Armageddon (14 page)

Some bizarre delusions persisted at XXX Corps about the possibilities of achieving success. As late as 22 September, the company commanders of an infantry unit of 43rd Division between Nijmegen and Arnhem were issued with orders for an assault to link up with 1st Airborne. “
Intention:
12 KRRC [King’s Royal Rifle Corps] will attack and seize the rd bridge at ARNHEIM,” declared this alarming document, which went on to detail deployments once the south bank had been secured: “at least one [tank] tp over bridge . . . KRRC will hold open bridge.” German strength in Arnhem was estimated at 300–500 infantry. The planned timetable for the British assault ended: “1730–1745 hrs—Leading Tp reaches bridge.” It was a source of extravagant relief to the riflemen when this flight of fantasy was cancelled a few hours before its execution.

An unhappy fate befell the 4th Dorsets of 43rd (Wessex) Division. They marched forward through darkness to the bank of the Rhine on 25 September, hurried on by NCOs muttering repeatedly, “Keep up lads, close up lads,” until they reached waiting boats. Then they were paddled across the Rhine in a belated, grossly misjudged attempt to reinforce 1st Airborne Division’s perimeter at Oosterbeek. On the northern shore, in the face of fierce German fire, a young lieutenant called on his platoon to charge, and leaped forward himself. None of the men followed. He turned back and said: “Come on, lads—charge.” Still no one moved. Finally, he said furiously: “If you don’t charge, you bastards, I’ll shoot you!” Reluctantly, his platoon advanced, hounded every step by their officer. By dawn, they were locked in fierce fighting with the Germans. Their ammunition ran low. At last, their colonel, Gerald Tilly, ordered them to cease fire. One eighteen-year-old private admitted only to relief: “Perhaps we were going to live after all.” They were marched into captivity, singing “Green grow the rushes, O.”

The Germans were pressing the British and Americans along the entire sixty-mile length of their salient from the start line of Market Garden to the most forward positions on the south bank of the Rhine. The Allies could hold their ground, but only by relentless exertion which left scant energy, resources or ammunition for pressing on further. Near Nijmegen, the adjutant of a tank regiment of 4th Armoured Brigade wrote in his diary: “Brigadier arrived in the p.m. and I gather the policy is now a decided sit-down till they can clear up this bloody corridor. It is cut again this evening, this time in three places . . . This is really pretty serious, and has ceased to be the joke we have considered it as for some time.” For the whole of 21st Army Group, the “joke” was over. It was now merely a matter of stabilizing the front, and rescuing the victims of failure.

The British XXX Corps suffered 1,480 casualties in the Market Garden battle. The two American airborne divisions, together with U.S. aircrew, lost 3,974. The chronically querulous General Lewis Brereton, U.S. commander of First Airborne Army, wrote in his diary: “In the years to come, everyone will remember Arnhem, but no one will remember that two American divisions fought their hearts out in the Dutch canal country and whipped hell out of the Germans.” For once, Brereton’s sourness seemed justified. The Americans had done their part better than the British. The survivors of 1st Airborne Division were evacuated across the Rhine on the night of Tuesday 26 September, nine days after the first landings. Of the 10,005 men who had started the formation’s battle, 2,163 now came out of it. Urquhart’s division had lost 1,200 men killed and more than 6,000 captured, many of these wounded. Overall Allied casualties were trifling by Russian or German standards, in pursuit of such an ambitious strategic goal as a Rhine bridgehead. Arnhem was a small battle in the context of the Second World War. It was rendered famous by the glamour of the paratroopers; the British romantic weakness for “last stands”; and a belief, probably illusory, that a great opportunity had been lost. For a British army troubled by its shrinking strength in the sixth year of war, the losses seemed a heavy price for failure.

“The soldiers who beat back these first-rate British troops metre by metre,” enthused a war correspondent for the German soldiers’ newspaper
West-Kurier,
“were drawn from every branch of the service. Only 24 hours before, they had not known each other . . . Only a few were familiar with the principles of fighting in forest and hedgerow, or with street-fighting. In one infantry battalion, members of as many as 28 different units fought side by side, led by an officer with a wooden leg.” For once, Nazi propaganda did not exaggerate. The German achievement was indeed remarkable. They were able to frustrate Market Garden with an assortment of available reinforcement units, without significantly disrupting their strategic deployments. For instance, excepting 9th and 10th SS Panzer around Arnhem, none of the formations already earmarked for Hitler’s Ardennes offensive were distracted from their refits to meet the airborne assault.

Private Bob Peatling was rescued from his refuge in Arnhem police station by two Dutch policemen who found him there at the end of October, living off scraps of food scavenged from empty buildings. Like several hundred other 1st Airborne survivors, Peatling began a confinement of more than six months behind the German lines, hidden by brave Dutch people. His wife Joan was informed that she could draw a widow’s pension, since her husband was “missing—believed killed.” She refused to do so, convinced that he would return. So he did, after reaching the Allied lines at last on 18 April 1945.

M
ANY OF THE
causes of the disaster at Arnhem were readily identified soon after it took place. Market Garden was a rotten plan, poorly executed. Although the paratroopers would have suffered substantial casualties by dropping on the bridges, such losses would have seemed trifling alongside those which they incurred in fighting their way into Arnhem and Nijmegen. At the very least, gliderborne coup-de-main parties should have been landed close to all the bridges at H-Hour, as had been done so successfully at the Orne on D-Day, and as some officers urged before the drop in Holland. Failure to do this reflected a fastidiousness about exposing soldiers to excessive risk which was characteristic of the north-west Europe campaign, but which almost always cost more Allied lives in the end. Much has been said about British failure quickly to seize Arnhem bridge, yet the German achievement in denying Nijmegen bridge to the American 82nd Airborne for three days was almost equally critical. It was a scandal—for which in the Russian or German armies some signals officers would have been shot—that the communications of 1st Airborne Division remained almost non-existent throughout the battle. The British paratroopers’ command and control scarcely functioned from 17 September onwards. A lamentable lack of initiative caused British officers to ignore the local expertise of the Dutch Resistance and the potential of civilian telephone communications, both imaginatively exploited by the Americans.

Horrocks’s XXX Corps faced a formidable task, reaching Arnhem up a single road against the clock. But its units displayed an embarrassing lack of urgency, and fought a tactically clumsy battle. One of the most persistent weaknesses of the British and American armies in north-west Europe was poor tank–infantry co-ordination, about which more will be said below. A British academic who has conducted a meticulous study of Guards Armoured’s training before its deployment in north-west Europe paints an abysmal portrait of its officers’ incomprehension of armoured tactics. Montgomery had tried to sack the division’s commander, Allan Adair, early in 1944, but the social popularity of that amiable gentleman frustrated him. In short, the performance of Guards Armoured on the road to Nijmegen, admittedly in adverse circumstances, was what 21st Army Group’s commander would have described as “a poor show.”

American parachute units were much better commanded than most of their British counterparts. Browning, Urquhart, Hicks and several British battalion COs performed inadequately. After the operation, Browning received one of the least deserved knighthoods awarded to a wartime general, and spitefully insisted upon the sacking of Sosabowski, the Polish Parachute Brigade’s commander. Given the indifferent British leadership, it is likely that the U.S. 82nd or 101st Airborne Divisions would have made a better showing if either had been given responsibility for Arnhem, though it is hard to see how any unilateral achievement on the north bank of the Rhine could have been decisive for the overall outcome. Chester Wilmot, who witnessed the battle as a war correspondent, as well as becoming one of the greatest post-war historians of the campaign, was contemptuous of the lame performance of 43rd (Wessex) Division beyond Nijmegen: “There was considerable truth in the criticism the Germans had made in Normandy that British infantry sought ‘to occupy ground rather than to fight over it’.” Yet 43rd Division’s alleged poor showing, to which Wilmot alludes, took place on 22 September, by which time Market Garden had already irretrievably failed.

The drive to Arnhem was thwarted by the startling achievement of the Germans in mustering an assortment of depleted units into battle groups which held at bay the best of the British Army. The Allies possessed overwhelming superiority, yet were unable to exploit this in the flatlands of Holland. Lack of effective ground control, as well as indifferent weather, marginalized the value of air support. It is sometimes argued that the British would have fared better had they adopted the plan initially favoured by the army, but vetoed by airmen alarmed by the threat of flak, to seize a crossing higher up the Rhine towards Wesel. It is hard to see why a drive to Wesel should have succeeded when one to Arnhem failed.

There is a further question. Even if the Allies had been able to capture a Rhine bridge, would they have been able to use this effectively to launch a drive to the Ruhr? Given the energy displayed by the Germans, and the reinforcements rushing to the Western Front in late September 1944, it seems unlikely that the British could have exploited their narrow corridor to achieve a swift German collapse, even if they had got across the river. Hitler’s commanders would have thrown everything into frustrating the Allied purpose. It is highly improbable that Montgomery’s cherished forty-division thrust at the Ruhr, or even his more modest sixteen-division plan, could have been fuelled, ammunitioned and provisioned without the use of Antwerp.

A hero of the Arnhem battle, and one of its shrewdest post-war chroniclers, Major Geoffrey Powell of 156 Para, became a prominent critic of the “Airborne Army” concept. It made sense, he suggested, for the Allies to possess small parachute forces capable of coup-de-main operations, but “it is arguable that Eisenhower would have been better served in the autumn of 1944 by another half-dozen infantry or armoured divisions . . . than by First Airborne Army . . . It is not easy to justify the scarce resources which the Americans and British devoted to their fine airborne troops, and to the aircraft which flew them into battle.” Here, from a parachute officer, was a fundamental criticism of the Arnhem fiasco. Paratroopers achieved a glamour in the Second World War which they have never lost, but nowhere did the airborne divisions justify their cost in men and equipment by changing the outcome of a big battle which would have been lost without a drop.

S
ERGEANT
E
RWIN
H
ECK
of the Arnhem SS NCO school was impressed by the disciplined bearing of British prisoners, who marched into the town singing “It’s a long way to Tipperary.” But the Germans were even more gratified by their own achievement. “We felt proud of ourselves,” said Heck, “especially when we had achieved victory with so few resources.” It has often been suggested that the Arnhem battle was distinguished by chivalry between the German and Allied combatants. It is true that there were local truces in the midst of the battle, to allow both sides to remove their wounded to a German hospital. Some British prisoners were treated with courtesy and consideration by the SS, as gallant warriors. But neither side gave much quarter during the battle, and there were ugly incidents when it was over. A British medical officer was shot in cold blood by a drunken German war correspondent. Captain John Killick said: “It was pretty dismaying that while the Germans were giving us food, water and cigarettes, on the other side of the square they were shooting out of hand Dutchmen whom they believed had helped us.” The entire civilian population of Arnhem was summarily expelled from the town. On 24 September in heavy rain, almost 100,000 dispossessed people trudged like a defeated army from their homes, clutching such belongings as they could carry, the silence of the Dutch broken only by the sobs of children and the sounds of battle a few miles distant. In the months that followed, the sufferings of local people at the hands of the Germans were very great. Lieutenant Jack Reynolds was awarded a Military Cross for his own contribution at Arnhem, yet it was half a century before he could bring himself to go back to the town. “I felt so ashamed. When we left the Dutch people, they were far worse off than before we came.”

Considerable bitterness towards Horrocks’s XXX Corps persisted among the British paratroopers when the battle was over. One of 1st Airborne’s survivors, arrived at last at Nijmegen, shouted at the 5th Wiltshires, who had come north up the road with 43rd Division: “It took you a bloody long time to get here!” A Wiltshireman shouted back with equal asperity: “Yeah, and quite a few poor bastards didn’t get this far!” When Corporal Denis Thomas arrived as a prisoner at Stalag XIB in October, a paratrooper cried to the rest of the hut: “Here’s another bloody tank man who’s come to relieve us!”

Gavin of the U.S. 82nd urged that the U.S. Army should review its policy of ruthlessly relieving formation commanders who failed in a single battle. He argued that it might be wiser to allow general officers to gain experience, and to enjoy at least a second chance. He suggested that the U.S. might learn something from the British practice of distributing decorations after a disaster, to relieve the burden of guilt on those responsible. Lieutenant-General “Boy” Browning “lost three-quarters of his command and a battle. He returned home a hero and was personally decorated by the King. There is no doubt that in our system he would have been summarily relieved and sent home in disgrace.” Decorations were awarded to other British senior officers, whom some of their subordinates would have preferred to see dismissed. Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Harris once remarked caustically upon the British habit of assuaging the pain of defeats with a deluge of “gongs.” At Arnhem, the British fielded too many gentlemen and not enough players. After its failure, senior American officers were even less willing than before to accept lessons in the conduct of war from their allies.