Arnhem

R. E. Urquhart

• Publisher: Pen & Sword Military
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9781844155378
• eBook ISBN: 9781473811904
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

An on-the-ground account of the 1st Airborne Division during Operation Market Garden from the British commander who led the "Bridge Too Far" battle.
Major-General Urquhart commanded the 1st British Airborne Division in Operation Market Garden, the greatest airborne assault of World War II, the struggle to capture Arnhem and win control of the bridge across the lower Rhine. The story of the 1st Airborne Division at Arnhem involved not only an Airborne Corps of three Divisions but also the bulk of the British 2nd Army in Europe. Gen. Urquhart has told the story of those fateful nine days clearly, frankly and, despite the terrible circumstances, not without humor. It ranks as an important work, describing an operation which opened with such high hopes and left its name forever as a feat of the highest endurance and valor.

Chapter 1

WITH a grand sweep of the hand, my Corps commander, Boy Browning, drew a third large circle on the talc-covered map and, fixing me with his hard and direct gaze, said: ‘Arnhem Bridge— and hold it.’ The three circles represented the ‘airborne carpet’ along which Montgomery intended to roll the victorious 2nd Army from the Dutch–Belgian border all the way across Holland to the Zuider Zee ninety-nine miles away. It was nothing if not daring. Monty had two major objectives: to get troops over the formidable Rhine barrier, and to capture the Ruhr. Further, he planned by this powerful stroke to cut off the escape route of the Germans still in western Holland, some of whom were responsible for the V2 attacks on England; to outflank the Reich’s West Wall, and to give the Allies a springboard for a rapid drive across the north German plain.

As deputy to the American commander of the Allied Airborne Army, General Lewis Brereton, Browning was responsible for ground operations. As he elaborated on the plan, I glanced at the two American generals sitting alongside me and wondered if they were as surprised as I was at the boldness of the whole conception —coming as it did from the usually cautious Monty. Major-General Max Taylor and his 101st U.S. Airborne Division were responsible for the stretch of carpet which included the river crossings between Eindhoven and Grave, and Jim Gavin and his 82nd U.S. Airborne Division for the middle length and the crossings of the River Maas at Grave and the Waal at Nijmegen. It occurred to me that it was either a compliment to the efficiency of my own 1st Airborne Division that we had been given the farthest bit of carpet or an instance of safety-first diplomacy in view of the fact that the idea was Monty’s and the operation British. If I had known all that had transpired between the birth of the idea in Monty’s agile mind and its acceptance by SHAEF, I might well have taken the latter view. For Eisenhower, as Supreme Commander, did not see eye to eye with Monty about the immediate shape of operations against the now battered Germans. While Eisenhower favoured an advance along a broad front, taking advantage of all lines of attack, Monty saw an opportunity for ‘one really powerful and full-blooded thrust’ in the north. As Eisenhower was later to write: ‘There was still a considerable reserve in the middle of the enemy country and I knew that any pencil-like thrust into the heart of Germany such as he proposed would meet nothing but certain destruction.’ This fundamental disagreement blew up when they met in Eisenhower’s aircraft on Brussels airfield on the afternoon of 10 September 1944.

Monty, living up to his reputation for pushing his own point of view, prevailed on Ike to allow him to use the airborne force to seize the crossings over the Maas, the Waal and the Neder Rhine. In acceding to Monty’s plan, however, Eisenhower was not going contrary to his own views. Whereas Monty visualized the operation as a vital knock-out punch, Ike merely saw it as an extension of his broad front plan. And even when he had set the ball rolling, Monty found that Ike had not given him priority over other operations farther south. With such powerful American generals as Bradley and Patton likely to be affected by any such decision, this was not surprising.

Thus, in its early stages, Operation Market Garden was not the best example of Anglo-American accord.

It was not unreasonable that the 1st Airborne Division was given the sharp end. Long after the war, I learned that an American official account of the battle states that the 101st U.S. Airborne Division was first assigned Arnhem and that the 1st Airborne Division then requested a switch because of our familiarity with the terrain through planning an earlier operation. While it is certainly true that we had studied the area for Operation Comet, in which we had the hazardous task of doing exactly what the entire Corps was about to do in Market Garden, I knew of no switch and definitely requested none. Browning made no such request on our behalf.

As far as I was concerned. Arnhem was our task from the start. Nevertheless I cannot help feeling that if one of the American divisions had been in our place, the effect on international relations would have been most serious. The circumstances which were to prevent the British 2nd Army from joining up with the airborne force north of the Neder Rhine would not have been understood at all if the stranded force had been American. Every possible accusation would have been levelled at the 2nd Army for its failure to appear at the right time and place. It would have produced a most unfortunate influence on relations between our two countries and would not easily have been forgotten.

Although he appeared so confident at our briefing in his sparsely furnished room in the elegant pillared clubhouse at Moor Park, Browning himself harboured some reservations about the practicability of the whole thing. When he had been given his orders in Monty’s caravan the day before, he asked how long we would be required to hold the Arnhem Bridge.

‘Two days,’ said Monty briskly. ‘They’ll be up with you then.’

‘We can hold it for four,’ Browning replied. ‘But I think we might be going a bridge too far.’ He was troubled about the distance that the 2nd Army would have to cover before it reached Arnhem. The main drive would come from Brian Horrocks’ XXX Corps, with VIII and XII Corps on its flanks. The start line was the bridgehead over the Meuse-Escaut Canal south of Eindhoven.

Already, there were ominous creaks coming from Monty’s overstrained supply lines. Antwerp was still not open for shipping and he was relying on long-distance road convoys from France. Monty saw as clearly as anyone the logistic snags, and the further demands on his transport caused by the need to bring up VIII Corps caused him to signal Eisenhower on Monday 11 September that he would not attack before 23 September. As a direct result of this representation he was promised a massive supply programme by the Americans, by road and air—a thousand tons a day until 1 October. Thus placated, he set forward D-Day to 17 September.

Before I went off to my caravan to make my plan, Browning informed me that he had persuaded the RAF to agree to a daylight operation and that, because of the limited number of aircraft available, we would have to go in three lifts. Throughout the war, airborne forces were bedevilled by a chronic shortage of aircraft. It was a commander’s job to try to get as many tugs and gliders for his men as he could, without too much consideration for the other fellow’s demands, but in this case the situation was complicated because we were depending so much on the Americans for air transport—and our companion divisions in the operation were both American: the RAF alone could hardly have got half the division off the ground. Nevertheless, I began to prod Browning and his staff regularly for more and more aircraft. Once, when I suggested that I could do with forty more planes in order to satisfy my ground plan and Browning was pessimistic about my getting even a proportion of them, I raised the telling fact that the two American divisions were doing somewhat better. He assured me that this was due not to any high-level American pressure but solely to the natural order of priorities. ‘It’s got to be bottom to top,’ he said, ‘otherwise you’d stand the chance of being massacred.’ As things were working out, Max Taylor and the 101st would go in at full strength and it was important to try to put down as many of Jim Gavin’s 82nd as possible in one lift, though in the event Gavin had to make do with two lifts.

My plan had to be tailored to fit three lifts.

I had ten squadrons of 38 Group and six squadrons of 46 Group to take in the glider element, and the 9th U.S. Troop Carrier Command was laying on the Dakotas for the parachutists. I reckoned I would need about 130 aircraft for each parachute brigade. My division consisted of the 1st and 4th Parachute Brigades and the 1st Airlanding Brigade, which was gliderborne. In addition, we had the normal number of divisional troops. And for this operation I had under command the 1st Polish Independent Parachute Brigade Group under Major-General Sosabowski. It had a small glider element.

The plan had to be produced quickly in order that it could be tied in with the American efforts at Grave and Nijmegen and also to allow time for it to be developed or amended in accordance with the RAF’s wishes. I also had to allow for the movement of men from their stations to the airfields, for the production of up-to-date photographs, for briefings and for the loading of aircraft and gliders.

When Comet had been cancelled earlier that Sunday, 10 September, some of my staff officers, including Charles Mackenzie, my chief staff officer, had gone boating on the Thames; Boy Wilson, a middle-aged but virile parachutist of great experience who commanded the Independent Company, and others, had nipped off home to see their families. The boating party was rounded up and Wilson just had time to eat a domestic lunch before returning in his jeep. Wilson, who was to lead the force that would mark out the dropping and landing zones, was soon occupied studying the latest air photographs of the area. Mackenzie was busy with the air staff and during the evening I talked things over with my chief intelligence officer, Hugh Maguire, and Robert Loder-Symonds, the chief gunner.

I should have liked to put in troops on both sides of the river and as close as possible to the main bridge. This was unacceptable to the RAF, however, because of the flak barrage which bomber crews on their nightly visits to the Ruhr reported as extremely heavy in the Arnhem area. It was also considered that the tug aircraft, in turning away after releasing their gliders in this area, would either have run straight into the flak over Deelen airfield some seven miles to the north or into a mix-up with the aircraft involved in the Nijmegen airlift. Furthermore, the intelligence experts regarded the low-lying polderland south of the bridge as unsuitable for both gliders and parachutists. These limitations were closely examined but the RAF had already conceded as much as they were ever likely to concede in agreeing to a daylight operation. An airborne operation remains the airmen’s responsibility until such time as the troops are put on the ground. The airmen had the final say, and we knew it.

Many experienced parachutists would have been quite prepared to have been dropped in the polden even though it was reported to be boggy, and in fact some of them would have been quite happy to have landed on the town itself and risked physical injury.

The influence of the flak picture on the RAF ruled out any possibility of putting in even a small coup-de-main force in the vicinity of the bridge. From the maps and aerial photographs spread out before me in the caravan I saw that the only practical alternative for a force of any size was the open country west-northwest of Arnhem. There were broad expanses of flat ground some 250 feet above sea-level and lying between belts of screening woodland. I checked the distances to the target and found that this ground was between six and eight miles away—a formidable distance for, as we had very little transport, the majority of the troops would have to cover the ground on foot. It had certain advantages: the ground would be firm and also ideal for quick re-grouping. I checked once more and could see no reasonable alternative. I now began to mark and allocate the likely dropping zones and landing areas.

The main handicap of having to go in three separate lifts was that not only had I to get enough men down in the first lift to seize the main bridge deep in the town but also to hold the dropping zones and landing areas for the succeeding lifts. This meant that the effective offensive strength of the division in the first day against the main objective was reduced to one parachute brigade.

I had no choice.

The planning of the operation was not helped by the scanty intelligence that was coming our way. I knew extremely little of what was going on in and around Arnhem and my intelligence staff were scratching around for morsels of information. I knew that what information we had received from across the Channel was bound to be out of date: it had filtered through various offices in the 2nd Army and our own corps before it reached us. In the division there was a certain reserve about the optimistic reports coming through from 21st Army Group concerning the opposition we were likely to meet. Obviously we would have liked a more recent intelligence picture, but we were subordinate to corps in such matters. Browning himself told me that we were not likely to encounter anything more than a German brigade group supported by a few tanks. Already, however, Dutch resistance reports had been noted to the effect that ‘battered panzer remnants have been sent to Holland to refit’, and Eindhoven and Nijmegen were mentioned as the reception areas. And during the week an intelligence officer at SHAEF, poring over reports and maps, came to the conclusion that these panzer formations were the 9th and possibly the 10th SS Panzer Divisions. It was likely that they were being re-equipped with new tanks from a depot in the area of Cleves, a few miles over the German border from Nijmegen and Arnhem. The SHAEF officer’s opinion was not shared by others and, even as our preparations continued, 21st Army Group Intelligence were making it plain that they didn’t see eye to eye with SHAEF over the panzer divisions. Nothing was being allowed to mar the optimism prevailing across the Channel. We all shared it to a certain degree, and this was particularly the case in our own Airborne Corps. On 13 September, four days before the attack, corps blithely passed on the information that the Germans in Holland had few infantry reserves and a total armoured strength of not more than fifty to a hundred tanks. And even if there was some evidence that the Germans were reinforcing their river lines near Arnhem and Nijmegen, the soldiers manning these defences were said to be few and ‘of low medical category’.

I had no illusions about the Germans folding up at the first blow. I counted on the likelihood that his retaliation would get fiercer by the hour. He would be steadily reinforced whereas we would not be at full strength until well into the third day. He would also have whatever advantages were going in the way of heavy weapons: it is one of the calculated risks of all airborne operations that the assault goes in without the support of heavy weapons, and my only resources in this respect was the Light Regiment with its 75-mm guns firing a comparatively light shell. I marked the landing and dropping zones, three of them north of the Arnhem-Utrecht railway line which I designated L, S and Y, and two others south of the railway and north of Heelsum village—X and Z. Then I marked an area where the Poles might land south of the river facing the town. By then, I trusted, Arnhem would be in our hands and the flak batteries for which the RAF showed so much respect would be silenced. I also selected supply dropping zones.

I decided to put the 1st Parachute Brigade and the bulk of the 1st Airlanding Brigade down with the first lift, which would also include my own HQ and some divisional troops. Before the main force, the Independent Company would drop in order to mark the arrival areas. The Company had twelve Pathfinder aircraft, and there were 143 Dakotas from the 9th U.S. Troop Carrier Command for the parachutists of the 1st Parachute Brigade, and 358 tugs and their equivalent in gliders for the rest. In the second lift, which would arrive twenty-four hours later, the main body of the 4th Parachute Brigade would jump from 126 Dakotas while the remainder of the Airlanding Brigade and other divisional units would land in 301 gliders. On the third day, I intended to bring in the main body of the 1st Polish Parachute Brigade in 114 Dakotas and thirty-five gliders.

At five o’clock on Tuesday afternoon, 12 September, I called a conference to give out my plan to my O Group, which included the brigade commanders, the brigade majors, the commanders of the gunners and sappers, and the heads of services—RASC, doctors, REME, RAOC After the briefing had started, Freddie Gough, a cheerful, red-faced, silver-haired major who commanded the Reconnaissance Squadron, turned up with the air of a truant playing schoolboy and I laid into him afterwards for his unpunctuality. It was not the first time he had been very late for a conference. I thought nothing more of the incident, but I was to be reminded of it at the height of the battle.

Briefly, I explained to the assembled officers that I wanted the 1st Parachute Brigade to capture and hold the main road bridge in Arnhem and the pontoon bridge farther west. The 1st Airlanding Brigade would protect the dropping and landing zones until the second lift was on the ground and would then move east to form the left sector of the bridgehead on the western outskirts of Arnhem. The 4th Parachute Brigade would move eastwards on arrival and form the northern part of the position along the high ground north of the town, linking up with the 1st Parachute Brigade on the Arnhem-Appeldoorn road. The 1st Polish Parachute Brigade under Sosabowski would land immediately south of the town, cross by the main bridge, which we should have captured by that time, and occupy the eastern outskirts of Arnhem.

I visualized a box-shaped bridgehead with standing patrols in advance of the main positions covering the bridge area.

Confirmatory notes on the orders were now given out and ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Full Title
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Preface
• Maps
• Chapter 1
• Chapter 2
• Chapter 3
• Chapter 4
• Chapter 5
• Chapter 6
• Chapter 7
• Chapter 8
• Appendixes
• Index