Arnhem

by William F Buckingham

  On the Van Borsselenweg D Company 1st Border, by now reduced to just nineteen men, was still holding its position despite being cut off from the remainder of the 1st Border for two days. At some point in the morning Company commander Captain William Hodgson despatched Corporal Alan Fisher to report to Battalion HQ before overseeing the setting up of the Company’s No. 18 wireless set in the open by Privates Ron Graydon and Joseph Maguire in an effort to establish contact. A heavy German mortar concentration fell just as the already wounded Hodgson left the shelter of the Company HQ building and he was wounded again so severely he died the following day.44 Private Maguire was also wounded and another Company signaller, Corporal Lawrence Cowin, was killed by a direct hit on his slit trench.45 Apparently missing Battalion HQ, Corporal Fisher arrived at the 1st Airlanding Brigade HQ at 14:30 and after making his report was immediately sent back to D Company with orders for an immediate withdrawal to a track east of the Van Borsselenweg.46 This Corporal Fisher did but his arrival coincided with a heavy German mortar barrage and as he was only able to contact a few men he assumed the Company was in the process of being overrun; he therefore led the handful of men he had located back to Brigade HQ and reported that D Company had been under heavy attack at 15:30 and was presumed to have been overrun at 16:00.47 This was not the case. The fatal wounding of Captain Hodgson during Corporal Fisher’s absence left Lieutenant Green as D Company’s sole functioning officer. By this point the situation of the Company’s wounded had become critical as medical supplies were almost exhausted, so following a discussion with his surviving senior NCOs it was decided to try to arrange a temporary ceasefire to allow the wounded to be evacuated. However Lieutenant Green was fired upon as he attempted to approach the nearest German positions before being caught in a mortar barrage, in the course of which he sustained a further four wounds. With that, the surviving nineteen members of D Company pulled into a tighter perimeter around the wounded and settled down to hold out until relieved or overrun, which is presumably why Corporal Fisher failed to locate them.48

  Along the remainder of the 1st Border’s frontage running up to the Utrechtseweg C Company was heavily bombarded from 06:00 but German attacks were reportedly broken up by Allied artillery fire. Details are sketchy and subsequent events suggest the seeming lack of German push during the daylight hours was due to SS Bataillonen Eberwein, Oelkers and Schulz switching to night attacks. The official and participant accounts from the units holding the line north of the Utrechtseweg, 261 Field Park Company RASC, 9th (Airborne) Field Company RE, 4th Parachute Squadron RE, the 1st Border’s A Company and the Glider Pilots from E and F Squadrons are similarly sketchy, and understandably focus on preparations for the night’s evacuation.49 On the northern aspect of the perimeter Kampfgruppe Bruhn appear to have been similarly quiet, given that the 7th KOSB reported that despite spending the night in ‘some trepidation’ in expectation of a final enemy effort at dawn, their frontage little happened until around 11:00. At that point the Battalion’s block position straddling the Bothaweg and Paul Krugerstraat came under ‘an extremely heavy concentration of shelling’, presumably connected to ArKo 191 implementing the order from Heeresgruppe B to systematically rake the entirety of the Oosterbeek pocket. German ground activity was confined to movement in the woods to the west of the KOSB’s positions, and was kept at arm’s length by a combination of sniping and machine-gun fire augmented with mortars and artillery.50 The latter appears to have been provided by the 64th Medium Regiment RA, possibly again controlled by Captain John Walker from the 1st Airlanding Light Regiment, which fired concentrations into the vicinity of the western and northern aspects of the perimeter at 11:47, 12:45 and 13:45.51 However, Bren Gunner Private Robin Holburn reported an attack by unsupported German infantry across a cabbage field in the vicinity of the KOSB’s block position. The enemy went to ground among the vegetables after Holburn and another unnamed gunner fired off several magazines and inflicted numerous casualties. An NCO remained on his feet exhorting his men to rise and continue the attack; after watching for a few seconds Holburn recalled, ‘I fired and hit him with a burst of fire and he dropped to the ground. At this, and among cries from the wounded, the rest scurried or crawled back behind other houses.’52

  The relative German inactivity did not extend to the eastern side of the perimeter. On the north-eastern corner the 1st Airborne Reconnaissance Squadron’s A Troop came under intense small-arms and machine gun fire from 07:30, in line with Obersturmbannführer Harzer’s intent to break in the western aspect of the British perimeter. The intense fire permitted German patrols to move around and up to the houses held by the Reconnaissance Troop at the junction of De la Reijweg and Steijnweg, which were attacked with bundled stick grenades as an improvised breaching device. The fighting cost the defenders two wounded, and the pressure became so great that Lieutenant Douglas Galbraith, the sole functioning A Troop officer remaining, ordered his men to abandon the buildings at 09:00 in favour of the slit trenches he had wisely had dug in the gardens the previous night. There A Troop waited to be overrun by the inevitable final German attack but was not forthcoming, reportedly due to the presence of RAF Hawker Typhoons overhead. Despite the intensity of the fighting there were still Dutch civilians sheltering in the area. Trooper Ken Hope, who had been posted in a house covering the roadway, was startled by a noise behind him but instead of a German infiltrator he was confronted by an aged couple standing in the cellar doorway ‘looking at the shambles of what had probably been their best room. The old lady was sobbing, and tears streamed down her wrinkled face.’ She and her dazed husband were gently ushered back into the cellar by Troop Sergeant Henry Venes.53 On the Reconnaissance Squadron’s right Major Geoffrey Powell and his hundred-strong group from 156 Parachute Battalion and Glider Pilots from D Squadron remained in the box position just back from the Stationsweg they had been obliged to withdraw to the previous day. They held on despite repeated German attacks supported by StuGs and heavy mortar fire until 14:00, when Major Powell was given permission by 4th Parachute Brigade HQ to ‘withdraw to the house North of the main rd’ due to the isolated nature of his position; the location was on the north side of the Utrechtseweg and the move was part of a consolidation by Lieutenant-Colonel Murray in preparation for that night’s withdrawal over the Lower Rhine.54

  Lieutenant Bereda-Fialkowski’s Poles had spent a tense night after an unnamed British medical officer from the Hotel Schoonoord relayed an ultimatum from the Germans at just before 18:00; this demanded an immediate evacuation of the Polish-held houses or tanks would be brought up to level the buildings. Lieutenant Bereda-Fialkowski contacted Captain Zwolanski at the Hotel Hartenstein for guidance. Zwolanski’s blunt if honest response was not encouraging: ‘You cannot surrender, you cannot withdraw, and we cannot give you any help.’ The Poles responded accordingly. In the Quatre Bras house overlooking the Utrechtseweg‒Stationsweg junction Corporal Jan Towarnicki collected all the available Gammon Bombs and used the plastic explosive from some to create a larger charge, which was in turn attached to a plank to allow it to be shoved beneath any tank moving across the junction; a party of seven men commanded by a 2nd Lieutenant Kowalczyk who were occupying slit trenches in the narrow lawn in front of the house were to deploy the weapon. The remaining Gammon Bombs were stored on the upper floor of the Quatre Bras to be thrown down onto the decks of any armoured vehicles that came within range. Just before dark another explosive charge was used on the brick wall dividing the back gardens of Stationsweg Nos. 8 and 10. The explosion had the startling side-effect of blowing out all the remaining window glass in the two houses, but the resultant breach completed a network of shallow communication trenches linking the rear of the five Polish-occupied houses on the Stationsweg. At No. 8 Lieutenant Bereda-Fialkowski ordered the Kremer family and the thirty-three Dutch civilians sheltering there from the fighting back into the cellar with strict instructions to remain totally silent, cover the cellar windows and to refrain from showing any lights. The
Poles were perhaps understandably concerned about the damage a collaborator among the civilians could cause, but the paratroopers nonetheless handed over what chocolate and sweets they could muster to the Dutch children, and Officer Cadet Mieczyslaw Jurecki reassured Mrs Kremer that British tanks would arrive shortly. Elsewhere the Poles set about preparing what food they could find. In the Quatre Bras house Corporal Towarnicki despatched one of his men to collect a bucket of water from a nearby well which, after the paratroopers had partially slaked their thirst, was boiled up with the contents of a large bag of bran discovered in the house earlier; Towarnicki augmented this meagre fare with three cans of oxtail soup he had been hoarding in his webbing small-pack.55

  The German tank attack failed to materialise, although a single tracked vehicle did approach the Polish positions in the darkness coming to a halt just short of the Utrechtseweg‒Stationsweg junction by the Hotel Vreewijk, where the commander engaged nearby German troops in a conversation audible over the idling engine. Lieutenant Kowalczyk led a party of his men stealthily forward from their trenches in front of the Quatre Bras across the junction and attacked the vehicle with a Gammon bomb. It is unclear if the subsequent explosion damaged it but the vehicle immediately reversed away from the junction while spraying the Quatre Bras with machine-gun fire; it then fired several more bursts west along the Utrechtseweg before withdrawing. Kowalczyk and his men also withdrew to their trenches, apparently unscathed. Although the Poles remained on the alert the vehicle did not return and the restof the night passed relatively quietly apart from regular rounds by Lieutenant Bereda-Fialkowski and the noise of heavy calibre shells from 30 Corps’ artillery falling just behind the German positions straddling the Utrechtseweg to the east.56 This continued after daybreak, when the Poles moved back into the buildings from the slit trenches, and the German bombardment was soon augmented by direct fire from Sturmgeschütze Brigade 280’s vehicles. Many of the German projectiles passed clean through the houses without exploding, which led to speculation that the vehicles were employing anti-tank shells due to a shortage of high-explosive rounds.

  The British heavy artillery shells also began falling closer to the Polish positions, making the buildings quake alarmingly. One shell, presumably a smaller calibre German projectile, burst in the parlour of the house serving as Bereda-Fialkowski’s command post, demolishing a heavy green brocade sofa and scattering the burning debris around the room. The flames were quickly extinguished by the occupants, although Corporal Stanislaw Lewicki sadly noted that the damage included a container of Genever gin gifted to the paratroopers the previous day that, ‘neither tasted or enjoyed, had soaked into the plaster that covered a once-luxurious rug’.57

  On the Poles’ right the Pathfinders from Major Wilson’s 21st Independent Company also appear to have spent a relatively quiet night after rebuffing German demands to evacuate the house on the Pietersbergseweg and subsequent destruction of a Panzer IV by the PIAT-wielding Company cook, Private Dixon. The by-now routine morning bombardment of the Pathfinder’s positions was classified as ‘very heavy’ by the unit War Diary and included a number of white phosphorous mortar bombs that ignited a number of fires in the buildings occupied by the Pathfinders and those adjacent. German ground activity in the morning consisted of attempts to infiltrate through No. 2 Platoon’s positions along the Paasbergweg on the right of the Company frontage.58 No. 1 Platoon and especially Bren-gunner Private Sidney Humphries were able to assist in repelling the would-be interlopers from its central position on the junction of the Pietersbergseweg and Paasbergweg. Private Humphries fired on and hit a German spotted by one of the Platoon NCOs standing in the open on the Annastraat just east of their location, only to see a previously concealed Red Cross armband as the man fell; after a pause Humphries not unreasonably justified his error by pointing out that the German had ‘asked for it – standing in the open like that’.59 By 11:55 Major Wilson was able to report that his situation had ‘stabilised and that any enemy who infiltrated were either dead or withdrawn’. A direct attack on No. 3 Platoon’s positions on the Pietersbergseweg facing the Hotel Schoonoord in the afternoon was also rebuffed.60

  While the fighting on and north of the Utrechtseweg was hard, the heaviest German attack of Monday 25 September, which came close to fragmenting the Airborne perimeter, came in against the sector south of the 21st Independent Company and involved the most formidable armoured vehicles deployed against the 1st Airborne Division to date. After serving in some of the heaviest fighting on the Eastern Front in the first half of 1944, Major Eberhard Lange’s schwere Panzer Abteilung 506 was ordered to withdraw to Ohrdruf in central Germany on 15 August. There the unit was re-equipped with forty-five Tiger II heavy tanks over a three-week period ending on 12 September and after a short period of training was despatched to the Western Front by rail, arriving at Zevenaar during the night of Saturday 23 September. There at least two of the Abteilung’s sub-units, each equipped with fourteen tanks, were unloaded to join II SS Panzerkorps while 1 Kompanie and the Abteilung HQ element carried on to Aachen, although they too may have been unloaded to road march to the railway stations at Apeldoorn and Zutphen for onward despatch to join the fighting against the US 1st Army. Of the remainder that definitely detrained at Zevenaar, 2 Kompanie commanded by a Hauptmann Wacker was despatched south to Elst to join 10 SS Panzer Division while Hauptmann Otto’s 3 Kompanie embarked on the fifteen-mile road march to Oosterbeek to join 9 SS Panzer Division.61 On arrival Otto’s vehicles appear to have been parcelled out to the units pressing against the south-eastern sector of the British perimeter, Kampfgruppe Harder and Kampfgruppe von Allwörden and possibly Kampfgruppe Möller, the new arrivals may also have been integrated with the elements of Sturmgeschütze Brigade 280 already operating with the various kampfgruppen, given British accounts of the Monday fighting.

  The German bombardment on the southern half of the Airborne perimeter was noted as being especially heavy, although reports of the time it commenced varied between units and locations. The 1st Airlanding Light Regiment referred to heavy mortaring from the early morning for example, while the 1st Airlanding Brigade HQ, located just a few hundred yards to the north, referred to heavy mortaring and shelling breaking out at around 10:00 after a ‘comparatively quiet morning’.62 The ground attack began at 10:00, although some reports refer to it beginning at 11:00 or in the early afternoon, the disparity likely being due to the attackers reaching the various British unit locations at different times.63 The target of the thrust was again the previously penetrated section of the eastern perimeter between the 21st Independent Parachute Company and LONSDALE Force. The 1st Parachute Battalion account noted: ‘On this day the perimeter was widely breached to the North of us, and the enemy was moving in our left flank in force. A considerable number of tanks inside the perimeter.’64 One Tiger II, accompanied by three StuGs and possibly a section of infantry, penetrated two-thirds of the way across the British perimeter, into the rear area of its western face. The infantry were eliminated after occupying a group of houses midway between the 1st Airlanding Brigade HQ and the Hotel Hartenstein by a party of Glider Pilots from C Squadron commanded by Major James Dale DFC and Bar, who had been providing protection for the Brigade HQ since Tuesday 19 September.65 The armoured vehicles came even closer to the Airlanding Brigade HQ after regrouping at a track junction 100 yards or so south, with the Tiger reportedly coming to a halt ‘with its nose just visible round the corner of the gate’. As the HQ was protected by a concealed 6-Pounder anti-tank gun the arrival of the sixty-eight-ton behemoth did not cause undue alarm, until it was discovered that the 6-Pounder’s breech had been damaged by mortar fire, rendering it inoperable. Another gun was then hastily brought up and fired three rounds in quick succession that ‘immobilised the tank but did not destroy it’. The presence of the 6-Pounder ‘deterred the enemy for the rest of the day’, while the damaged Tiger was towed away by another tank after dark.66

  The most serious fighting of the day actuall
y took place in the vicinity of the Oosterbeek Old Church as the German units facing the south-eastern sector continued their efforts to prise the Airborne perimeter away from the Lower Rhine. The 1st Airlanding Light Regiment’s 3 Battery had moved into the immediate vicinity of the Church on Monday 18 September, where it was joined by the rest of the Regiment the following afternoon. Regimental HQ occupied a building on the north side of the Benedendorpsweg just opposite the Church with 1 Battery’s gun positions immediately adjacent to the north and 2 Battery located just to the west, while 3 Battery was deployed on the south side of the Benedendorpsweg almost directly west of the Church. LONSDALE Force was deployed around the Light Regiment’s location, with a composite group made up mainly of men from the 2nd South Staffords commanded by Major John Simonds dug in to the immediate south of the Church; another group of Staffords commanded by Major Robert Cain was located north-east of the Church covering 1 Battery’s gun positions and a third group, dubbed ‘LONGSTOP’, was dug in just west of 3 Battery’s location. The much-reduced 1st, 3rd and 11th Parachute Battalion contingents were located straddling the Benedendorpsweg to the east of the Church and the north of 1 and 2 Battery’s gun positions was protected by G Squadron Glider Pilots commanded by Major Robert Croot. The location also included two Vickers Medium Machine-Guns and two 3-inch mortars deployed in the immediate vicinity of the Church, up to five 6-Pounder anti-tank guns and a single 17-Pounder.67 According to Middlebrooks’s account the crisis point of the German attack came with the arrival of tanks after a supporting shoot from 30 Corps’ artillery, but the primary source material suggests this was not the case as the 1st Airlanding Light Regiment record refers to being ‘subjected to a heavy Tank attack’ at the outset of the attack at 10:00.68 Within the hour the Gunners informed 1st Airlanding Brigade HQ that they were ‘being very heavily attacked’ and made an emergency request for ‘immediate infantry support and PIATs’. As the Airlanding Brigade HQ had no assistance to offer, the request was passed on to the Hotel Hartenstein, which responded honestly if equally unhelpfully by pointing out that ‘nothing could be found for them and that they must hang on’.69 The Light Regiment’s 1 Battery bore the brunt of the initial assault from the north during which A Troop was reportedly overrun by three Tiger tanks despite a Sergeant Daly, a Gun Commander from B Troop, reportedly knocking out an unidentified vehicle. The adjacent 2 Battery appears to have been attacked initially by infantry whose heavy fire prevented the crews from operating their guns and then, just as the Gunners were organising a counter-attack to drive the interlopers back, by tanks that overran the Battery position.70 One vehicle stood off and pumped shells into the house serving as the Battery Command Post, where Gunner William Speedie stuck steadfastly to his assigned duty whilst manning the Battery control set, as related by Gunner Robert Christie from C Troop: