General ‘Boy': The Life of Lieutenant General Sir Frederick Browning
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South of the Maas, facing Second Army’s front on the Meuse-Escaut Canal and on either side of the airborne corridor between Eindhoven and Grave, the command was placed in the hands of General Student at First Parachute Army. In order to attack the corridor, Model arranged for it to receive such reinforcements as could be spared, including 59 Infantry Division and 107 Panzer Brigade. The attacks on 82 Airborne from the Reichswald were to be the responsibility of Corps Feldt, composed of whatever units could be found, including a NCO school and some Luftwaffe and ‘stomach and ear’ battalions.14 Model, however, promised to send immediately two parachute divisions, which were refitting near Cologne. These were in practice reduced to not much more than battalion strength, but they were composed of tough and experienced troops.
Particularly when they were on the defensive, the Germans had an extraordinary ability to form ad hoc Kampfgruppen (battle groups) of almost any size, led by the most senior officer, or even NCO, available. Each Kampfgruppe could be created out of a larger formation or from a variety of smaller units or parts of units and it could take any shape and absorb soldiers from all arms. A large number of these were formed during the course of Market Garden and many proved to be highly effective.
With stalemate at the Nijmegen Bridge, a further meeting was convened for the senior commanders at 2000 on 19 September. Boy had already impressed on Gavin the urgent need to take the Nijmegen Bridge and he now required a plan to achieve this. Moore, Goulburn and Vandeleur were all present, wearing the informal dress adopted by many Guards officers of corduroy trousers, suede boots and battledress top, behind which was an old school scarf, or a bright green one in the case of Vandeleur. ‘They wore a most amazing air of nonchalance’, wrote Chatterton, who was present, ‘and gave the impression that this was not a battle but an exercise near Caterham barracks. In contrast to them Colonel Tuck,15 the American commander, had a tin hat on which covered his whole face, a jumping jacket on which there were several decorations (including our own DSO), a pistol strapped under each arm, a knife on the right-hand side, long trousers and lace-up boots. He chewed a fat cigar and every now and then spat. Each time he did so a faint look of surprise flickered over the faces of the Guards officers.’16 Even allowing for some hyperbole, this vignette encapsulates the differences between the officers of the two armies.
Boy had asked for a plan and Gavin arrived with one, but it required boats.17 He proposed to put a battalion of Tucker’s regiment across the Waal west of the town and attack both the rail and road bridges at their north ends. He asked Horrocks about the availability of the boats and, although these were well back in the XXX Corps column, the staff thought that they could be brought up by daylight. Boy and Horrocks, the former evidently filled with admiration at its boldness, both gave their agreement to the plan.
On the morning of the following day, the Grenadiers and Lieutenant Colonel Ben Vandervoort’s 2/505 Parachute Infantry moved against both bridges, but made very slow progress, whilst Tucker’s men, supported by the tanks of the Irish Guards, cleared the river bank at the site of the proposed crossing. The boats, however, were seriously delayed by the traffic jam on the single carriageway road leading up from Eindhoven, which was already subject to attack from Germans. 107 Panzer Brigade had put in two vigorous attacks on the new bridge at Son and, although both were repulsed by 101 Division and British tanks, free movement had been halted. Time and again the crossing operation was postponed until it was eventually scheduled to begin at 1500, the boats arriving half an hour before that.
Shortly before the boats’ arrival, Gavin was called away urgently by serious developments on his southern front, where the Germans had taken Mook, which was perilously close to the Heumen Bridge, and had also overrun the defenders at Beek, below the ridge looking north-east towards the Waal over the flat polder. These attacks were part of a coordinated operation involving three separate attacks, the third against Groesbeek itself, by Kampfgruppen which now included the German paratroopers from Cologne, who were to prove a much tougher proposition than the second-rate soldiers encountered earlier. Gavin rushed away initially to Mook, where the situation was on a knife-edge but was eventually restored with the help of the Coldstream Guards’ tanks, and then to Beek and the nearby village of Berg-en-Dal, where the Americans had created a strongpoint around the hotel. The Germans focused on this, but Gavin was later to say that if they had slipped between the defenders, they would have had a clear run into Nijmegen. Fighting at all three sites was to continue through the night, but peter out on the following day, with the Americans retaining the key defensive positions.
Back on the Waal, Boy, Horrocks and Adair stood on the roof of the power station near where the Maas-Waal Canal entered the river, whilst the operation unfolded at their feet. Boy was now seriously worried. During the morning he had received the first direct signal from 1 Airborne and the news was not good. The division had no contact with Frost at the bridge, whilst Arnhem itself was by now entirely in enemy hands. Intense fighting was being experienced and immediate relief was urgent. The only solution seemed to lie with the forthcoming assault crossing by 3/504 Parachute Infantry, led by Major Julian Cook. The boats, when they arrived, proved to be made of collapsible canvas, heavy, paddle-driven and difficult to manoeuvre. The river itself was 400 yards wide, with a current running at eight to ten knots, and on the far side there was 500 yards of polder to cross in front of an embankment.
Preceded by a barrage from rocket firing Typhoons of the RAF and supported by their own artillery and the guns of the Irish Guards’ tanks, which put down a smoke screen, the Americans picked up the twenty-eight boats and carried them down to the river. The crossing was subject to heavy fire from the far bank, many boats were sunk and casualties were high. The survivors leapt out and rushed across the polder towards the embankment, many falling in the process, whilst the remaining boats turned round for further crossings.18 Boy turned to Horrocks and said ‘I have never seen a more gallant action.’
Overwhelming the defenders on the far embankment, Cook’s paratroopers turned right and made for the bridges, taking the old Dutch Fort Hof van Holland on the way. In the meantime, heavy fighting was continuing in Nijmegen, where the Grenadiers and Vandervoort’s paratroopers were inching towards the road bridge, having by now pushed the Germans back into a small perimeter around the old medieval fortifications of the Valkhof and the nearby Hunner Park, with its prominent belvedere. The defenders had received reinforcements from 10 SS Panzer Division and were resisting tenaciously, but gradually they were winkled out of their strongholds. On the other side, Cook’s men reached the north end of the railway bridge, which they took and held, whilst a group had penetrated to about 1,000 yards north of the road bridge. A signal was received by the Grenadiers in Nijmegen saying that the far end of the bridge had been captured and, in the mistaken belief that this referred to the road bridge, a troop of Sherman tanks was made ready to storm across.
As the last defenders were pushed away from the southern end of the road bridge, Moore ordered Sergeant Robinson to lead the way. Initially the tanks were driven back by anti-tank fire, but with the light fading, another attempt was made. This time Robinson and Sergeant Pacey drove their tanks onto the bridge itself and raced forward. A brief duel ensued with a German 88mm gun positioned at the far end, but this was destroyed by accurate shooting and the two Shermans sped across, followed by another two on their heels and then by Peter Carrington, the second-in-command of the squadron, with two more. In a bunker close to the north end SS Brigadier General Harmel, the commander of 10 SS Panzer Division, who had been given strict instructions by Model not to destroy the bridge but to preserve it for a counter-attack, gave the order to blow it, but the detonators failed and the tanks passed across intact, whilst engineers cut the wires to the remaining charges.19
The last water obstacle before the Lower Rhine had been crossed. Although the Poles, 325 Glider Infantry Regiment of 82 Airborne and part of 327 Glider Infantry Regiment
of 101 Airborne had yet to arrive on the field of battle, all the initial airborne objectives apart from the bridge at Arnhem had been secured and ‘Market’ was effectively at an end. ‘Garden’, however, was far from complete.
Chapter 19
Garden (21–24 September 1944)
The capture intact of the Nijmegen bridges on the evening of 20 September had been a cause for jubilation on the Allied side, as it seemed for a brief moment that nothing stood between them and Arnhem. This very quickly proved to be an illusion. The Americans in particular have always criticized Guards Armoured Division for not pressing on immediately after crossing the bridge, but in practice this would not have been a sensible military decision. It was 1900 before the small troop of tanks had collected and the light was fading fast. Although there were American paratroopers around, none of them were trained in working with armour and the Grenadiers’ infantry was still mopping up in Nijmegen. Ahead ran a single carriageway road across totally flat polder, slightly raised, with no chance of lateral deployment and no fire support available from artillery or the RAF.
On the next day tanks of the Irish Guards did advance, but before they reached Elst and about six miles short of Arnhem they ran into anti-tank guns and four were immediately destroyed, blocking the road. Only infantry would be able to proceed further on the direct route and this would require 43 Division, which was only just arriving in Nijmegen. One positive development took place, however, when 64 Medium Regiment RA, with its guns at Hees just to the west of Nijmegen, established contact with 1 Airborne’s Forward Observation Unit. This enabled the gunners to put down accurate fire from a distance of about twelve miles to break up attacks on the Oosterbeek perimeter.
Boy was deeply frustrated by the slow progress, although he did not necessarily show it. Gwatkin said later that he spent a lot of time at the 5 Guards Armoured Brigade HQ, but that he ‘never fussed, never complained, never urged on great efforts: he knew that all that could be done was being done – but it does take more than just iron control to behave as he did. I thought then that I was too old to hang another picture in my Hero’s gallery, but I put him up.’1 One of Boy’s other concerns was the performance of his own HQ and here he unburdened himself in a scribbled letter to Daphne late on 19 September: ‘My staff is almost more inefficient than I could possibly imagine now we are in the field – I suppose its due to people being pushed up the tree too quickly without sufficient experience, but its really too frustrating for words. Gordon Walch has completely failed as chief of staff in the field – not entirely his fault I suppose but he seems unable to combine the two jobs.’2 It is difficult to conclude that the failure was other than of Boy’s own making, although the War Office’s reluctance to provide him with a signals unit until the last minute, and then a totally inexperienced one, made a major contribution.
Map 3. The Island
On 20 September the HQ moved to the location which it would occupy until it returned to the UK. This was necessitated partly by geography, but more by the piecemeal arrival of the Main HQ by road. Eagger had turned up on the previous day and immediately made himself useful by organizing hospitals in the area with the assistance of the Dutch. Bower, the chief administrative officer, arrived twenty-four hours later and the balance of the HQ on 21 September. The choice fell on three empty villas found by Firbank, the GSO2 (Operations), on Sophiaweg, a pleasant wooded suburban thoroughfare which linked the main roads to Nijmegen from Mook and Malden at one end, from Berg-en-Dal at the other and from Groesbeek in the middle. The position was ideal, providing good communications to all parts of the Airborne Corps sector.
There was also an empty barracks close at hand (from which Firbank liberated a large quantity of wines and spirits) which was used as an alternative to tents by some of the staff and by the seventy glider pilots, who were supposedly providing the defence of the corps HQ, but were for the most part underemployed. They did, however, have to clear the surrounding woods of snipers left behind by the departing Germans and still proving a nuisance. An airstrip for light aircraft was constructed nearby and used for communication with Second Army. Boy’s mobile caravan arrived with the Main HQ, which provided him with a ready-made office.
One of Boy’s deep frustrations concerned the delays to the third drop, which had been due on 19 September. Increasingly irate signals were sent from his HQ over the non-arrival of the Polish Parachute Brigade and Gavin’s 325 Glider Infantry Regiment, both of which were urgently needed. On 20 September the weather was still fine in Holland and Boy could not understand why they were still not being despatched. The weather in England, on the other hand, had closed in. FAAA was responsible for the decisions, but Brereton had decided to visit the front and was in Eindhoven on 19 September and then with Taylor at 101 Airborne on the following day. Ridgway, whose XVIII Airborne Corps was responsible for supplying the two American divisions, had travelled with Brereton initially,3 later arriving at Nijmegen, where he turned up at Gavin’s HQ just as the latter was tackling the crises at Mook and Beek. Gavin could spare him no time, but noted later that Ridgway was still unhappy not to be controlling the two divisions. With the two most senior commanders away, the decisions regarding further lifts were left to Parks, Brereton’s Chief of Staff, who gave priority to resupply rather than fresh troops.
During the afternoon of 20 September a message was received at Rear HQ from Edmund Hakewill-Smith, the GOC of 52 Division. Passed on to the Advance HQ, it offered to fly in by glider one brigade and a mixed artillery regiment of 6-pounder anti-tank guns, 25-pounder field guns and 3.7 inch howitzers to reinforce 1 Airborne. Given that 52 Division had no training on gliders, this was a brave suggestion. On the previous day a message had been received that the division was now at the disposal of Second Army, so Boy needed Dempsey’s approval to use it. He and Horrocks met Dempsey on the morning of 21 September and it is inconceivable that this was not discussed. In any event, Boy’s clear priority was still to bring in the Poles and Gavin’s glider infantry. There were already considerable difficulties being experienced in sustaining XXX Corps and to transport and supply another formation at this juncture, in addition to those already in the field or planned to arrive, would have put a huge additional strain on resources.
Boy’s reply to Hakewill-Smith, not delivered until 22 September but almost certainly drafted on the previous day after the meeting with Dempsey, was nevertheless extraordinary: ‘Thanks for your message but offer not repeat not required as situation better than you think. We want lifts as planned including Poles. Second Army definitely require your party and intend to fly you in to Deelen airfield as soon as situation allows.’ If anything was to demonstrate his lack of understanding of the situation at Arnhem, it was this. On the previous day Frost’s party at the bridge had been forced to surrender, after a most gallant resistance against overwhelming odds. The perimeter at Oosterbeek had contracted and was under constant attack from all sides. The one other potential river crossing point into the perimeter, the Heveadorp ferry, had been lost to the Germans and, although the Poles had landed on the south side of the Lower Rhine by the time the response was received by Hakewill-Smith, they were unable to get across without boats. There was absolutely no hope at all of taking Deelen in the near future. Brereton’s subsequent comment on the message – ‘As it turned out, General Browning was overoptimistic’4 – was a major understatement, but Brereton had earlier described the message as ‘encouraging’, demonstrating clearly his own lack of comprehension of the position.
If Boy had been frustrated, Sosabowski had been even more so. Due under the plan to parachute in on D+2, his brigade’s departure was put back time after time by the weather in England. Although the glider-borne element arrived with the second and third lifts, the latter was much depleted by losses on the way: those who survived the third lift had to fight their way into the Oosterbeek perimeter, but with only two of their ten anti-tank guns. Sosabowski was as short of information on the fate of 1 Airborne as everyone else and
was becoming increasingly concerned about aspects of his own drop. On D+3 the drop zone was changed from just south of the road bridge to an area close to Driel five miles to the west, from where he would be able to use the Heveadorp ferry to cross to Urquhart’s relief. The retention of the ferry was thus uppermost in his mind and he decided that he would refuse to go unless it was still held.
At 0700 on the morning of 21 September – D+4 – his British liaison officer, Lieutenant Colonel Stevens, told him that the ferry remained in British hands and shortly afterwards he received confirmation from Parks that he could fly. By early afternoon the weather had cleared and at 1415 Sosabowski’s plane left the ground. The drop itself was successful, but one of his battalions had to turn back because the weather had again deteriorated, leaving Sosabowski with two weak battalions, comprising just 750 men. Sending out reconnaissance parties, he discovered to his horror that the Heveadorp ferry had actually been destroyed and that the far bank at that point was now held by the Germans. Shortly afterwards his Polish liaison officer with Urquhart arrived, having swum the Rhine, to report on 1 Airborne’s precarious situation. He was sent back with a message that Sosabowski would try to cross as soon as he had the wherewithal to do so.
On 22 September, the weather in England closed in again and there was no resupply, let alone further reinforcements. 101 Airborne now came under Boy’s command for the first time since the initial landings, in order to free XXX Corps for the impending battle north of Nijmegen. Since the action at Son two days earlier, the corridor had been relatively quiet, but Student was gathering his forces for a series of attacks from both sides. From the east, Kampfgruppe Walther, incorporating 107 Panzer Brigade, struck between Veghel and Uden and cut the highway, whilst Kampfgruppe Huber attacked from the other side close to the Zuid-Willemsvaart Canal bridge. Taylor had already brought up some of his troops who had been relieved further south by VIII Corps and these, together with those already in the area, drove back the attackers causing heavy losses, but the road remained under artillery fire and was effectively impassable. The German attacks became increasingly uncoordinated, improving weather created opportunities for the Allied air forces to strike back and the arrival of 32 Guards Brigade from the north, sent down urgently by Horrocks, tipped the balance. By the early afternoon of 23 September, the Germans were forced to pull back, but they had cut what was now called ‘Hell’s Highway’ for 36 hours and delayed 69 Brigade, which was moving up to Nijmegen in the van of 50 Division, as well as other urgently needed supplies and equipment.