Battle for Arnhem.... (14 Viewers)

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

The 4th Parachute Brigade Withdrawals

The 10th Battalion had received orders to pull back from its firefight with the Germans between the pumping station and the Leeren Doedel road junction before the glider landing took place.




Captain Nick Hanmer remembers hearing the order on the Battalion HQ wireless: 'I said to Colonel Smyth that we couldn't do that'.




They always say never disengage while under attack. He said we would do as we were bloody well told, and I sent off the runners to the companies with their orders. The disengagement was carried out without serious loss; the men north of the main road crossed under cover of smoke grenades and the battalion started to move back through the woodland towards the open ground behind.




But a platoon left behind on the edge of the woodland to act as a rearguard suffered some casualties. Lance-Corporal Jim Finn describes how he and five other men became cut off and spent the next three days making their way back towards the dropping zone of the previous day; they had no idea that the main division was south at Oosterbeek. They were eventually captured.

 

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Lieutenants Sammy Carr and Bobby Dodd stayed to help the MO evacuate wounded men, were late leaving the wood and had to hide until dark before attempting to escape. They became separated. Carr got back to England as an evader, but Lieutenant Dodd's field grave was found after the war with those of men killed in the battalion's action that morning. Separations from their units such as those of Lance-Corporal Finn and his group and of the two officers were typical of the way the brigade was starting to disintegrate.

The 10th Battalion had begun to cross the open ground when the gliders came in. That area now became a scene of developing confusion.




Men from the KOSB's B Company, supplemented by other volunteers, came out to help unload the gliders. The 10th Battalion men continued their withdrawal, at first under control, with many men on foot and a few jeeps.




It then became a rush when German infantry and tanks appeared on the edge of the wood behind them.

 

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Arnhem Thread Index
Page

72		Kampfgruppe ‘von Tettau’ reinforcements
72	18 Sept 1944	1st and 3rd Parachute Battalions push into Arnhem, to 2km from the bridge at the end of that day, but the Germans were able to break the columns up and inflict heavy losses, especially to their leaders.
72	18 Sept 1944	Tanks and SPGs arrive to support the Germans.
		Kampfgruppe Knaust
		Panzer-Grenadier-Ausbildungs Ersatz-Battalion 64
72	19 Sept 1944	Panzer-Kompanie Mielke are delayed a day
72	18 Sept 1944	9 S.S. Aufklarung Abteilung commanded by SS-Hauptsturmführer Viktor Gräbner attack across the Arnhem bridge.
72		Major Tatham-Warter DSO, A Company, 2 Para.
72		US Paras and XX Corps progress on 18 Sept 1944.

Major Digby Tatham-Warter DSO, A Company, 2 Para.

 

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

To continue from #2,282

Brigadier Hackett, watching from the southern edge of the landing zone, says:

'It was all no end of a party - the Poles coming in between the 10th Battalion and Brigade HQ. It was wonderful that the 10th Battalion kept its morale and structure. I watched it all from the south side of the LZ - a very interesting occupation.'

But the German fire grew fiercer. Private George Taylor says:

'We were moving back in extended order across the open when some fire came overhead. We all went down. Major Peter Warr shouted at us to stop doing that. He said that next time anyone got down he would stay down. It was only a joking warning, but it worked.'






Captain Nick Hanmer also describes the move:

‘It was not far off panic stations when the Germans came in behind us. I was in the Battalion HQ jeep, in the middle of an extended line of men; they were not running but were going at a fast walk. There was much fire from the northern edge and it caused many casualties. The gliders were coming in from the south, but it was a large piece of ground, and there was no need to get out of their way. I saw a German wheeled vehicle come out of the trees, right up to one glider, and it fired straight into the glider; it all looked pretty horrific’.




Lieutenant Miles Henry, the Intelligence Officer, was walking next to me when he was hit by a burst of machine-gun fire. I remember that he was hit in the back by such a heavy burst that bits of haversack were coming out of his front. I wanted to put his body in the jeep, but the CO said we had to leave him.

Corporal Harry Dicken of the Intelligence Section, faced with a mile of open ground to cover, buried in a slit trench the battalion war diary he had been keeping, together with his map case and telescope.

The confusion mounted. There was a rush by everyone to get off that open ground, and some of the glider loads had to be abandoned. The newly arrived Poles, many of whom could not speak English, could not always tell who was friend and who was foe. They, in turn, were sometimes mistaken for Germans because of their strange tongue and different-coloured berets to those of the British airborne men. There were several examples of Polish and British troops opening fire on each other and causing casualties.

Several contributors mention the bravery of a 10th Battalion Bren carrier driver who went back and forth across the open, bringing in casualties, tossing them into the carrier despite their screams of pain; this was Lance-Corporal Bill Garibaldi, from Brighton, one of the Royal Sussex men who had helped form this battalion; he would be killed on the following day.




Eventually, the last of the British and Poles who could do so were off that open ground, leaving their casualties and the broken or burning gliders to the Germans. As the 10th Battalion men reached the southern edge, they were directed along the track by the railway towards Wolfheze, only a mile away now.