A Bridge Too Far

by Cornelius Ryan

  Major Freddie Gough had finally overtaken Lathbury’s brigade headquarters, following Frost’s battalion on the Lion route. Quickly he sought out Major Tony Hibbert, the second in command. “Where’s the General and the Brigadier?” Gough asked. Hibbert didn’t know. “They’re together someplace,” he told Gough, “but they’ve both gone off.” Gough was now totally confused. “I didn’t know what to do,” he recalls. “I tried to contact Division without success, so I just decided to keep on going after Frost.” Leaving Hibbert, Gough set out once more.

  It was dark when Gough and his troopers drove into Arnhem and found Frost and his men holding positions near the northern end of the bridge. Immediately Gough asked where Urquhart was. Like Hibbert, Frost had no idea. He assumed Urquhart was back with Division. Once more Gough tried his radio. Now adding to his anxiety was the absence of any news of his own reconnaissance forces near Wolfheze. But again he could make no contact with anyone. Ordering his tired men to a building close by the bridge, Gough climbed to the roof just in time to see the whole southern end of the bridge “go up in flames” as Frost’s men made their first attempt to seize the far end. “I heard this tremendous explosion and the whole end of the bridge seemed to be on fire. I remember somebody saying ‘We’ve come all this way just to have the damn bridge burn down.’ ”Gough himself was momentarily alarmed. Then, through the smoke he saw that only the pillbox and some ammunition shacks were destroyed. Concerned and weary, Gough turned in for a few hours’ rest. He had traveled route after route all day in search of Urquhart. Now, at the bridge, at least one problem was solved. He was where he had set out to be and there he would stay.

  There was little more that Lieutenant Colonel Frost could do this night, except to guard the northern end of the bridge from enemy attacks on the southern side. He still had no contact with his missing companies and now, in a house on a corner overlooking the bridge, Frost set up battalion headquarters. Lance Corporal Harold Back of the 2nd Battalion’s cipher section remembers that from the front window of the house, the headquarters personnel could look out on the ramp. “The side window of the room gave us a direct view of the bridge itself,” says Back. “Our signalers stuck their antennas through the roof and moved their sets constantly, but they couldn’t make contact with anybody.”

  Shortly after, Brigade headquarters arrived and set up in the attic of a house near Frost’s. After conferring with his officers, Frost thought it was now obvious that the 1st and 3rd battalions had either been held up on the Tiger and Leopard routes or were fighting north of the bridge somewhere in Arnhem. Without communications, it was impossible to tell what had happened. But if the two battalions did not reach Arnhem during the hours of darkness, the Germans would have the precious time necessary to close the area between Frost’s men and the rest of the division. Additionally, Frost was worried that the great bridge might still be blown. In the opinion of the engineers, the heat from fires had already destroyed any fuses laid from the bridge to the town and all visible cables had already been cut by sappers. Still, no one knew exactly where other cables might be hidden. And, as Frost recalls, “the fires prevented even one man from being able to get on to the bridge to remove any charges that might still be there.”

  But the northern end of the Arnhem bridge was in Frost’s hands and he and his courageous men had no intention of giving it up. Although he worried about his missing companies and the rest of the division, he did not show his concern. Visiting various sections now billeted in several houses near the ramp, he found his men “in great heart, as they had every reason to be.” As Private James Sims recalls, “We felt quite pleased with ourselves, with the Colonel making jokes and inquiring about our comfort.”

  At battalion headquarters, Frost himself now settled down for the first time during the day. Sipping from a large mug of tea, he thought that, all in all, the situation was not too bad. “We had come eight miles through close, difficult country, to capture our objective within seven hours of landing in Holland … a very fine feat of arms indeed.” Although restless, Frost, like his men, was optimistic. He now had a force numbering about five hundred men of various units, and he had every faith that his own missing companies would reach him at the bridge. In any case, he would only have to hold, at most, for another forty-eight hours—until the tanks of General Horrocks’ XXX Corps arrived.

  *Frost recalls that “a map I had taken from a German prisoner … showed the routes of an enemy armored-car patrol unit and I realized that the German strength was to my left.”

  *Several accounts state that the flamethrowers’ aim was diverted and instead of hitting the pillbox, the fiery liquid hit several huts containing explosives.

  *A short-range, spring-loaded British antitank gun weighing 33 pounds and capable of firing a projectile that could penetrate four inches of tempered armor plate.

  *According to Dutch Police Sergeant Johannes van Kuijk the bridge was deserted and without guards when he came on duty at 7:30 that evening. Earlier, according to Van Kuijk, when the airborne landings began, the bridge garrison of twenty-five World War I veterans deserted their post.

  *In the official orders issued to Urquhart, no reference to the Driel ferry as an objective seems to exist. R.A.F. reconnaissance photographs, used at briefings, show it clearly and one must assume that at some stage of the planning it was discussed. However, General Urquhart, when I interviewed him on the subject, told me “I can’t recall that the ferry ever came up.” When Urquhart finally learned of the ferry’s existence, it was too late to be of any use. Says Urquhart, “By that time I did not have enough men to put across the river.” In oral orders, however, the engineers were warned that “the seizure of all ferries, barges and tugs becomes of paramount importance to assist the subsequent advance of XXX Corps.” Obviously, however, in the last-minute stages of the planning these orders apparently carried lower priority, for they were never formally issued. “No one told us about the ferry at Driel,” Colonel Frost told the author, “and it could have made all the difference.”

  FROM BERLIN TO THE WESTERN FRONT, the German high command was stunned by the sudden Allied attack. Only in Arnhem, where the British 1st Airborne Division had dropped almost on top of General Bittrich’s two panzer divisions, was the reaction both fierce and quick. Elsewhere, baffled and confused commanders tried to determine whether the startling events of September 17 were indeed the opening phase of an invasion of the Reich. A ground attack by the British out of Belgium had been anticipated. All available reserves, including General Von Zan-gen’s Fifteenth Army, so worn down that men had little else but the rifles they carried, had been thrown into defense positions to hold against that threat. Trenches had been dug and strategic positions built in an all-out effort to force the British to fight for every foot of ground.

  No one had foreseen that airborne forces would be used simultaneously with the British land advance. Were these airborne attacks the prelude to an invasion of Holland by sea, as Berlin feared? In the hours of darkness, while staff officers tried to analyze the situation, reports of additional airborne attacks further confused the picture. American paratroopers, their strength unknown and their units still unidentified, were in the Eindhoven-Nijmegen area; and the British 1st Airborne Division had clearly landed around Arnhem. But now new messages told of paratroopers in the vicinity of Utrecht, and a totally bewildering report claimed that airborne forces had landed in Warsaw, Poland.*

  At Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt’s headquarters in Koblenz, the general reaction was one of astonishment,* The crusty, aristocratic Von Rundstedt was not so much surprised at the nature of the attack as by the man who, he reasoned, must be directing it—Montgomery. Initially, Von Rundstedt doubted that these sudden and apparently combined land-and-air operations were the opening of Eisenhower’s offensive to invade the Reich. The Field Marshal had long been certain that Patton and the American Third Army driving toward the Saar posed the real danger. To combat that threat, Von Rundstedt had committ
ed his best troops to repulse Patton’s racing tanks. Now Germany’s most renowned soldier was caught temporarily off balance. Never had he expected Eisenhower’s main offensive to be led by Montgomery, whom he had always considered “overly cautious, habit-ridden and systematic.”

  He was astounded by the boldness of Montgomery’s move. The messages pouring in from Model’s headquarters carried a note of hysteria attesting all the more to the surprise and gravity of the attack: “We must reckon with more airborne landings being made at night … the enemy obviously believes his attack to be of major importance and the British have achieved considerable initial success against Student and pushed forward to Valkens-waard … the position here is particularly critical … the lack of fast, strong reserves is increasing our difficulties … the general situation of Army Group B, stretched as it is to the limits, is critical … we require, as fast as possible, panzers, artillery, heavy mobile antitank weapons, antiaircraft units, and it is absolutely essential that we have fighters in the sky day and night …”

  Model ended with these words: “… the main concentration of the Allies is on the northern wing of our front.” It was one of the few times Von Rundstedt had ever respected the opinion of the officer he had caustically referred to as having the makings of a good sergeant major. In that fragment of his message, Model had stripped away Von Rundstedt’s last doubts about who was responsible for the startling developments. The “northern wing” of Army Group B was Montgomery.

  During the night hours it was impossible to estimate the strength of the Allied airborne forces in Holland, but Von Rundstedt was convinced that further landings could be expected. It would now be necessary not only to plug gaps all along the German front but to find reserves for Model’s Army Group B at the same time. Once again, Von Rundstedt was forced to gamble. Messages went out from his headquarters transferring units from their positions facing the Americans at Aachen. The moves were risky but essential. These units would have to travel north immediately, and their commitment in the line might take forty-eight hours at minimum. Von Rundstedt issued further orders to defense areas along Germany’s northwest frontier, calling for all available armor and antiaircraft units to proceed to the quiet backwater of Holland where, the Field Marshal was now convinced, imminent danger to the Third Reich lay. Even as he worked steadily on through the night to shore up his defenses, Germany’s Iron Knight pondered the strangeness of the situation. He was still amazed that the officer in charge of this great Allied offensive was Montgomery.

  It was late evening when the staff car carrying General Wilhelm Bittrich from his headquarters at Doetinchem arrived in the darkened streets of Arnhem. Bittrich was determined to see for himself what was happening. As he reconnoitered through the city, fires were still burning and debris littered the streets—the effect of the morning’s bombing. Dead soldiers and smoldering vehicles in many areas attested, as Bittrich was later to say, to “the turbulent fighting that had taken place.” Yet, he had no clear picture of what was happening. Returning to his own headquarters, Bittrich learned from reports received from two women telephone operators in the Arnhem Post headquarters—whom he was later to decorate with the Iron Cross—that the great highway bridge had been taken by British paratroopers. Bittrich was infuriated. His specific order to Harzer to hold the bridge had not been carried out. Now it was crucial that the Nijmegen bridge over the Waal river be secured before the Americans in the south could seize it. Bittrich’s only chance of success was to crush the Allied assault along the corridor and squeeze the British to a standstill in the Arnhem area. The paratroopers now on the north end of the Arnhem bridge and the scattered battalions struggling to reach them must be totally destroyed.

  The top-secret Market-Garden plan that had fallen into Colonel General Kurt Student’s possession finally reached Field Marshal Model at his new headquarters. He had abandoned the gardener’s cottage on the Doetinchem castle grounds and moved about five miles southeast near the small village of Terborg. It had taken Student the best part of ten hours to locate the Field Marshal and transmit the document by radio. Arriving in three parts and now decoded, Market-Garden lay revealed.

  Model and his staff studied it intently. Before them was Montgomery’s entire plan: the names of the airborne divisions employed, the successive air and resupply lifts ranging over a three-day period, the exact location of the landing and drop zones, the crucial bridge objectives—even the flight routes of the aircraft involved. Model, as Harzer was later to learn from the Field Marshal himself, called the plan “fantastic.” It was so fantastic that in these critical hours Model refused to believe it.

  The plans were too pat, too detailed for credibility. Model suggested to his staff that the very preciseness of the document argued against its authenticity. He stressed again his own firm conviction that the landings west of Arnhem were the spearhead of a large-scale airborne attack toward the Ruhr, via Bocholt and Minister, some forty miles east. Additional airborne landings should be expected, he warned, and once assembled would undoubtedly swerve north and then east. Model’s reasoning was not without validity. As he told his staff, “If we are to believe these plans and are to assume that the Arnhem bridge is the true objective, why were not troops dropped directly on the bridge? Here, they arrive on vast open areas suitable for assembly, and moreover, eight miles to the west.”

  Model did not inform General Bittrich of the document. “I never realized until after the war,” says Bittrich, “that the Market-Garden plans had fallen into our hands. I have no idea why Model did not tell me. In any case, the plans would simply have confirmed my own opinion that the important thing to do was prevent the link-up between the airborne troops and the British Second Army—and for that, they certainly needed the bridges.”* One officer under Bittrich’s command did learn of the document. Lieutenant Colonel Harzer seemed to be the only officer outside the Field Marshal’s staff with whom Model talked about the plan. Harzer recalls that “Model was always prepared for the worst, so he did not discount it entirely. As he told me, he had no intention of being caught by the short hairs.” Only time would tell the Germans whether the document was, in fact, genuine. Although the temperamental, erratic Field Marshal was not fully prepared to accept the evidence before him, most of his staff were impressed. With the Market-Garden plan in their hands, Model’s headquarters alerted all antiaircraft units already on the move of the drops that the plan said would take place a few hours later.

  One assumption, at least, was laid to rest. Lieutenant Gustav Sedelhauser, the general-headquarters administrative officer, recalls that on the basis of the captured documents, Model was now of the opinion that he and his Oosterbeek headquarters had not been the objective of the airborne assault after all.

  *The R.A.F. did drop dummy paratroops over a wide area around Utrecht, diverting some German troops for days. No troops were dropped on Warsaw and the report may have been garbled in transmission or, more simply, may have been the result of unfounded rumor.

  *“When we first informed Von Rundstedt’s headquarters of the airborne attack,” Colonel Hans von Tempelhof, Model’s operations chief, told me, “OB West seemed hardly perturbed. In fact the reaction was almost callously normal. It quickly changed.”

  *OB West was not informed of the captured Market-Garden plans either; nor is there any mention in Model’s reports to Von Rundstedt of the documents. For some reason Model thought so little of the plans that he did not pass them on to higher headquarters.

  AT THE PRECISE TIME that Lieutenant Colonel John Frost secured the northern end of the Arnhem bridge, a cautious approach to another prime objective eleven miles away was only just beginning. The five-span highway bridge over the Waal river at Nijmegen in the 82nd Airborne’s central sector of the corridor was the last crossing over which the tanks of General Horrocks’ XXX Corps would pass on their drive to Arnhem.

  With spectacular success, Brigadier General James M. Gavin’s 504th paratroopers had grabbed the crucial Grave
bridge eight miles southwest of Nijmegen; and, at about 7:30 P.M., units of the 504th and 505th regiments secured a crossing over the Maas-Waal Canal at the village of Heumen, less than five miles due east of Grave. Gavin’s hope of capturing all three canal crossings and a railroad bridge was in vain. The bridges were blown or severely damaged by the Germans before the 82nd could grab them. Yet, within six hours of landing, Gavin’s troopers had forged a route over which the British ground forces would travel. Additionally, patrols of the 505th Regiment probing the area between the 82nd’s drop zones near the Groesbeek Heights and the Reichs-wald encountered only light resistance; and, by nightfall, other troopers of the 508th Regiment had secured a 3½-mile stretch of woods along the Holland-German border north of the Groesbeek drop zone and running to the southeastern outskirts of Nijmegen. Now, with three of the 82nd’s four key objectives in hand, everything depended upon the capture of the 1,960-foot-long road bridge at Nijmegen.

  Although General Browning had directed Gavin not to go for the Nijmegen crossing until the high ground around Groesbeek was secured, Gavin was confident that all the 82nd’s objectives could be taken on this first day. Evaluating the situation some twenty-four hours before the jump, Gavin had called in the 5o8th’s commander, Colonel Roy E. Lindquist, and directed him to send one battalion racing for the bridge. In the surprise and confusion of the airborne landings, Gavin reasoned, the gamble was well worth taking. “I cautioned Lindquist about the dangers of getting caught in streets,” Gavin remembers, “and pointed out that the way to get the bridge was to approach from east of the city without going through built-up areas.” Whether by misunderstanding or a desire to clean up his initial assignments, Lindquist’s own recollection was that he was not to commit his troopers in an assault on the bridge until the regiment’s other objectives had been achieved. To the 1st Battalion, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Shields Warren, Jr., Lindquist assigned the task of holding protective positions along the Groesbeek-Nijmegen highway about a mile and a quarter southeast of the city. Warren was to defend the area and link up with the regiment’s remaining two battalions to the west and east. Only when these missions were accomplished, Warren recalled, was he to prepare to go into Nijmegen. Thus, instead of driving for the bridge from the flat farming areas to the east, Warren’s battalion found itself squarely in the center of those very built-up areas Gavin had sought to avoid.