The Day Gone By (54 page)

Our gliders and parachute aircraft (though we hadn't actually been told this at the time) were to fly into Holland along two separate routes from south-east England. The northern route lay over Walcheren and thence a little south of 's Hertogenbosch, where they were to diverge to the various dropping zones and landing zones of 1st Airborne and 82nd American. The southern route, 101st American Division's, lay over Ostend and Ghent and then, a little east of Louvain, turned northward for their dropping and landing zones between Eindhoven and Veghel.

It was the fly-in along this latter route that we watched. About one o'clock the ‘planes and gliders came in sight and passed right over us. I don't know the official numbers, but I would guess that we must have seen about a hundred bombers towing Horsa gliders and perhaps five hundred parachute aircraft. No such sight had ever been seen before and probably never will be again. The noise of the engines filled the sky, drowning all other sounds. The ground seemed stilled and the sky moving. The continuous streams of aircraft stretched out of sight, appearing, approaching and passing on overhead. They were quite low and from time to time we could plainly see people at the open doors and wave to them. I didn't hear anyone in the Company utter any comment. We simply looked at each other with a wild surmise. Here, mighty beyond anything we could have imagined, was the war's great climax. Even Driver Rowland, the platoon cynic, was plainly staggered. This lot was certainly not being done by Errol Flynn.

Now I know it tells in the books how General Horrocks, commanding XXX Corps, began his ground offensive as the first airborne troops landed that early afternoon, and how the Guards Armoured Division ran into tough opposition, but by nightfall had covered about nine miles towards Eindhoven. Horrocks has been criticized for not pressing on that night with fresh armoured troops, and for not putting in an infantry battalion to probe forward in the darkness and harass the Germans. I'm not competent to give an opinion. According to the plan as told to us, XXX Corps were supposed to reach Eindhoven that night, Nijmegen the following night and Arnhem on the next (Tuesday) afternoon. As everyone knows, this didn't happen.

However, 250 Company knew nothing of all this, waiting in the fog of war to drive northward up the Eindhoven road. The weather grew worse and by the next morning - Monday morning - it was cloudy and raining; the notorious weather of Arnhem week, which was to be a major factor in preventing our Typhoons from giving 1st Airborne the vital support they needed.

It was Tuesday afternoon - a nasty, wet day - before we went into what had become known as ‘The Corridor'. We had seen great numbers of tanks and lorried infantry go past us, and no end of sappers with loads of bridging materials; and we had watched grubby bands of German prisoners being shepherded to the rear. More gliders and parachute aircraft - the second lift - had flown over us during the previous day. We had no least idea that anything might be wrong. Very likely, we supposed, XXX Corps were even now making whoopee at Arnhem with General Urquhart and the boys. All the time there was gunfire and throughout the nights there had been continuous noise and movement of vehicles. We were all sleepless. Still, that didn't matter: now we were on the way.

I have only vague recollections of our journey up the Corridor to Nijmegen: about sixty to seventy miles. The extraordinary thing is that all the way we never saw a German and never came under fire. It was slow going, as usual. Along the road were signs, put up by the Sappers, warning against leaving the road, the verges not yet having been cleared of mines. We met with groups of American 101st, exhausted but glad to be alive. I recall a huge American signaller, using wire and pliers at the top of a tall telegraph pole and singing at the top of his voice ‘This is the G.I. jive - Man alive -'. In the little town of Veghel we waited a long time in the dark and the men quite rightly went to sleep. There were rumours of a German counter-attack and of The Corridor having been cut, but nothing happened. At length we were told to get moving again, and the whole place came to life with a great deal of noise - shouting and movement - in the midst of which an outraged voice yelled ‘Here, cut it out, all the damn' row!
We've
got to
stay
here!'

I suppose it must have been very early on Wednesday morning that we crossed the Maas on the captured bridge at Grave. It was all high girders, and stuck between two ribs thereof was an unexploded shell. That shell looked distinctly wobbly. From Grave it was only about seven or eight miles to Nijmegen, where fighting was going on near the bridge and along the south bank of the 400-yard-wide river.

By this time we had all become more or less aware that the original scheme couldn't have gone according to schedule; nevertheless, we were still in no doubt that we would soon get to Arnhem, where the 1st Division would be in possession of the bridge. 250 Company was ordered to camp in a field on the southern outskirts of Nijmegen, right next to two batteries of 25-pounder guns which were firing in support of the troops advancing northwards from Nijmegen. I'd never felt so tired or sleepless in my life. And still it rained and rained.

By that evening we knew — everyone in Nijmegen couldn't but know - that things had gone badly wrong. The plain truth was that it was proving a hard and dreadful business to get over the Nijmegen bridge, to cross the Waal and establish a bridgehead on the northern bank. On either side of and below the embankment carrying the road northward to Arnhem lay the Betuwe polder - low-lying, marshy land, partly flooded. It was impracticable for tanks. German artillery was firing on Nijmegen. German infantry were resisting the Allied efforts to cross the bridge.

Why hadn't the Germans blown the bridges at Arnhem and Nijmegen, reader, you may well ask? The answer is that Generalfeldmarschall Model had said not. He took the view that the bridges could be successfully defended against the Allied advance, and that they would then be needed for a German counter-attack. Other German generals had doubts about this, but Model's view prevailed.

By the Wednesday afternoon, soon after we had arrived in Nijmegen, the Grenadier Guards and the American 82nd had fought their way to the southern end of the huge bridge, below which the river was running (as Geoffrey Powell tells in
The Devil's Birthday)
at eight knots. The Americans, whose skill and courage throughout this dreadful week were beyond all praise, then crossed about a mile below the bridge in light assault craft. In the face of heavy German fire, only about half of them got across. Many were hit; many drowned. Yet those who got over routed the Germans on the other side, while meantime our troops had driven the enemy out of Nijmegen altogether - back over the bridge.

Four Guards Armoured tanks followed across and still the bridge wasn't blown. Two of those tanks were hit, but the other two demolished the German anti-tank guns. By nightfall the Guards and the Yanks had joined up at a village called Lent, just north of the bridge, and the bridge and the Waal crossing were safely in Allied hands.

That night, we in 250 Company were all waiting for the order to join the advance to Arnhem and the bridge. As we waited, John Gifford characteristically sat his officers down to a four of bridge. I'm afraid I didn't play very well. ‘But, Dick, we could have made four spades.' (Bang!) ‘Sorry, sir.' (Bang!)

The order never came. It wasn't until about eleven o'clock on Thursday morning that Guards Armoured got orders to press on up the Arnhem road. During the night the Germans had rallied: they were now ready and waiting. The tanks, of course, couldn't get off the road. As Geoffrey Powell says, they were like shooting-range targets at a fairground. The three leading tanks were knocked out and our infantry, doing everything they could to attack across the wet, flat polder on either side, had a very bad time. In brief, there was no getting on to Arnhem that day.

Meanwhile, what had been happening to Paddy Kavanagh and Sergeant McDowell, to Jack Cranmer-Byng, to Captain Gell (commanding our third parachute platoon), and to my three sections of glider-borne jeeps? By Friday we at least knew how desperate the general situation was, for on the Thursday night two senior officers of 1st Airborne, Lt.-Col. MacKenzie and Lt.-Col. Myers, acting on General Urquhart's orders, had escaped from north of the Neder Rijn and reported to the headquarters of XXX Corps details of what was happening at Oosterbeek.

Today everybody knows, of course, the essential story: how the division's first lift dropped on that fine Sunday afternoon, 17 September, and set off the eight miles eastward for the bridge: how Colonel John Frost, with a good proportion of 2nd Parachute Battalion, reached it, together with Major Freddie Gough, commanding the Reconnaissance Squadron. With them were a few divisional troops; some Sappers, some Gunners and our Captain Gell's parachute platoon. David Clark was there, too. The rest of the division were prevented by the Germans from getting into Arnhem, and after very heavy losses on the afternoon of Tuesday, 19 September, were forced into a defensive perimeter, about a mile in diameter, most vulnerably based on Divisional Headquarters in the Hartenstein hotel at Oosterbeek, about a mile or so west of Arnhem. The southern end of the perimeter rested on the north bank of the Neder Rijn, and here there was a ferry of sorts. This was why it was considered worth hanging on. As explained, by Wednesday evening the Nijmegen crossing was in Allied hands, and it was still expected that the 2nd Army would reach the south bank of the Neder Rijn in force, take the ferry and relieve 1st Airborne.

During the week the eastern and western sides of the Oosterbeek perimeter were gradually squeezed closer together. By Sunday 24 September, they were only about half a mile apart, and full of holes at that. The Germans were prevented from cutting off the division's precarious hold on some 600 yards of the north bank, to the east by a scratch force under the famous Major Dickie Lonsdale, one of the heroes of Arnhem, and to the west by what was left of the Border Regiment, who suffered badly.

By Thursday morning, 21 September, all resistance at the bridge had ceased. The remnants of 2nd Para., Colonel Frost (badly wounded), Freddie Gough, David Clark, Captain Gell and what was left of his platoon were prisoners in German hands. I want to emphasize that the whole division was only meant to hold the bridge for forty-eight hours. Colonel Frost and his men had held it for about eighty hours, against much heavier German opposition than had been expected, and if XXX Corps had come they could have had the crossing.

Of some 10,000 men of 1st Airborne who landed north of the Neder Rijn at Arnhem, about 1,400 were killed and over 6,000 - about one-third of them wounded - were taken prisoner. By Thursday morning, 3,000 sleepless, starving men were holding the Oosterbeek perimeter. 4th Parachute Brigade had virtually ceased to exist. (In the event, it did cease to exist: the survivors were transferred to 1st Para. Brigade and 4th was never re-formed.)

Corporals Bauer, Pickering and Hollis, their blokes and their jeeps all fell into the hands of the Germans. One soldier, a nice chap called Driver Eggleton, a Newbury man, escaped with the help of the Dutch Resistance after the glider he was in had force-landed in Holland short of the true landing zone.

Jack Cranmer-Byng (hit in the hand) and his platoon were among those shut into the Oosterbeek box. So were Paddy Kavanagh and Sergeant McDowell. I will now relate what happened to Paddy.

During the week, despite the adverse weather, ‘planes were flown from England to drop supplies to 1st Airborne. They had a bad time from German flak and many were lost. There was no ground-to-air communication (a bad fault, surely?) On account of this and also because the situation on the ground was so confused and in the rain visibility was so bad, most of the panniers fell outside the Oosterbeek perimeter. Colonel Packe asked Paddy to take his platoon and try to collect what he could of the nearer ones.

Paddy and Sergeant McDowell, their blokes and their jeeps set out from the 1st Airborne lines and drove down a narrow, empty lane bordered by fairly thick woodland. As they were coming over a little hump-backed bridge they were caught in German small-arms fire. Corporal Wiggins and several more died instantly. Several jeeps were smashed up.

Paddy grabbed a Bren gun and leapt into the ditch beside the verge, whence he returned the German fire. Sergeant McDowell joined him.

‘Take the blokes, sergeant!' yelled Paddy. ‘Get them out of here - back through the woods. I'll cover you.'

‘You sure of that, sir?' asked McDowell.

‘Yes,' answered Paddy. ‘Get out! That's an order!'

Somehow or other Sergeant McDowell got most of the platoon together inside the edge of the wood. Three or four lay writhing and screaming on the road. There was blood everywhere. Paddy, who had several magazines, continued firing. The platoon retreated on foot. After a minute or two they stopped to listen. Sergeant McDowell told me how you could hear the
rrrrip, rrrrip
of the German Schmeissers against the slower rat-tat-tat of the Bren - a dreadful counterpoint. Suddenly there was an explosion, and then nothing more.