:30 on 21 September for an advance north out of the Nijmegen bridgehead the following day, employing two brigades. On the left, Brigadier Hubert Essame’s 214 Infantry Brigade, reinforced with Sherman tanks from the 4th/7th Dragoon Guards, a Troop of self-propelled 17-Pounder anti-tank guns commanded by a Lieutenant Bellamy and support from a Troop of self-propelled 25-Pounder guns and a Royal Artillery Field Regiment, was to cross the River Waal at 07:00 via the Nijmegen railway bridge and angle north-west to Driel. On the right, Brigadier Gerard Mole’s 129 Infantry Brigade, reinforced with three Squadrons of Sherman tanks from the 13th/18th Hussars, was to cross the River Waal via the Nijmegen road bridge no earlier than 10:00 and advance up the Nijmegen‒Arnhem road to secure the Arnhem road bridge.92
129 Brigade’s advance to Nijmegen does not appear to have been prosecuted with the urgency the orders suggested or the situation required. The methodical approach march mandated by 43rd Division HQ meant the Brigade took over thirty hours to cover the sixty-odd miles from Neerpelt and as a result did not reach Nijmegen until 11:00 on 22 September.93 While the remainder of the Brigade stayed south of the River Waal, Lieutenant-Colonel E. L. Luce’s 4th Wiltshires and tanks from 13th/18th Hussars crossed the river at some point after midday and advanced straight up the west side of the Nijmegen‒Arnhem railway line toward the station at Ressen, with Major A. D. Parsons’ A Company in the lead. The railway line ran through an area of close country and orchards incised by five-foot-wide drainage ditches, where 10 SS Panzer Division had established its defensive line the previous day, and Major Parson’s men became embroiled in a vicious, small-unit infantry battle at close quarters, with armoured support largely precluded by the ditches and the SS stubbornly contesting every inch of ground. Lieutenant-Colonel Luce tried to outflank the SS positions by pushing his B and C Companies forward but they too were pulled up by heavy German fire, as was an attempt to push tanks along the main road running parallel to the railway line at last light. British infantry losses were heavy, along with up to four Shermans from the 13th/18th Hussars and two more from the 2nd Irish Guards. The 5th Wiltshires crossed the Waal in the evening and expanded the attack frontage by pushing up the east side of the railway line, but when the fighting ceased for the night at around 22:00, the British advance remained 400 yards short of Ressen station and with barely fifty yards separating the British and German front lines.94
Brigadier Essame’s 214 Infantry Brigade enjoyed a more rapid approach march to Nijmegen, although events outwith its control conspired to nullify the time saved. Moving off from Hechtel in Belgium at 18:00 on Wednesday 20 September, the Brigade passed through Eindhoven at midnight on 20 September to reach Uden, midway between Veghel and Grave at 09:45 the following morning; lead elements reached a harbour area west of Nijmegen at 11:30 on Thursday 21 September, a journey time of seventeen-and-a-half hours to cover around seventy miles.95 The Brigade was then briefed by Major-General Thomas in person, who reportedly stressed the need for the utmost speed and ordered a battalion group pushed across the River Waal at 14:00. At this point things began to go awry. The Brigade’s lead unit, Lieutenant-Colonel H. A. Borradaile’s 7th Somerset Light Infantry was unable to access the Nijmegen railway bridge before 15:00 because strengthening work was being carried out, and the structure was not cleared to support tanks until 16:15. For some reason part of the Battalion’s A Echelon crossed the Waal via the road bridge, but when the bulk of the Battalion finally moved off at 15:30 for a concentration area near the south end of the Nijmegen railway bridge, it became entangled with elements of the Guards Armoured Division and the ever-present crowds of celebrating Dutch civilians in the outskirts of the city. As a result, the 7th Somersets did not reach the concentration area until 19:30, and only then because Colonel Borradaile ordered his Battalion to temporarily abandon its vehicles and move on foot. The Brigade move across the Waal was thus postponed until the following morning as darkness overtook events.96
In the meantime Brigadier Essame had gone forward over the Waal to reconnoitre the ground and discuss matters with his opposite number from 5 Guards Armoured Brigade, Brigadier Norman Gwatkin. The latter identified the village of Oosterhout as the western pivot of the German defensive line and therefore the key to breaking through to Driel; the newly arrived 1st Battalion Welsh Guards had put in an attack on the village between 17:00 and dusk on Thursday 21 September that reportedly knocked out three German tanks before being called off with the onset of darkness. Essame appears to have intended to move his lead battalion across the Waal during the night in readiness for a first-light attack to take advantage of the early morning river mist, and remained north of the river for the night in anticipation. He was therefore not best pleased at the 7th Somerset Light Infantry’s failure to cross the River Waal as ordered on 21 September and greeted Lieutenant-Colonel Borradaile with a terse ‘Where the hell have you been?’ when the Battalion finally crossed the Nijmegen railway bridge at 07:00 on Friday 22 September.97 The 7th Somerset Light Infantry’s D Company, commanded by Major Sidney Young, was tasked to carry out a hasty attack on Oosterhout at around 10:00. Major Young was badly wounded whilst carrying out his pre-attack reconnaissance. The attack then ran into stiff resistance from SS infantry supported by at least one tank, and an attempt to outflank the village from the east by another company was also rebuffed. A deliberate battalion attack was then organised, preceded by a forty-minute barrage employing brigade-, division- and corps-level artillery carried out despite an ‘alarming shortage of artillery ammunition’. The 7th Somerset Light Infantry’s A and B Companies went in at 15:20 supported by a troop of Sherman tanks from A Squadron, 4th/7th Dragoon Guards and Oosterhout was cleared and secured in 100 minutes of fighting. Two German tanks were knocked out, a third captured intact along with an 88mm gun, and 139 ‘sullen’ SS troops taken prisoner. British casualties for the day numbered nineteen wounded including Major Young, who died of his wounds two days later.98
While Oosterhout was being cleared and secured the remainder of 214 Infantry Brigade, the 1st Battalion The Worcester Regiment and the 5th Duke of Cornwall’s Light Infantry (DCLI), remained at their concentration area awaiting the order to move; the DCLI was tasked to move through the 7th Somersets and on to Driel once Oosterhout was secured, while the Worcesters were to protect the left flank of the advance by securing Valburg, just over two miles west of Elst. The enforced inactivity for the better part of two days frustrated many. Lieutenant-Colonel George Taylor, commanding the 5th DCLI, was acutely aware that Operation GARDEN was around seventy-two hours behind schedule at this point, and he was unable to see ‘what was holding everything up’. His anxiety was assuaged to some extent by the arrival of a staff Major from 30 Corps HQ at around midday on Friday 22 September. The staff officer informed Taylor that his Battalion column was to be joined shortly by two DUKW amphibious trucks loaded with supplies for the 1st Airborne Division. He explained the gravity of the Airborne formation’s situation and stressed that the DUKWs were to be despatched across the Lower Rhine immediately on arrival at Driel.99 The idea of using DUKWs actually appears to have originated with Taylor, who suggested it when Lieutenant-General Horrocks invited suggestions whilst visiting 214 Brigade’s concentration area the previous day, although Horrocks’ response at the time gave the impression he had dismissed the idea out of hand. The two heavily laden DUKWs arrived as promised at 15:00 but Taylor expressed doubts as to
whether the two loads were sufficient to his Intelligence Officer, Lieutenant David Willcocks.100
The 5th DCLI crossed the River Waal while the 7th Somersets were still fighting in Oosterhout, which was cleared less than two hours before sunset; the western edge of the village was actually secured by B company 5th DCLI as a forming-up point for the Battalion’s advance to Driel. On past GARDEN precedent the approach of darkness ought to have signalled a cessation of operations until the following day, but not in this instance. It is unclear whether it was a brigade-, division- or corps-level initiative or even a unilateral battalion-level decision, but what came next provides an example of the flexibility, lateral thinking and improvisation which had been conspicuously absent from the ground advance up the Airborne Corridor to date. Despite the fading daylight Lieutenant-Colonel Taylor scrapped his existing plan for the advance to Driel to take advantage of the fleeting gap in the German defences created by the fall of Oosterhout, and rejigged his Battalion for a rapid advance via the route followed by the 2nd Household Cavalry Regiment’s armoured cars that morning. The 5th DCLI was hurriedly divided in two. An armoured column consisting of Colonel Taylor’s command group, A and D Companies commanded by Majors Parker and John Fry and a Medium Machine Gun platoon was formed. It used the Battalion’s integral armoured troop carriers and the Sherman tanks of Major Richards’ B Squadron, 4th/7th Dragoon Guards as troop transports. The remainder, Major Hingston’s B Company and Major Arthur Kitchen’s C Company, were to follow on in a second column, moving largely on foot with the Battalion’s support personnel and unarmoured wheeled transport.101
The impromptu reorganisation took time and the armoured column did not move off into the gathering dusk until some point after 19:00. They went despite Lieutenant-Colonel Taylor spotting two Tiger tanks to the north of Oosterhout shortly beforehand. The risk was considered worth taking as the Battalion route ran west from the village but was courageous nonetheless, especially given the near-mythical status accorded to the Tiger tank by Allied forces at that time; Colonel Taylor instructed Lieutenant Willcocks, who also saw the enemy vehicles, to withhold the information to safeguard morale. Taylor later justified his decision on the grounds that delay would have squandered the window of opportunity created by the capture of Oosterhout: ‘If we had waited five minutes more...I knew the road would have been closed again.’102 Moving with all available speed the armoured portion of the column moved west along the north bank of the River Waal to Slijk‒Ewijk, then north-west to Valburg where the column had to contend with crowds of enthusiastic Dutch civilians, primed by the earlier passage of Lieutenant Bereda-Fialkowski’s bicycle patrol and the 2nd Household Cavalry’s armoured cars. From there the column veered north directly to Driel and the 5th DCLI’s vanguard reached the southern outskirts of the village at around 20:00, having covered around ten miles in approximately thirty minutes.103 This puts the time taken for the relatively benign road march to Nijmegen into perspective. What could have been achieved had the Guards Armoured Division displayed a similar degree of urgency and flexibility upon securing the Nijmegen road bridge in the evening of 20 September, or if the formation had displayed more application in its eventual attack toward Bemmel in the afternoon of 21 September?104
The 5th DCLI’s run into Driel was undoubtedly rapid, and especially so in comparison with the GARDEN advance to that point, but it did not run totally smoothly and involved two serious incidents, the first of which would be classed as a Blue-on-Blue today. The approach of the British armoured column was heard by the Polish paratroopers in Driel, first by a patrol from the 2nd Battalion probing south along the Dorpstraat in search of Kampfgruppe Brinkmann, and then by the men of the 4th Company dug in covering the southern sector of the Polish Brigade’s perimeter. Sergeant Michal Iwaskow was concerned that a renewed German attack employing heavier armour would overwhelm the lightly armed paratroopers, as their organic anti-tank guns were north of the Lower Rhine.105 Lieutenant Young was therefore prevailed upon to investigate with his armoured vehicles, accompanied by Sergeant Iwaskow and Lieutenant Lukjan Zuchowski, second-in-command of the 5th Company. Recognising the distinctive silhouette of a Sherman tank Young quickly ordered his vehicles to ignite yellow smoke grenades, the standard friendly recognition sign, while the paratroopers deployed their cerise Day-Glo recognition panels. It was at this critical juncture that the lead Sherman, commanded by a Corporal Reboulf, ran over an anti-tank mine laid earlier by the paratroopers, as did the following tank. Reboulf’s crew, having spotted Young’s armoured vehicles, reacted swiftly to the perceived attack with two armour-piercing rounds. The first grazed the left side of Lieutenant Young’s Daimler Armoured Car, tearing off the mudguard and spare wheel and blowing an otherwise unhurt Sergeant Iwaskow into a roadside ditch. The second struck the Daimler Dingo Scout Car commanded by Corporal ‘Mac’ McNeill on the right side of the glacis and decapitated the driver, Trooper Reginald Holmes; he was buried in Driel churchyard with full military honours the following day.106 Assuming the tanks were manned by German troops, Lieutenant Zuchowski immediately set about stalking them with a PIAT team but the potentially calamitous confrontation was averted by Lieutenant Young, who had dismounted to move forward with Zuchowski; on hearing English voices emanating from the halted Shermans he was able to rein in the paratroopers and presumably identify himself to the tank crewmen, and thus prevent further fratricide.107
The second incident occurred at the tail of the armoured column at around the time the head reached Driel. The route from Valburg to Driel involved negotiating road junctions and a motorcycle despatch rider was stationed at these junctions to ensure all adhered to the correct route, as per standard operating procedure. At one crossroads dubbed De Hoop (The Hope) by the locals the bulk of the armoured column had passed on toward Driel when another group of vehicles approached from the direction of Elst. Assuming they were friendly vehicles travelling by a different route, the despatch rider signalled them onto the road to Driel and it was only when they drew abreast he saw they were marked with black crosses. The vehicles were actually three Tiger I tanks from schwere Panzer Kompanie Hummel from Kampfgruppe Knaust and at least two Panthers from SS Panzer Regiment 10, accompanied by around a dozen infantry and a motorcycle outrider; the British despatch rider managed to pass the tanks and raised the alarm at Driel.108 Had the German vehicles arrived at the junction very slightly earlier or later there would have been carnage; as it was they slotted into a lucky gap that had opened up in the 5th DCLI armoured column because A Company in the rear was unable to keep up with the speedier vehicles ahead of it. In addition, A Company’s portion of the column had also become spaced out; by the halfway point between Valburg and Driel Major Parker’s Jeep, two M3 Half-tracks and a 15-Hundredweight Bedford truck had drawn 600 yards ahead of the slower Bren Carrier driven by a Private Rogers transporting Company Sergeant Major (CSM) Reg Philp and a Private Tucker. The last vehicle in the column, another Bren Carrier carrying Lieutenant J. Olding, trailed another 200 yards behind CSM Philp.
Major Parker’s group thus came upon the enemy tanks at speed and although they did not see their black cross markings until actually overtaking them, the British vehicles were able to accelerate out of danger and reached Driel unscathed; the Germans could not have recognised them. At the tail end of the A Company column CSM Philp’s Bren Carrier almost made it past the tanks as well, but Private Rogers was obliged to perform an emergency stop when the two lead tanks veered across the road and stopped, leaving the Carrier touching the front of one of them. Showing remarkable presence of mind CSM Philp put a burst of fire into one of the turret crew who attempted to speak to them, using a captured German MG of some kind according to one account, before ordering his men to abandon the Carrier for the shelter of the reed-filled roadside ditch. Fortunately for the Riflemen, they were too close for the tank to bring its bow or co-axial machine-guns to bear, although CSM Philp banged his head on the tank’s main gun barrel as he went over the side of the Carrier
. After ascertaining the strength of the German force Philp made his way south accompanied by Private Rogers to warn the unarmoured column of the danger. As the last Carrier in the group had witnessed events with sufficient time to stop he was preceded by Lieutenant Olding, who suggested Lieutenant Bellamy deploy his 17-Pounder anti-tank guns as a precaution. The latter remained in place until Major Kitchen and C Company came up. It was decided to detour the soft-skin column to the west to avoid the German tanks. The detour was carried out successfully and the two parts of the Battalion were reunited at Driel at around 21:00, although the German tanks may have clashed with Major Hingston’s B Company at some point.109 In the meantime, Major Parker, correctly surmising that the German tanks would at some point return to Elst, had organised an anti-tank ambush close to De Hoop crossroads where the tanks had first appeared. It is unclear precisely when the party set out or when the ambush was sprung, but it was probably after 21:00, given that the party was accompanied by CSM Philp after he rejoined A Company. After leaving a platoon to act as a firm base midway between Driel and the crossroads, the ambush party moved on to a suitable stretch of road, possibly where CSM Philp had abandoned his Bren Carrier. No. 75 Hawkins mines were placed across the road at the forward end of the kill zone, which was covered by six PIATs briefed to volley-fire on Parker’s order when the lead Tiger tank reached the mines; another chain of mines was to be pulled across the road behind the tanks to prevent them reversing out of danger. Small-arms fire was strictly forbidden unless the ambush group was attacked by enemy infantry, in order to avoid muzzle flashes giving away the ambushers’ location, and total silence was enforced as the Riflemen settled down to wait.
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