Battle for Arnhem.... (2 Viewers)

[panda1gen]

There was a German outpost in the trees just north of the track which was the axis of the company approach.




It fired into the flank of the glider-pilot platoon.




Captain Muir was wounded. One of his officers, Lieutenant Sydney Smith, was fatally wounded, and there were several other casualties.



Without their leaders and in that confusing wood, the survivors went no further.




The dash led by Major Pott got across the road however. They moved well into the wood on the other side.

Lieutenant Watling's platoon also climbed out of the ditches at the side of the road to join in the rush, but Watling was killed at once. The company second in command, Captain Terry Rodgers, was also hit and fatally wounded.

 

[panda1gen]

The German defence was too strong for the lightly armed airborne men.

This was particularly the case with the German armoured vehicles.

 

[panda1gen]

Ref: Arnhem - 1944: The Airborne Battle by M. Middlebrook

Only Major Pott and a few men managed to get through the German line of defences and well into the trees.




Some were badly wounded, and one of them, Sergeant George Sheldrake, describes a moving incident:

'I was with another two lads; we were all in a pretty bad way. Major Pott came over and said that he couldn't take us with him but he put us carefully under some bushes. He said that the battalion might make a fresh attack, and we could be recovered; if not we would be picked up by the Germans. He had to leave us then but, before he moved off, he stood there and prayed over us - for a couple of minutes maybe, although there was some mortar and machine-gun fire, and a couple of minutes is a long time to stand up in those conditions. It is something I shall never forget'.

A Company's advance ended on its objective six hours after it had started, but with only six men left and John Pott himself twice wounded, one bullet smashing his thigh and another hitting him in the hand. Some of the survivors hid and were able to escape.



The Germans marched away the walking wounded ....






.... but left John Pott out in the open for the next eighteen hours, during which time he attempted to write a farewell letter to his wife with his left hand. He was found by two Dutchmen on the following day, carried to the nearby Mill Hill Fathers' house and eventually became a prisoner, the only one of six officers (including the glider pilots) in the A Company attack to survive.

Captain Muir later became a prisoner of war and was shot with a Royal Engineers officer, Lieutenant W. H. Skinner, at or near Renkum, in one of the few German prisoner-of-war atrocities in this battle.

 

[panda1gen]

Ref: Arnhem - 1944: The Airborne Battle by M. Middlebrook

It was not known at Battalion HQ that A Company had suffered so badly. A third company was sent forward at about 9.0 a.m. This was Major John Waddy's B Company on what was yet another left-flanking movement.




John Waddy describes how he received his orders:

“The Colonel didn't know the full situation. He thought there were only a few snipers about and said A Company had reached the road and B Company was to push through them and capture the Lichtenbeek feature. When he told me about the 'few snipers', I realized from the amount of fire we had already heard that there was more than that”.

‘When we moved up, it was obvious that A Company had received tremendous casualties, there were wounded coming back in Bren carriers .....




.... and dead chaps lying at the side of the road, and I passed a complete platoon headquarters all killed’.

Yet again, the attack came under heavy fire as it approached the Dreijenseweg. Here are two accounts which illustrate the difficulty of fighting in those woods.

Private Ted Reynolds:

‘I couldn't see where the Germans were and had to fire at where their fire seemed to be coming from. Things got quite bad. One of the first to be hit was the Number Two on my Bren, Private Ford. Suddenly he was laid on the ground, stone dead, with three neat little bullet holes in the throat. Funny enough, he had been a lovely singer. The platoon lost four or five men. I remember Dodds being shot in the chest or the neck, and Atkinson was hit in the neck, but it came out the other side without hitting the artery. I saw him walking back with blood spurting out of the side of his neck. They both survived.

A man came out of the woods with his hands up. He claimed to be a glider pilot and certainly wore a glider pilot's equipment. He told us to follow him, saying there were only young Germans ahead and we could easily go and get them. He spoke perfect English, but I am convinced that he was a German because he had come out of the bushes where the Germans were and he went back the same way when we refused to follow him. No one thought to stop him’.

Private Ron Atkinson was in the same platoon:

Then it happened - we walked right into it, fire from above, from our flanks, and even from behind. My platoon halted and took cover.




We saw a figure in khaki running towards us shouting some gibberish about where Jerry was. He turned out to be a glider pilot; he was lucky he didn't get shot from both sides.




Then we heard the clatter of tank tracks to our front and flank using the narrow paths among the trees. They let off everything they had at us: small arms, armour-piercing shells, high explosive, the lot.




Then we had an order to advance at the double - no point in waiting to be massacred. We must have advanced about 500 yards when we were ordered to halt and take cover again. I heard my stretcher bearer pal's Midlands accent asking for assistance, so me, being nosy, crawled over and found him with one arm limp due to a bullet in the shoulder, struggling to get our section sergeant on the stretcher. The latter was lying face down. I turned him on his back and proceeded to put my hands under his armpits while Harry held his legs.

Then it happened. Something struck me at the back of my neck; it felt like a back heel from a cart-horse. I remember feeling to see whether I still had a head on my shoulders and then looking at my hands and tunic sleeves covered in blood - my own blood! I dashed to the rear, to the first-aid post, moaning and groaning all the way.