I looked back to see if I could see the trucks…and actually saw an 88 shell ricochet off the road in a shower of sparks between the jeep and the truck following …without exploding. It went into the next field where it finally did explode. It was apparent that the Germans were able to see even our small axle lights and were firing at us over open sights.61
While the storm boats were being unloaded in the orchard under Lieutenant Kennedy’s supervision, Lieutenant Cronyn and Lieutenant Martin were tasked to clear the 500-yard route to the water’s edge over the two dykes and mark it with white tape. The crossing point itself consisted of a stretch of mud beach with two inlets twenty and sixty yards wide to the west and east respectively, divided and bounded by stone groynes extending thirty yards or so out into the river. The smaller inlet was designated as the boat launch point while the larger inlet was to act as a servicing and holding area for reserve storm boats and making running repairs; Major Anthony Vinycomb’s 260 Field Company RE occupied the adjacent inlet downstream to the west and possibly the one next to that. Major Tucker set up his Command Post on the servicing and holding inlet while Sergeant George King set up a refuelling station 100 yards back from the launch inlet, and a RAP was established in a culvert under the summer dyke opposite the launch point manned by a Lance-Corporal Roseborough and Sapper McDonald. Lieutenant Kennedy was responsible for getting the storm boats from the orchard to the inlets assisted by Lieutenant Tate, unloading was to be controlled by Lieutenant Cronyn on the south bank while Lieutenant Martin was to cross the river and supervise loading on the north bank.62
Unloading the storm boats from the trucks was a difficult task complicated by the darkness and rain. They weighed 900 pounds apiece and the Evinrude outboard motors 198 pounds; it took eight men to unload each vessel and the task was hampered initially by a shortage of manpower until Lieutenant Cronyn returned with the missing personnel trucks.63 Moving the boats over the 500 yards from the orchard to the lee of the ten-foot-high summer dyke was even more challenging, with each vessel requiring a carrying party of sixteen to eighteen men employing lengths of steel pipe threaded through cast iron hoops attached to the hulls. The twenty-foot-high winter dyke proved to be a formidable obstacle as the ‘heavy rain softened the ground and the churning of men’s feet as they struggled over with the stormboats soon created a slippery mess which lent no footing whatsoever. Hand ropes were fixed, but even with these the going was extremely difficult.’64 Lieutenant Kennedy, who accompanied the first carrying party commanded by Corporal George Robinson, remembered it was ‘unbelievably difficult to climb…and we left men to fix hand ropes over it’.65 The difficulty was compounded by fire from German machine-guns, mortars, artillery and nebelwerfers stirred up by the British covering barrage, which commenced at 21:00. As Sapper Donald Somerville recalled, ‘the Germans were firing machine guns at us; the tracers bouncing off the dyke wall seemed to go right through your legs.’66 The artillery and mortars proved to be an even worse problem as near misses understandably prompted the carrying parties to drop their burdens and seek cover; several boats were damaged this way and that carried by Corporal Robinson’s party was holed after being inadvertently dropped on one of the clumps of rocks scattered along the taped pathway, although the damage does not appear to have been discovered until the vessel was launched. Despite this the first storm boats were delivered to the lee of the summer dyke where one of the maintenance Sections from the 10th Field Park Company RCE attached the outboard motors; the other Section had been assigned to the 20th Field Company at the western crossing point.67 Just west of the Canadian crossing point 260 Field Company RE had a slightly easier time moving its lighter canvas-sided assault boats to the water’s edge. Each vessel could be manhandled by a team of ten men, although the German small-arms and artillery fire rendered the task no less dangerous. Nonetheless by 21:30 the British and Canadian vessels were in place ready to launch and commence the evacuation as scheduled.68
The artillery fire-plan to cover the 1st Airborne Division’s withdrawal to and across the Lower Rhine began at 21:00, although two sources refer to it commencing ten minutes before the hour and another fifteen minutes after the hour.69 The evacuation fire-plan was delivered by all three of the 43rd Division’s organic artillery units, 94, 112 and 179 Field Regiments RA with an ammunition allotment of 200 rounds per gun and a further 100 rounds per gun was provided to be fired in support of the deception operation at Heteren, although it is unclear which unit was involved.70 The bombardment was intensified by fire from 84 Medium Regiment RA and possibly 64 Medium Regiment RA from 5 Army Groups Royal Artillery (AGRA) operating under 30 Corps control. 84 Medium Regiment reported firing a total of ‘20 rpg [rounds per gun] spread over 2½ hours engaged in sp [support] of 43 Inf Div’, while 64 Medium Regiment reported firing six separate fire missions on coded targets between 21:00 and 22:58, when all radio contact was finally lost with 1st Airborne Division.71 This tallies with Middlebrook, who refers to the fire-plan consisting of ‘Intensive fire from every available regiment…for the first three hours, followed by “spasmodic concentrations” for the next five [hours]’.72 The weight and ferocity of the fire-plan doubtless brought comfort to the embattled Airborne soldiers who had endured days of bombardment from German mortars and artillery, although some rounds inevitably fell short inside the British perimeter; Staff-Sergeant Victor Miller divedr beneath a wrecked Jeep under a series of short rounds whilst acting as a guide on the route to the Lower Rhine, and to add insult to injury he discovered he had ‘plunged into some dung’.73
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Unsurprisingly, the British bombardment prompted a response from the Germans, which interfered with the British withdrawal in at least one instance. Major Wilson briefed his officers from the 21st Independent Parachute Company on the upcoming withdrawal at 18:00, the plan being to disengage quietly from the Company positions on the Pietersbergseweg and Paasbergweg under cover of the British bombardment and move to a Forming Up Point (FUP) in a cabbage field just west of the Pietersbergseweg, before moving down to the river at 21:45 in a Company column, Lieutenant David Eastwood’s No. 1 Platoon in the lead. The process commenced at 19:45 with the most forward elements being withdrawn within the Company perimeter but for most it was a nervous period of waiting for the order to move; Sergeant Stanley Sullivan passed the time in the school occupied by No. 1 Platoon by chalking ‘WE’LL BE BACK’ in large underlined block letters on one of the blackboards.74 The fire-plan included a concentration on a patch of woodland south of the Independent Company’s location held by the Germans, presumably as a result of their push into the perimeter earlier that day. The German response came fifteen minutes later when the ‘the enemy…put down everything he had into our area, making the forming up of the Company very difficult and hazardous.’75 The Germans pressed forward and set fire to the houses occupied by the Company under cover of darkness, possibly a facet of their new tactic of night fighting.
Despite this the Independent Company appears to have withdrawn to the FUP without incident, although despite the heavy rain some of the Pathfinders may have fallen asleep while lying in the cabbage field and the move to the embarkation point began fifteen minutes late, at 22:00. The planned order of march may also have been modified or abandoned, given that part of No. 1 Platoon under Sergeant Ron Kent and another party commanded by Sergeant Richard Wilkin were left behind at the FUP when the Company moved off; the error was discovered when the two Sergeants came together whilst seeking to clarify the prolonged delay in moving. In the event the abandonment proved a good thing as the two Sergeants led their men into the woods, located the white tape for the western route and reached the Benedendorpsweg west of the Old Church without further incident at 23:30.76 Matters did not run so smoothly for the remainder of the Company, which bumped a German outpost in the wood and came under fire from two machine-guns; Major Wilson and Lieutenant John Horsley, who was on attachment from the Border Regiment, were both hit and other members of the lead Section
may also have become casualties. The Pathfinders discouraged the guns with hand-grenades while Captain Robert Spivey, the Company’s second-in-command, reformed the column and reached the Lower Rhine without further incident after taking a dog-leg to the west to avoid the outpost.77 Both increments of the Independent Company waited separately on the riverside polder to be called forward to the embarkation point, although at least one man, Private Kenneth Roberts, attempted to swim the fast-flowing river and was drowned in the attempt.78 Major Wilson, who became separated during the incident in the wood where he received grazing wounds to his nose and eye, reached the embarkation point under his own steam and rejoined the Company on the south bank; Lieutenant Horsley died of his wounds on 27 September 1944.79
On the western side of the perimeter the 7th KOSB, among the most far-flung of the 1st Airlanding Brigade’s units, was first to move off from its position straddling the Bothaweg and Paul Krugerstraat as scheduled at 21:15, with C Company and Battalion HQ in the lead, followed by D Company and then B Company acting as rearguard. The Battalion’s non-ambulatory casualties were to be left in the Battalion RAP under the care of the Battalion Medical Officer and Padre, Captain John Graham-Jones and Captain The Reverend John Rowell; the walking wounded were supposed to accompany D Company but for some reason they did not appear at the FUP as ordered.80 The first stage of the withdrawal, to the 1st Airlanding Brigade RV on the Benedendorpsweg west of the Oosterbeek Old Church, did not go as planned. The Battalion column stayed clear of the Oranjeweg and Steijnweg running south to the Utrechtseweg to avoid roving German patrols and machine-guns firing along them on fixed lines, and instead followed a route through the gardens of the houses on the Nassaulaan and the Hartensteinlaan reconnoitred by a Corporal Munro from the Battalion Intelligence Section. As it negotiated this route the column ran into ‘an extremely heavy shelling concentration’ that caused a number of casualties and cut off the tail of the column as men sought cover and became separated in the darkness.81 The bulk of the Battalion successfully crossed the Utrechtseweg but then became disoriented in the thick woods to the south of the Hotel Hartenstein after falling in with a guide leading a group of unidentified paratroopers. Lieutenant-Colonel Payton-Reid solved this by striking off on his own, marching to a compass bearing with the assistance of Captain John Walker from the 1st Airlanding Light Battery RA who was acting as replacement FOO for the 7th KOSB; this brought the Battalion column to the 1st Airlanding Brigade HQ from where it was able to access the western route to the Brigade RV on the Benedendorpsweg, possibly with the assistance of the HQ given that it remained in place until 23:00.82 Whether or not, the 7th KOSB column reached the Brigade RV exactly on schedule at 22:15 and from there followed the white tape across the polder to the embarkation point.83
The RE contingent on the north-west sector of the perimeter moved off at the same time as the 7th KOSB just as a heavy German artillery bombardment began to land on that sector. The main body of the 4th Parachute Squadron RE led by Lieutenant Norman Thomas fell back through the positions of the 9th (Airborne) Field Company at 21:15, followed five minutes later by a covering party commanded by Captain James Cormie.84 The two groups made their way straight to the Lower Rhine independently, arriving at 22:15 and 22:30 respectively, where Captain Cormie made contact with Captain James Smith from the Squadron’s 1 Troop. Both parties reported losing an unknown number of men missing en route; it is unclear if this was due to enemy action or as a result of men simply getting lost.85 The 9th (Airborne) Field Company followed at 21:27, moving in parties of approximately fifteen, each under a Sergeant or Senior NCO, the first of which reached the Lower Rhine at 22:30.86 They were accompanied by approximately fourteen men from 261 (Airborne) Field Park Company RE, the bulk of whom made it to the Lower Rhine although a Sapper Page was wounded en route and Sapper Lennox Anderson was killed by a mortar bomb. Sapper Kenneth Clark may also have been killed during the withdrawal.87
The 1st Border was scheduled to begin its withdrawal at 20:00 with the despatch of a reconnaissance party to the Lower Rhine to set up a Battalion RV point. Battalion HQ, S Company and the walking wounded from the Battalion RAP were to move off at 22:40, followed by A company at 22:50 and C Company ten minutes after that but things went awry when Captain Barry Ingram and A Company moved back temporarily to occupy the positions vacated by the RE contingent. The German shelling of the Sappers’ location proved to be the precursor for a German attack as Kampfgruppe von Tettau took up the new night-fighting tactic and a combination of the bombardment and German infantry attacks rapidly took a serious toll of the glider soldiers; on conferring with his second-in-command Lieutenant Lennard Withers, Captain Ingram discovered that the fighting had halved his effective strength to twenty-two men in under an hour. With no sign of a let-up Ingram decided staying in place until 22:50 as ordered would simply lead to A Company being destroyed in place and he therefore went back to Battalion HQ accompanied by a Private Kerwin to seek permission to withdraw earlier; Lieutenant Withers was instructed to lead the Company to the river if Ingram did not return within forty-five minutes.88 Captain Ingram found the HQ occupied by Lieutenants Joseph Hardy and Michael Holman from the Battalion from the Signals and Mortar Platoons respectively, with no sign of acting Battalion commander Major Stuart Cousens, who had presumably departed early for the embarkation RV with S Company and the walking wounded; 1st Airlanding Brigade HQ noted that ‘Other units in the order of the march had not adhered to their timetable’ and departed earlier than scheduled.89 Ingram therefore sought out the commander of C Company, Major William Neill, and arranged for A Company to fall back to Battalion HQ and act as a temporary backstop for Major Neill’s Company, after which he returned to the perimeter. He had some difficulty retracing his steps in the darkness. He appears to have led A Company back to the Battalion HQ location but found it impossible to act as a rearguard there due to German pressure. On coming across an immobile line of men waiting in the woods, he struck off for the Brigade RV with his Company in tow. After clambering over several dykes and wading through waist-deep water Major Neill eventually located the RV where Major Anthony Blake, the Brigade Major, directed them onto the soggy riverside polder where they joined ‘a long serpentine queue…for all the world like a cinema queue’.90
The 1st Border’s C Company also appears to have come under German attack but held on in its positions astride the Utrechtseweg until 23:00 as ordered. At that point Major Neill put in an attack to put the enemy off balance before neatly breaking contact and withdrawing toward the river ten minutes later, becoming the Battalion rearguard in the process; the Company appears to have reached the Brigade RV without further incident.91 In so doing Major Neill’s unit appears to have neglected to inform the re-roled Polish anti-tank gunners to the rear of his Company location of his departure. After tiring of waiting in the darkness for the word to move, Lieutenant Bossowski visited the C Company Command Post in the Valkenburg house in search of clarification, only to find it empty and abandoned. Understandably a ‘little disgusted at the “misunderstanding”’, Bossowski held a brief conference with Lieutenant Mikulski, gathered his men and set off through the rain-lashed woods in the direction that seemed most likely to bisect the withdrawal route. Unfortunately, this took the Poles to the brink of entering the German lines before Bossowski got an inkling that something was amiss; he halted the column and on retracing his steps located the path leading to the Lower Rhine and was able to join the expanding throng on the riverside polder.92 Back with the 1st Border, the remnants of B Company and BREESE Force were presumably scheduled to withdraw after C Company at some point after 23:00, but Major Breese was summoned to Brigade HQ at 22:00; the reason is unclear but after he had been absent for two hours Lieutenant Patrick Stott made his way around the various positions ordering the men to begin moving down to the river. Major Breese then returned and announced that they were to remain in place for a further hour and this was done despite difficulties in recalling the men in the darkness. In t
he meantime the 1st Airlanding Brigade HQ left its location for the Brigade RV on the Benedendorpsweg at 23:00 with the men holding hands to avoid becoming separated in the darkness. On arrival Brigadier Hicks and his party discovered that that ‘units which should still have been in position were already moving past’. They were followed by BREESE Force, which found itself at the very back of the queue on the polder.93
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The boats began moving across the Lower Rhine from the south bank as scheduled, although there were some minor variations to the plan. As nothing was known about the situation opposite the Heveadorp ferry crossing site it was decided to despatch a single craft over the Lower Rhine to gauge the situation, and that it would be tactically prudent for it to be an assault boat from 553 Field Company RE rather than a storm boat with its noisy Evinrude outboard motor. The assault boat, commanded by Sergeant Frederick Petrie, was launched precisely on schedule at 21:30 and took just ten minutes to reach the north bank in the face of ‘incessant machine gun fire from three enemy posts’ and illumination from a burning factory building near Heveadorp village, repeating the tactic employed over the previous two nights.94 On arrival Sergeant Petrie found the riverside mudflats deserted apart from two men from the 4th Dorsets who had been hiding in one of the mired DUKWs from the previous night’s crossing. On reaching the south bank these stragglers, ‘advised us that there were no other personnel on the far bank’.95 Another assault boat was immediately despatched to verify this and returned empty and Sergeant Petrie made a second crossing at 23:30 with the same result, although in the meantime a party made the passage from the north bank using an assault boat abandoned there during the previous night’s crossing; this may have been the group from the 1st Border that included Private Wilfred Oldham.96 Sergeant Petrie was awarded the Military Medal for his actions that night and for rescuing a wounded officer under fire during the crossing of the River Seine in August 1944.97 Operations were suspended for an hour at 01:00 owing to friendly mortar fire falling on the disembarkation area, and another assault boat crossed at 02:00 and returned carrying two men before operations were permanently cancelled an hour later at 03:00, partly because of the lack of passengers and more immediately because the volume of German machine-gun and mortar fire made it too dangerous for the Sappers to operate on the water or exposed riverbank.98 In around five hours, forty-eight men came across the Lower Rhine through the western crossing point, twenty-five via 533 Field Company’s assault boats; the remainder either made their own way across like Private Oldham’s party or were carried downstream from the eastern crossing site by the current.
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