Arnhem

by John Nichol

  But not everyone in the airborne division was at a standstill. The leading strike force had found a reasonably open route into Arnhem and, with luck and good speed, had the bridge well in their sights. For them at least, the main objective of Market Garden was within reach.

  4. ‘Are We on Overtime Now?’

  Ron Brooker was in the so-called coup de main striking force, which was tasked to race ahead in jeeps the 5 miles or so to the bridge at Arnhem and seize it, hopefully before the Germans realized what was happening and could react. There were three routes designated for the invading force to converge on the city, and his 200-strong reconnaissance squadron, a mixture of paras and glider troops, started out on the northern one, only to find a strong enemy force in its way. Its job was not to stop and fight but to skirt around trouble and keep going. Brooker was driving the squadron’s commanding officer, Major Freddie Gough, and they now swung south away from the trouble and congestion, to take the centre route. ‘We passed the wrecked car of a high-ranking German officer. His body lay half in, half out of the vehicle; a pool of blood covered the area around his body.’

  This was Major-General Friedrich Kussin, the military governor of Arnhem and the man ultimately responsible for the defence of the bridge. When the parachutists and gliders were spotted landing he had driven out to see what was happening. His car had run into a forward airborne patrol and been raked with machine-gun fire before the driver could turn and flee. Numerous soldiers recalled the sight of that high-ranking body and being encouraged that they had the enemy on the run. ‘Must have been a severe blow to them,’ concluded para James Sims, stretching out his hand to trace a cross on the dead man’s cold forehead. It was the first corpse he had ever seen, and his mother had told him that if he did that it would never come back to haunt him. But a mother’s soothing words had no currency here. ‘What are you doing?’ yelled a sergeant. ‘Get mobile. You’ll see plenty more like him before you’re much older.’

  But this line of advance was soon blocked too, running into more and better armed opposition. Pressing forward, Brooker found himself almost deafened by the sound of small arms and heavier weapons and the high-pitched screams of mortars. ‘We passed several bodies, both the enemy and our own.’ It was time to switch routes. Once again, the way ahead was blocked, and he headed for the southern route, following the north bank of the Rhine. This was the one already taken by Lieutenant-Colonel John Frost of 2 Para, leading the only group making real progress towards the target that day, though also taking losses. ‘Hairy’ was how, with typical army understatement, Brooker would one day describe what now lay ahead: a hellish advance on Arnhem through a series of ambushes and obstacles. He kept his head down and his foot on the accelerator as the major, sitting beside him, gripped the Vickers K4 machine gun mounted on the front and swivelled to meet each attack and rattle out his response. ‘Bullets were whizzing back and forth but I just pointed the jeep and kept going. I felt remote from everything, just concentrating on driving. I had absolutely no control over my own destiny.’

  The grey-haired, ruddy-faced Gough – ‘a marvellous man, a perfect gentleman’ – was, he noticed, having the time of his life. ‘He was loving it. He was normally a benign, calm person, but he was different in action. You couldn’t have wished for a better bloke beside you.’ The enemy were popping up all over the place. ‘We turned a sharp bend in the road and almost ran into a group of Germans marching in file down the road, heading in the same direction as ourselves.’ With Brooker’s foot on the pedal, the paras just sailed past without a shot being fired, by either side. ‘I don’t know who was the more surprised. We were sitting ducks and I was half expecting the bullets to start flying into our backs, but nothing happened. It was almost like an Ealing comedy.’ Further back in the line, Leo Hall was startled to see a German patrol coming towards him on a side road from the river. They were on bicycles. ‘I walked towards them with my Sten. With rifles slung, they were helpless, so off their bikes they tumbled and quickly surrendered to me. Their panniers contained stick grenades. I felt chuffed. Easy!’

  By now, the countryside was petering out and the frontmarkers were moving into the increasingly built-up area on the outskirts of Arnhem. Brooker was astonished to see civilians coming out from their houses. ‘Old men, kids and women threw flowers, right in the middle of the battle.’ He was concerned that this joyous welcome was slowing them up. James Sims felt the same as, the deeper they penetrated into Arnhem, the more crowded the street became. ‘One young Dutchman was charging about on a bike completely drunk and offering swigs of gin to one and all. Our officer lost his temper and threatened to shoot him and any of us who touched a drop. We were losing time and he realized that this semi-triumphal entry into Arnhem was not going to last.’ To the right now lay the railway bridge across the Rhine, which the battalion had hoped to capture on the way – the more bridges the merrier. As riflemen approached it, the Germans defending it opened fire. A fierce fight began, which was punctuated by a huge explosion. ‘Jerry had blown up its southern end, so denying us its use.’ Passing by the spot a few minutes later, Sims saw a young British soldier propped up against a wooden seat where, on a different Sunday, strollers might stop for a stunning view of the river. ‘His legs were buckled under him and his helmet removed. His battle-blouse was soaked with blood. Out of a waxen face his eyes stared past us into eternity. We crept by as quietly as possible as though afraid of waking him from that dread sleep.’

  Up front, the head of the advancing column was meeting ever stiffer opposition. A cry of ‘Tanks!’ went up, and the thought of panzers in their path produced a shiver of fear among the infantrymen. But a jeep filled with anti-tank specialists came roaring up from the rear of the column, whooping and cheering as they brandished their trademark PIAT1 weapons. ‘They vanished round a bend in the road and there followed a succession of shots and shouts, then a single loud explosion. The menace had been dealt with.’ But whatever element of surprise the column had hoped to have on its side was all but gone. From the other bank of the river, German heavy machine guns opened up and, though, over that distance, the salvoes were pretty harmless, they signified that the chances of an easy, unopposed seizure of the bridge were diminishing with every minute. Ahead of him, Sims could hear more firing as the riflemen leading the advance fought for possession of a pontoon bridge across the river, until a loud explosion announced that it had gone the same way as the railway bridge. ‘Once again, Jerry had beaten us to it.’ The dead and dying from the contact were lying at the northern end of the pontoon and, as he passed, Sims got the chance to stare his enemy in the face for the first time. He was not impressed. ‘Some of the German casualties were SS. ‘I was curious to see what these supermen looked like but, apart from their distinctive uniform, they were just like us. One was badly wounded and terrified we were going to shoot him. He was screaming and carrying on something shocking. Our lieutenant waved a .45 at him and that shut him up.’

  Now – with the railway bridge and the pontoon bridge gone – the last unblown crossing over the Rhine was the Arnhem road bridge itself, still half a mile away. Sims could see the top of its huge single span and the strutted frame underneath. The sight of it had the same impact on Lancashire-born Leo Hall as seeing Blackpool Tower when he was a boy on his holidays: ‘a special memory of my childhood’. He was as excited now as he was then, ‘seeing the thing that we’d come to capture’.

  The column halted to prepare for the final assault and Sims was not alone in suddenly feeling overcome with exhaustion. ‘It was growing dark and we had been in action for several hours. When joining the Parachute Regiment we were told that one parachute jump was equal to eight hours’ manual labour; by now I could believe it.’ Out on the river, a small German patrol boat was sighted, its crew seemingly unaware that anything unusual was happening in Arnhem that Sunday. ‘A soldier was leaning over the stern smoking a pipe, at peace with the world. Commands rang out and our machine-gun platoon pulverized the b
oat. The pipe-smoker toppled over the guard rail into the Rhine. I don’t suppose he knew what hit him. The boat heeled over and sank in seconds.’ The machine-gunners were exultant, though Sims noted rather sarcastically that, ‘from the fuss they were making you would have thought they had sunk the battleship Scharnhorst.’ But the real task was to get to the bridge in time. ‘We knew the Germans must be working feverishly to set charges to blow it up. We set off on the last lap.’ Sims ducked and dived from one piece of cover to the next. ‘We pressed on, flitting from door to door. All of a sudden I got the fleeting impression of grey behind me, and I stiffened, expecting either a bayonet or a burst of Schmeisser fire. Nothing happened and I spun round, lunged with my bayonet and narrowly missed a young Dutch girl, no more than sixteen and wearing a grey jumper. My relief turned to anger at the fright she had given me and I bundled her back inside her front door.’

  As they neared the bridge, its size and extent became apparent. It was massive, lifted high above the surface of the water on huge piers and accessed on its northern side by a long and high road ramp that loomed over the surrounding buildings. Sims’s platoon veered away from the river and headed into the town to find a way up. ‘People looked down on us from their windows and waved, but without huge enthusiasm. Perhaps they could foresee that their beautiful town would be laid in ruins before long. Even so, some of these Dutch civilians took quite extraordinary risks to warn us of enemy activity or snipers.’ A burst of fire as Sims was crossing a road sent him dashing for cover, until help arrived in the shape of a Bren-gun carrier. ‘An officer jumped aboard and ordered the driver to head straight for the enemy machine-gun nest. When he got there he fired straight down their throats while we dodged past the back of the carrier to gain the shelter of the houses beyond.’

  A last effort was needed. From up ahead came jubilant shouts of ‘Whoa Mahomet!’2 the battle cry the paras had picked up and adopted as their own when fighting in North Africa. They were coming from Frost’s men, already on the approach to the bridge. Inspired, Sims’s patrol raced forward, throwing caution to the wind. ‘We ran on past an SS police barracks, which was now on fire. Several of Hitler’s black-uniformed thugs lay dead on the path outside. In the gutter lay two more dead in Luftwaffe blue. They were a boy and a girl of about my own age. The boy was slumped across a light machine-gun with the girl beside him, the ammunition belt threaded through her fingers. The girl’s blonde hair was stained with blood; they had died quickly and violently.’ He could only guess at who they were and what they were doing there. ‘Brother and sister? Lovers? It was just another of those wartime incidents that make a mockery of fiction.’ The bridge was now just a hundred yards ahead and he could see that the riflemen in the front of the column were swarming over its northern end and engaged in a fierce fight with German defenders holed up in pill boxes. Flame-throwers were sent forward to deal with them and, suddenly, with German soldiers on the retreat, running for their lives, it was over. The northern end of the bridge was captured and, though the other end was still in enemy hands and attempts to storm it repulsed, the German sappers laying explosive charges underneath had been chased off.

  The Arnhem bridge was intact. Stage one of Market Garden was nearly complete. Wearily, the British troops moved into the buildings around the end of the bridge and to either side of the road ramp, set up their positions and settled down to wait for stage two: the arrival of reinforcements, firstly from the other airborne columns on their way from the drop zone and then, in a day or so – tomorrow even if things went really well – from the heavy armour of XXX Corps racing to Arnhem from their start point on the Dutch–Belgian border.

  Fires from burning German vehicles which had tried to escape across the bridge lit up the night. Abandoned guns littered the road, and the men of the strike force took great cheer from this visible proof of their triumph. ‘We felt pleased with ourselves,’ Sims said, ‘for we had dropped many miles behind the enemy lines, fought our way into a large town and captured the northern end of our main objective, the road bridge.’ Para Major Tony Hibbert acknowledged feeling ‘pretty cocky. We’d achieved the first part of our operation order in taking the bridge. Now all we had to do was hold it for forty-eight hours.’3 It was to be a task easier said than done.

  What the paras held – and that precariously – was, in fact, not the actual bridge but the tiniest slice of Arnhem at its northern end. Even at its greatest extent, it was the size of just a dozen football pitches and in the end would shrink to the equivalent of barely one. From their various vantage points, Frost’s men covered the approach road to the bridge and a few streets around it, but the span itself was a lethal no-man’s land. The other end was resolutely in German hands, as was the rest of the city. As backmarkers from the strike force continued to arrive, they had to fight their way through enemy lines. Ted Mordecai hugged walls and crawled in the gutter to reach the archway under the road ramp. ‘Lead was flying all over the place and we couldn’t make out who was firing at whom. The sound of shot and shell was deafening.’ He wasn’t supposed to be here in the heat of battle. An ordnance man, his role on the Arnhem mission was a logistical one, rooting out petrol supplies and commandeering vehicles, but he was ordered to forget about that now. Foraging could wait; every hand was needed for fighting. His platoon scurried across a road to a large house and banged on the door for entry. After a long delay, it was opened by a Dutchman. The soldiers apologized for having to occupy his home and advised him to leave with his family while he still could. ‘He fetched his wife and small daughter from the cellar, packed a small suitcase and they left, walking down the middle of the street away from the bridge. I thought to myself, “I hope they don’t get shot by the Germans.” I also wondered where on earth they could go.’ As he watched the civilians trudge away, the house came under mortar fire.

  By now, Ron Brooker had been at the bridge for some time and was guarding brigade headquarters, which had been set up in a large building on the near side of the road ramp. An orderly recalled how beautifully furnished the house was, with shelves of books and a fine china tea service laid out on a table. (A sergeant-major, sensitive to the need not to upset the owners, threatened retribution on anyone who damaged the china. Later, when things hotted up, he was seen to sweep it all away when the table was urgently needed for a barricade.) The entrance was through a gateway into a courtyard and Brooker positioned his jeep in the gateway with his Vickers machine gun pointing out. He was chatting to a comrade about home, family, football – anything to distract them from the present situation – when a lorry came meandering slowly down the road. It was full of German troops and it looked as if the driver, far from leading an attack, had taken a wrong turn in the confusion. But Brooker was taking no chances. He opened fire – the first time he had pulled the trigger since arriving in the Netherlands – and brought it to a halt. The driver and passengers were dead, but what was a shock to him was what they were wearing: the uniforms of SS panzer troops. ‘Until then we’d thought we were up against old men and boys. We didn’t expect crack front-line troops and tanks, and we’d got nothing to fight them with.’

  Brooker was then ordered to the top of the building, where, in a large attic room, Frost, Major Gough and other officers were planning their defence strategy. A window looked out over the ramp, but to see the actual bridge meant climbing on to a chair and peering through one of two dormer windows. Brooker stood at the larger window, his rifle at the ready. There was a radio operator in the room too, but, amid mounting frustration among the officers, he couldn’t get through to anyone else in the brigade to find out where they were or what was happening. In a neighbouring building, Major Hibbert was having the same problem, despite antennae sticking out of every window. ‘My first job was to inform Division that we were on the bridge. But not one of our wirelesses could pick up the faintest whisper from anyone in northern Europe except John Frost, who was all of 50 yards away.’

  At this point, command of the entire opera
tion was becoming an issue of serious concern, and not wholly because of faulty communications. The British end of Garden was theoretically being run by the commander of the Airborne Corps, the aloof and upper-crust Lieutenant-General Frederick ‘Boy’ Browning. Guards-trained as well as a qualified glider pilot, he was better known generally for being the impossibly handsome husband of best-selling novelist Daphne du Maurier, whose Rebecca and Frenchman’s Creek were huge cinema hits in wartime Britain. In military circles he was renowned for introducing the Sandhurst tradition in which the adjutant rode his horse up the steps and in through the college doors after the cadets’ passing-out parade. He chose to set up his tactical headquarters near Nijmegen and dropped in there by glider, alongside the US 82nd Airborne Division, with his headquarters staff of two hundred. This in itself was unwise – the thirty-eight gliders needed to get them there might have been more usefully employed ferrying extra fighting men into Arnhem. But even more of a problem was that, a dozen miles distant from the action at Arnhem and with almost zero radio contact, he was hardly ever in touch with the brigades it was his job to direct.

  Meanwhile, his commander on the ground, Roy Urquhart, had gone missing. He had set up his divisional headquarters close to the Wolfheze landing zone and then, frustrated by the radio problems and anxious to keep the advance moving, jumped into a jeep to hare frantically around his various battalions and squadrons to gee them along. He was in such a hurry that he took no protection squad with him and was helpless when, on the outskirts of Arnhem, he ran into the enemy. Forced to take shelter in a civilian house surrounded by German soldiers, he hid in the attic and was out of contact with his staff officers for a day and a half. What’s more, his designated number two was wounded and also out of action. Twin crises of command and communication were a military man’s worst nightmare, but this was the scenario now unfolding.