Arnhem
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The two accounts are clearly at variance, not least because the sentences in the British version expressing open criticism of Sosabowski appear rather disjointed and contrived, as does the wording of his alleged comments. More importantly, however, the British version of events does not square with a third account from a participant at the Valburg Conference. According to Sosabowski’s adjutant/interpreter Lieutenant Dyrda, Horrocks and the rest of the British officers were already gathered outside the meeting tent when Sosabowski arrived and Thomas behaved in a cold and distant manner toward him from the outset. Next, Horrocks refused to allow Dyrda to accompany his commander into the conference tent on the grounds that the Polish commander spoke English well enough, and he only relented when Dyrda appealed to Browning to intercede. The tent was laid out with a single long table with seating for the British attendees along one side and a single chair for Sosabowski on the other but no seat for Dyrda. Horrocks ordered him to stand behind his commander; the Polish Brigade’s liaison officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Stevens, was seated on the British side of the table. Dyrda, perhaps presciently, thought the seating arrangements were more suited to a trial than a military conference, and subsequent events supported his view. With Lieutenant Dyrda translating, Horrocks began the conference by announcing that he was executing orders from Dempsey to establish a strong lodgement on the north bank of the Lower Rhine, then outlined that this would be done via two crossing points, before handing over to Thomas to fill in the details. Thomas then not only informed Sosabowski that he was to continue the crossing at the same place as previously, but that one of his Battalions would be removed to cross near the Heveadorp ferry after the 4th Dorsets and that he was to be effectively placed under the command of Brigadier Walton from 130 Infantry Brigade, who was in charge of the crossings overall; according to one source Dyrda chose not to pass the latter point on to his commander.157
Despite his humiliating treatment Sosabowski waited until Thomas had finished before proposing a full Division crossing farther west near Renkum and pointing out that not only would crossing near the Heveadorp ferry be under the guns of the Germans occupying the Westerbouwing Heights, but that the crossing on the planned scale ‘would change nothing’ and would be ‘an unnecessary sacrifice of soldiers’. He closed by pointing out that as the Polish Brigade commander, he should have been allowed the courtesy of selecting which of his units would be detached to cross with the 4th Dorsets. All this fell on deaf ears. Thomas simply rose and stated, ‘The crossing will take place as I said, at the locations I stated, and will begin at 22:00 hours.’ Sosabowski tried again, this time speaking in English that became more fluent as he went on, talking over Thomas when he tried to interrupt to point out that the 1st Airborne Division had been holding out in Oosterbeek for eight days and that ‘the best sons of England are dying there, for no effect’. Again, this was to no avail for Sosabowski was then interrupted by Horrocks, who announced, ‘The conference is over. The orders given by General Thomas will be carried out. And if you, General, do not want to carry out your orders, we will find another commander for the Polish Para Brigade who will carry out orders.’ As the meeting broke up Thomas added one final twist of the knife by totally ignoring the Polish commander despite him standing close by while issuing the orders for the night’s operation to Lieutenant-Colonel Stevens. When Stevens passed on the orders to Sosabowski the Polish commander acerbically enquired when the hapless Liaison Officer would be taking over command of the Polish Brigade.158 Although perhaps aimed at the wrong target, Sosabowski’s bitterness was both understandable and excusable. His contemptuous treatment would have been reason enough, but Sosabowski was also likely the only man in the conference tent who had been in recent close contact with the enemy and seen first-hand the results of trying to perform a river crossing with insufficient numbers, equipment or support. In the event, his assessment of the coming night’s crossing was to prove to be absolutely correct.
This puts a rather different complexion on the matter than that provided by Sosabowski’s personal and the 43rd Division semi-official accounts, and with the benefit of hindsight it is difficult to see the treatment meted out to Sosabowski as anything other than the prelude to the full-scale blame-shifting that occurred after MARKET GARDEN was concluded. Nor was the Valburg Conference the end of the matter that day, for as the meeting was breaking up Browning invited Sosabowski to his Forward Airborne Corps HQ in Nijmegen. According to one source the invitation was to allow the Polish commander to celebrate Mass, but the course of events make it more likely that the purpose was to allow Browning to inform Sosabowski about the decisions taken at Valburg in his absence.159 Sosabowski began by dining with Browning in the Staff Officer’s Mess after dropping Lieutenant Dyrda at a nearby Officer’s Mess, during which Sosabowski was ‘bombarded with questions about the battle’ by curious members of the Corps HQ staff; Sosabowski mentally compared the lunch, served on china plates, to the more basic repast he would have enjoyed back at his own HQ at Driel.160 When the pair retired to discuss business after the meal Browning began by reiterating that his Airborne Corps was subordinate to 30 Corps, that the primary task at this juncture was keeping the road open between Eindhoven and Nijmegen and gathering in both formations’ vehicles; Browning may have been in temporary command of 30 Corps at this point as a German attack had severed the road near Veghel, obliging Horrocks to remain at 2nd Army HQ at St. Oedenrode until the following day.161 Anxious to push the points he had made at the earlier conference, Sosabowski again urged a full divisional crossing west of Driel and was reportedly ‘thunderstruck’ when Browning countered this by announcing that the upcoming crossing might fail due to a lack of equipment, adding ‘because it is impossible to get the equipment up to the river’ when Sosabowski queried the announcement. The discussion then deteriorated as Sosabowski bluntly pointed out the price the 1st Airborne Division was paying ‘every hour and every minute’ and urged Browning to make a final worthwhile effort, while Browning simply repeated the point about keeping the road open before bringing the meeting to a close.162
Before detailing Sosabowski’s reaction to his unofficial meeting with Browning and subsequent developments, and given Browning’s claim that there was insufficient bridging equipment and that it was not possible to get the equipment that was available up to the Lower Rhine, we should investigate what river crossing personnel and equipment was potentially available to 30 Corps at this moment. The GARDEN order of battle included a Special Bridging Force (SBF) made up largely of Engineer and Service Corps units gathered from across 21st Army Group and including the only Canadian units involved in MARKET GARDEN, totalling approximately 9,000 personnel and 2,277 vehicles. This force was initially concentrated at Bourg-Leopold near the GARDEN start line, where a huge dump of equipment was established for despatch up the Airborne Corridor. The SBF was in turn divided into three Army Group Royal Engineers (AGRE), each of which was assigned to crossings on specific watercourses; the 11th AGRE was responsible for the River Maas, the 1st Canadian AGRE for the Maas‒Waal Canal and River Waal, and the 10th AGRE for the Lower Rhine. The AGREs in turn controlled specifically configured bridging columns for each crossing. The column assigned to the Mass‒Waal Canal contained 483 vehicles carrying the components for two Class 40 Bailey pontoon bridges while that for the River Waal consisted of 380 vehicles carrying nine Class 40 rafts, to be followed by a single Class 40 Bailey pontoon bridge within seven days. The column assigned to the Lower Rhine consisted of 536 vehicles carrying a single Class 9 Folding Boat Equipment (F.B.E.) bridge to be followed by a single Class 40 Bailey pontoon bridge within twelve days; the initial arrangements on the Waal and Lower Rhine were to be augmented with additional Class 40 Bailey barge bridges within thirteen to eighteen days.163 Preparation and provision of river-crossing personnel and equipment for Operation GARDEN was thus thorough and plentiful and although it is unclear precisely where all the various elements of this host ended up along the Airborne Corridor this nonetheles
s begs the question as to what was available at the head of the Airborne Corridor after the GARDEN force crossed the River Waal.
In fact, there were at least four specialist engineering units on or north of the River Waal within fifteen miles and thus striking distance of the crossing point near Driel. Two of these belonged to the 43rd Division. Major Thomas Evill’s 204 Field Company RE arrived at a point three-and-a-half miles south-west of Nijmegen at 11:00 on 21 September, after moving off from a harbour area near Hechtel at 16:45 the previous day. The seventy-two-mile journey took just fifteen hours and forty-five minutes and the Company halted from 03:00 to 05:30 near St. Oedenrode, a rate of progress that suggests that traffic movement up the Airborne Corridor was smoother and swifter at this juncture than popularly portrayed.164 The Company then remained in that general area until the morning of 24 September, apart from being stood to for a series of proposed crossing operations. The Company’s 3 Platoon was despatched to assist 214 Infantry Brigade with a proposed attack across the Lower Rhine at 18:00 on the day of arrival before being released by the 7th Somerset Light Infantry at 22:30 when the crossing was postponed, although it did not arrive back at the Company harbour until the late afternoon of the following day due to traffic congestion north of the Waal bridges.165 At 15:15 on 22 September the bulk of the Company moved to another harbour area close to the south end of the Nijmegen railway bridge to participate in the pending assault crossing over the Lower Rhine. Although as we have seen, in the event only the Company’s 3 Platoon went forward at 21:00 on 23 September to assist with the Polish Brigade’s third attempt to cross the river.166 The second 43rd Division unit was Major Anthony Vinycomb’s 260 Field Company RE, which moved off from a harbour area just south of the Albert Canal at 18:00 on 20 September and arrived at a harbour area near Nijmegen at 10:00 the following day after an all-night road march. There the Company learned that its projected task of bridging the Rivers Maas and Waal had been rendered superfluous by the 3rd Battalion, 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment’s seizure of the Nijmegen bridges in the afternoon of 20 September, and remained there awaiting orders until 25 September.167
The other two units were from the Canadian contribution to the SBF, the No. 1 Army Group Royal Canadian Engineers commanded by Colonel C.J. ‘Spike’ Bermingham and specifically from one of that formation’s two sub-formations, Lieutenant-Colonel N.I. Byrn’s 1st Canadian Army Troops (CAT), Royal Canadian Engineers (RCE) made up of three RCE Field Companies and an RCE Field Park Company.168 The 20th Field Company RCE, commanded by Major A.W. Jones, was actually on the move before MARKET GARDEN commenced, leaving Arques in the Pas de Calais at 07:30 on 16 September and travelling via Brussels to a harbour area near Eksel, just south of the Meuse-Escaut Canal, at 06:30 on 17 September. There the Canadian Sappers discovered that while they had no specific mission, they were likely to be given the task of erecting a Bailey bridge across the River Maas and carrying out ‘an assault ferrying job’ over the Lower Rhine using Class 9 or Class 40 rafts.169 After spending four days at Eksel the Company moved to Nijmegen at 10:30 on 21 September, linking up with a bridging train en route. The convoy was shelled near Uden, with Sapper G.A. Topping being evacuated to a US field hospital after being badly wounded by shrapnel, before reaching a temporary bivouac area on the outskirts of the city at 19:00. They discovered via an O Group at 22:00: ‘We still don’t know whether or not there is a job for us. The assaulting corps wants its own engineers to handle the rafting and bridging so we may have come on a wild goose chase.’170 The following day the Canadians were ordered to despatch a party to reconnoitre the crossing site on the Lower Rhine in readiness to ferry tanks across the river on Class 40 rafts, and on 23 September the Company officially came under command of the 43rd Division’s CRE, Lieutenant-Colonel Mark Henniker, on one-hour notice to move.171 On 24 September the Company’s organic transport and the bridging train, totalling 483 vehicles, were marshalled to move by midday but the move was cancelled at 13:30 and the increasingly disgruntled Sappers were stood down to their bivouac site.172 Events unfolded in a similar vein for the second Canadian unit, Major Mike Tucker’s 23rd Field Company RCE, which left St. Omer at 07:45 on 16 September, also moving via Brussels, before arriving at a harbour area near Hechtel at approximately 10:30 the following day.173 At 12:10 on 21 September the 23rd Company moved off for Nijmegen again in company with a bridging train, although the timings and locations cited suggest it might have been the same train as that accompanied by the 20th Field Company RCE. Whether or not, Major Tucker and his men arrived at their new harbour area south of Nijmegen at approximately 17:00 where they remained, apart from despatching a reconnaissance party to the Lower Rhine the following day and commencing a move forward on 24 September that was cancelled at approximately 13:00; again, this may have been the move with the bridging train marshalled by the 20th Field Company on that day.174
This shows that Browning was being economical with the truth in his claim that there was insufficient equipment as there were at least four specialist bridging units and at least one complete bridging train in place at Nijmegen by 21 September, arriving hard on the heels of the seizure of the Waal road and rail bridges and not caught up in the oft-cited traffic congestion farther south in the Airborne Corridor. These units were thus in position to move up to the Lower Rhine in the wake of 130 Infantry Brigade’s advance to Driel in the morning of 23 September and they were actually marshalled and preparing to make that very move on 24 September when it was cancelled at about 13:00. Moving the bridging train up to the Lower Rhine was clearly problematic before 214 Infantry Brigade succeeded in pushing back the German forces overlooking the road through Valburg by last light on 23 September, but it is difficult to see why at least some if not all the Field Companies could not have been moved up in their entirety to assist the Poles in their river crossing efforts on the nights of 22-23 and 23-24 September, given that the Sapper units were able to despatch reconnaissance parties to the river and remembering the Platoon level assistance rendered by 204 Field Company RE on the night of 23-24 September. It is also difficult to see how moving the equipment up to the riverbank would have been much more difficult than in any contested river crossing, although the state of the ground and the fact the Germans held the ground overlooking the proposed crossing site as part of the ring around Oosterbeek supports Sosabowski’s suggestion of utilising a crossing site farther west. Quite why the bridging units’ collective move on 24 September was cancelled is unclear, but the timing does support the contention that Horrocks had decided to cut his losses and evacuate the Oosterbeek pocket rather than push across the Lower Rhine before the Valburg Conference, irrespective of his claimed intentions communicated to Dempsey at British 2nd Army HQ. To be fair, Horrocks’ reluctance may have been due to a lack of resources for while Sosabowski repeatedly recommended a Division-strength crossing, which was likely the minimum force necessary to make a difference, at this point 30 Corps did not have a Division available. Half of the Guards Armoured Division was busy maintaining the eastern side of the Waal bridgehead along with 69 Infantry Brigade from the 50th Division; the remainder of both Divisions were employed in maintaining the Airborne Corridor south of Nijmegen. 129 and 214 Brigades from the 43rd Division were engaged in clearing Elst and maintaining the western half of the Waal bridgehead, thus leaving only 130 Brigade to form a bridgehead over the Lower Rhine, with no immediate prospect of reinforcement. However, there does not appear to be any reference to Horrocks pointing this out in the official or semi-official records and 30 Corps’ general lack of push from the outset of MARKET GARDEN, combined with the seeming lack of urgency after crossing the River Waal creates the distinct impression that as far as 30 Corps’ senior commanders were concerned, all bets were off when the 1st Airborne Division failed to provide the crossings at Arnhem ‒ the GARDEN force had done its bit by reaching the Lower Rhine, and whatever was happening on the north bank of the river was not really their concern.
Major-General Sosabowski was
still noticeably agitated when Lieutenant Dyrda and Sergeant Juhas picked him up from Browning’s HQ to return to Driel; it is unclear if they were still accompanied by Lieutenant-Colonel Stevens. When Sosabowski related the details of the meeting to Lieutenant Dyrda the adjutant pointed out, not mincing his words, that even suggesting there was any reluctance to aid the 1st Airborne Division might have lost friends among the senior British commanders if not actually created enemies, although Sosabowski’s treatment at Valburg strongly suggests that this was already the case before the Polish commander set foot in the conference tent. Sosabowski, perhaps understandably, did not take Dyrda’s analysis well and the remainder of the journey back to Driel passed in a rather frosty silence.175