19
D Plus 7
00:01 to 23:59 Sunday 24 September 1944
Major-General Sosabowski and the portion of the 1st Polish Independent Parachute Brigade on the south bank of the Lower Rhine gathered in Driel for their third attempt to cross the river to reinforce the 1st Airborne Division at around 20:00 on Saturday 23 September 1944. The eighteen assault boats promised by 130 Brigade did not materialise as arranged at 20:30 but a delivery of food, consisting of a variety of emergency rations gathered up and forwarded by 30 Corps augmented with local produce, did. Once this largesse had been distributed, the paratroopers moved off for the concentration area marked out by Captain Budziszewski’s Engineer Company, leaving a party to bring the assault boats forward when they arrived; it is unclear if the carrying party was drawn from the Engineer Company or from the wider Brigade. The paratroopers moved silently through the rainy darkness along a muddy track that paralleled the riverside dyke, partly illuminated by a nearby burning farm building. The firelight revealed a number of containers from that afternoon’s supply drop dangling from nearby trees, although there was no attempt to collect them. On arrival at the concentration area, which encompassed the edge of an orchard and a stretch of polder in the lee of the riverside dyke, the Poles split into their pre-arranged boat groups and settled down to wait in the wet grass.1 They were joined at some point by Major-General Sosabowski, who established a forward HQ by the dyke from which to monitor the crossing.2
The British side of the crossing was controlled by the 1st Airborne Division CRE Lieutenant-Colonel Edmund Myers assisted by Major Hugh Maguire from Division HQ, who was recently returned to duty after being wounded; Maguire was commanding a party drawn from the 1st Airlanding Brigade’s Defence Platoon tasked to guide the Poles to an area of slit trenches where they were to spend the night.3 The Poles were also planning to provide their own security. Men from Captain Budziszewski’s Engineer Company were briefed to cross in the initial wave to provide security on the north bank and assist in turning the assault boats around.4 A primary source suggests that Lieutenant Henry Brown and a party of twenty Sappers from the 4th Parachute Squadron RE accompanied by a Lance-Sergeant Lake from the 9th (Airborne) Field Company RE were again involved, although this appears to be unlikely.5 Some of the Poles already on the north bank of the Lower Rhine were certainly involved. Captain Ludwik Zwolanski spent the first part of the night in the cellar of the Hotel Hartenstein with the rest of the Polish Liaison Team before moving off for the riverbank at just before 02:00, accompanied by War Correspondent Marek Swiecicki. Behind them Major-General Urquhart was reportedly communicating with Sosabowski via the radio set operated by a Cadet Corporal Pajak, although there is no mention of such contact in the official records or either senior officer’s personal accounts. Zwolanski and Swiecicki were preceded by Captain Alfons Mackowiak, also from the Liaison Team, who, as an artillery officer, had been working with the 1st Airlanding Light Regiment; Mackowiak had also acted as a seemingly unofficial guide during the previous night’s crossing.6
The assault boats finally arrived in Driel between 00:20 and 00:30 on a number of DUKWs whose drivers wasted no time in departing once their cargo had been unloaded. The arrival of the vessels was just the beginning of the Pole’s problems. The commander of 130 Brigade had promised Sosabowski’s Chief-of-Staff twenty-four large assault boats capable of carrying sixteen to eighteen men apiece. However, the DUKWs delivered just twelve collapsible wood and canvas assault boats reassigned from the 4th Dorsets, reportedly as previously indicated survivors from the assault crossing of the River Waal by the 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment on 20 September. The vessels had a total capacity of around sixteen men and as the Poles intended to crew each boat with four of Captain Budziszewski’s Engineers, the number of passengers was reduced accordingly.7 While the Polish accounts give the impression that they crewed the craft themselves, at least some appear to have been manned by Sappers from 3 Platoon, 204 Field Company RE from the 43rd Division’s divisional assets, which moved up from a harbour area at the north end of the Nijmegen road bridge at 21:00 on 23 September.8
The craft substitution rendered the Pole’s careful division of men and equipment into boat parties redundant and they were thus obliged to reorganise in the concentration area with darkness, the need for stealth and sporadic German mortar and artillery fire hampering officers and NCOs in identifying and reordering men and equipment; the process was further complicated by tired paratroopers falling asleep during the process. Consequently, it was over two hours before the reorganisation was complete and the crossing could commence, covered by the Polish Brigade’s mortars and the 43rd Division’s artillery, the latter reportedly firing at maximum range; one source also refers to the 4th/7th Dragoon Guards’ Sherman tanks firing across the river.9 Carrying the 200-pound assault boats in addition to their personal weapons, kit and other equipment, the first dozen boat parties made their way down the slippery polder, manhandled the boats over the dyke and across the sucking mud to the water’s edge at 03:00.10 The parties may also have included more men than the vessels could actually carry to ease the burden; Lance-Corporal Boleslav Kuzniar recalled the boat he helped carry and launch being filled up as he struggled with a kit-bag filled with signals equipment and having to find a place on another, for example.11
German observation of the crossing site was assisted by illumination from the burning building on the south bank, the blazing roof timbers of which War Correspondent Swiecicki likened to ‘an apocalyptic cross’.12 This was increased with liberal use of flares and by opening and igniting a main at the Oosterbeek municipal gas works just west of the crossing point, which Major-General Sosabowski assumed to be the result of Allied or German artillery setting fire to a building.13 The volume of German artillery and mortar fire increased as soon as the Poles left the cover of the dyke to move down to the water’s edge, inspissated with sustained machine-gun fire from weapons sited on both banks to cover embarkation and debarkation points and the intervening stretch of river itself. On the south bank Major-General Sosabowski recalled seeing an assault boat floating ‘empty and abandoned downstream, because all the crew had been killed or wounded’, while on the northern polder Captain Zwolanski and War Correspondent Swiecicki watched German tracer rounds from both sides of the river converge on one unfortunate assault boat and follow it all the way across, before swinging back to engage another vessel.14 The boat may have been the one carrying Lance-Corporal Kuzniar, which reached the middle of the river before being fully illuminated by a flare popping overhead and then raked with tracer rounds that set fire to the vessel’s canvas sides and wounded one paratrooper in the arm. The horrified pause the incident elicited was ended by an angry order from the rear of the boat that set all the occupants rowing as fast as they could.15 The initial waves of the crossing carried Captain Ignacy Gazurek and men from his 3rd Battalion including the Battalion Padre, Reverend Hubert Misiuda; Gazurek had refused the Padre permission to accompany the Battalion on the not unreasonable grounds that carrying unarmed passengers was a waste of effort, but Misiuda ignored the order and sneaked aboard one of the assault boats in the confusion. In another boat 2nd Lieutenant Leon Prochowski, a Platoon commander in the 9th Company, was wounded in the leg by a round that passed through the man rowing in front of him.16
On reaching the north bank the assault boats rapidly unloaded their passengers, who required little urging, and repeated the hazardous journey back across the bullet- and shrapnel-frothed water to collect another load, carrying casualties back with them. Major-General Sosabowski recalled that ‘files of stretcher bearers trudged past’ his Forward HQ en route to the Brigade Main Dressing Station in Driel whenever he emerged to check on progress.17 The boat parties were relentlessly organised and chivvied by the officers controlling the embarkation points, Engineer Lieutenants Dawidowicz and Grünbaum. The latter was especially active, briefing and leading parties to the river, assisting with loading and launching boats a
nd on occasion successfully urging the men on with un-officerlike profanity; he was wounded in the face by a shell fragment shortly before the crossing was halted.18 Thanks to their efforts and despite the intensity of the German fire the bulk of the 3rd Battalion was across the river within an hour and the Brigade specialist elements and HQ began to cross. The assault boat ahead of that carrying Private Zbigniew Raschke from Brigade HQ sank after being caught in crossfire which then riddled Raschke’s vessel, hitting 2nd Lieutenant Waclaw Jaworski multiple times and Lance-Sergeant Tomasz Lepalczyk in the head, killing both men.19 The boat carrying Captain Jan Kanty Wardzala, the commander of the Brigade’s Anti-tank Battery and Brigade QM Lieutenant-Colonel Marcin Rotter made landfall safely on the north bank but after being carried downstream by the current. All were taken prisoner, possibly after a brief firefight, by German troops who appear to have allowed the Poles to unload and the assault boat to depart before revealing themselves; the prisoners included an unfortunate and unnamed private who, ironically, had been put aboard the boat by Lieutenant Zbigniew Bossowski, the Anti-tank Battery’s Supply Officer with specific orders to look after Captain Wardzala, ‘no matter what’.20 The also unnamed Engineer Corporal who had paddled the boat reported his suspicion of what had happened to Captain Budziszewski on returning to the south bank, who responded with a blunt ‘You must row harder.’ Budziszewski was wounded in the hand by a shell burst just moments later as he returned the salute of another reporting paratrooper.21
The Poles stubbornly continued to push men across the river until first light began to grey the sky, although traffic was channelled to just one of the crossing points toward the end, possibly because the other had been accurately registered by SS Werfergruppe Nickmann. Unsurprisingly in the stress and confusion, some of the Poles reportedly ‘went astray’ on reaching the north bank and ended up in the 1st Airlanding Regiment’s perimeter near the Oosterbeek Old Church, presumably because the church had been the designated rendezvous for the previous night’s crossing.22 This group included Lance-Corporal Kuzniar and his companions, who saw the church silhouetted against the skyline after moving inland; this may have been further upstream than intended, given that they crossed an area carpeted with German dead and reported spotting the church to their west.23 It may also have included men gathered by Captain Mackowiak, who repeatedly exposed himself to enemy fire to call out to paratroopers struggling with their burdens through the sticky mud extending up from the water’s edge; after gathering a group between thirty and forty strong he handed them over to Captain Zwolanski and War Correspondent Swiecicki, who in turn led them to unspecified British positions near the Oosterbeek Old Church. This group may also have included Lieutenant Prochowski who, on reaching cover, took the opportunity to pull the bullet from his still-functioning leg with his fingers and apply a field dressing to the wound.24 Likely the last boat to reach the north bank carried 2nd Lieutenant Szczesny Relidzinski and some of his men from the Brigade HQ Signal Section, which landed at just before 05:00.25
Precisely who issued the order that brought the crossing to a halt is unclear. Major-General Sosabowski takes the credit in his memoir, but participant testimony suggests it was actually the Deputy Brigade Commander, Colonel Jan Kaminski. Private Piotr Wawiorko, who was attempting to follow his Section commander with a kitbag full of signals equipment, recalled Colonel Kaminski standing at the water’s edge shouting over the noise of bursting shells for the paratroopers to break off and get back into cover; Wawiorko also recalled being waylaid and accused of cowardice by Sosabowski while falling back across the polder until he explained that he was only following orders.26 Whoever issued the order, the Poles’ third effort to cross the Lower Rhine and reinforce the Oosterbeek perimeter ceased at 05:05 in the morning of Sunday 24 September 1944, leaving Major-General Sosabowski, part of Brigade HQ and the 2nd Battalion still on the south bank of the Lower Rhine. There were also ten men from the Anti-tank Battery and all the Other Ranks from the 3rd Battalion’s Mortar Platoon. The latter had become separated from their commander, Lieutenant Jan Kutrzeba, when their heavily laden Airborne handcarts had become bogged in the soft polder; Lieutenant Kutrzeba thus arrived on the north bank with no command. His men were amalgamated with the anti-tank gunners under Lieutenant Tadeusz Rembisz and attached to the 2nd Battalion.27 Tired and bedraggled after a sleepless night under German fire, the paratroopers and their commander once again retraced their steps to their recently vacated positions in Driel in the grey dawn. While the results may not have met hopes or expectations, the Poles had once again done their very best with the poor hand they had been dealt. Perhaps the most fitting comment on their efforts is the much-quoted observation by the man who had controlled the effort on the north bank, CRE Lieutenant-Colonel Myers:
I can find no fault with their attempts; they did as much as they could. They had not been trained in river crossings, and the Arnhem plan had not envisaged one, and no one had any proper boats. But the less said about their watermanship the better.28
A total of 153 Poles reached the north bank of the Lower Rhine in a combat-ready state, excluding an unknown number of killed and wounded who, as we have seen, were immediately evacuated back across the river by returning boats;29 the Platoon from 204 Field Company RE also lost two men missing and an NCO wounded in the course of the night, with the latter presumably being evacuated to the Polish Brigade Forward Dressing Station.30 Including the casualties may explain the figure of 200 men cited by Major-General Sosabowski and reported in the British official records, a conjecture supported by the arrival of an additional forty casualties at the Polish Brigade MDS in Driel during and in the aftermath of the crossing; fortuitously, a reconnaissance party from 163 Field Ambulance had escorted the medical portion of the Polish Brigade’s seaborne tail to Driel late in the evening of 23 September.31 1st Airlanding Brigade HQ cited a lower figure of 125, which may exclude Poles who made their own way into the 1st Airborne Division’s perimeter and thus went unrecorded.32 Of the 153, ninety-five were from the 3rd Battalion, forty-four from the Anti-tank Battery and fourteen from various Sections of Brigade HQ.33 They were initially concentrated in the Hemelsche Berg, an area of woodland just north of the Benedendorpsweg and adjacent to the 1st Airlanding Light Regiment’s gun pits; the location included a two-storey convalescent home called the Hemeldal set in landscaped grounds with two large ornamental ponds, which prompted the British to refer to the area as ‘the ponds’.34 Captain Zwolanski directed Captain Gazurek and the 3rd Battalion to the woods to the north of the Hemeldal while the anti-tank gunners, now commanded by Lieutenant Mieczyslaw Mikulski following Captain Wardzala’s capture during the crossing, and the Brigade HQ personnel, occupied or dug slit trenches around the building. Brigade Signals Officer Captain Julian Karasek and his platoon colonised the building itself, where the cellar proved to be filled with Dutch civilian wounded to whom Karasek donated a satchel full of medical supplies he had come upon after landing.35
The area was quiet when the Poles arrived, although the guides from the 1st Airlanding Brigade reported that their charges were ‘difficult to control and were very noisy, causing alarm to all troops in the vicinity’.36 The Poles appear to have found their new hosts rather less concerned. Corporal Cadet Adam Niebieszczanski from the Signals Platoon unsuccessfully tried to pass off some of his canned rations to a British neighbour, a rather surprising result given the shortage of food in the Oosterbeek perimeter, while one of his comrades was more than happy to exchange one of his hand-grenades with another British paratrooper for the considerable sum of £5.37 Despite the shelling in Driel the quiet lulled the Poles into a false sense of security, with Captain Zwolanski having to urge members of the Signal Section to dig in while 2nd Lieutenant Bossowski from the Anti-tank Battery had to specifically order his men to break out their entrenching tools.38 The routine commencement of the German bombardment at around 07:00 therefore came as an unpleasant surprise and caused a number of casualties, including the unitless Lieu
tenant Kutrzeba, who was killed by shrapnel whilst sheltering in a covered slit trench.39
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