The lack of demand for the Sapper’s services at the western crossing point was simply because the bulk of the 305 men from the 4th Dorsets who crossed the Lower Rhine the previous night had been killed or captured in the course of the day, and the Airborne troops were simply unable to reach the crossing point because the Heveadorp ferry site had been outwith the 1st Airborne Division’s perimeter since the 1st Border had been driven off the Westerbouwing Heights on Thursday 21 September; it is unclear whether Urquhart’s HQ had not informed 30 Corps that this was the case or whether 30 Corps had been informed but chose to ignore the fact; either way, the result was the needless risking of lives and more importantly a waste of resources that would have been better deployed at the eastern crossing point. The 20th Field Company RCE thus did not make a single crossing at Heveadorp. The 03:00 cancellation was unfortunately not the end of the story for the Canadian Sappers. At 03:30 they were ordered to send four of their storm boats to assist at the eastern crossing site, which meant carrying the craft back over the summer dyke and reattaching their outboard motors before relaunching them. The first boat was struck by a mortar bomb and sunk as it was launched, the second made it upstream halfway to the eastern crossing point before being forced to beach on the south bank by intense machine-gun fire; the outboard motor then refused to start and the crew were forced to abandon it, wading through waist-deep mud to safety. The two remaining storm boats were not launched as the effort was abandoned with the approach of first light. Major Jones made some trenchant observations on the employment of his unit in the final paragraph of his report on the 20th Field Company’s involvement in the evacuation.99
Matters ran more according to plan at the eastern crossing site opposite the Oosterbeek Old Church. It was again decided to deploy the more stealthy assault boats first to clarify the situation on the north bank and the first of 260 Field Company’s eight craft, commanded by Lieutenant Alan Bevan, was launched at 21:30 as scheduled. It reached the north bank after ten minutes of intense paddling against the current, where Lieutenant Bevan made contact with the waiting Airborne troops and was swiftly loaded and returned with the first party of evacuees; Lieutenant Bevan remained on the north bank to liaise with Lieutenant-Colonel Myers’ loading control party. The return of the first assault boat to the south bank was witnessed by Lieutenant-Colonel Henniker, who had been pacing the shore after watching Lieutenant Bevan’s craft disappear into the ‘inky darkness’: ‘I do not know how long the interval was, but perhaps after ten or fifteen minutes, though it seemed longer, there came across the darkness the sound of dipping paddles. Then I saw a boat. It held a dozen men. I could recognize their airborne-pattern helmets. What a welcome sight it was!’100 All eight of 260 Company’s boats were launched and moving back and forth across the river in short order, with Lieutenant-Colonel Henniker witnessing the arrival of around sixty men from the north bank in a relatively short period.101 Despite the best efforts of the Sappers manning the craft the current carried the assault boats up to 200 yards downstream on each leg of the journey, obliging the crews to carry them back along the bank to the embarkation/disembarkation points.102 There was also some friction over loading wounded individuals as the Sappers had been ordered to prioritise able-bodied evacuees whereas the Airborne troops were looking to bring out their walking wounded and gave them priority by despatching them to the head of the queue. According to Ryan, members of LONSDALE Force visited the RAP in the vicarage near the Oosterbeek Old Church before withdrawing to the river and ‘took as many of the walking wounded as they could’; this may have been connected to Captain The Reverend Talbot Watkins, the 1st Parachute Battalion’s Padre, leading a party of around fifty wounded to the embarkation point from the same location.103 The result was some understandably acrimonious exchanges before the boat crews accepted that the Airborne troops were not going to comply; one Airborne Sergeant recalled that one boat crew refused to load his wounded friend until he threatened them with his rifle.104 The engine of the storm boat Private Arthur Shearwood from the 11th Parachute Battalion obtained a place on failed and the Canadian crew suggested their passengers employed rifle butts as paddles while it was coaxed back into life. Private Shearwood tapped the man in front and suggested he start paddling; the man pointed at his bandaged shoulder and replied ‘I can’t, I’ve lost an arm.’105
There was also the enemy machine-gun and mortar fire to contend with. One assault boat was reportedly ‘hit by a shell’, presumably close to the south bank as the ‘crew and cargo’ reached the shore safely. At least one other assault boat crew were not so lucky; Ryan recounts how when his fifteen-strong party from 156 Parachute Battalion reached the Lower Rhine Major Geoffrey Powell saw a boat ‘bobbing up and down in the water, sinking lower as the waves hit against. Powell waded out. The boat was full of holes and the sappers in it were all dead.’106 Two men from 260 Field Company RE were awarded the Military Medal for their actions during the evacuation, Sergeant Fred Hilton for making numerous crossings and remaining on the north bank for three hours organising embarkation and Sapper Arthur Denmark for making over twenty crossings without relief.107
Events were worse for the 23rd Field Company RCE. When the first storm boat was launched at 21:30 it began leaking badly, having been holed on rocks during the carry down to the water’s edge. The second boat, crewed by Lance-Corporal Daniel Ryan, Sapper Harold Magnusson and Sapper Leslie Roherty, carried Lieutenant James Martin to liaise with the Airborne side. It was launched fifteen minutes later and promptly disappeared with its crew, possibly after suffering a direct hit from a mortar bomb according to two witnesses.108 The third storm boat, commanded by Lance-Corporal James McLachlan, left at 22:15 followed at 22:35 by a fourth crewed by Corporal Sidney Smith, Sapper David Hope and Sapper Neil Thompson. The latter was capsized by a near miss from a mortar bomb as it headed fully laden for the south bank. Most of the men in the boat were killed including Sappers Hope and Thompson but five were thrown clear including Corporal Smith, who was kept afloat by air trapped inside his greatcoat. A borrowed assault boat commanded by Sergeant George Willick was later despatched to search for Lieutenant Martin’s craft.109 Lance-Corporal McLachlan’s boat eventually reappeared after nearly an hour loaded with wounded, possibly from Padre Watkins’ party from the vicarage RAP. It returned for another load as soon as the vessel was emptied. The first few boatloads may all have contained at least a proportion of wounded due to the Airborne troops giving them priority; Sergeant Sandy Morris noted that the ‘boats that came back were mostly full of wounded’.110 This caused delay as it took longer to embark wounded men, and the problem was compounded by the fact that many walking wounded weren’t walking. Lieutenant-Colonel Henry Preston, one of the 1st Airborne Division staffers supervising the loading, referred to wounded being laid on the bottom of the storm boats ‘amongst the boots of the others’,111 while on the other side of the Lower Rhine Sergeant Morris recalled carrying wounded from the boats and lying them on the beach in the rain with ‘nothing to cover them’; Lieutenant Cronyn also recounted comforting a badly wounded paratrooper whilst waiting for a stretcher party to carry him off the beach.112
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Back on the north bank the Polish 3rd Battalion contingent was scheduled to withdraw at 22:00 and Lieutenant Bereda-Fialkowski had ordered his men to make their way from the houses on the Stationsweg to the Quatre Bras house on the junction of the Utrechtseweg and Stationsweg in readiness. However, before the move began and possibly provoked by the British bombardment, the Germans attacked the Quatre Bras house at 21:30 with machine-guns and hand-grenades using flares for illumination. Lieutenant Kowalczyk’s men replied in kind; Corporal Towarnicki put out a hail of fire from a downstairs corner window, reloading his Sten gun with magazines provided by Private Marian Nowak and on occasion exchanging weapons provided from the same source. The German attack died down as the flares began to gutter out although there was still firing from both sides and Lieutenant Bereda-Fialkowski immediately ordered the
rest of his men to concentrate in the adjacent No. 4 in readiness to move through the Quatre Bras and across the Utrechtseweg. The move involved filing though a window opening after Bereda-Fialkowski, during which one paratrooper was shot and progress faltered when someone shouted that the Lieutenant had been killed; Bereda-Fialkowski scotched this with an angry rejoinder from across the yard and after a pause in the Quatre Bras the entire party reached the relative safety of the woods on the south side of the Utrechtseweg. Lieutenant Bereda-Fialkowski’s decision to withdraw when he did was shrewdly judged, for the Germans appear to have attacked the Poles’ positions again shortly afterward and swiftly divined where the paratroopers had gone. Lance-Corporal Kuzniar heard shouting back on the Stationsweg followed by a volley of flares and mortar bombs dropping into the wood; a paratrooper next to Kuzniar was seriously wounded in the neck by mortar fragments and had to be left behind. The rest of the journey to the embarkation point appears to have gone without incident and the Poles joined the throng on the riverside polder. Seeing that there was no chance of securing a crossing as a group, Lieutenant Bereda-Fialkowski cut his men loose by announcing ‘Men, each is on his own…We shall meet in Driel.’ The 3rd Battalion contingent then broke up into small groups to work out their next move, at least two of which appear to have found their own way across the Lower Rhine. Some of Lieutenant Jozef Kula’s men called him to an abandoned boat of some description, which they then launched and paddled across to the south bank. Lance-Corporal Kuzniar, accompanied by Lance-Corporal Cadet Grzelak and two unnamed companions, also located an abandoned boat under an overhang in the riverbank. Paddling with two small shovels they found in the craft, the four Poles headed for a red boat beached on the south bank but accurate machine-gun fire obliged them to take to the neck-deep water just short of the beach and swim to the shelter of the red craft; timing their move to when the gun was at the opposite end of its sweep, the four made a dash for and over the summer dyke to safety, although in the tumble down the far side Kuzniar’s Sten gun struck a painful blow on Grzelak’s leg, to the latter’s annoyance.113
The last HQ increment left the Hotel Hartenstein from 22:00, beginning with HQ Royal Artillery. After destroying its radio equipment CRA Lieutenant-Colonel Loder-Symonds and Brigade Major RA Major Philip Tower led a party of thirty down to the embarkation point, arriving at 23:45. RA HQ Intelligence Officer Lieutenant Hilary Barber was late and appears to have made his own way to the river, possibly with Signals Officer 2nd Lieutenant George Marshall, while Lieutenant de Burgh was wounded, captured and somehow taken to the MDS; he escaped and swam the Lower Rhine the following day. RA HQ clerks Sergeant Dear and Lance-Bombardier Cole were also captured after failing to get a boat.114 Major-General Urquhart and the Division HQ element moved off from the hotel at 22:30, leaving the wounded accrued at that location in the cellar in the care of Lieutenant Derrick Randall, the HQRA Medical Officer.115 The senior commanders burned their personal papers as part of their preparations for departure and Major-General Urquhart wrapped his boots in curtaining obtained by Private Hancock, who had been his batman since serving with the 2nd DCLI in 1940. Urquhart also passed a bottle of whiskey around that had lain forgotten in his pack so the assembled officers could enjoy a ‘nip’ and received Benzedrine tablets in exchange from an unnamed Sergeant-Major, possibly Company Sergeant-Major Reginald Field from the Division HQ Defence Platoon; the tablets were pocketed and also forgotten. The Division commander then visited the wounded in the cellar in person to wish them well before meeting up with his group for the journey down to the river.116 This included Division Chief-of-Staff Lieutenant-Colonel Charles Mackenzie, Operations Officer Major Gordon Grieve, ADC Captain Graham Roberts and Major Anthony Murray, commanding F Squadron GPR; the latter two were wounded but had escaped from the Division MDS after the Germans occupied the Hotel Schoonoord, possibly at the prompting of ADMS Colonel Warrack, by simply walking out past the guards carrying blankets and a medical pannier and purloining a parked Jeep.117 The group also included Private Hancock, who slipped out without Urquhart’s knowledge immediately before departure and purloined the maroon and light blue Pegasus pennant that had flown from a lance on the back lawn of the Hotel Hartenstein whilst the building had served as Urquhart’s HQ.118 The journey to the riverbank, with Lieutenant-Colonel Mackenzie in the lead, passed without incident apart from the random German mortaring and small-arms fire and a whispered conference about whether or not to throw a grenade at a German post. On arrival Urquhart’s party merely settled down in the rain-lashed riverside mud to wait for a boat, although Mackenzie appears to have ‘slipped away’ briefly on his own account and returned to inform Urquhart that Myers was rearranging the evacuation schedule in the erroneous belief that around half the boats had been lost in the first hour of the evacuation.119
The fact that Major-General Urquhart simply blended into the crowd at the embarkation point has gone largely unremarked or has been seen as a positive; Middlebrook holds it up as evidence of an atmosphere of equality amongst all ranks during the evacuation, for example.120 However, this overlooks the fact that Urquhart was still the formation commander and ranking officer in the Oosterbeek Pocket, and he should therefore have been monitoring the operation as a matter of course, even if that involved delaying his own departure, rather than remaining inactive while Mackenzie went soliciting information on his own account. Urquhart’s behaviour was therefore poor leadership at best and raises the suspicion that he essentially considered his responsibility for the members of the 1st Airborne Division to have ended on drawing up the evacuation plan and handing it to Lieutenant-Colonel Myers for execution, a contention that is reinforced by his behaviour on reaching the safety of the south bank of the Lower Rhine. It is difficult to imagine his opposite number at the 6th Airborne Division for the Normandy landings, Major-General Richard Gale, behaving in such a fashion. Urquhart’s behaviour also contrasted poorly with more specific examples, one of which he must have been aware of. Given that he based the Oosterbeek withdrawal plan on the Gallipoli evacuation, Urquhart must have been aware that Major-General Stanley Maude, commander of the British 13th Division, came out on the very last boat from the last beach to be evacuated near Cape Helles.121 Three more examples were more immediate. Brigadier Hicks, commander of the 1st Airlanding Brigade, was initially reluctant to make the crossing to the south bank until he could be sure all his men were safe, before being persuaded that ‘such honourable gestures were not practicable’ according to Brigade Major RA Major Philip Tower. Major Richard Lonsdale remained at the embarkation point until all his men from LONSDALE Force were away; by this time the crossings had been called off and Lonsdale was obliged to swim the river despite his wounds.122 Perhaps even more pertinently, Hauptsturmführer Heinrich Oelkers established a lodgement on the south bank of the Lower Rhine near the Heveadorp Ferry on 1 October 1944, which was evacuated after ten days of near constant bombardment and infantry attacks; Oelkers was almost literally the last man out, crossing the river in the last, badly holed inflatable dinghy to leave the south bank.123
Urquhart’s party was called forward to board a storm boat a little after midnight. First the vessel had become stuck in the mud and, as the outboard motor lacked a reverse gear, had to be pushed off; this was done by Private Hancock, who slipped into the water to perform the deed and then reboarded the moving vessel despite complaints from some of those onboard that it was ‘overcrowded already’.124 The motor then cut out part-way across, likely due to the rain penetrating the motor’s electrics, and the boat drifted for what seemed ‘an absolute age’ before it was restarted. The final indignity occurred after the vessel gained the relative safety of the groynes of the disembarkation area on the south bank. Having crossed the mudflats to the summer dyke Urquhart began to pull himself over the concrete obstacle when
…there was an ominous snap…[and]…the voice of Graham Roberts came out of the gloom near by [sic] solemnly inquiring whether I was intact. ‘It’s all right’ I s
aid. ‘It’s only my braces.’ Even in these circumstances, when my chief reaction was one of heartfelt relief, it was an annoying indignity. When we set out down the road beyond the dyke, I was holding my trousers up.125
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