Arnhem 1944

The Airborne Battle

Martin Middlebrook

• Verlag: Pen & Sword Military
• Jahr: 2009
• ISBN:
  9781844686322
• Thema: History
• Thema: World War II

A detailed history of the World War II battle, featuring experiences from over 500 participants, by the author of The First Day on the Somme. The Battle of Arnhem was a turning point in the war, a gamble by Montgomery, using three airborne divisions to capture a series of bridges spanning the wide rivers of Holland and unleash the Allied armies into the plains of northern Germany. If the bridges had been captured and held, and the ground forces had been able to relieve the airborne forces, then there would have been a good chance of ending the war before Christmas, 1944. It all went wrong. Although the bridges taken by the Americans were relieved by ground troops, these troops could not reach Arnhem quickly enough. In the meantime, only a small part of the 1st British Airborne Division had reached the Arnhem Bridge. Most of the remainder of the airborne force was held up on the outskirts of the town by German units that turned out to be far stronger than expected—a major intelligence failure. After nine days of fighting, the survivors of the division were withdrawn across the Rhine, and it was not until many months later that ground forces captured Arnhem. Using the technique he has perfected over twenty-five years of military study, blending meticulous research based on original documents with the personal experiences of more than 500 participants, Martin Middlebrook describes the Battle of Arnhem from start to finish, from one end of that complicated battlefield to the other. He offers a masterly summary of what went wrong in the last major defeat in battle suffered by the British Army.

CHAPTER 1

The Path to Arnhem

The war was exactly five years old in September 1944, almost a year longer than the whole of the First World War. But it seemed to many that the end was in sight, for the signs of German collapse in the first few days of the month had been breathtaking. It had started when Montgomery's plans in Normandy reached fulfilment early in August and the Third U S Army under the brilliant Patton broke out and motored deep into the German rear, before swinging round and trapping much of the Seventh German Army in the Falaise Pocket. This was followed by a general Allied advance culminating in a dramatic dash across northern France into Belgium, this time with the British covering the ground fastest. Starting from the Seine, they advanced 200 miles to capture Brussels and Antwerp in just one week. That exhilarating drive ended on 5 September when the Germans were at last able to form a new defence line on the Meuse–Escaut canal to stop the Allies moving on to the liberation of Holland. The British were just able to establish two bridgeheads across the canal before the German defence hardened.

The German losses had been enormous, and it was believed that their defence lines everywhere were paper thin. There was only one problem for the Allies: the fighting units had outrun their supplies. The approaches to the port of Antwerp had not been cleared; recently captured Ostend and Dieppe had only limited cargo capacity, and the Germans had left garrisons at the other Channel ports. Only Cherbourg – 450 miles from the forward British positions and 400 from Patton's in eastern France – was capable of handling appreciable tonnages. A general advance was out of the question until Antwerp could be cleared, and that might allow the Germans to recover unless a decisive move was undertaken at once. Such a move would have to be limited to a narrow frontage because of the supplies position. There was one other factor. There remained in England an ‘airborne army’ containing two American and one British airborne divisions, a Polish parachute brigade and an infantry division capable of being lifted by transport aircraft – all fresh and ready for immediate action. But an airborne operation would have to be within the range of the transport aircraft based in England, and there was only one part of occupied Europe that those aircraft could reach from their existing bases – Holland.

Attention can quickly focus upon the 1st British Airborne Division, which was to bear the brunt at Arnhem.¹ This formation contained Britain's earliest airborne units. Parts of the division had fought in North Africa, Sicily and Italy in 1942 and 1943, and the whole division had been standing by in England since early 1944, ready for further action. Its sister division – 6th Airborne – had dropped into Normandy to protect the flank of the British landings; 1st Airborne had been ready to follow in support but had not been required. Since then, no less than fifteen further operations had been planned but then cancelled, usually because ground forces reached the landing area first. Some of these operations would have been carried out in conjunction with American airborne divisions, others would have been solo British efforts.

It was out of the last of these cancelled operations — code-named ‘Comet’ – that the Battle of Arnhem was born; indeed, the operation which eventually took place was an extension of ‘Comet’. The decision to mount ‘Comet’ was made on 2 September, just as the leading Allied forces were crossing into Belgium from France and before even Brussels was reached. The plan was for the 1st British Airborne Division, with the Polish brigade attached, to drop ahead of the advancing armies and capture the bridges over the rivers and canals flowing across Holland. The 4th Parachute Brigade was to seize the nearest bridge, over the Maas near Grave; the glider-borne 1st Airlanding Brigade, the Poles and divisional headquarters were to land in the centre, around Nijmegen, and capture the bridges over the Waal; and the 1st Parachute Brigade was to drop in the north near Arnhem and capture the crossings over the Rhine.

The initiative behind ‘Comet’ was that of Field Marshal Montgomery, commander of the British 21st Army Group. Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied Commander, favoured a general move forward by all of his armies. Montgomery, however, was pressing hard for a strong ‘single thrust’ while the Germans were in such disarray and urged that such a thrust should be northwards and under his command, continuing onwards through Holland over the river crossings captured in Operation ‘Comet’, outflanking the Siegfried Line, breaking out on to the open country of the North German Plain, which would favour the mobile Allied forces, and pressing on all the way to Berlin – beating the Russians to the German capital and hopefully ending the war before the winter. It was a plan of breathtaking scope. There were two drawbacks: the shortage of supplies already mentioned and the reluctance by Eisenhower to abandon his own plan and give priority to Montgomery at the expense of American commanders, some of whose forces would need to come under Montgomery's control.

Eisenhower gave ‘Comet’ the go-ahead, but did not yet sanction Montgomery's later plans. Only the British airborne division and the Polish brigade were to be employed; the two American divisions and the airportable division were not included. The reason for this was probably twofold: a smaller force required a shorter planning and preparation period, and there were only sufficient transport aircraft to carry such a force in one lift, factors which enabled the operation to proceed with speed and surprise while the Germans were off balance. It is believed that the start date was initially set for Saturday 9 September, one week later.

The RAF was asked to help by bombing German fighter airfields in Holland and Bomber Command promptly obliged with heavy raids by 675 bombers in daylight on 3 September; only one aircraft was lost. Some urgency might have been added to the planning on 8 September when the German V-2 rocket campaign against London opened from launch sites in Holland. But doubts about the viability of the operation were developing as the week passed. The Allied advance across Belgium ran out of steam; the supply crisis was evident; the German defence on the Dutch frontier was hardening. Major-General R. E. Urquhart, commander of the 1st British Airborne Division, had received his orders on 6 September and had briefed his brigadiers. Brigadier ‘Shan’ Hackett, a comparative newcomer to the division, whose 4th Parachute Brigade was to capture the nearest bridge, at Grave, tells of his reaction to the plan:²

The airborne movement was very naïve. It was very good on getting airborne troops to battle, but they were innocents when it came to fighting the Germans when we arrived. They used to make a beautiful airborne plan and then add the fighting-the-Germans bit afterwards. We brigade commanders were at one of the divisional commander's conferences for ‘Comet’ at Cottesmore airfield where this lovely plan was being presented. The Polish commander, Sosabowski, said in his lovely deep voice, ‘But the Germans, General, the Germans!’

Sosabowski and I, and one or two others, knew that, however thin on the ground the Germans were, they could react instantly and violently when you touched something sensitive. Thank goodness ‘Comet’ was cancelled; it would have been a disaster. But the same attitude persisted with the eventual Arnhem plan.

The period for preparation for ‘Comet’ ran its full course. All units were briefed; gliders were loaded; parachute-dropping and towing aircraft were ready. But Sosabowski's forceful objections had some result. Urquhart took him by plane to see Lieutenant-General F. M. (‘Boy’) Browning, who was carrying out the detailed planning of ‘Comet’ at his headquarters in Hertfordshire. Sosabowski argued that the force to be employed on ‘Comet’ was not strong enough and that at least two airborne divisions were required. This and possibly other protests, together with the changed ground situation, put an end to ‘Comet’. On Friday 8 September the operation was postponed for twenty-four hours, but it was not until 2.0 a.m. on Sunday 10 September, four hours before take-off time, that a message was received at Urquhart's headquarters that ‘Comet’ was cancelled.

Operation ‘Comet’ was not dead, however; it was about to be transformed into a much larger venture with important changes taking place at both the strategic and the tactical level. The strategy was settled at a meeting later that day, Sunday 10 September, when Eisenhower flew from Normandy to meet Montgomery at Brussels; the ensuing discussion took place in Eisenhower's aircraft because his knee was in plaster following an accident. Montgomery once again urged total commitment to a northern thrust, with Berlin as the eventual objective. Eisenhower was still willing to go along with the airborne plan to seize the Dutch bridges; success in that operation would enable the 400-mile-long Siegfried Line to be outflanked, and operations could then be developed which would hopefully lead to the encirclement of the Ruhr. There were advantages also on the western flank of the proposed operation. A short onward advance from Arnhem to the Ijsselmeer (formerly the Zuider Zee) would cut off all German forces in western Holland, and eventually capture the V-2 rocket launch sites, hasten the clearance of Antwerp and overrun Rotterdam to bring two major ports into use and help solve the chronic supply problem. So Montgomery received the go-ahead for an enlarged airborne operation, the original ‘Comet’ force being supplemented by the two American airborne divisions. Montgomery was also given the support of some American troops on his right flank and an increase in his supplies, but he was not to have absolute priority in supply, and Berlin was not to be his ultimate objective.

So ‘Comet’ became ‘Market Garden’. The reason there were two words in the new code-name was that, instead of the airborne troops being dropped ahead of the still advancing ground force, as in ‘Comet’, a set-piece ground attack would need to be prepared and set in motion to join up with the air landings. The airborne part in this new combined plan was ‘Market’, and the ground attack was ‘Garden’. The objectives of ‘Market’ were exactly the same as those of ‘Comet’ – seizure of the bridges over the waterways in Holland between the existing front and the North German Plain; the main change was in the scale of airborne force to be used. An initial proposal to launch the new operation in a mere five days' time had to be extended, but the start date would be only a week away, on Sunday 17 September.

The airborne forces waiting in England came under the First Allied Airborne Army, an organization which had been formed only six weeks earlier to co-ordinate the activities of the various British and American airborne units in England and of the air transport units required to take them into action. Its commander was an American, Lieutenant-General Lewis H. Brereton, who until then had been commander of the US Ninth Air Force; his headquarters were at Sunninghill Park near Ascot. As was normal at that time with ‘Allied’ formations, an American commander had a British deputy, in this case an army officer with the same rank as the commander -Lieutenant-General F. A. M. Browning; the staff were, again as usual, mixed British and American. Brereton's current directive was to be ready to despatch his airborne units on any operation in support of Montgomery's 21st Army Group, the American sectors on the Continent being now too distant for support by airborne operations. So, when Eisenhower gave Montgomery the go-ahead for ‘Market’, it was Brereton and his staff who prepared the operation. It would be the first of their many planned operations actually to be launched.

The next level of command was that of ‘corps’. The American units came under Lieutenant-General Matthew B. Ridgway's XVIII US Airborne Corps; his main units were the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions, which had fought in Normandy but were ready for action again, and the 17th Airborne, which was still assembling and was not yet operational. The British units were under I British Airborne Corps and consisted of the 1st British Airborne Division and the Polish Independent Parachute Brigade Group, both ready for action, the 6th British Airborne Division, just returned from a long spell in Normandy, and an SAS unit. The British corps commander was Lieutenant-General Browning, who thus had two jobs. Both of the two corps organizations were also new, although the British one was really a transformation of the British Airborne Forces HQ, which had been in existence since 1941. Also available was the British 52nd (Lowland) Division, capable of being lifted by aircraft, but this was not officially part of Browning's corps.

The main purpose of the corps organizations was administration and training, and no previous airborne operation had taken place in which a corps headquarters had any operational role. The standard practice was that divisions were dropped independently and came under the command of the relevant ground forces corps headquarters as soon as a link-up was achieved. Three airborne divisions had been dropped in Normandy on D-Day and had performed satisfactorily in that way. But the two corps headquarters under Brereton's command had recently been given a limited operational capability in case circumstances developed in which an operation would require the co-ordinating influence of an airborne corps headquarters on the ground. ‘Market’ was about to employ three and one-third divisions, dropped at three separate places, and which were hopefully to be relieved within three days by ground forces. On the face of it, these were not the circumstances in which an airborne corps headquarters could be inserted into the operation with any beneficial effect.

But Lieutenant-General Browning – ‘Boy’ Browning, forty-one years old, handsome and elegant, married to the famous novelist Daphne du Maurier and a qualified glider pilot – was anxious to command troops in action before the war ended. He was a gallant veteran of the First World War, in which he won the DSO and the Croix de Guerre with the Grenadier Guards, but he had not yet had the opportunity to see action in this war. As commander of British Airborne Forces since 1941, his had been the guiding hand in the major build-up of this new arm of the British Army. Now the war might be brought to an end by means of the largest airborne operation of all time, and Browning wanted to be personally involved in it.

As Brereton's deputy and military adviser, Browning had met Montgomery at Brussels immediately after Eisenhower's aircraft took off after the 10 September meeting which inaugurated ‘Market’, and he brought Montgomery's outline plan back to England; he presented it at Brereton's first planning meeting that evening. Perhaps with Montgomery's blessing or perhaps by persuading Brereton himself, Browning secured agreement that the embryo untried tactical headquarters of his airborne corps should actually take part in the operation, despite the fact that the three divisional drops were to be scattered and despite the fact that the majority of the troops to be used would be American, whose own corps commander, Matthew Ridgway, with his recent battle experience as an airborne divisional commander in Normandy, would have to stand aside to give Browning his chance. In the plan that soon evolved, Browning and his tactical staff would fly in by glider and land on the first day alongside the 82nd US Airborne Division in the middle of the three main dropping areas, near Nijmegen.

The reader may think that this lengthy introduction of ‘Boy’ Browning and his corps headquarters in the plan for ‘Market’ is tiresome. But the first contribution to the tragedy of Arnhem had now been made. The signals organization of Browning's tactical headquarters was not complete; many extra men and much signals equipment had to be added during the next few days – much of it from American sources. On landing in Holland, he would be out of touch with two-thirds of his command unless his signals organization worked perfectly. His presence would also mean that, after the ground forces linked up with the air landings, two corps headquarters would be attempting to control operations in the same geographical area. There would be an even more direct effect upon the fortunes of the British troops about to fly to Arnhem. The glider lift of Browning's headquarters would require thirty-eight tug aircraft from the limited air transport force available, and these would be taken from the allotment to the Arnhem lift.

There is no record of any American opposition to Browning's plan, but British officers due to take part in ‘Market’ ridiculed it. One says: ‘Browning's staff came straight from soft living in comfortable ...