Arnhem

by William F Buckingham

  Major-General Thomas’ plan for the evacuation, which was to be carried out under the command of Brigadier Walton and 130 Brigade, involved two crossing sites, one roughly opposite the Oosterbeek Old Church where the Poles had made their crossings on the nights of 22-23 and 23-24 September and the other at the Heveadorp ferry terminal, where the 4th Dorsets had crossed the previous night.102 Four Sapper Field Companies, two British and two Canadian, were tasked to carry out the ferrying with the two eastern sites being manned by the 23rd Field Company RCE and 260 Field Company RE. The Heveadorp site was manned by the 20th Field Company RCE but there is some confusion as to which British unit shared that crossing point with the Canadians. The 20th Field Company RCE War Diary specifically refers to it being tasked with 204 Field Company RE, but that unit’s War Diary makes no mention of being involved in the evacuation, merely referring to its constituent platoons returning to their respective harbour areas after the previous night’s activities and being involved in road repairs south-west of Driel. The only possible involvement is indicated by a cryptic reference to ‘Four men from 3 Pl under comd of RAMC ferrying men from far bank of river’.103 However, the British official record, the 43rd Division’s semi-official account and Sliz’s work on the Canadian involvement quite clearly state that the western crossing site was manned by the 20th Field Company RCE and 553 Field Company RE, the latter being one of the 43rd Division’s organic Divisional units.104 The pairing of the units was deliberate in order to make the best use of the different craft with which the units were equipped. The arrangement originated with Lieutenant-Colonel Mark Henniker, the 43rd Division’s CRE, who argued his case with a sceptical Major-General Thomas at the Divisional O Group for Operation BERLIN. According to Henniker, Thomas ‘was unbelievably ill-informed about the behaviour of boats in a swiftly flowing river’ and he did not take having the realities of the situation pointed out well either: ‘He [Thomas] looked at me with astonishment and increasing displeasure as I told my tale, but it seemed to me prudent to warn him of the worst before he heard of it from spectators the following morning.’105 Thomas yielded grudgingly and the ferrying operation was run according to Henniker’s detailed template.106

  The two British Field Companies were equipped with the standard canvas-sided assault boats while the Canadians were equipped with storm boats. At twenty feet long and with a capacity of around a dozen men the storm boats were larger than the assault boats employed hitherto, their all-plywood construction rendered them considerably more robust and most crucially they employed a fifty-horsepower Evinrude outboard motor. This of course made them faster than the oar-propelled assault boats and the absence of oarsmen freed up more space for passengers and equipment.107 There is some confusion regarding the actual number of craft involved depending on the source. According to the 43rd Division account the British units deployed sixteen canvas assault boats to each of their two sites and the Canadians twenty-one storm boats to each, giving a total of thirty-two and forty-two craft respectively.108 The British official record on the other hand cites figures from 130 Brigade and is adamant that the true overall total across the two locations was sixteen assault boats and fifteen storm boats. Sliz’s more recent research puts the total number of storm boats at twenty-two, with fourteen allocated to the 23rd Field Company RCE and eight to the 20th Field Company RCE; the figure of sixteen assault boats each is likely accurate given that 260 Field Company RE reported employing eight of the craft.109

  The commanders of the four Sapper units attended an O Group called by Lieutenant-Colonel Henniker at 10:00 at 43rd Division HQ at Valburg. It is intriguing ‒ perhaps ironic ‒ that Henniker had served as the 1st Airborne Division’s CRE in Sicily and thereafter until August 1944 when he transferred to the 43rd Division, recommending Lieutenant-Colonel Edmund Myers as his successor. The transfer away from the Airborne fold was reportedly due to Henniker’s increasingly negative attitude during the period June to September 1944, when the 1st Airborne Division was repeatedly placed on stand-by for aborted missions.110 The Sapper commanders were informed of the decision to evacuate the Oosterbeek perimeter that night and that the Canadian storm boats were intended to play the primary role as their outboard motors made them better able to cope with the strong current. No details of the upcoming operation were provided as these were to follow at another O Group at 130 Brigade HQ at Homoet at 17:00, although Major Tucker from the 23rd Field Company RCE was informed that ‘he could only rely on his own resources to deploy the [storm] boats to their launch sites’; the Canadians appear to have addressed this by temporarily co-opting a number of vehicles from 551st General Transport Company RASC, which was part of one of the 2nd Army’s bridging trains.111 The Engineers were to concentrate near the railway station in Valburg, five miles south of Driel, where they would remain until dark. In the meantime Major Tucker inspected the concentration area accompanied by Lieutenants Russell Kennedy and Robert Tate, Sergeant Donald Barnes and Sapper Buck McKee. The latter four were then despatched north to liaise with 130 Brigade, familiarise themselves and reconnoitre the routes and likely crossing sites while Major Tucker returned to the Company location at Nijmegen to brief the rest of the unit and organise the move to the concentration area. It is unclear if the reconnaissance party proceeded straight from Valburg or returned to Nijmegen first.

  The 23rd Field Company RCE moved off from its harbour area in Nijmegen at 14:00 in a thirty-seven-vehicle column, with the Company personnel travelling in three Jeeps, two wireless-equipped scout cars, twelve three-ton trucks and two kitchen lorries; of the remainder seventeen vehicles were carrying storm boats and their outboard motors and a single three-ton truck carried two Sections from the 10th Field Company RCE, each made up of an electrician, four engine fitters and two carpenters to make any necessary running repairs to the storm boats during the evacuation.112 The thirteen-mile journey to Valburg was slow due to the complicated route, the narrow roads with their impassable verges and deep ditches and the proximity of the enemy, but the convoy reached the concentration area near Valburg railway station without significant mishap after an hour and three-quarters at 15:45. It was fully dispersed and parked by 16:30 on an area of hard standing near the station and concealed on an adjacent tree-lined street.113 The 20th Field Company RCE moved off from Nijmegen in eighteen vehicles including two kitchen trucks at 14:30; it is unclear if the column travelled with the other Canadian Field Company or independently, and when it arrived.114 In the event the 17:00 O Group at 130 Brigade HQ did not get underway until 17:45 as Lieutenant-Colonel Henniker was ‘unavoidably delayed’ but this was perhaps fortunate as Lieutenants Kennedy and Tate from the scouting party did not arrive at Homoet until 17:15.115 Lieutenant Kennedy briefed the assembled commanders on the three locations he had selected as crossing points and the preparations necessary to make them usable. At the eastern location this involved building a bridge from the road into the riverside orchard where the 23rd Field Company RCE’s fourteen storm boats and seventeen Evinrude outboard motors were to be unloaded ready for manhandling over two dykes to the water’s edge. While the western location was more accessible, it required white tapes to be laid as a guide from the point on the road where the 20th Field Company RCE’s eight storm boats were to be unloaded, four of them complete with motors and other equipment fitted, through an orchard and over three separate dykes, one of them twenty feet high; additional guidance was to be provided by Bofors guns firing tracer across the river to mark the left and right boundaries of the Heveadorp crossing lane.116 The operation was to begin at 21:00 with a covering bombardment on the north bank intended to keep the enemy occupied and to mask the noise of unloading and other preparations from the Sappers. The first assault boat scheduled to launch at 21:30 with the first storm boat following ten minutes later and in an effort to conceal what was afoot the trucks carrying the storm boats were forbidden to move before the onset of full darkness at 19:30.117

  Lieutenant-Colonel Henniker terminated the O Group at 18:15
and the Sapper officers rejoined their units to complete preparations for the last act of Operation MARKET GARDEN.118

  21

  Evacuation

  D Plus 8 to D Plus 9

  18:00 Monday 25 September 1944 to

  06:00 Tuesday 26 September 1944

  Major-General Urquhart took two hours to consider the letters carried across the Lower Rhine by Lieutenant-Colonel Edmund Myers from his opposite number Major-General Thomas at the 43rd Division and his direct superior Lieutenant-General Browning at 1st Airborne Corps. After snatching a few moments of pre-bombardment quiet in the shattered remnants of the Hotel Hartenstein’s once pristine gardens he informed Thomas at 08:08 via the radio link to the 64th Field Regiment that Operation BERLIN had to be implemented that night. Twenty minutes later he transmitted a message to Browning via the Phantom link that included the warning that ‘Even comparatively minor offensive [enemy] action may cause complete disintegration’; the message had been encoded the previous night by the Division’s GHQ Liaison Regiment officer, Lieutenant Neville Hay.1 With the messages transmitted Urquhart summoned his senior commanders to a commander’s conference at the Hotel Hartenstein at 10:30.2 In the meantime he turned his attention to the mechanics of the upcoming withdrawal and evacuation with his Chief-of-Staff, Lieutenant-Colonel Charles Mackenzie, taking the Allied evacuation from Anzac Cove at Gallipoli on the night of 19-20 December 1915 as a template. Urquhart had studied the operation in detail for a promotion exam as a junior officer.3 As Urquhart himself put it, the intent was to work out ‘the simplest possible plan to get the chaps out of the perimeter during the few hours that were available to do so’ and to that end he planned the withdrawal ‘like the collapse of a paper bag. I wanted small parties…to give the impression we were still there, all the while pulling downwards and along each flank.’4 The evacuation was to be covered by 30 Corps artillery using a complex fire-plan supervised by the 1st Airborne Division’s CRA, Lieutenant-Colonel Robert Loder-Symonds. The plan was drawn up and encoded into Slidex in ‘two huge messages’ for transmission to 43rd Division by Brigade Major RA Major Philip Tower and Lieutenant Patrick de Burgh from Division HQ RA. The task took six hours and was made more onerous and time-consuming as the final signal had to be returned after receipt by 43rd Division to be double-checked because ‘Slidex keys…[had]…proved a stumbling block throughout the battle owing to faulty “tie up” in [the] planning period.’5 In the event the signal was acknowledged as accurate to the ‘great relief’ of all involved; Major Tower later recalled ‘It was a Slidex signal the like of which I had never done before and I have never done since – all done in poor conditions.’6

  Most of the attendees at Urquhart’s 10:30 commander’s conference were likely already present in the Hotel Hartenstein, specifically Lieutenant-Colonel Mackenzie, CRA Lieutenant-Colonel Robert Loder-Symonds and CRE Lieutenant-Colonel Myers. They were joined by Brigadier Philip Hicks, commanding the 1st Airlanding Brigade and western side of the Oosterbeek perimeter and Lieutenant-Colonel Iain Murray from No.1 Wing GPR, who had taken command of the 4th Parachute Brigade and the eastern side of the perimeter on 24 September, after Brigadier John Hackett was wounded. Hicks reportedly arrived out of breath after being obliged to sprint across the Hartenstein’s back lawn, which was covered by a German machine-gun.7 The conference may also have included Major John Winchester commanding the 9th (Airborne) Field Company RE, given that he returned to his Company on the north-west sector of the perimeter at around 11:00 with details of the withdrawal plan.8 The conference was inadvertently joined by the Division ADMS Colonel Graeme Warrack, who had come into Division HQ to brief Urquhart on the casualty situation, and his adventures behind German lines connected to transferring the most serious casualties from the Division CCS to the St Elizabeth Hospital the previous day. Urquhart informed him of the evacuation prior to the conference commencing, including his decision that all the Division’s doctors would be expected to remain on the north bank with the wounded. This made Warrack the first officer of the Division outside the staff and senior commanders to learn of the withdrawal; the first Other Rank appears to have been Signalman James Cockrill attached to Division HQ who overheard the terse ‘Operation Berlin is tonight’ signal, albeit without realising its significance.9 The news of the imminent withdrawal left Warrack ‘downcast and unhappy. Not because I had to stay – I had an obligation to the wounded – but because up to this moment I had expected the Division to be relieved in a very short time.’10 After garnering some details and covering his disappointment with his customary smile, Warrack left to start his own preparations for the withdrawal.

  Urquhart opened the conference with the simple announcement ‘We are to clear out tonight’ before laying out the withdrawal plan in detail.11 The covering bombardment from 30 Corps’ artillery using the fire-plan then in the process of being drawn up by Major Tower and Lieutenant de Burgh was to commence at 20:30 with the evacuation across the Lower Rhine scheduled to begin ninety minutes later, the delay being intended to mask the withdrawal of the units farthest from the Lower Rhine. The units were to move along two routes running east and west of the Division HQ area, with the 4th Parachute Brigade responsible for placing guides along the former and 1st Airlanding Brigade along the latter. The routes converged near the gun positions occupied by the 1st Airlanding Light Regiment’s 3 Battery west of the Oosterbeek Old Church, with the route from there across the polder to the embarkation area at the river’s edge being marked with white tape. All ranks were to muffle their footwear using whatever means available and move along the routes in groups of fourteen to facilitate rapid loading onto the evacuation craft; these groups were expressly forbidden from engaging any enemy encountered en route unless absolutely unavoidable, partly to avoid alerting the Germans to what was going on and partly to avoid friendly casualties in any outbreak of firing. On arrival at the water’s edge the parties were to take shelter in the lee of the bank and wait their turn.12 After assigning Myers the task of selecting the withdrawal routes and arranging the ‘ferry service’ over the river and assurances from Loder-Symonds that 30 Corps’ artillery would be up to the task of covering the evacuation, Urquhart brought the conference to a close by announcing that

  …news of the evacuation should not be broken until it was absolutely necessary to do so…there was always the likelihood of exhausted men falling into German hands and coming under interrogation. Further, when once men start to look over their shoulders their effectiveness is reduced. Only those who had to know were told now of the plan.13

  The Division challenge and password for BERLIN was JOHN/BULL.14 On the western half of the Oosterbeek perimeter some of those who needed to know were informed of the upcoming evacuation by Brigadier Hicks via an O Group at 1st Airlanding Brigade HQ at 13:30, although unit records refer to the meeting taking place at 13:00, 14:00 and 15:00 depending on the source.15 The attendees included Lieutenant-Colonel Robert Payton-Reid from the 7th KOSB, who travelled from his Battalion’s location in a Bren Carrier, the acting commander of the 1st Border Major Stuart Cousens accompanied by the Battalion Adjutant Captain Colin Douglas, the commander of No. 2 Wing GPR Lieutenant-Colonel John Place, and Major Charles Breese commanding BREESE Force.16 The 4th Parachute Squadron RE appears to have been briefed in two increments at different times, with the bulk of the Squadron at the Sonnenberg location being briefed by Major Winchester from the 9th (Airborne) Field Company RE at 14:00, while the detachment closer to Division HQ were included in the 4th Parachute Brigade O Group.17 Brigadier Hicks’ plan allotted BREESE Force the task of holding its positions and providing a covering screen through which the rest of units on the western half of the perimeter would withdraw along a route marked in white tape by the 9th (Airborne) Field Company RE.18 The first to move would be the 7th KOSB, which was scheduled to withdraw from its box position straddling the Bothaweg and Paul Krugerstraat at 21:15; D Company 1st Border was supposed to move off from its location on the western edge of the per
imeter at the same time but when contact was lost later in the afternoon it was assumed the beleaguered Company had been overrun; Lieutenant Green and his little band were thus left isolated and without orders in the woods near the Van Borsselenweg.19 Brigade HQ was to move next at 22:40, presumably accompanied by Major Dale and his Glider Pilots from C Squadron, followed by the rest of the Glider Pilots from No. 2 Wing and the re-roled Polish anti-tank gunners, and then the 1st Border; for some reason the No. 2 Wing War Diary refers to the Glider Pilots starting their move out of sequence at 21:00.20 Once all the above had passed through its positions BREESE Force was to withdraw to the river, although the timing is uncertain. The need for silence and stealth was again emphasised and the withdrawal was to include walking wounded from the unit RAPs while non-ambulatory cases were to be left behind to be gathered in by the Division Field Ambulance personnel the next day; the latter were to remain with their charges on the north bank. All ranks were to carry their personal weapons and ammunition ‘but no surplus eqpt carried. Everything left behind was to be destroyed so as to be rendered unusable’.21

  Disseminating instructions for the withdrawal did not flow quite so smoothly on the eastern side of the perimeter. Lieutenant-Colonel Murray called a Brigade O Group at the Hotel Hartenstein at 13:00 attended by around half a dozen commanders including Captain Brown from the 4th Parachute Squadron RE and probably Major Ian Toler commanding No. 1 Wing GPR in Murray’s stead, Major Hugh Bartlett and Captain James Ogilvie commanding B and D Squadrons GPR respectively.22 Major Lonsdale sent word that it would be impossible to get anyone through to Division HQ from his location due to the heavy German attack on the south-eastern sector of the perimeter, while Major Wilson warned that he might be late or unable to attend at all due to German snipers.23 In the event Major Wilson does appear to have reached the Hotel Hartenstein at 16:00 where he was given details of the withdrawal and informed that the Independent Company was to act as rearguard for the east.24 By this point LONSDALE Force was reportedly cut off from 4th Parachute Brigade HQ except for runners. A warning order for the withdrawal appears to have arrived via this runner at 16:00. Major Alan Bush from the 3rd Parachute Battalion was tasked to make ‘preliminary arrangements’ for the withdrawal in case more detailed orders did not appear.25 Implementation of Urquhart’s edict on not breaking news of the withdrawal to the rank-and-file until absolutely necessary was patchy. 156 Parachute Battalion was informed at 13:00 for example. Major Geoffrey Powell found the news ‘an appalling blow. I thought of all the men who had died and then I thought the whole effort had been a waste.’ Powell nonetheless requested and received permission to withdraw to a less isolated position in readiness at 14:00, presumably on the Utrechtseweg to the west of the Polish positions on the junction with the Stationsweg, although the new position put the paratroopers in close contact with the enemy on their left flank.26 At the other end of the scale LONSDALE Force did not receive the withdrawal instructions until 22:30, just an hour before it was to move.27