Battle for Arnhem.... (1 Viewer)

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Ref: Arnhem 1944, the Airborne Battle by M. Middlebrook

Major Dover gave Lieutenant Peter Barry's No. 9 Platoon the task of capturing the railway bridge. No. 8 Platoon would be the support, putting down smoke-bombs with its 2-inch mortar. Peter Barry recalled,

“While we were waiting behind a bank, I saw a man run out from the other side of the bridge to the centre and saw him bend down and do something. He was dressed in black, with a German Army cap on.




We were about 500 yards away. I gave a fire order to the Bren, but the German ran off without being hit.




He had obviously done what he was going to do and escaped. Then the company commander came up and said I was to take a section forward and capture the north end – our end - of the bridge. So I took a section of nine men forward with me, leaving the other two sections to give cover. It was wide-open country. We reached the north end of the bridge and climbed up the embankment.




We had got there without any trouble, and I told the men that we might as well carry on and capture the whole bridge. I looked back to see if they would follow me. Only one man said no, shaking his head as though I was a bloody fool, and I don't blame him; but he came.

We threw a smoke grenade; unfortunately the wind was in the wrong direction, but it gave us some cover. It was quite a long bridge. We ran across, as fast as we could, through the smoke. We were running on the metal plates, and our hobnailed boots made a hell of a clatter. We got about fifty yards and then needed a pause; we had a lot of equipment on and soon got short of breath. So I told them to get down. We were just above the water by then.




The centre span of the bridge exploded then, while we lay there, and the metal plates right in front of me heaved up into the air. It was lucky that we had stopped when we did, otherwise we would have all been killed; no one was injured by the explosion.

Then I felt something hit my leg; I looked back and asked if anyone was shooting. They all said, 'No'; it was a German bullet. Next I felt a searing shot through my upper right arm, and it seemed to become disconnected; it went round and round in circles; the bone had been completely severed. There were only a few shots, but whoever was firing certainly picked me out as a leader and hit me”.

 

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Lt Barry withdrew his men from the bridge, but lost one man killed when the German rifleman opened fire again.




Peter Barry was bitter over the failure to land closer to the bridge:




‘If we had only landed there, we could have gone in and got it easily; that bridge was there for the taking. Never mind about flak positions. Right there, on those fields between the railway bridge and Oosterbeek, was the place to land. But they landed us at the wrong place, and we carried the can. It was a perfectly sound bridge; you could have got tanks - anything - across. Instead, they had three hours' warning and were able to blow it’.

A (K&C mahogany) Horsa preparing to take off


From post #1298 at page 130 ............

General Brereton now commanded 1[SUP]st[/SUP] Airborne Army. There were two parts to his command. The first was the ground forces. For operation ‘Market’, ‘Boy’ Browning commanded the Airborne Corps of 1[SUP]st [/SUP]British, 82nd and 101[SUP]st[/SUP] US Airborne. This was to be dropped on key bridges over rivers and canals, on an axis of Eindhoven, Nijmegen and Arnhem.

However, perhaps understandably given his air force background, Brereton gave priority of input to the second component of his command, the air forces. In the planning for Market Garden he made some important and far reaching decisions.

The first decision was for a daylight drop, to avoid the scatter of the D-Day night drops. This allowed the concentration the para commanders wanted so was not especially contentious.

The Allies did not have enough transports to take everyone in one drop, especially those allocated to 1[SUP]st[/SUP] Airborne. In fact less than half the 1[SUP]st[/SUP] Airborne Army troops available could be transported in the first wave. Nor were there enough ground crew to turn the transports around quickly. The result was a second decision, at the recommendation of the air forces, of one drop per day, which meant drops spread over three days instead of one. Even this assumed that the weather would hold, by no means a ‘given’ for NW Europe.

This meant that only half of the first lift would be available to capture objectives, as landing zones (LZ) and drop zones (DZ) would need to be defended for subsequent drops. This decision proved to be crucial.

Thirdly, as in Normandy, the airmen warned of heavy losses from flak,



so DZs were chosen with this in mind. This would be especially important they argued, as a daylight drop would be made. These DZs were some distance from the targets, especially for Arnhem bridge, which was several miles away.


And from post #1299 .......

Fourthly, both Urquhart (1[SUP]st[/SUP]) and Gavin (82[SUP]nd[/SUP]) argued for glider ‘coup de mains’ at Arnhem and Nijmegen respectively (as per Pegasus Bridge on D-Day) – both were refused by the airmen.


So the Germans had time to react.

 

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The Germans at the railway bridge were part of a mobile troop of Battalion Krafft, whose job was to guard the southern ends of the Rhine ferries and bridges.

 

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Lt Col Frost saw the action from just over half a mile away. Blowing the bridge ruined his plan to send a company across to the south side of the road bridge, so C Company was now ordered to accompany the battalion into Arnhem.








It was given the job of capturing the local German HQ in Arnhem as its next objective.

 

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Before it made its final approach to Arnhem, 2[SUP]nd[/SUP] Battalion had to pass under a railway bridge in a narrow underpass, with a high embankment at either side, near Oosterbeek Laag Station. First under the bridge was Lieutenant Vlasto's platoon.





They seemed to be making good progress, when a German armoured car suddenly appeared from around the next bend.



It opened fire both with its 20mm gun and machine-gun,



hitting the two men on either side of Lt Vlasto. One was killed and the other had his hand shattered.

 

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The platoon immediately found cover off the road,






whilst the company C.O. ordered the leading 6-pounder to unhitch and engage the armoured car. However, the armoured car withdrew as the Germans realized the threat.




Back on the move, Vlasto went behind some houses and then returned to the road.




Here, the company came under machine-gun fire again, from a German position on high ground called Den Brink.




It was about 500 yards to his left, but the weight of German fire dominated the only road available, so Frost detached a force to overcome it. Major Doug Crawley of B Company was briskly told to 'deal with it'.

 

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It was approximately 7.0 p.m. and still light when Crawley ordered Lieutenant Peter Cane to take his No. 6 Platoon and attack up the deep railway cutting.




It was hoped that this move might bring the platoon up to the German position unobserved. The composition of the opposition was unknown, but all briefings had indicated only weak German forces. The textbook attack would have involved putting out scouts or a section out in front, but speed was of the essence and so Cane led his platoon straight up the railway cutting, without scouting it.



Unfortunately, many in the platoon were hit at once, when a machine-gun post, set up near a railwaymen's hut on a bend ahead to protect this approach, opened fire.




A corporal and Lieutenant Cane were killed. Privates Claude and Tom Gronert were twins from Devonshire. They had remained together since joining the army (they had consecutive regimental numbers). It was reported that one twin was wounded and when his brother went to help he was also hit. They were then both hit again and killed.

Lieutenant Cane was his most experienced platoon commander and long afterwards, Major Crawley worried that he should not have given him this task as a newer officer might have been more cautious.

A brother officer of Peter Cane described him as, “having a great sense of humour and was a great singer.”

Another said: “He was always, under the surface, rather sad, as though he had a presentiment that he would not survive the war.”




For the next four hours, B Company would remain on the lower slopes of Den Brink.




The Germans were not evicted, but they were kept occupied. Eventually, it became too dark for the Germans to dominate the road, but it was midnight before B Company was able to disengage and resume its advance.

ref: M Middlebrook

 

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As discussed earlier, the 1st Parachute Brigade HQ, under the command of the Brigade Major, Tony Hibbert, followed the 2nd Battalion closely.

The Brigade Defence Platoon, a large part of Major Douglas Murray's 1[SUP]st[/SUP] Parachute Squadron Royal Engineers, some Military Police and Intelligence Corps men were included in this group. A 'Jedburgh' team of an American and a Dutch officer also followed, but their American sergeant had become separated.

Also as discussed earlier, the vital RASC platoon commanded by Captain Bill Gell followed, mostly on foot, but they also brought two jeeps and four trailers loaded with invaluable ammunition. It was not the platoon's original role to go with 2 Para to the bridge. Gell had accepted this job at the landing area after the platoon originally allocated to it had failed to assemble on time.






Major Freddie Gough and two jeeps from the Reconnaissance Squadron also arrived. Gough had by now given up looking for the divisional commander (see earlier).






A third jeep carried Major Dennis Munford, his driver and two signallers of his Light Regiment battery, whose job was to support the 1st Parachute Brigade. His post was at Brigade Headquarters level.

 

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Major Hibbert was now in charge of a 'large and cumbersome column', following the 2nd Battalion. One Royal Engineer said that he had expected a 'walk-run progress', but it became a 'stop-start movement'. This included a halt of nearly an hour in Oosterbeek, when the Den Brink action broke out.



As a result of the Den Brink action, part of the 1st Parachute Squadron was ordered to dig in as a flank guard to the left of the column, in case of a lengthy hold-up. An English lady's voice was heard inquiring for 'anyone from Lancashire', whilst they dug their slit trenches and a Lancastrian sapper was found to talk to her.

However, the hold-up was soon over and the column followed John Frost's men into Arnhem.




It was not quite dark at about 7.30 p.m. and there were not many people about, when the leading men of the 2nd Battalion crossed the town boundary into Arnhem. They were still about two miles away from the road bridge.




Lieutenant Jack Grayburn's No. 2 Platoon led and Lieutenant-Colonel Frost was well up with them. 2nd Battalion avoided any organized resistance by infiltrating through back gardens or side streets, to find another route, but a few individual Germans were met and dealt with.




At one point Frost led most of the battalion into a house via a garden, entering through the back door then exiting out of the front door into another street.




As the Battalion marched through, perhaps not unreasonably, the old lady owner 'played hell with him in her own language'.

 

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The pontoon was soon reached and, as expected, its middle section was still moored on the northern bank. The two guards there were dealt with and a small party was left behind to wait for C Company to come up from Den Brink whilst the rest of the battalion marched on.




A group of anti-tank gunners and glider pilots were temporarily held up and scolded by a man from a bedroom window for waking up his children. He thought at first that they were Germans, but he apologized and brought his whole family to the window to shake the British soldiers by the hand when he realised.






There was no opposition on the final approach, and Lieutenant Grayburn's platoon reached the bridge at about 8 p.m. on the 17[SUP]th[/SUP] September. The whole of A Company was soon able to concentrate underneath the ramp carrying the roadway on to the bridge, in a position that was out of sight of any Germans on the bridge itself.

Robin Vlasto later wrote:

'Things were organized amid the most awful row. There was a complete absence of any enemy and the general air of peace was quite incredible. The CO arrived and seemed extremely happy, making cracks about everyone's nerves being jumpy.'

 

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So far, A Company 2 Para was the only rifle company at the bridge. There was still no sign of the Reconnaissance Squadron, which should have been there hours earlier.

The Recce Jeep Sqdn story from landing starts at #1560




Neither had the 3rd Battalion arrived yet, their entire strength was expected at any time to help hold the bridge. The 3rd Battalion story from landing begins at #1581

Major Tatham-Waiter deployed Nos 1 and 3 Platoons in buildings either side of the bridge foot, starting the creation of a firm holding force for the northern end of the bridge.






Lieutenant Grayburn's platoon went up the steps of the solid embankment, before moving further into the town, where they also took up positions either side of the road.




At this point, they did nothing to stop the occasional German vehicle from passing.

 

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John Frost chose a large private house for his headquarters, as the upper rooms provided a good view of the area.




Headquarters and Support Companies went into buildings close by.




The battalion’s vehicles and anti-tank guns were moved into a sheltered yard belonging to a large office building close nearby. The anti-tank guns would move to action positions later.




The Dutch owners gave up their homes, but understandably varied in their willingness to do so. They generally either departed or took to their cellars while the paratroops prepared their houses for defence.




Constant Vogel was the assistant registrar at Arnhem's law courts. He was twenty nine, single and lived in a large boarding house, which was nearly taken over:

“A British officer came to the door and spoke to the owner, Mr Kneist, asking if he could put weapons in the building. Mr Kneist pointed out that there were a lot of old people in the building and that he was sorry, but he would rather not have the weapons. So the officer set up this machine-gun on the pavement, pointing towards the bridge. I went into the cellar and, from the window by the pavement, could see the machine-gun and three or four soldiers. I was enormously pleased that something was being done for our liberation – it would have been like coming from hell to heaven. We were full of hope.”

The machine-gun in question was probably a Vickers.

 

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Ref: Arnhem 1944, the Airborne Battle by M. Middlebrook

Frost and part of his battalion had reached their objective and took up defensive positions without any major interference.




Although they had been lucky in being allocated a comparatively undefended route, they should also be credited for pushing on skilfully and swiftly. Major Tatham-Warter and A Company had led the column throughout, at a cost of only one man killed and a handful of wounded. John Frost was asked to describe Tatham-Warter,

'A Prince Rupert of a man; he would have been a great cavalry commander on the King's side in the war with the Roundheads.'

He was a tall, slender man and the major would be prominent in the coming days. He carried a furled umbrella so that his men could always recognize him. Tatham-Warter wrote:

'I suppose that, for me, the best moment of all was when I stood on the embankment to the bridge watching my platoons move into position to cover the approaches from the north and the bridge itself.'

John Frost said that the best time in the whole battle for him was,

'to see that big bridge still intact and our soldiers getting on to it – not blown in their faces like the railway bridge'.

Arriving forty minutes after the 2[SUP]nd[/SUP] Battalion, the Brigade Headquarters group also arrived at the bridge.




They had made good progress but did suffer casualties, e.g. Sapper Bill Madden was killed on the Utrechtseweg. From a distance, the Germans covered a square on the line of advance, near the pontoon area.




They had to dash across it, split up into small groups, but even so some were still hit.




Another man who might have been hit crossing that square was Corporal Arthur Maybury of the divisional Intelligence Section.

An RASC jeep driver was wounded, but Corporal Doug Beardmore courageously went back, under fire, to drive the jeep with its two trailers (loaded with ammunition) clear.




Wilhelmina Schouten, a language teacher at a domestic science school on the Rijnkade, was at the school's evening meal when British soldiers started passing the building. This is an extract from her diary:

“Someone opened the front door and, within a moment, the ground floor and the basement were full of soldiers. They were tired. The floors and stairs were full of them, but they made very little noise. The fruit which I had brought from the Betuwe that afternoon vanished in no time, and my pupils were pleased to be able to converse with them in English. Tea was made and passed around. They had brought everything and, hoping and fighting, had come all the way from Renkum and Doorwerth. Their next task was to occupy the bridge after a few moments of rest. Quietly and without fuss, they told their stories . . . There were several wounded among them. One Irishman had lost two fingers on the way; he did not want to stay behind because, he said, he could still fire with one hand. Another man had been shot in the eye and the thigh. Yet another had been shot in his stomach; he was the worst of all”.

 

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A doctor called later and explained that the Germans were using all the ambulances. Corporal Maybury was the man with the stomach wound: Miss Schouten and a male colleague nursed him,

“Around midnight the situation changed, but for the worse. "I think he can still hear us," Jan Mielekamp said. "Do you know the Lord's Prayer in English?" And I prayed: "Our Father, who art in heaven, etc." He opened his eyes for a moment; he recognized something. But, before I reached "Amen", he was no longer there.”

Maybury was a professional photographer and author who had written travel books before and parachute stories during the war, he was buried in the school garden next morning. Dr Zwolle, the doctor who attended Maybury, and Jan Mielekamp, who had nursed him, were in a group of five Dutch men arrested by the Germans later in the battle and shot for alleged looting and 'terrorism'.

When the Brigade Headquarters group came into the bridge area at about 8.45 p.m., they outnumbered the 2nd Battalion men already there.






Major Hibbert and Lieutenant-Colonel Frost conferred.




It was agreed that the Brigade Headquarters should be set up in a large office building near Frost's headquarters. The building was originally a hospital, but at this time it was the headquarters of the Provincial Roads and Waterways Department. 2[SUP]nd[/SUP] Battalion still had two companies absent, so Hibbert stripped as many men from Brigade Headquarters (and the various other units that had just come in) as possible and sent them to take up positions in several other buildings, to extend the area under British control as far as possible.





The force components that eventually reached the Bridge are listed at #1533

 

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There were plenty of German troops in the area, but most were in the process of moving to counter the Arnhem landing and the American one near Nijmegen. There was still no serious interference at the bridge.










No extra force had been sent to protect the bridge, so only its permanent guard, of twenty or so elderly or very young soldiers from a local flak unit, were present.




These men were either in a pillbox sited a quarter of the way across the bridge or asleep in some huts behind it. They seemed to be unaware of the British presence at the bridge.

 

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2nd Battalion’s first attempt to gain a foothold on the bridge itself was given to just a rifle section. Lance-Sergeant Bill Fulton of No. 3 Platoon was in a group of men under the bridge ramp. Unseen by him in the darkness an officer asked for any NCOs present. Having identified himself, Fulton was told to take his section and

'capture this end of the bridge':

Fulton recalled:

“I told him I only had seven men, but he said he would send more up to join me as soon as more arrived. I led off first, up those steps on the west side of the bridge. When I reached the top I heard voices - definitely German. I told the section to be quiet and I peeped over. There was a truck with troops in the back, facing south, only fifteen yards or so away. An officer or an NCO was talking to the men in the back.

I thought that the element of surprise would be gone if we burst in, so I decided to wait. It was only two or three minutes before the one doing the talking got into the cab, and the truck moved off. We started to walk along the right-hand side of the bridge. It was very dark, but you could see outlines. I caught a few of the enemy hiding in corners of what looked like small huts and passed them back to the last man in the section and told him to take them down the steps as prisoners. You could hear firing in other parts of the town, but there was no firing on the bridge itself.

Then, in the gloom, I saw a rifle starting to point at me. I swung round to the right and started firing my tommy-gun. I know I hit him because he fired his rifle as he was falling forward and I caught the bullet in the top of my left leg. I told the section behind me to report back and say that the bridge was well manned and would need more troops. I managed to crawl behind an iron girder, and eventually a couple of medics came for me.

Bill Fulton spent the next two years in various hospitals.

 

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Ref: Arnhem 1944, the Airborne Battle by M. Middlebrook

Major Tatham-Warter conferred with Lieutenant Jack Grayburn, whose platoon would make a stronger attempt.




Major Tatham-Warter described the plan and attack.

“When it was completely dark he would move across the bridge in single files on either side, keeping close to the iron sides of the bridge for camouflage. The rest of the company would provide covering fire if necessary, as well as continuing to watch the northern approaches for the counter-attack we were sure would eventually come.

Everything depended on stealth and surprise, and Jack had his men black their faces and bind their boots with strips of material (curtains, I think), and made sure that there was no rattling equipment or weapons. When the time came the platoon crept up the side of the embankment and began silently to cross the bridge.




They had gone a very short distance when a machine-gun opened up on them at point-blank range. The effect was shattering, and they had no choice but to get back as quickly as possible to the cover of the embankment. They suffered heavy casualties; Grayburn was himself hit in the shoulder.

The fire had come from a pillbox on the bridge itself near the north end. We had, of course, seen it and checked it out in daylight and we had never thought that the Germans would risk or be able to place a gun in it after dark. The pillbox was almost alongside our forward defences in the houses by the bridge, and the machine gunner must have been a good soldier and certainly a brave man.”




Eight men were wounded. Signalman Bill Jukes noted:

“A lone figure came running down the ramp shouting, "Stretcher-bearer, stretcher-bearer!"




Colonel Frost stepped out on to the road and said to him, "Stop that noise."




The man came to a halt in front of him and said in a perfectly moderate voice, "Excuse me, sir, but I'm ****ing well wounded."

 

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It took until about 10.0 p.m. (almost an hour) to prepare the next try. Sergeant Ernie Shelswell commanded a 6-pounder anti-tank gun, which was skilfully backed by a jeep to a position two-thirds of the way up a path on the side of the approach road embankment.




Then, with the aid of two glider pilots, it was manhandled to the top and positioned to face the bridge.






Simultaneously, a flame-thrower team was sent to the house nearest the pillbox. Here, a gap had been made in the wall by firing a PIAT round into it. When they were ready, the 6 pounder fired four or five rounds of (tungsten-tipped core) sabot shells at the pillbox.




The flame-thrower was operated by Sapper 'Ginger' Wilkinson. He flamed across the gap in the wall, but missed the pillbox. The flame fell instead on the first of the huts, which turned out to be a petrol and ammunition store. A large explosion followed, the paintwork on the bridge caught fire and a large blaze would burn all night.

 

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The Irish Guards begin their advance from #1303 on this thread,

I include some 'evening shots' to represent their advance on the evening of the 17th September 1944.

Lt Col JOE Vandaleur impatiently pushes the Irish Guards on .....




Machine Gun Battalion troops in 'Bren Carrier' provide mobile fire support .....




A Firefly approaches enemy held territory with caution ....




XXX Corps Recon troops, the Household Cavalry, try to find every usable route forward ....




Infantry march on Club Route, all the key towns like Valkenswaard have to be taken ...

 

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A small convoy was ambushed when it approached the bridge from the Arnhem side. The seventeen men taken prisoner, probably wisely, did not disclose that they belonged to a unit firing V-2 rockets against England.






Later, another small convoy of a few German lorries attempted to cross the bridge from the south. As they were engaged, ammunition aboard the lorries exploded, adding to the inferno on the bridge.




There were some brave men, for example a German NCO who ran up to the British positions, climbed on to a wall and opened fire with a pistol. He managed to wound one paratrooper before he was killed, however, the occupants were either killed or captured.