by Richard Mead
Further south the operations by VIII and XII Corps were going much more slowly than anticipated. The resistance to XII Corps to the south-west of Eindhoven had been particularly stubborn and it was only inching its way forward. VIII Corps had done better after a late start on 19 September, capturing Helmond and Deurne and seeing off 107 Panzer Brigade, and it was now in close contact with 101 Airborne. Dempsey met O’Connor on 22 September and told him that he was to take responsibility for clearing the road from Veghel to Grave. A further conference was held with Taylor on the following day and command passed from the Airborne Corps to VIII Corps that afternoon. For the short period during which it had been under his command, Boy had had no impact at all on 101 Airborne’s battle, apart from concurring with Horrocks’s decision to detach 32 Guards Brigade.
In 82 Airborne’s sector the southwards attack by 32 Guards Brigade had deprived Gavin of his reserve, the Coldstream Guards Group, but he now received some armour of his own in the form of the Sherwood Rangers Yeomanry from 8 Armoured Brigade. This enabled him to extend his front across the low-lying polder to the south bank of the Waal east of Nijmegen. He was able to pull 504 Parachute Infantry back into his line after their heroic efforts on either side of the Nijmegen bridges and to hand over responsibility for the bridges at Grave and over the Maas-Waal canal, but he still urgently needed reinforcements. He found himself under a series of attacks from a number of Kampfgruppen, particularly on the Duivelsberg, a high point on the ridge between the two roads from Wyler to Nijmegen, and around Mook and Riethorst along the Maas, where he lost the Kiekberg Woods. He was therefore greatly relieved when 325 Glider Infantry Regiment arrived at last on 23 September, four days late, to be put initially into reserve before being moved to Mook.
On the same day, the sector responsibilities were changed in order to free up Horrocks for the battle now developing on the Island as the low-lying land between the Maas and the lower Rhine was known.5 Boy was allocated the Royal Netherlands Brigade, which was ordered to protect the Grave Bridge and to patrol westwards between the Maas and the Waal. On 24 September, a further reinforcement arrived in the shape of 157 Brigade Group, the seaborne echelon of 52 Division.6 This formation had a single battalion of infantry, but it included the division’s reconnaissance regiment, a regiment of field artillery, its own engineers, an antitank battery and an anti-aircraft battery, so it was a welcome addition to the corps. Over the course of the following week the reconnaissance regiment was tasked to patrol south-west of Grave, the field regiment was placed under Gavin and the remainder were ordered to protect a newly found airfield.
Boy had earlier sent out parties to locate possible landing grounds for Dakotas and on 21 September his Chief Engineer had discovered a grass airfield, previously unknown to the Intelligence staff, at Oude Keent, about three miles west of Grave. There was also an open space nearby which could be used for glider landings or as a fighter airstrip. Permission was immediately requested from Second Army to fly in 878 Airborne Engineer Battalion, AFDAG and 2 LAA Battery, with the intention of using the main airfield for supplies and, in due course, for the possible arrival of 52 Division. Second Army replied two days later, giving permission for it to be used, but it would be another three days before AFDAG and 2 LAA Battery were flown in, so the discovery was to make little contribution to the immediate battle.
Although there were a number of peripheral issues such as the airfield to be dealt with, Boy’s priorities were twofold. First, he had to ensure that the Airborne Corps continued to hold its sector of the airborne corridor. With O’Connor now running all operations on the road between Eindhoven and Grave, his own remit incorporated Nijmegen and all the surrounding land between the Maas and the Waal, together with Grave itself, the south end of the Maas Bridge and the country immediately along the south bank of the river towards ’s-Hertogenbosch. The most vulnerable sector remained that facing the German border along the edge of the Reichswald and extending from there to the Waal, but he had realized from the outset that Gavin was a highly competent commander, who should be given support when he asked for it, but could be allowed to operate with a minimum of supervision. Their relationship had improved immeasurably since the start of the operation, Walch writing subsequently ‘The mutual trust and respect shown by General Boy and General Jim Gavin, working closely together in the Nijmegen area, was particularly good to see.’7
More pressing by far was the second priority, the relief of 1 Airborne. This could only be effected by XXX Corps and the battle north of the Waal was now unequivocally under Horrocks’s control, in spite of his subsequent insistence that he and Boy took the main decisions together. Boy was still notionally responsible for 1 Airborne, but the continuing lack of good communication and his inability to be on the ground prevented him from exercising any command role. In Urquhart’s absence, he was also Sosabowski’s immediate superior, and here the sensible course of action, implicitly understood by Boy and Horrocks and later explicitly ordered, was to combine the Poles with elements of XXX Corps.
The halting of Guards Armoured Division on 21 September had been a setback, as 43 Division was still concentrating in Nijmegen and the small bridgehead to the north and was not ready to launch an attack. During that night, however, two troops of the Household Cavalry side-slipped through a gap in the German defences along the Waal to the west and looped round to link up with the Poles early the next morning. There they found two senior officers from 1 Airborne, Charles Mackenzie, the GSO1, and Eddie Myers, the Chief Royal Engineer, who had crossed the river in a rubber boat. For the first time, using the armoured cars’ wireless sets, an accurate picture of the situation at Oosterbeek could be passed through to XXX Corps and thence to Boy. Plans were put in hand to get as many of the Poles as possible across the river on the night of 22 September, but in the event only fifty or so made it to join the defenders of the perimeter.
On the morning of that day, 43 Division began its advance on a two-brigade front, 214 Brigade moving north-west toward the Polish Parachute Brigade with the intention of effecting a crossing, whilst 129 Brigade advanced directly on Elst. The latter found the German defences too strong, but 7th Somerset Light Infantry from the former broke the strong resistance at Oosterhout, just north of the Waal, enabling 5th Duke of Cornwall’s Light Infantry to pass through and join up with the Poles by the evening.
The difficulty of getting through in either direction meant that Mackenzie and Myers had remained with Sosabowski all day, but on 23 September they were taken back to Boy’s HQ in Nijmegen in two Household Cavalry armoured cars. Mackenzie, who arrived the worse for wear following a narrow escape from the Germans after his armoured car had overturned, tried to impress on Boy and Horrocks the full scale of 1 Airborne’s plight. However, although Boy told him that every effort would be made to get reinforcements and supplies over the river to Urquhart, he was less than convincing about the ability to put across a strong force and Mackenzie left with the impression that neither of the two corps commanders had really grasped the urgency of the situation. That night he crossed back over the river at the same time as another two hundred Poles, whose journey had been made under vicious fire from the Germans.
Early on 23 September, with the weather having deteriorated into heavy driving rain, Major General Ivor Thomas, the GOC of 43 Division, managed to slip the whole of 130 Brigade round the back of 214 Brigade. This enabled 214 Brigade to attack Elst from the west, but the town was proving a seriously difficult nut to crack. Having been forced back from the Nijmegen bridges, the Germans were now able to focus all their efforts on the Island into preventing the British from advancing any further north or east and continued to pour reinforcements across the now cleared Arnhem Bridge and the Pannerden ferry. Thomas, with two-thirds of his division committed to pushing back the Germans on the Island, only had one brigade available for any river crossing.
During the course of the day an outline plan was evolved between Thomas and Brigadier ‘Pete’ Pyman, the XXX Corps
Chief of Staff, which involved a river crossing near the site of the Heveadorp ferry. Pyman took the plan down to Dempsey at St Oedenrode and that evening the Second Army Commander sent a message to Boy and Horrocks jointly, spelling out what he saw as the priorities. These were firstly to keep open the main axis from VIII Corps’ sector so that supplies could get through and secondly to hold the Nijmegen bridgehead. Only then were they to establish a bridgehead in the Arnhem area. ‘You know situation in North’, wrote Dempsey, ‘better than I do but if you consider task No 3 too difficult at present both to gain and to hold you may withdraw 1 AB without reference to me.’ This was the first time that withdrawal had been seriously mentioned and the idea probably stemmed from a meeting that day between Dempsey and Montgomery at the former’s Tac HQ. Writing about 1 Airborne in his personal diary on 23 September, Montgomery recorded: ‘I am very doubtful myself now if they will be able to hold out, and we may have to withdraw them’8 but in his message, Dempsey made it clear that he still relied on the judgement of Boy and Horrocks as to whether such a course of action would become necessary. For the moment, however, both were committed to a crossing and a meeting was convened to take place at 43 Division’s HQ in Valburg, a few miles from Driel, on the following day.
The Valburg Conference on the morning of Sunday 24 September was a key moment in the whole operation and a source of much subsequent controversy. It was attended among others by Horrocks, who was in the chair, Boy, Thomas and Sosabowski, accompanied by Stevens, his Liaison Officer, and by one of his best English speakers, Lieutenant Dyrda. Sosabowski had earlier climbed the tower of Driel church with Horrocks to show the XXX Corps commander the lie of the land over which the forthcoming relief operation would take place. On the previous afternoon, a message sent by Stevens to Boy said that Sosabowski believed that ‘it now requires a divisional operation to carry out a normal river crossing with full arty support & smoke. The high ground on the far side commanding the river is held by the enemy and must be neutralised by all the arty available.’ Sosabowski was not to know it at that time, but the resources for a full divisional crossing were just not available.
It was unfortunate that Sosabowski and Thomas were both strong characters who clashed immediately. Thomas had the reputation of being one of the most difficult general officers in the British Army, although he was appreciated by his superiors as a man who would carry out the toughest orders without demur. Humourless and often regarded by his subordinates as something of a martinet, he did not brook dissent from his instructions.9 When Sosabowski met him for the first time just before the meeting, he described him as giving out an air of well-being and satisfaction.
It possibly did not help that neither Horrocks nor Boy was on top physical form. Horrocks was still suffering from the after-effects of the very serious injuries he had received in North Africa in June 1943. These had put him out of the war for over a year and, when he was called back by Montgomery to take command of XXX Corps in Normandy in August 1944 he was still not fully fit. He experienced a number of relapses and was certainly under the weather at this time, as well as being desperately worried about progress and somewhat short-tempered as a result. Boy had failed to shrug off the heavy cold which he had developed just before leaving England and which had left him feeling very tired.
The plan produced by Thomas and Pyman involved not a division or even a brigade, but a single battalion, the 4th Battalion Dorsetshire Regiment (4 Dorset), together with the recently arrived 1st Polish Parachute Battalion. Sosabowski protested that it was he who should choose which of his troops should go on the operation, at which Thomas became very angry. According to the historian of 43 Division, Sosabowski then said, ‘I am General Sosabowski, I command the Polish Para Brigade. I do as I like.’ Horrocks replied, ‘You are under my command. You will do as I bloody well tell you’, to which Sosabowski’s retort was: ‘All right. I command the Polish Para Brigade and I do as you bloody well say.’10 It was a most unhappy incident and was to prove in due course inimical to Sosabowski’s career. Boy, Sosabowski’s immediate superior, did not speak up in his defence, though it is possible that he deprecated and was embarrassed by such behaviour from one of his senior officers.
In further discussion, Sosabowski strongly recommended that the force should not cross at the selected point, where the German defences were strong. He favoured another point some way to the west, where he believed that the crossing would be unopposed, and argued that it should be in divisional strength. The matter of opposition is one of speculation, but the whole of the north bank was now crawling with Germans and it is likely that a crossing anywhere would have been seen and resisted. Moreover, there was no hope of conducting it on the scale which Sosabowski believed necessary. In any event, Horrocks and Thomas had made their decision and it was to stand. Thomas rubbed in his displeasure by conveying his detailed orders to Stevens, ignoring Sosabowski.
After the meeting Sosabowski drove back to Airborne Corps HQ where he had a further meeting with Boy. The latter admitted that the crossing might not succeed as the equipment available, by way of boats and bridging, was inadequate. Sosabowski expressed considerable surprise that such an eventuality had not been planned for and that the equipment had not been given priority but Boy pointed out the delays caused by the Germans cutting the road. Sosabowski, true to his character, spoke his mind very forcefully, which did not go down well with Boy who saw it as unmerited criticism of the British Army.
Horrocks, in the meantime, had travelled down to St Oedenrode to report to Dempsey on the proposed operation and to discuss possible outcomes.11 Dempsey wrote that day in his war diary: ‘Met Commander 30 Corps at St Oedenrode. Contact gained with 1 AB and 43 Div will pass a battalion over the river tonight to join them. Depending on the development of operations in the next 24 hours, 30 Corps during the night of 25/26 September will either: (a) pass a complete brigade of 43 Div across the river West of Arnhem, build a bridge and so establish a bridgehead; or (b) withdraw 1 AB south of the river and give up the existing slender bridgehead. I will give Comd 30 Corps a decision at 1200hrs tomorrow.’ In fact, Montgomery had already told Dempsey that, unless strong contact was made with 1 Airborne, it would have to be withdrawn on the next day.
The die was now cast for the final episode of ‘Market Garden’.
Chapter 20
Tragedy (24 September–9 October 1944)
Charles Mackenzie had left his meeting with the two corps commanders at Airborne Corps HQ feeling that they did not understand the gravity of the situation and the urgency of relief. It is much more likely that by then, albeit very belatedly, they understood it only too well, but knew that the resources necessary to engineer a significant reinforcement of 1 Airborne’s bridgehead just did not exist. Sufficient boats were not even available for a crossing in brigade strength, as Boy admitted to Sosabowski, so the single battalion from 43 Division, together with the 1st Polish Parachute Battalion, was the best they could provide.
Sosabowski subsequently criticized Boy for not making one final effort to get across the Lower Rhine in strength, but it was Boy, not he, who was in full possession of the facts; these did not allow for such an operation to be mounted in time to save what was left of 1 Airborne, which was becoming Boy’s overriding priority. Although he went along with the agreement reached at the Valburg Conference, he already favoured withdrawal, as Sosabowski suspected, and it might reasonably be supposed that this carried weight with Dempsey. Urquhart could only be thankful that he did: ‘Horrocks remained optimistic to the very last about the possibility of effecting a crossing to the west of the perimeter. In this I think he was being unrealistic; it is as well that Browning and Dempsey insisted that we came out when we did.’1
Boy’s anguish was conveyed in a letter to Daphne written on the day of the Valburg Conference. ‘We have had a very tragic time the last few days’, he wrote, ‘as we’ve been unable to reach the 1st Division in time to prevent their annihilation –its been a combination of weather
, stiffening resistance and appalling country. I’ve got a major battle on me hands to keep the corridor open and hold the Boche on me southern flank,’ going on to say later that he was ‘worried as hell about the 1st Division although the latter is not now my battle but a matter for 30 Corps who are trying to reach them. Apart from the latter the thing has been a great success, but the whole thing is overshadowed by the tragedy in the north.’2
Boy’s priority was given greater momentum by a message received on the Phantom net from Urqhuart on the evening of 24 September. ‘Must warn you’, wrote the beleaguered GOC, ‘unless physical contact is made with us early 25 Sep. consider it unlikely we can hold out long enough. All ranks now exhausted. Lack of rations, water, ammunition, and weapons with a high officer casualty rate … . Even slight enemy offensive action may cause complete disintegration. If this happens all will be ordered to break towards bridgehead if anything rather than surrender. Any movement at present in face of enemy NOT possible. Have attempted our best and will do so as long as possible.’ If this communication was not enough, the news that ‘Hell’s Highway’ had been cut yet again meant that any last vestige of hope of bringing up reinforcements in time to swing the battle in the Allies’ favour had vanished.
