The Pole’s original plan had been to deploy their Battalions as complete units and for the Anti-tank Gunners to rejoin the 6-Pounder guns and crews that had come in with the glider lift on Tuesday 19 September. However, on making contact with the ranking officer from the glider lift, Lieutenant Wladyslaw Mleczko, Lieutenant Mikulski discovered that there were only four Polish guns still functioning and that these were either embedded with, or had been appropriated by, British units, rendering the reinforcements superfluous.40 In the event the decision was taken out of the Poles’ hands, and Captain Zwolanski appears to have led the entire newly arrived contingent to the area of the 1st Airborne Division HQ at 09:00; interestingly, there does not appear to have been any thought of reuniting Lieutenant Smaczny and the 8th Company contingent at the Transvalia with their parent 3rd Battalion. Zwolanski also despatched two of Lieutenant Mikulski’s to help man anti-tank guns and transferred a further three, all armed with Bren guns, to the 3rd Battalion contingent. It is unclear if this minor reorganisation occurred before or after arrival at the Hotel Hartenstein. Captain Gazurek and his ninety-four men were then assigned to the 4th Parachute Brigade HQ on the eastern side of the perimeter, while Lieutenant Mikulski and his forty-three Anti-tank Gunners were assigned to the 1st Airlanding Brigade to fight as infantry on the western side; the HQ personnel appear to have been allotted to the Division reserve.41
***
The night began relatively quietly at the Hotel Hartenstein but at 01:20 the hotel and the immediate vicinity came under a heavy and sustained mortar barrage that continued for over an hour; according to the Royal Engineers HQ War Diary it ceased at 02:57 precisely. The Germans may by this point have become aware that the hotel was the site of the 1st Airborne Division’s HQ, either through direct observation by the elements of Kampfgruppe von Tettau from the west, or possibly from monitoring signals traffic. Whatever the reason, the rest of the night appears to have remained quiet until the regular German bombardment of the Airborne perimeter recommenced just after dawn at 07:29.42 The daylight threat was not solely from German artillery, rocket launchers and mortars, as the proximity of the front line to the west and north-west of the Hotel Hartenstein rendered the hotel and surrounding area susceptible to small-arms fire. The Division Commander Royal Artillery, Lieutenant-Colonel Robert Loder-Symonds, and his Brigade Major Philip Tower narrowly escaped being hit in the entrance to the Royal Artillery HQ bunker in the hotel grounds for example, by what was reported as a sniper, prompting the HQ to move its wireless sets deeper underground and redirect the aerials through the bunker roof. The Division Signals section reported that ‘things were very difficult at Div HQ throughout the day owing to…the fact that [hotel] entrances were covered by enemy snipers.’43 At 05:35 1st Airborne Division HQ received a sitrep from British 2nd Army HQ via the PHANTOM net which summarised the 43rd Division’s activities on the south bank of the Lower Rhine, detailing 129 and 214 Brigades efforts toward Ressen and Elst respectively. More importantly, it also informed Major-General Urquhart that 130 Brigade was to assault across the river in the vicinity of the Heveadorp ferry with two battalions that night. A Class 40 bridge was then to be constructed across the river over which 129 and 214 Brigades were to reinforce and expand the bridgehead to the east and west.44
Although it reiterated the information provided by Lieutenant-Colonel Mackenzie on his return to the Hotel Hartenstein shortly before midnight on Saturday, receiving official confirmation of imminent reinforcement likely lifted Urquhart’s spirits, at least until he was called to the radio to speak to his opposite number commanding the 43rd Division, Major-General Ivor Thomas. The timing of the conversation is unclear but was probably in the late morning or early afternoon. It did not go well.45 Anxious to stress the gravity of his situation Urquhart informed Thomas that the 1st Airborne Division was ‘being very heavily shelled and mortared now from areas very close to our positions’. This drew an impatient ‘Well, why don’t you counter-mortar them? Or shell them?’ from Thomas, to which Urquhart angrily replied ‘How the hell can we? We’re in holes in the ground. We can’t see more than a few yards. And we haven’t the ammunition.’46 Urquhart was understandably angered by the exchange which, although he wrote it off as a facet of Thomas’ character, he also considered showed Thomas ‘had not got the situation clear at all’.47 In itself Thomas’ response displayed a breathtaking lack of insight into the reality of what was happening on the north bank of the Lower Rhine for a serving division commander, to say nothing of his appreciation of the likely capabilities of an airborne formation after fighting alone and virtually unsupported for almost a week, especially as Urquhart had transmitted numerous reports of the 1st Airborne Division’s deteriorating situation. Taking into account the 43rd Division’s failure to render more than token assistance to the Poles and the general lack of urgency displayed by the Division after reaching the south bank of the Lower Rhine, Thomas probably considered what was happening just across the river to be of tangential concern to him at best. In this he was merely reflecting a shift in priorities higher up the British chain of command, for at some point late on Saturday 23 September, Lieutenant-General Dempsey at British 2nd Army HQ ‘delegated authority to Commanders 30 Corps and 1 Br Airborne Corps to withdraw 1 Airborne Div if and when considered advisable’.48 As we shall see, this delegation effectively sealed the fate of the 1st Airborne Division.
Roughly a mile south of the Hotel Hartenstein at the riverside end of the perimeter Lieutenat Smaczny and his men from the 8th Company spent a relatively quiet night despite the presence of German troops within a hundred yards or so of the Transvalia, interrupted only by sporadic mortar fire and shelling. Once it was fully dark the paratroopers were able to leave their trenches to stretch cramped limbs, and the opportunity was also taken to gather and bury the dead. The Poles do not appear to have been aware of the renewed crossing by their comrades until later on Sunday morning, when rumours circulated that around 200 of their comrades had made it across to the north bank. They were however aware of the upsurge in German fire down at the river in the early hours; the overwhelming feeling was of relief that the fire was not falling on them. Smaczny was worried that the shortage of food and water would affect his men’s morale, but an early morning tour of the positions around the Transvalia found them in good fettle, with two of his NCOs busy amending the date on the grave marker they had made to reflect the fact that they had survived into a new day. There does not appear to have been a recurrence of the German tank probes along the Benedendorpsweg, but in the afternoon the adjacent 1st Border requested Smaczny to provide a reconnaissance patrol. Ten men under a Lance-Corporal Bielawski were duly despatched to the 1st Border HQ where an unnamed British Major guided them through the woods to the patrol jump-off point on a country lane, likely the Van Borsselenweg. The Poles moved westward through the woods for approximately 400 yards before coming under intense machine-gun fire that killed the patrol point man, Private Mieczyslaw Krzeczkowski.49 Having located the enemy front line, Bielawski and his men marked the location of Private Krzeczkowski’s body and fell back to the Transvalia, from where Lieutenant Smaczny forwarded a report to 1st Border’s HQ.50
Later in the afternoon a formation of Dakotas approached the Oosterbeek perimeter from the south, crossing the river and dropping a number of supply containers in the woods north-east of the Transvalia, despite some of the 8th Company paratroopers energetically waving their day-glo identification panels; the containers were also seen by members of the Polish Brigade HQ element dug in around the Hemeldal and one loaded with PIAT bombs came down in the positions occupied by D Company 1st Border on the Van Borsselenweg.51 The provenance of the aircraft is unclear. According to one source there were four machines belonging to No. 575 Squadron, which had temporarily moved to Brussels to shorten the journey time to the Airborne perimeter on Saturday 23 September, and were part of a twenty-one-strong flight that delivered 235 panniers of food and ammunition and thirteen bundles of bedding to a DZ w
est of Grave.52 However, the No. 575 Operational Record Book differs on the number of aircraft involved in both the Brussels detachment and 24 September mission, and makes no mention of any aircraft being despatched to Oosterbeek.53 On the other hand, No. 620 Squadron’s official record refers to despatching five machines from Fairford to drop supplies in northern Holland in support of the Airborne operation. Although only one succeeded in delivering its load and the success of the mission was reportedly compromised by ‘much ground activity at the dropping zone’; the problem for identification in this instance is that all resupply flights from UK bases to Oosterbeek were supposed to have been suspended on 23 September, the aircraft were Stirlings rather than Dakotas and they took off long after dark, at between 22:30 and 23:00.54 Wherever the aircraft had come from, Lieutenant Smaczny despatched a patrol to retrieve the closest containers while he led a party of six men in a noisy feint attack to distract the German’s attention. The ploy succeeded and the patrol returned with three containers retrieved at a cost of two wounded; on opening their booty back at the Transvalia the 8th Company men were disappointed to find one container packed full of 9mm ammunition and the other two with No. 75 Hawkins Anti-tank Grenades without fuses, rather than the food and cigarettes the paratroopers had been hoping for. Heavy German shelling throughout the night prevented them from sleeping properly.55
The relatively quiet day enjoyed by Lieutenant Smaczny and his men may have been due to the Germans on the southern end of the western perimeter concentrating their attention on BREESE Force in the woods just north of the Transvalia. German infantry accompanied by one or possibly two tanks penetrated into the BREESE Force perimeter; the timing of the attack is unclear but it may have been connected to German infiltration around D Company at around midday or even as late as 19:35.56 Whenever the attack developed, Sergeant Sidney Clark and his detached 7 Platoon from A Company were tasked to mount a counter-attack to restore the line. The Platoon was pinned down initially by German small-arms fire from deeper in the wood, but Sergeant Clark led his men forward despite the enemy fire, using hand-grenades to suppress the enemy and drive them back. The advance then brought the glider soldiers into contact with a hull-down tank, possibly a Char B from Panzer Kompanie 224, which was firing into the main British position. Despite Generalleutnant von Tettau’s instruction on improving infantry protection for tanks the previous day, 7 Platoon was able to isolate the vehicle while Sergeant Clark replenished his supply of grenades by gathering more from his men. He then arranged covering fire, successfully stalked and climbed aboard the unprotected tank before forcing open the turret hatch and dropping several grenades inside, all the time under heavy enemy fire. The tank abruptly ceased fire and began to burn; it is unclear if any of the crew escaped. Sergeant Clark was subsequently awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal for his actions.57
The previous day’s fighting had left the 1st Border’s D Company cut off from the rest of the Battalion and reduced its strength to twenty-five All Ranks including the only two officers still mobile, Company commander Captain William Hodgson and Lieutenant Alan Green, both of whom were wounded but still functioning. However, while the depleted Company continued to hold its position, it had simply too few men to block its entire frontage along the Van Borsselenweg. As a result a platoon-strength force of German troops succeeded in setting up a position in the woods east of D Company’s location, occupying a number of vacant slit tranches around a crossroads from where they infiltrated in small groups across a track toward 1st Airlanding Brigade HQ; ironically the HQ had been moved there on 22 September after twice being badly hit by German artillery fire in its initial location close to the Hotel Hartenstein.58 A Bren belonging to the Brigade Signals Section inflicted a number of casualties on those crossing the track and a party commanded by Lieutenant George Austin, an RA officer attached to the Airlanding Brigade HQ and Sergeant-Major Leslie Morgan from the Army Physical Training Corps attempted to clear the crossroads but failed to dislodge the interlopers; both Lieutenant Austin and Sergeant-Major Morgan were killed in the fighting.59 Later in the afternoon a group of twenty Glider Pilots commanded by Lieutenant Robert Boyd from C Squadron launched another attack but was unable to close in because two German tanks were covering their infantry comrades from a nearby track junction; a subsequent attempt to tackle the tanks by members of the Brigade HQ Defence Platoon equipped with PIATs also failed, losing the weapons and incurring a number of casualties.60 Medium artillery from the south side of the Lower Rhine, likely the 5.5-inch guns from the 64th Medium Regiment RA, was then brought into play, although the guns had to be registered individually by Captain Anthony Taylor from the Airlanding Light Regiment’s 3 Battery owing to the proximity of friendly troops. According the Brigade HQ War Diary, following two concentrations of fire at 18:46 and 18:57 the enemy ‘kept quiet for the rest of our stay in ARNHEM’.61 Nonetheless D Company remained cut off, with Lieutenant Jack Bainbridge being wounded whilst attempting to regain contact with the rest of the Battalion, and the Germans launched a direct attack on the isolated Company at 19:35; the attack was repelled but the fighting reduced D Company’s strength to nineteen All Ranks as the Company entered its second night in isolation.62
After a day of artillery and mortar fire the 1st Border’s A and C Companies also came under direct attack at 19:05, the late timing possibly due to the depredations those units had inflicted upon German attackers the previous day.63 The new attack was paralysed on C Company’s front thanks to the commander of the 1st Border’s Signals Platoon, Lieutenant Joseph Hardy, who had been relaying fire orders to the 1st Airlanding Light Regiment after the Battalion’s assigned Forward Observer had been killed; he was subsequently replaced by Captain John Walker from the 1st Airlanding Light Battery RA. In the meantime Hardy somehow found himself in direct contact with a US artillery unit near Nijmegen and promptly called in a sustained barrage just to the front of C Company’s positions that stopped the attack and prompted the attackers to withdraw; the incident provided a welcome boost to the hard-pressed and increasingly battle-weary glider soldiers.64 The cessation of the German attacks with the onset of full darkness was fortunate: the 1st Border’s food reserves were now totally exhausted and its ammunition reserve reduced to just 2,500 rounds of .303 ammunition. Fifty per cent of C Company were by this time using captured enemy weapons.65 On the upside, C Company’s frontage did receive some reinforcements. Guided by Glider Pilots, Lieutenants Bossowski and Mikulski and their party of forty-two reassigned Polish Anti-tank Gunners occupied a number of slit trenches in the edge of the wood overlooking a farm track and area of pastureland behind C Company’s line, close to the Utrechtseweg near a villa called the Valkenburg. This appears to have been taken over as C Company’s Command Post and Lieutenant Bossowski discovered it contained a functioning piano, which was played by a young British officer when he crossed to liaise with his 1st Border counterparts. The Poles drove off a number of curious German troops who appeared on the pasture to their front with a few bursts of Bren fire.66
The Germans also maintained the pressure against the perimeter on the north side of the Utrechtseweg in addition to the constant mortar and artillery fire that wounded a Sapper from 261 Field Park Company RE and two more from the 4th Parachute Squadron RE. Another source refers to the latter unit also losing at least three dead in the course of the day.67 Two of the dead were likely killed during the early morning artillery barrage, as recalled by Sapper Stanley Holden from No. 3 Troop: ‘In a trench a few yards away were two bodies…They were both decapitated but the man in front had part of his chin left and there were bits of flesh strewn about…somebody suggested getting their dog tags but there were no takers for such a gruesome job.’68 The third fatality, Sapper Thomas Cunningham from 1 Troop, was hit later while seeking additional bombs for PIAT gunner Sapper William Grantham and subsequently died of his wounds; Captain Roger Binyon from the 9th Field Company RE was also killed in the fighting to maintain the perimeter, while stalking a tank wit
h a PIAT in the woods to the north of his unit’s location.69
The heaviest pressure was directed against the Glider Pilots from E and F Squadrons holding the north-western shoulder of the perimeter. An attack at 12:30 by two flamethrower tanks from Panzer Kompanie 224 inflicted a number of casualties on the defenders before the vehicles were reportedly knocked out by 17-Pounder guns; it is unclear whether the latter came from the 1st or 2nd Airlanding Anti-tank Batteries, although all anti-tank guns including the 17-Pounders in the Divisional area had been concentrated into a single Group on 19 September.70 The attack was held but Lieutenant-Colonel Place approached the 7th KOSB holding the north face of the perimeter and asked them to redeploy in more depth to provide a backstop for the Glider Pilot’s line, which Lieutenant-Colonel Payton-Reid agreed to do.71 This was a prescient move, as the Germans renewed their attack at 14:07, this time coming in from the right flank to the north, and at 17:00 the Glider Pilots were obliged to withdraw from the woods and take up position in houses along the Oranjeweg.72 It is unclear how the withdrawal impacted upon the 1st Border’s A Company on the Glider Pilot’s left flank, but 261 Field Park Company despatched three men to reinforce the 4th Parachute Squadron although one was wounded and evacuated in the process or shortly thereafter.73
On the northern aspect of the perimeter the 7th KOSB spent a more active night along the Ommershoflaan than their western neighbours, thanks to determined German infiltration. The KOSB’s roving patrols moving between the occupied houses clashed repeatedly with the infiltrators between midnight and 04:30, and a fighting patrol led by Company second-in-command Captain James Dundas and Lieutenant William Lamond from the Battalion Signals Platoon had to be despatched to drive off a group attempting to dig in close to B Company on the right of the Battalion’s two-company frontage. Daylight revealed that the Germans had taken the opportunity to lodge numerous snipers and machine-gun teams inside the KOSB perimeter, some entering through a gap on the Battalion’s right flank where contact had been lost with the 1st Airborne Reconnaissance Squadron’s D Troop. Lieutenant-Colonel Payton-Reid’s men spent the morning locating and clearing the interlopers, with D Company CSM James Swanston, Sergeant John Nattrass and a Sergeant Wilson playing a prominent role despite Swanston and Wilson having been wounded the previous day. The clearing operation cost the KOSB a number of additional casualties. This explains why Colonel Payton-Reid agreed to the Glider Pilots’ early afternoon request to rearrange the line in more depth. The precise location of the new consolidated position is not clear from the Battalion War Diary, but the front of the new location appears to have involved redeploying B Company westward to man houses along the north side of the Bothaweg, D Company in the houses on the south side of that street along with the Battalion RAP, while C Company occupied houses on the north side of the next street, the Paul Krugerstraat.74
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