By May 1945 the 1st Airborne Division had been brought back up to strength and they were tasked with liberating Norway and taking the surrender of the German garrison there. A service was held in Salisbury Cathedral on their return for the disbandment of the 1st Airborne Division.
Eight months after the Battle of Arnhem, the surviving officers of the 7th KOSB gathered in the North British Hotel, Edinburgh, on 18 May 1945 for their first reunion. Robert Payton-Reid asked for them to spare a thought for those who had not returned: ‘On our first guest night in the Battalion after the Arnhem operation, a night devoted to entertaining those officers of the Brigade who had returned unscathed the Pipe-Major’s toast was to ‘Absent Friends’. Happily many of those whom we then named in our hearts are here tonight, after many vicissitudes and hair-raising experiences. Unhappily, others are gone from our midst and will not return. It is to these latter that I would ask you now to turn your thoughts. Many warrant officers, non-commissioned officers and men are included in this number and each of us will think at this moment of those best known to him. For this reason and because of their number, I shall not attempt to name them all and to name some might be invidious, since, although a number were most outstanding, all gave of their best. But, on this family occasion, I feel that you would like me to recall the names of those who are missing from our Mess circle. The first to fall was Major Henry ‘Glaxo’ Hill, who, in the brief period before he was shot, set an example of cool courage which inspired us all. Young Lieutenant Albert Kipping, too, who had shown such keenness to be in the Battle, fell on the second day, shot whilst leading his Platoon. At Johanna Hoeve Lieutenant Donald Murray disappeared whilst leading his Platoon against the enemy in the darkness and no more has been heard of him. The popular Canadian Lieutenant Bunny Wayte, was, I believe, badly hit during the withdrawal from this locality and died later in hospital. Also about this time Lieutenant Jimmy Strang went missing and since then no news of him has been heard. Lieutenant Adam Hunter, known to have been hit, has also been missing since that time.
‘The White House position as many of you know produced a heavy toll in dead and wounded. The debonair and gallant Lieutenant Jimmy Hunter was shot by a sniper here, as was Lieutenant Alec Crighton whilst establishing a forward observation post. Lieutenant Arthur Sharples received a severe wound and died later in hospital. In what we call the Battle of the White House Major Bill Cochran fell during the counter attack. In the final evacuation Captain Jimmy Dundas, having stuck it with great determination throughout, was hit and concussed by a shell and must be presumed killed. Finally, a serious loss not only to the Battalion but to the Regiment, there is Major John Coke - ‘Corgi’ - who, it now seems established, was shot and killed whilst attempting to escape from enemy hands. I need not say how much we miss them all, especially tonight, but I know there is not one of them who would wish this to cast any gloom over our celebrations. Rather, let us think of them in the words of R. L. Stevenson:
‘Home is the sailor, home from the sea,
And the hunter is home from the hill’.
Gentlemen, I ask you to rise and drink in silence, to the fallen. May their memory never fade and the example remains our inspiration.’
On September 15 1945, R Saidman paid an anniversary visit to Arnhem for Illustrated magazine and he compiled this picture story: ‘The leaves are turning brown again at Arnhem. The broken branches swing in an early autumn breeze. A big white parachute hangs limply from a tree in which machine gun bullets have cut big gashes. Moss grows on a battered container that lies there as it was dropped exactly a year ago when the Battle of Arnhem was moving towards its dramatic climax.
The ghosts of our airborne heroes, who fought and died there, adding another epic to British history as they died, still virtually walk in this fantastic scene. It is as if they had simply stepped out, of the battle into the Elysian Fields leaving everything behind-a tattered and battle-torn equipment, masks, phials of morphia, silken maps, iron rations, guns and daggers.
Have you ever seen the aftermath of a fair, the litter left by the crowds - crumpled paper hats, bottles, a lost purse, perhaps...? One full year after the grim fighting, the scene of battle in and around Arnhem is still just like that. Nobody has touched it - except for a few souvenir hunters who braved the mines still buried in the ground, ready to go off at a touch, the booby traps, hidden behind door-bells where houses still stand. It was at 1pm on September 17, 1944 that H. M. Spitman, a Council employee of Oosterbeek, the little Dutch town near Arnhem took out a water-truck took out a water truck to fight fires started by British bombs. Aircraft engines droned in the distance; an air f1eet was approaching, Mr. Spitman’s eyes flashed; his features hardened; he moved swiftly; he lived again through the dramatic moments of these September days in 1944 as he told me what happened. Once more he excitedly clapped his hands: and jumped into the ditch as he had done a year ago. Then the “Red Devils” of the immortal British First Airborne Division dropped from the sky to launch their assault on Arnhem in an attempt to take the road bridge leading into the town, link up with the main body of the Second Army, take the Wehrmacht in the rear, fight their way into Germany.
It was only an attempt. Had it succeeded it might have shortened the war in Europe by many months. In its failure it: remains one of the great memorable battles of this or any other war. How could I escape the impact of the historic event as I made my way over the road which the Red Devils took? They dropped in three major batches around the villages of Wolfhezen and Heelsum, to the west of Arnhem.
The glider pilots later Said they had no difficulty in finding the spot on which they were scheduled to land; but I suppose, it was only with professional interest that they surveyed the pleasant meadow, fringed with trees, in which the battle was to be fought.
Wolfhezen bears grim marks of that battle, although the men did not stay there long before rushing towards the main road and on, to Oosterbeek; farther south. For four hours there was hardly any opposition and Divisional H.Q. was quickly established at the Hartenstein Hotel. Now it stands as a monument to their heroism, with its walls cracked and pockmarked from a thousand shots fired at it as soon as the Germans concentrated to fight back in overwhelming force.
The rooms have remained as they were. Equipment in some of them is piled inches high on the floor. Where is that man now who left his private letters scattered around as he made his dash through a hail of fire to escape from the German ring that was drawing tighter around him and his comrades?
I met a few of these soldiers who were spending their leave wandering over the place on which their signatures are inscribed in blood. Brave men, modest men, silent in awed memory - yet eloquent when they passed the mammoth German Tiger tank in the side lane and recalled the young British major who had met it single-handed and put it out of action before being killed himself. Praise from heroes for a hero!
From Wolfhezen, from Hartenstein on to Arnhem. Melancholy road, for only 350 men out of the whole division made it and reached the bridgehead, dug themselves in the buildings around held out for a week.... Let the official record take up the story: “For the last four days they had no food, for the last three no water and for the last 72 hours no sleep!” When they finished on the Thursday night 280 out of these 350 men were so badly wounded that they could not move; it was physically impossible for the remainder to have fought any more. One marvels that any of them remained alive at all.
I went to see the “buildings” in which they had made their last stand. The buildings? They weren’t there any more. Razed to the ground. Ruins over which grass grows now is all that is left. The wreckage of the bridge itself sags into the water. On the other side is Arnhem town.
And the rest of Arnhem dramatically reflects the tornado of shells and bullets that whistled around the “Devils” as they rushed towards the bridge according to orders which envisaged surprise and speed as the principal elements of the encounter. There are few people among the inhabitants who could tell me muc
h about the battle.
As it broke all around them they dived into the cellars and stayed there while the noise from the explosions, the wild cried of the combatants rose in a frightening crescendo until it died down and silence fell at the uncanny finish.
After that the Germans moved them out, clearing the town. Only now are the people of Arnhem drifting back to a bleak post-war existence; but their eyes reflect something of the glory of-their native town.
Yet many of them have become accustomed to the incongruous evidence of war that strikes the visitor... a shell-marked, torn tram which stands where it was hit a year ago; the graves in the back garden; wooden crosses with the steel helmets; jeeps - over-turned to give cover to the fighting men; slit trenches as in the grounds of Hartenstein – with earth-filled baskets for protection against enemy fire; the church with prayer-books scattered all over the floor.
A smart blouse that Arnhem girl is wearing! Green silk, strong silk. That was once a parachute from which a British soldier dangled as he sailed - down to earth to challenge the Nazi SS Black Guards, to kill them, and, God knows’ ... to die perhaps a few yards from where: he left the parachute.
How the “Red Devils” fought, how they were pressed into a. shrinking perimeter, how they held out beyond human endurance, how those who survived made their way back under the cover of night to live and fight another day... that was Arnhem one year ago. That still is Arnhem. That will be for ever Arnhem.
‘Not in vain may be the pride of those who have survived, the epitaph of those who fell.’
Winston Churchill speaking of the American and British airborne troops in Holland. The campaign in the lowlands had been turned into Allied Victory, but not without cost.
Wednesday 27 September 1944 Urquhart goes south to 21st Army Group HQ at Eindhoven to brief Dempsey and Montgomery on the battle. In the ‘Market-Garden’ corridor, 21st Army Group digs in. Its front, already 150 miles long on 16 September, has been extended by a long thin finger of territory stretching up Hell’s Highway from Joe’s Bridge to Driel and from Boxmeer to Oss where 7th Armoured Division of XII Corps has finally linked with the Guards Armoured, adding another 130 miles to be defended. The 712th Static Division of LXXXVIII Corps tries to escape through Grave, only to be repulsed by the Coldstream Guards.
Thursday 28 September two major Luftwaffe air attacks by more than 40 aircraft including Me 262 fighter-bombers damage both bridges at Nijmegen. This is followed by a suicide attack that night on the bridges by 12 German frogmen, which closes them for 24 hours.
1 October Generalfeldmarschall Model begins his counter-attack against XXX Corps on the ‘island’ with II SS Panzer Corps in the north, XII SS Corps from the west and II Parachute Corps from the east across the Groesbeek heights. In five days the German offensive over the open polder is heavily defeated by Allied firepower. Arnhem bridge is bombed by Allied aircraft to stop German reinforcements moving south.
5 October 101st Airborne take over 43rd Division’s position on the ‘island’, just in time to repel Model’s final attack, by 363rd Volksgrenadier Division.59
7 October 11 SS Panzer Corps ceases its attacks. USAAF and RAF bombing raids close Arnhem Bridge to traffic. B-26 Marauders of 344th Bomb Group, US 9th Air Force destroy it to deny its use to the Germans.
1st Polish Parachute Brigade returns to England. The 82nd Airborne Division remain in the line until 13 November and the 101st Airborne Division until 27 November. During this period these two US divisions suffer more casualties than during ‘Market-Garden’.
27 November Last troops of 1st Allied Airborne Army leave the ‘Market-Garden’ corridor. Allied forces launch offensives on two fronts in the south of the Netherlands. To secure shipping to the vital port of Antwerp they advance northwards and westwards, taking the Scheldt Estuary in the Battle of the Scheldt. Allied forces also advance eastwards in Operation Aintree in order to secure the banks of the Meuse as a natural boundary for the established salient. This attack on the German bridgehead west of the Meuse near Venlo is for the Allies an unexpectedly protracted affair, which includes the Battle of Overloon.
28 November The first ships enter Antwerp harbour. The battle to open the Scheldt estuary which started at the end of September and has lasted almost to the end of November has cost 21st Army Group 30,000 casualties. In response to the Dutch transport strike incited by the Dutch government in London called to coincide with ‘Market-Garden’ the Germans forbid food transportation and halt all civilian transport in the country. 18,000 Dutch civilians die in the Hongerwinter (Hungerwinter) that follows.
16 December The German Ardennes offensive (the Battle of the Bulge).
1945
February Allied forces in Operation Veritable advance from the Groesbeek heights which had been taken during ‘Market-Garden’ and into Germany.
4 February Germans destroy Arnhem Bridge.
24 March Operation ‘Plunder’: crossing of the Rhine. Operation ‘Varsity’. 1,696 aircraft and gliders land 21,680 troops of US XVIII Airborne Corps under Lieutenant General Ridgway (17th US Airborne Division and 6th British Airborne Division), east of the Rhine as part of a river crossing by British XII Corps near Wesel. The whole airborne force land in two hours barely five miles ahead of XII Corps, which makes contact on the same day.
15/16 April Allied liberation of Arnhem by 49th West Riding Division of First Canadian Army after two days of fighting.
In early 1945 a sizeable area of western Holland remained in German hands, with 3.5 million Dutch citizens still under occupation. Following an earlier embargo imposed in reprisal for a Dutch rail strike in support of the Allies, they entered the ‘Hungerwinter’: a crisis in which famished town-dwellers were reduced to eating bulbs or cooking sugar beet, while the elderly, the infirm and the very young began to die. The Allies proposed to airdrop food, but when the first wave of Lancasters took off to do so in the early afternoon of Sunday 29 April, no guarantee had been received from the Germans for their safety. Since the supplies were to be dropped as dead weight, no parachutes, the aircraft were obliged to fly low. Experiments suggested that 300 feet would be appropriate for the drops, but many crews were to come lower and all would be within easy range of anti-aircraft defences. Tension at the start of Operation ‘Manna’ was accordingly high. There were designated approach corridors for the aircraft and drop zones for the supplies - Kralingsche Plas in Rotterdam, Duindigt racecourse, sites at Gouda, Leiden and other places. When the loads were released, some crews skimmed along streets and boulevards where citizens waved hats and handkerchiefs and orange flags were unfurled from upper windows. ‘Manna’ operations followed daily until 8 May, the USAAF Joining in, all carrying 6,685 tons of food into Holland. Locals living along the routes began to express thanks in phrases written in giant letters on fields or open spaces. One pilot read ‘Thank you Tommy’ written on a roof.
5 May surrender of the remaining German forces in the west of the Netherlands signed.
8 May (V-E Day) the unconditional surrender of Germany.
8 October US 82nd Airborne Division awarded the Dutch Military William Order for gallantry during the ‘Market-Garden’ operation.
1948 Arnhem Bridge is replaced with a bridge of similar appearance.
17 December 1977 Arnhem Bridge renamed John Frost Bridge (John Frostbrug).
16 September 1994 101st Airborne veterans unveil a ‘Monument for the Dutch’ in Sint-Oedenrode. The monument is a gift from the veterans to the civilians who fought alongside of the US troops, much to the surprise and relief of the US soldiers. The inscription on the monument is in English and reads ‘Dedicated to the people of the Corridor by the veterans of the 101st Airborne Division, in grateful appreciation of their courage, compassion and friendship’.
31 May 2006 Polish 1st Independent Airborne Brigade awarded the Dutch Military William Order by HM Queen Beatrix for gallantry at Arnhem during Operation ‘Market-Garden’.
43 The Gliders by Alan Lloyd.
44
Deane-Drummond was mentioned in despatches for this second escape and awarded a bar to his Military Cross. He attended Staff College, Camberley in 1945 and then became Brigade Major of 3rd Parachute Brigade. In 1949 he was appointed an instructor at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst and in 1952 an instructor at the Staff College. He held a number of staff positions, later commanding a division in the British Army of the Rhine before retiring. In 1957 he took command of 22 Special Air Service Regiment which was serving in the Malayan Emergency. He continued to command the unit until 1960, which included its service in Oman. He was awarded the DSO for the regiment’s successful assault on Jebel Akhdar in January 1959. In 1961 he was promoted to command 44th Parachute Brigade. In 1963 he returned to Sandhurst as the Assistant Commandant and in 1966 again took an operational command as GOC 3rd Division and was made Assistant Chief of the Defence Staff for Operations in 1968. From 1966 to 1971 he also held the ceremonial post of Colonel Commandant of the Royal Signals. A recreational glider pilot, as an instructor with the Royal Military Academy, he was ordered to move the Army Gliding Club to Lasham airfield in 1951 and so was instrumental in creating one of the World’s largest gliding clubs. He was British National Champion in 1957, as well as a member of the British Gliding Team in 1958, 1960, 1963 and 1965 at the World Gliding Championships. He published three books (one an autobiography) and restored antique furniture as a hobby.
45 On 22 October Grainger and Captain Wainwright acted as guides and it was to a large extent due to their excellent work that sixty men reached safety. Grainger was Mentioned in Despatches.
46 He remained friends with the de Nooij family for the rest of their lives, visiting them immediately after they were liberated, bearing gifts. Hackett wrote about this experience in his book I Was A Stranger in 1978. He received his second DSO for his service at Arnhem. He returned to Palestine in 1947 where he assumed command of the Trans-Jordan Frontier Force. Under his direction the force was disbanded as part of the British withdrawal from the region. He attended university at Graz as a postgraduate in Post Mediæval Studies. After attending Staff College in 1951 he was appointed to command the 20th Armoured Brigade and on being promoted to Major General, assumed command of the 7th Armoured Division. In 1958 he became Commandant of the Royal Military College of Science, Shrivenham and was promoted to Lieutenant General in 1961. He became GOC-in-Chief, Northern Ireland Command in 1961. In 1963 he was appointed to Ministry of Defence as Deputy Chief of the General Staff, responsible for forces organisation and weapon development and became the leading figure in the reorganisation of the Territorial Army, something which made him unpopular. It was a controversial decision therefore to promote him to general and, in 1965, give him command of the British Army of the Rhine and the parallel command of NATO‘s Northern Army Group, but his ability to speak several languages made him a natural choice, as did his friendship with foreign soldiers such as General Kielmansegg of the Bundeswehr. In 1968 he wrote a highly controversial letter to The Times, critical of the British Government’s apparent lack of concern over the strength of NATO forces in Europe but signed the letter as a NATO officer, not as a British commander. After retirement from the Army, Sir John continued to be active in several areas. From 1968 to 1975 he was Principal of King’s College London. He proved to be a popular figure, addressing gatherings of students on several occasions and attending at least one NUS demonstration for higher student grants. In 1978, Sir John wrote a novel, The Third World War: August 1985,which was a fictionalized scenario of the Third World War based on a Soviet Army invasion of West Germany in 1985. It was followed in 1982 by The Third World War: The Untold Story, which elaborated on the original, including more detail from a Soviet perspective. His (British) military decorations included the Knight Grand Cross of the Bath, CBE, DSO and Bar, Military Cross, twice Mentioned in Dispatches. General Sir John Winthrop HackettGCB CBE DSO* MC died aged 86 on 9 September 1997. His obituary in The Times called him a man of ‘intellect and prodigious courage.’
A Bridge Too Far Page 22
