Arnhem

by William F Buckingham

  The ambush’s first victim was a German motorcycle combination from Elst, which was destroyed after running over one of the mines. The convoy of tanks eventually approached the ambush site from the opposite direction led by a motorcycle, with the lead tank firing flares every thirty seconds to illuminate the road ahead; Major Parker construed this as an indication that the tank crews were ‘windy’. Whether or not, once the unfortunate motorcyclist had detonated a mine Major Parker ordered all six PIATs to fire on the lead tank, likely a Tiger, just as it reached the mines, which put it out of action immediately. The PIAT gunners, after some very rapid cocking and reloading, meted out the same treatment to the second tank after it moved past its running mate and detonated a mine. The third Tiger tried to reverse away from the ambush but ran over the daisy chain of mines that had been pulled across the road behind it and was thus immobilised before also being knocked out by a PIAT wielded by a Private Brown, who closed to within a few yards to ensure hitting the target. The last two tanks, likely Panthers, also attempted to reverse out of danger but were abandoned by their crews after the vehicles slipped off the edge of the road in the darkness and confusion; one appears to have become bogged in the deep roadside ditch while the other toppled right over onto its roof.110 After reorganising the ambush party moved back to Driel via the firm base location, but not before CSM Philp moved systematically down the row of tanks ensuring they were properly knocked out by dropping grenades into their open hatches. There were two known casualties. Private Brown, who had only recently joined the 5th DCLI, strayed too close to the target when despatching the third Tiger and received a serious eye wound from flying debris. His last words before losing consciousness whilst being evacuated by Jeep were reportedly ‘I don’t care, I knocked the ****** out.’ He was subsequently awarded the Military Medal for his actions.111 The second casualty was CSM Philp, who was wounded in the face by a shell splinter whilst moving between the immobilised tanks as Allied artillery, alerted by the noise and light generated by the ambush, had begun to shell the nearby crossroads. Undaunted Philp continued his self-appointed task, and he was later awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal in recognition of his actions on 22 September 1944.112

  The lead element of the GARDEN relief force finally reached the south bank of the Lower Rhine five days and six hours after the Irish Guards had crossed the start line from the Neerpelt bridgehead at 14:35 0n Sunday 17 September. This was seventy-seven hours behind schedule and around thirty-six hours after Lieutenant-Colonel Frost’s party holding the north end of the Arnhem road bridge had finally been overwhelmed. The question was now whether supplies and reinforcements could be channelled over the Lower Rhine with sufficient speed to prevent the 1st Airborne Division’s shrinking enclave at Oosterbeek from suffering the same fate as Frost’s force.

  18

  D Plus 6

  00:01 to 23:59 Saturday 23 September 1944

  The second attempt to ferry the 1st Independent Polish Parachute Brigade across the Lower Rhine to reinforce the 1st Airborne Division’s Oosterbeek perimeter was scheduled to begin at some point after 21:30 on the night of Friday 22 September. The precise start time varies between accounts, but the unit selected to be first across, Lieutenant Albert Smaczny’s forty-nine-strong 8th Company, moved up to the crossing site between 21:00 and 22:00. It is unclear if they were accompanied by the rest of the 3rd Battalion or if they moved up later. Smaczny was thus in place to see the arrival of the horse and cart carrying the first of the three improvised rafts constructed by Staff Sergeant Wojciech Juhas’ party and the rather noisy unloading onto the road atop the riverside dyke that followed. The raft was manhandled down to the water’s edge and handed over Smaczny’s men who quietly carried it a few yards out into the river before carefully lowering it to the surface, whereupon it promptly sank. The paratroopers fished the raft out and tried again with the same result; it transpired that the raft was constructed from an oak barn door which was simply too heavy to float. The Polish end of the reinforcing effort was thus left reliant upon three bright-yellow aircraft emergency rubber dinghies, two two-seaters and a single four-seater scrounged by Captain Piotr Budziszewski’s Engineers back in England and recovered earlier that day from the Brigade DZ. With his men lined out in the lee of the riverside dyke to await developments, Lieutenant Smaczny watched members of the Brigade’s Engineer Company inflate their three dinghies and then waited, chewing a blade of grass to lessen his craving for a cigarette, until a small, dark-coloured dinghy paddled by a lone British officer emerged out of the gloom.1

  Carrying out the British end of the river crossing had been assigned to Captain Henry Brown and his party from No. 3 Troop 4th Parachute Squadron RE, fresh from its new role as the 4th Parachute Brigade reserve. Brown was summoned to the Hotel Hartenstein by the Division CRE, Lieutenant-Colonel Edmund Myers, late on Friday morning, where he was ordered to make arrangements to ferry Polish troops across the Lower Rhine from Driel. The briefing took place immediately before Myers departed for Driel with Lieutenant-Colonel Charles Mackenzie en route to 30 Corps HQ, and in uncomfortable circumstances, with Captain Brown lying atop Lieutenant Colonel Myers in his slit trench as they sheltered from a sudden German mortar bombardment.2 After collecting the vessels that Myers had cached earlier ‒ six Army-issue two-seater dinghies and a larger RAF dinghy likely salvaged from a downed aircraft ‒ Brown told off between twelve and twenty-four of his Sappers for the mission, selecting older men for their superior stamina.3 The party moved off for the Lower Rhine at 19:45 in two Jeeps loaded with the deflated dinghies, reels of marker tape and drums of signal wire, accompanied by an unnamed liaison officer from 1st Airborne Division HQ equipped with a radio. On reaching the water’s edge Brown organised a defensive perimeter around his chosen crossing point, a 400-yard stretch of bank located among a series of protective stone groynes projecting out into the river. He then paddled alone across the Lower Rhine to establish contact, making landfall in front of Lieutenant Smaczny and his men, being welcomed ‘by a group of Poles some of whom I could just understand’.4 After ascertaining the Polish preparations Brown quickly informed Smaczny that he intended to run the six smaller dinghies back and forth along individual lengths of signal wire, carrying two men per crossing, with the larger craft making their own way in between. Once across, the Poles would be escorted to the Oosterbeek Old Church by a group of Glider Pilots detailed to act as guides under Lieutenant Brian Bottomley, No. 1 Wing’s Intelligence Officer; they were assisted, apparently unofficially, by Captain Alfons Mackowiak from the Polish Liaison Team attached to 1st Airborne Division HQ. The Poles asked Brown to take a Polish officer back with him to liaise over the crossing, although one source refers to the return passenger being a signaller. Whatever the identity of any passenger, Brown returned safely to the north bank where he received an enthusiastic welcome from his men, who had decided that they would not see him again.5

  The crossing appears to have begun at 23:00, with the first increment of Lieutenant Smaczny’s men employing the Polish craft in the wake of Captain Brown.6 Staff Sergeant Juhas paddled the lead dinghy with a shovel, as the Poles had not managed to purloin paddles when appropriating their dinghies. The crossing took around forty-five minutes; 1st Airlanding Brigade HQ reported the arrival of Polish paratroopers at the 1st Airlanding Light Regiment’s location by the Oosterbeek Old Church at 23:45.7 At least one more increment that included Lieutenant Smaczny appears to have crossed using the Polish dinghies while the British Sappers were still organising their own craft, and the Poles’ use of their own craft appears to have brought them onto the north bank earlier than anticipated. This is suggested by the fact that 1st Airlanding Brigade HQ reported Poles missing the guides from the Brigade Defence Platoon because they had landed at the wrong place, although Captain Brown’s account makes no mention of it.8 This may have been why Lieutenant Smaczny’s party was reportedly guided away from the crossing point to 1st Airlanding Brigade HQ rather than the Oosterbeek Old Churc
h by an unidentified Glider Pilot, who unwittingly gave the Poles a dramatic introduction into the realities of the Oosterbeek pocket, der Hexen Kessel (the Witches’ Cauldron). Despite repeated reassurances that he knew the way, the alleged Glider Pilot appears to have become disoriented in the dark streets after passing through an impressively silent and alert British platoon location. Lieutenant Smaczny recalled hearing the sound of cooking pots and voices in what he thought was Dutch before a German sentry called the alarm and the ensuing blizzard of small-arms fire from German troops ensconced in buildings on both sides pinned the party down in a narrow, glass- and rubble-strewn street. The Poles were only able to break contact after Smaczny organised a volley of hand-grenades and put down covering fire with his Sten gun. The Glider Pilot guide was killed in the process and one of Smaczny’s men was wounded in the thigh. On trying to retrace their steps the Poles were then pinned down for several fraught minutes by fire from the British platoon they had passed through earlier, until Lieutenant Smaczny managed to establish their identity by hollering over the noise of the gunfire. The Lieutenant commanding the British position, perhaps unsurprisingly, had no knowledge of any reinforcing effort across the Lower Rhine, but had one of his men finally led Smaczny and his men to their proper rendezvous point at the Oosterbeek Old Church. There they found a number of other men from the 8th Company and were able to snatch some sleep.9

  Back at the crossing point things were not going well for Captain Brown. The plan to haul pairs of dinghies back and forth had to be abandoned as the signal wire was not strong enough to withstand the current, and simply snapped once the dinghies left the sheltered waters between the stone groynes. The Polish paratroopers thus had to be ferried across individually and more precious time was lost as the current tended to carry the craft downstream on the southern leg, obliging the rowers to drag them laboriously across the sodden polder back to the crossing site. The larger, four-seat RAF craft proved ‘very difficult to control and almost impossible to steer’ and one sank just after leaving the south bank, its passengers swimming to safety. The other was carried a mile or more downstream by the current before running onto the north bank; the men aboard eventually made their way back to the relative safety of the Oosterbeek perimeter. Suspecting that something was afoot the Germans began firing machine-guns across the river and dropping mortar bombs along both banks and into the water, followed by rocket salvos from SS Werfergruppe Nickmann located behind the Oosterbeek Laag railway embankment east of the crossing point.10 The rowers applied themselves fully to their task: Lieutenant David Storrs from HQ Royal Engineers, who turned up to help after the crossing was underway, reportedly made twenty-three round trips in the course of the night for example. But the Sappers had been fighting virtually non-stop since arriving with the second lift five days earlier, and Captain Brown unsurprisingly noted a diminution of his Sappers’ performance as the night passed, to the extent he was obliged to patrol the defensive perimeter around the crossing point repeatedly kicking their feet to keep them awake. Brown also had an additional problem in the shape of an unidentified Polish liaison Officer, who constantly pestered the harassed and increasingly tetchy Sapper Captain for greater speed. When Brown’s patience finally ran out he pointed his Browning pistol at the Pole and said quietly ‘If you don’t fuck off, I’ll shoot you.’11 This did the trick as the liaison Officer promptly disappeared, to be replaced shortly thereafter by Lieutenant Henri Podzorski, the Polish liaison Officer attached to 4th Parachute Brigade HQ; Brown suspected Podzorski had approached him at the behest of the unnamed liaison officer to establish if the Sapper Captain was still in his right mind.12

  Matters did not proceed as planned with the two DUKWs loaded with supplies. Having been briefed on the urgency of the 1st Airborne Division’s situation and on speaking to Lieutenant-Colonel Mackenzie on arrival at Driel, Lieutenant-Colonel Taylor wanted to push straight on to the Arnhem road bridge with the DUKWs. He was dissuaded on learning that there had been no contact from that quarter for around thirty-six hours, and presumably also on being informed that Sperrverband Harzer was securely dug in along the Arnhem‒Nijmegen railway embankment between Driel and the road bridge. Taylor thus accepted Major-General Sosabowski’s assurance that measures would be taken to get the supplies across the Lower Rhine as rapidly as possible.13 The dykes, ditches and sodden polder along the river line were impassable to the unwieldy amphibious vehicles however, as ascertained by the earlier survey by Captain Budziszewski and Lieutenant-Colonel Myers. The only option was the paved road leading down to the Heveadorp ferry, several hundred yards west of the crossing point and likely outside the Polish perimeter. Guiding the DUKWs down such a narrow roadway would have been a tricky business in daylight, let alone on a moonless night with the tactical situation precluding the use of lights, and according to one source matters were complicated further by thick riverside mist. The result was predictable, with both DUKWs running off the edge of the paved surface and becoming inextricably bogged in the deep roadside ditch. Had the vehicles made it across the river and delivered their supplies, they might have made a significant difference in the number of Polish paratroopers shuttled into the Oosterbeek pocket. As it was, the DUKWs appear to have remained bogged in place for the remainder of the battle and while it is unclear what became of the supplies they were carrying, it is highly unlikely they made their way across the Lower Rhine, given the ongoing dearth of craft, personnel and time.14

  The personnel ferrying effort was running out of steam despite the best efforts of all involved. At 03:00 Captain Budziszewski returned to Sosabowski’s HQ in Driel to report that it would be impossible to move much more than the forty-nine men of 8th Company before dawn. Most ‒ and possibly all but one ‒ of the dinghies had been lost to enemy fire, accidents or the current and the 8th Company had suffered fifteen per cent casualties whilst waiting on the south bank, mostly killed. Sosabowski therefore ordered the understrength 3rd Battalion to return to its positions at 04:00.15 It is unclear if there was any coordination between the Poles and Captain Brown, but the latter also terminated the effort and withdrew the 4th Parachute Squadron party to the Oosterbeek Old Church at some point between 04:00 and 05:00. It then transpired that one of the RE party, Lance-Corporal Michael Flannery, had been inadvertently left on the south bank. Brown returned to the river with a reconnaissance boat and personally retrieved the missing man ‒ that success did little to dispel a general feeling that the Sappers had failed in their mission.16 Just fifty-two men had been ferried across the Lower Rhine in the four hours or so from 23:00 although only thirty-six, all from Lieutenant Smaczny’s 8th Company, appear to have made it to the rendezvous at the Oosterbeek Old Church.17 The remainder either ended up in different parts of the 1st Airborne Division perimeter or were drowned, killed or wounded during the crossing or on reaching the north bank; the wounded were shuttled back to Driel, presumably to avoid burdening the 1st Airborne Division’s already overstretched medical resources.18

  ***

  Saturday 23 September in Oosterbeek dawned grey, rainy and blanketed in river mist, with first light marked by a resumption of the German bombardment.19 On the western face of the Airborne perimeter the 1st Border’s positions along the Van Borsselenweg came under fire at 05:20 followed an hour-and-a-half later by the units in the vicinity of the Laundry and Oosterbeek Old Church at the southern extremity of the eastern face.20 Shells and mortar bombs began to land in the area of the Hotel Hartenstein at approximately 07:30 and, in an unwelcome contrast to the previous day, with a particularly heavy strafe on the 7th KOSB’s positions along the Ommershoflaan on the north face of the perimeter at the same time.21 The bombardment heralded a resumption of the German strategy of concentric attacks against the 1st Airborne Division’s perimeter, beginning with the positions held by elements of Major Bernard Wilson’s 21st Independent Parachute Company on the west side of the Utrechtseweg‒Stationsweg crossroads.

  The survivors of the 10th Parachute Battalion, led
by Captain Peter Barron from the 2nd Airlanding Anti-tank Battery, had been cut off by Kampfgruppe Möller in the evening of Thursday 21 September and were still holding a position east of the Utrechtseweg‒Stationsweg crossroads and thus outside the Divisional perimeter to the front of the 21st Independent Company. Major Wilson considered the position too far forward to be tenable, a not unreasonable view given that two attempts to reach the 10th Battalion party the previous afternoon had been beaten back by German fire, but Brigadier Hackett was insistent that Wilson relieved and then maintained the outpost, ostensibly because it protected the Divisional Main Dressing Station (MDS) located in the Hotels Schoonoord and Vreewijk. Hackett may also have been motivated by the fact that the 10th Parachute Battalion was an original constituent of his 4th Parachute Brigade, while Major Wilson’s unit was not; interestingly, Hackett does not appear to have informed Division HQ of the substitution either, as there is no mention of it in the Division HQ War Diary, which refers to the forward position being held by the 10th Battalion several hours after it had been relieved.22 Major Wilson was reluctantly obliged to order Lieutenant Hugh Ashmore and No. 3 Platoon to relieve the marooned paratroopers, with the changeover being complete by 03:00.23 The relief appears to have been carried out without incident and the 10th Parachute Battalion party was assigned a reserve position on the Utrechtseweg just west of the crossroads near Hackett’s Brigade HQ to snatch some rest. The Battalion’s semi-official history described the scene: ‘The rain had ceased and as the stars again became visible the small band of 10th Battalion defenders was withdrawn from its shell-shattered positions to a new group of houses to the west.’24 They were joined at around 06:30 by Lieutenant Smaczny and his men from the 1st Polish Independent Parachute Brigade, who had been led up from the Oosterbeek Old Church by the wounded but still functioning Captain Barron.25 He and Lieutenant White were subsequently relieved as temporary commanders of the 10th Battalion party, which was handed over to Lieutenant William Grose from the 11th Parachute Battalion; Grose had been serving as a Junior Liaison Officer at Division HQ and was reassigned at around 07:35.26