ARNHEM: Analysis and/or Opinion #2

A very British View

 

Operation ‘Market Garden’ was Montgomery’s attempt to end the war by Christmas 1944. That it ended in failure cannot be blamed either on Montgomery, or on the airborne soldiers who fought so bravely in the spearhead. Monty’s plan was simple, and uncharacteristically audacious: the British 2^nd Army, under Gen. Miles Dempsey, would make a 60-mile dash from Neerpelt on the Belgian/Dutch border to Arnhem on the Rhine, so outflanking the German ‘West Wall’ by the north.  Three airborne divisions would drop to capture vital crossings over the many rivers and canals which barred Dempsey’s path, and would hold them until relieved by the advancing armour. The US 101^st Airborne would capture the bridges over the Wilhelmina and Willems canals at Son and Veghel respectively; the US 82^nd Airborne would take the Maas and Waal bridges at Grave and Nijmegen; and the British 1^st Airborne, penetrating furthest behind enemy lines, would capture the road and rail bridges across the Rhine at Arnhem.  For this operation the three divisions were placed under the command of ‘Boy’ Browning, now Brereton’s deputy at 1^st Allied Airborne Army.  At Montgomery’s planning conference in Brussels on 10 September Lt. Gen. Browning received his orders. He was told that XXX Corps, the 2^nd Army spearhead commanded by Lt. Gen.  Brian Horrocks, would reach Arnhem in 48 hours.

 

Browning reckoned that 1^st Airborne could holdout for four days if necessary; but added the now immortal qualification, ‘But, sir, I think we may be going a bridge too far.’ (The rewriting of history which put these words in his mouth after the battle in a recent, fictionalised feature film is felt by some who knew him to be one of a number of regrettable libels on Browning’s character and intelligence.) For their part the 1^st Airborne were delighted to be going into action. The fact that they had only one week to plan and mount the operation did not alarm them unduly.

 

For Roy Urquhart the first problem was logistics: there were not enough aircraft to get the whole division to Arnhem in one lift. He elected to take 1^st Para Bde. and 1^st Air-Landing Bde. with Div. HQ on D-Day, the former to seize the bridge by coup de main, the latter to guard the DZs and LZs for the later lifts. The second lift, on D + 1, would cons1st of the 4^th Para Bde.; the third, on D + 2, would cons1st of the 1^st Polish Ind. Para Bde. The plan was for 1^st Para Bde. to hold the bridges for 24 hours; 4^th Para Bde. would then take the high ground north of Arnhem, while 1^st Air-Landing Bde. would create a perimeter to the west in the suburb of Oosterbeek.

The Poles would land south of the river, then cross it to create a perimeter to the east That, as they say, was the plan . . .

Urquhart’s other headache was the choice of DZs available. The open ground south of the river was ‘unsuitable’, according to the RAF; besides, flak over Arnhem, and the Luftwaffe airfield to the north at Deelen, made heavy losses among the aircraft almost inevitable. The RAF therefore suggested the open ground west of Oosterbeek, some seven miles from the bridge. Urquhart reluctantly agreed, but only because enemy strength in Arnhem was believed to be low. Despite disquieting rumours from the Dutch Resistance, HQ 1^st Allied Airborne Army received no hard information suggesting otherwise.  The drop was planned for noon on 17 September.  First to arrive, on DZ ‘X’. were Maj. B. A. Wilson’s divisional pathfinders of 21^st Ind. Para Coy.; they were followed by Div. HQ, 1^st Air-Landing Bde..  and 1^st Para Bde. in that order. Despite aircraft losses en route the drop was virtually faultless, and the troops quickly set off on their allotted tasks.  First away were ‘Freddie Gough’s Specials’: the 1^st Air-Landing Recce Squadron. Moving in armoured jeeps, they were to take the bridges by surprise attack. The 2^nd Para Bn., led by Frost, were to make for the bridges on foot, taking a route which followed the river and by-passed Oosterbeek. Further north. 3^rd Para Bn. would move through Oosterbeek in the same direction; and 1^st Para Bn.  were in reserve.

Taking a more northerly route than either 2 or 3 Para, Gough’s men were soon encountering stiff resistance. While Gough himself returned to Div.  HQ to report to Urquhart, Frost and Fitch pressed on alone, unaware that the ‘Specials’ had not reached the bridges. Urquhart did not even know where the ‘Specials’ were: he had been told that none of their jeeps had arrived. Worse still, none of the radio sets seemed to be working. He decided to go forward and warn Lathbury in person that 2 Para were on their own.

At 1630 hrs. that afternoon the operation began to go seriously wrong. An SS training batallion under Maj. Sepp Krafft, who had actually seen the drop, took up a blocking position between the DZ and the bridges. Here, just east of Wolfhezen, he fought off both 3 Para and 1 Para. He did not yet know it, but he was aided in this by no less a formation than Gen. Wilhelm Bittrich’s 2^nd SS Panzer Corps, consisting of the 9^th ‘Hohenstaufen’ and 10^th ‘Frundsberg’ SS Panzer Divisions.  Receiving news of the airborne attack, Bittrich ordered his two divisions, led by Lt. Col. Walter Harzer and Brig. Heinz Harmel respectively, out of Arnhem to repulse this advance. Their presence here was totally unexpected: as already stated, no firm intelligence had reached Browning suggesting that they were in the area in any sort of strength.  But here they were, even if in depleted numbers after hard fighting in France: and they were as determined to fight as these crack units always were. A recce battalion under Capt. Paul Gräbner was sent to check the bridges; finding nobody there, Gräbner was ordered to Nijmegen. While he patrolled slowly down the Arnhem-Nijmegen highway, Frost’s 2 Para arrived at the road bridge. 

Hampered, like everyone else, by the communications breakdown, Frost ordered A Coy.—by then his only available sub-unit—to rush the northern end of the bridge. After a stiff fight they were successful, and were joined by Gough and his men. A second attack, this time to capture the southern end, was unsuccessful: Gräbner had left some of his SS Panzergrenadiers there as a garrison. Lt. John Grayburn tried to lead his men across the bridge twice, but was beaten back both times, while a fierce battle raged around the northern end. 

The rest of the brigades were righting an increasingly desperate battle with the German defenders.  Urquhart and Lathbury were cut off from the rest of the division; but by dawn on the 18^th, D + 1, they were up with 3^rd Para Bn., urging them on. Concerned about the rest of the division—there had been no news for several hours—the two officers decided to make their way back to Div. HQ, now established at the Hartenstein Hotel in Oosterbeek.  While they were moving back Lathbury was seriously wounded. Urquhart helped carry him to shelter; then shot a German soldier with his Colt .45 automatic when the man appeared at the window of the house in which they were taking cover—one of the few modern occasions when a divisional commander has got close enough to see the whites of the enemy’s eyes. Moving through the town, Urquhart’s small party got trapped yet again, and the general had to shelter for the rest of the day and the night which followed in the attic of a house. 

Back at the DZs, Hick’s Air-Landing Bde. had also had a rough night fending off repeated attacks.

When the 4^th Para Bde. dropped that day, four hours late due to fog over the British airfields, they found the DZs clear but a stiff battle in progress.  ‘Shan’ Hackett himself accepted the surrender of several Germans on the DZ before he could even assemble his HQ. The news of Urquhart’s absence, and the shambles to which the operation had degenerated, shocked the brigade commander.  Urquhart had named Hicks as his successor after Lathbury, and Hicks now ordered Hackett to send his 11^th Para Bn. towards the bridges to support the by now badly mauled 1^st Para Bde.; in exchange, Hackett should have 7 KOSB from the Air-Landing Bde.; and the 2^nd South Staffords’, now released from DZ garrison duties, could lead 11^th Para into Arnhem.

During the rest of the 18^th, the night which followed, and the morning of the 19^th. 4^th Para Bde. tried to carry out their allotted task, but they were repeatedly beaten back with heavy casualties.  The Polish glider LZ at Wolfhezen was being guarded by 7 KOSB at this time, in anticipation of the third lift. The Polish glider element duly arrived—but not their paratroopers, who were held up on fog-bound UK airfields. The Poles who did arrive took heavy casualties on the LZ, but somehow managed to retain some semblance of order, and fought bravely and well with the rest of the division. Later on the 19^th the 4^th Para Bde.  were ordered to withdraw to a divisional perimeter which had been established around Oosterbeek.

 The withdrawal from contact was an epic in itself. All three of Hackett’s battalions had taken a beating. Hackett personally led his HQ and other elements in a series of bayonet charges through the thick woods south-east of Wolfhezen. Battered, and disgusted at the turn of events, the brigade took up positions on the north-east corner of the perimeter: 7 KOSB nearest the railway line, 156 Para next to them, and 10 Para on the now-notorious Oosterbeek crossroads. To the right of 10 Para was a composite battalion—‘Lonsdale Force’, after its CO, Maj. Dickie Lonsdale, second in command of 11 Para—comprising elements of 1^st, 2^nd and 3^rd Para Bns., 11^th Para Bn., and the South Staffords.  The Border Regiment, the pathfinders of 21^st Independent Co., and the glider pilots held the western perimeter along with Royal Engineers.  To everyone’s relief, Urquhart had managed to rejoin early on the morning of the 19^th, D + 2. He organised the withdrawal and the defence of the perimeter; and had had to face the agonising decision to abandon 2^nd Para Bn. to its fate, since there was now no hope of linking up with the bridge. Despite the communications problems he was able to make occasional contact with Browning at Nijmegen, via the division’s rear link in the UK; and he urged that the Poles be dropped near the village of Driel, some six miles west of their planned DZ. He hoped that they would be able to cross the river from there, and link up with the exhausted division.

It was not to be. The Poles arrived two days late, on 21 September, and every attempt to get more than a few men across was beaten back by the Germans. In the end Sosabowski had to dig in on the south bank and wait for XXX Corps to arrive.  Meanwhile, res1stance at the bridge had finally ceased. Frost was wounded on the morning of 20 September, D + 3, and Freddie Gough took over command at the bridge. For another 24 hours the ‘Red Devils’ of 2 Para clung to its northern end with desperate ferocity. A short truce late on 20 September allowed the wounded to be taken into German captivity; then the fighting began again.  One by one the men ran out of ammunition, and by shortly after first light on 21 September the position had been overrun. Out of some 700 men who had first fortified the houses overlooking the Rhine, barely 100 now remained.

Things were no better back at the division. Constant shelling and mortaring, and attacks by infantry with tanks and SP guns, had taken a terrible toll of the defenders. The 4^th Para Bde. Had taken the worst casualties: by 22 September. 156^th Para Bn. was down to 100 men under command of Maj. Geoffrey Powell; 10^th Para Bn. had lost all its officers, and all but 30 men—of these, the survivors of some 500 who had jumped, only 16 men were destined to escape from the closing trap.

 

Only one hope kept the men going—the presence across the river of XXX Corps. Fighting slowly forward along a single, narrow axis of advance which was defended grimly by the SS Panzers of Harmel’s division, the leading elements of the Guards Armoured Division had crossed the Waal at Nijmegen on the afternoon of the 20^th. The bridge had been captured for them by one of the bravest assault river crossings of the war, mounted by the 3^rd Bn., 504^th Parachute Infantry Regt. of the US 82^nd Airborne Division. The tank advance was soon halted, however, and the 5^th Bn., Duke of Cornwall’s Light Infantry had to be brought forward to ‘take point’ for the 43^rd Infantry Division. They eventually linked up with Sosabowski on the south bank of the Rhine late on 22 September. That night the abortive attempt to ferry the Poles across the river was shot to pieces, only some 50 men making it to the far bank. The next attempt was made by the 4^th Dorsets; barely half of them succeeded.

Urquhart had by this time managed to get his chief of staff. Col. Charles Mackenzie, across the river to liaise with XXX Corps. Browning was also in the area, and he agreed with Maj. Gen. Thomas, commanding the 43^rd Div., that the 1^st Airborne should be evacuated from their shrinking perimeter.  Crossing back over the Rhine, Mackenzie passed this message to Urquhart on the morning of 25 September. Urquhart’s heart must have sunk at the prospect: the only way out was across the Rhine, the way the Poles had tried to get in.

That night Operation ‘Berlin’, the extraction of the Airborne survivors, took place. Urquhart designed the operation to give the impression to the enemy that a fierce fight was still going on. With the wounded and certain selected units holding out to the last, the division moved silently to the crossing point. Most of the men were furious to think that after fighting for so long and at such cost, it was all to be for nothing. The evacuation lasted all night, and by first light on 26 September all were across who were going across: just 2,163 men, out of the 10,005 who had begun to land around Arnhem nine days before.

 

At least 1,500 Airborne soldiers were killed during the battle. They lie today in Oosterbeek cemetery where, every year on the anniversary, Dutch children lay flowers on their graves. A guard of honour from 10 Para—the only British parachute battalion to have survived since 1944 without being renumbered or amalgamated—mount guard over the graves of the men who helped create the legend of the Red Beret. Their epitaph may be taken from the words of the official account of the battle:

 

‘In attack most daring, in defence most cunning, in endurance most steadfast, they performed a feat of arms which will be remembered and recounted as long as the virtues of courage and resolution have power to move the hearts of men. 

‘Now these things befell at Arnhem.’

The Aftermath

Despite Montgomery’s assertion that ‘Market Garden’ was 90% successful, the loss of almost the entire 1^st Airborne Div. raised some awkward questions. Too many factors contributed to the disaster for the blame to be laid at any one door; but one of Brig. Jim Gavin’s comments before the operation bears close attention—that it was ‘better to suffer 10% initial casualties by dropping either on or close to the bridge, than to run the risk of landing on distant drop zones.’

Airborne forces are too lightly armed to rely on anything but surprise and concentration for the success of their operations. Given that only two brigades could be landed on D-Day, these factors assumed vital significance. It is a fallacy that the British had fewer aircraft than either of the two American divisions: in fact, they had slightly more.  But the decision to fly Browning’s Corps HQ to Nijmegen absorbed a battalion’s lift of gliders, while the jeeps and trailers which landed at Wolfhezen on D-Day could have been sacrificed to allow more men into the battle.

 

Once the element of surprise was lost on D-Day, and the already small force was split up between the DZs and the bridge, the 4^th Para Bde.’s arrival was bound to be an ‘event’. In a letter Gen. Hackett wrote:

‘The choice of DZs (especially for my own brigade, when surprise had been lost and we came in on the second wave) was disastrous. As I understood it at the time the choice of dropping zone so far away from the objective was forced upon the operation by exaggerated fears of the extent of German anti-aircraft defences in the neighbourhood of Deelen Airfield. I have not closely studied all the documents, but my impression is that the RAF were strongly opposed to what they regarded as an invitation to heavy casualties if they took us in any closer, whereas we were prepared to risk these to be dropped close enough to our objectives.

‘It may interest you to know that in my own final conference before take-off I went through the plan for my brigade’s occupation of a defensive position around the north side of Arnhem city with meticulous care and all the briefing material (which in terms of terrain was very good indeed) available.  I then dismissed all the officers of the brigade who were present except the battalion commanders and the brigade staff, and told them that they could forget all that. Being put down where we were, with surprise gone and the opposition alerted, and given the German capability for a swift and violent response to any threat to what really mattered, they could expect their hardest fighting and worst casualties, not in defence of the final perimeter, but in trying to get there. And of course, we never did, though nobody, I am quite sure, could have tried harder.’

Gen. Hackett had the highest regard for the RAF but not, perhaps, for their tactical appreciation of ground matters. It was fitting, however, that of the five Victoria Crosses won at Arnhem, one should have gone to an RAF Dakota pilot, Flt. Lt. David Lord, for his selfless courage during the resupply operation. Like the other aircrews of 38 and 46 Groups RAF, and the RASC air dispatchers who flew with them, he met a storm of anti-aircraft fire unflinchingly, concerned only to support the embattled division below. More than half the aircraft which took part in these missions were damaged or destroyed, and RAF aircrew losses were 21 killed, 159 missing and 12 wounded. The air dispatchers suffered more heavily, in percentage terms, than the troops they were supporting: 116 killed and 148 captured out of 600 men. The RAF and RASC were the unsung heroes of British Airborne Forces, and no praise can be too high for men who attempted so much.

 

Of the other four VCs won at Arnhem two went to The Parachute Regiment: to Capt. Lionel Queripel of 10 Para for a gallant rearguard action during his battalion’s withdrawal to the perimeter; and to Lt. John Grayburn for ‘supreme courage, leadership and devotion to duty’ despite severe wounds, during the battle at the bridge. Two VCs went to the South Staffords: to L/Sgt. John Baskeyfield, for his single-handed destruction with a 6pdr. anti-tank gun of two German tanks and two SP guns; and to Maj. Robert Cain, for fighting off everything from tanks to flamethrowers, armed first with a PIAT and later, despite his wounds, with a 2in. mortar. Of the five Arnhem VCs, only Cain survived the battle.