Bridge Too Far (15 page)

By September 12, Urquhart had his plan ready.  Outlined on the map were five landing and drop zones straddling the Arnhem-Amsterdam railroad in the vicinity of Wolfheze, approximately four miles northwest of Arnhem.  Three sites lay north of Wolfheze and two south, the southern zones together making up an irregular box-shaped tract more than a mile square.  All were at least six miles away from the bridge at Arnhem; the farthest, northwest of Wolfheze, was eight.

On D Day two brigades would go in—Brigadier Philip “Pip” Hicks’s 1/ Airlanding Brigade, scheduled to hold the drop zones, and Brigadier Gerald Lathbury’s 1/ Parachute Brigade, which would make a dash for Arnhem and its highway, railroad and pontoon bridges.  Leading the way would be a motorized reconnaissance squadron of jeeps and motorcycles.

Urquhart was

counting on Major C. F. H. “Freddie” Gough’s highly specialized force of some 275 men in four troops—the only unit of its kind in the British army—to reach the highway bridge and hold it until the main body of the brigade arrived.

The next day, D plus 1, Brigadier John “Shan” Hackett’s 4th Parachute Brigade was due to arrive, together with the remainder of the Airlanding Brigade; and on the third day, Major General Stanislaw Sosabowski’s Polish 1/ Parachute Brigade was to be landed.  Urquhart had marked in a sixth drop zone for the Poles.  Because it was anticipated that, by D plus 2, the bridge would be captured and the flak batteries knocked out, the Poles were to drop on the southern bank of the Lower Rhine near the village of Elden about one mile south of the Arnhem crossing.

Despite the risks he must accept, Urquhart felt confident.  He believed he had “a reasonable operation and a good plan.”  Casualties, he thought, might be “somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 percent”; considering the intricate nature of the attack, he did not think the cost was too high.  In the early evening of September 12, he briefed his commanders on the operation and, Urquhart remembers, “everybody seemed quite content with the plan.”

One commander, however, had grave misgivings.  Major General Stanislaw Sosabowski, the trim, fifty-two-year-old leader of the Polish 1/ Parachute Brigade, was quite sure that “we were in for a bitter struggle.”  The former Polish War Academy professor had already stated his position to Generals Urquhart and Browning when he first heard about Operation Comet.  At that time he had demanded that Urquhart give him his orders in writing so that “I would not be held responsible for the disaster.”  With Urquhart he had visited Browning and told him “this mission cannot possibly succeed.”  Browning asked why.  As Sosabowski remembered, “I told him it would be suicide to attempt it with the forces we had and Browning answered, “But, my dear Sosabowski, the Red Devils and the gallant Poles can do anything!””

Now, one week later, as he listened to Urquhart, Sosabowski thought,

“the British are not only grossly underestimating German strength in

the Arnhem area, but they seem ignorant of the

significance Arnhem has for the Fatherland.”  Sosabowski believed that to the Germans Arnhem represented “the gateway to Germany, and I did not expect the Germans to leave it open.”  He did not believe that “troops in the area were of very low caliber, with only a few battered tanks sitting around.”  He was appalled when Urquhart told the assembled brigade commanders that the 1/ Airborne was to be dropped “at least six miles from the objective.”  To reach the bridge the main body of troops would have “a five-hour march; so how could surprise be achieved?  Any fool of a German would immediately know our plans.”

There was another part of the plan Sosabowski did not like.  Heavy equipment and ammunition for his brigade was to go in by glider on an earlier lift.  Thus, his stores would be on a northern landing zone when his troops landed on the southern bank.  What would happen if the bridge was not taken by the time the Poles landed?  As Urquhart spelled out the plan, Sosabowski learned to his astonishment that, if the bridge was still in German hands by that time, his Polish troops would be expected to take it.

Despite Sosabowski’s anxieties, at the September 12 briefing he remained silent.  “I remember Urquhart asking for questions and nobody raised any,” he recalled.  “Everyone sat nonchalantly, legs crossed, looking bored.  I wanted to say something about this impossible plan, but I just couldn’t.  I was unpopular as it was, and anyway who would have listened?”

Later, when the entire airborne operation was reviewed for all commanders at General Browning’s headquarters, others had grave misgivings about the British part of the plan but they too remained silent.  Brigadier General James M. Gavin, commander of the American 82nd Airborne, was so astonished when he heard of Urquhart’s choice of landing sites that he said to his operations chief, Lieutenant Colonel John Norton, “My God, he can’t mean it.”  Norton was equally appalled.

“He does,” he said grimly, “but I wouldn’t care to try it.”  In Gavin’s

view, it was far better to take “10 percent initial casualties by

dropping either on or close to the bridge than to run the risk of

landing on distant drop zones.”  He was “surprised that General

Browning did not question Urqu-

hart’s plan.”  Still, Gavin said nothing “for I assumed that the British, with their extensive combat experience, knew exactly what they were doing.”

SS Sturmbannf@uhrer (major) Sepp Krafft did not intend to move again if he could avoid it.  In the past few weeks his understrength SS Panzer Grenadier Training and Reserve Battalion had been ordered back and forth across Holland.  Now, after only five days, the unit was being ordered out of the village of Oosterbeek—and not by a superior of Krafft’s, but by a Wehrmacht major.

Krafft protested vehemently.  The main body of his three companies of men was billeted in the village, with the rest in Arnhem, and another 1,000 SS recruits were due to arrive momentarily for training.  The Wehrmacht major was adamant.  “I don’t care about that,” he told Krafft bluntly, “you’ve got to get out.”  Krafft fought back.  The ambitious thirty-seven-year-old officer took orders only from his SS superiors.  “I refuse,” he said.  The Wehrmacht officer was not intimidated.  “Let me make things clear to you,” he said.  “You’re moving out of Oosterbeek because Model’s headquarters is moving in.”

Krafft quickly calmed down.  He had no wish to run afoul of Field

Marshal Walter Model.  Still, the order rankled.  Krafft moved, but not

very far.  He decided to bivouac his troops in the woods and farms

northwest of Oosterbeek, not far from the village of Wolfheze.  The

spot he happened to choose was alongside the Wolfheze road, almost

between the zones marked on

maps in England for the men of the British 1/ Airborne Division to land, and blocking the route into Arnhem itself.

Henri Knap, Arnhem’s underground intelligence chief, felt safe in his new role.  To protect his wife and two daughters from complicity in his activities, he had left home four months earlier and moved a few blocks away.  His headquarters were now in the offices of a general practitioner, Dr.  Leo C. Breebaart.  The white-coated Knap was now the doctor’s “assistant,” and certain “patients” were messengers and couriers belonging to his intelligence network: forty men and women and a few teen-agers.

Knap’s was a time-consuming and frustrating job.  He had to evaluate the information he received and then pass it along by phone.  Arnhem’s resistance chief, Pieter Kruyff, had given Knap three telephone numbers, each with twelve to fifteen digits, and told him to commit them to memory.  Knap never knew where or to whom he was calling.  His instructions were to dial each number in turn until contact was made.  * * Knap has never learned who his contacts were except that his reports were passed on to a top-secret unit known as the “Albrecht Group.”  He knew the calls he made were long distance.  At the time, Dutch telephone numbers consisted of four digits.  A brilliant telephone technician named Nicolaas Tjalling de Bode devised a method for underground members under which, by using certain telephone numbers, they could bypass local switchboards and automatically call all over Holland.

Gathering intelligence was even more complicated.  Knap’s requests were

passed down through the network chain, and he never knew what agent

procured the information.  If a report seemed dubious, Knap

investigated on his own.  At the moment he

was intrigued and puzzled by several reports that had reached him about enemy activity in Oosterbeek.

A German officer wearing staff insignia, Major Horst Sm@ockel, had visited a number of stores in Renkum, Oosterbeek and Arnhem and ordered a variety of supplies to be delivered to Oosterbeek’s Tafelberg Hotel.  What Knap found curious were the requisitions; among them were hard-to-find foods and other specialty items which the Dutch population rarely saw anymore, such as Genever gin.

Additionally, German signalmen had been busy laying a welter of telephone cables to a number of hotels in the suburbs, including the Tafelberg.  The conclusion, Knap felt, was obvious: a high-ranking headquarters was moving into Oosterbeek.  But which one?  Who was the general?  And had he arrived?

It was even more important for Knap to keep abreast of the enemy strength in and around the Arnhem region.  He knew there were other intelligence men sending back information in each town and that he was “only a small cog in a vast collection system.”  As a result, there was probably “much duplication of effort.”  Nevertheless, everything was important, for “what one cell might miss, we might pick up.”

Two weeks before, as he later recalled, “there was almost no German strength in the Arnhem region.”  Since then, the military picture had changed dramatically.  Now, Knap was alarmed at the German buildup.  From his network sources, over the previous seven days, Knap had reported that “the remains of several divisions, including panzer units, were in the process of reorganizing in and around Arnhem or were moving into Germany.”  By now, more specific news had come.  His sources reported the presence of tanks north and northeast of Arnhem.  Knap believed that “parts of at least one or even two panzer divisions” were in the area, but their identity and exact location were, so far, not known.

Knap wanted details quickly.  Urgently, he passed the word to his network.  He demanded more exact information on the panzer activity and he wanted to know immediately the identity of the “new occupant” in the Tafelberg Hotel.

Twenty-five-year-old Wouter van de Kraats had never heard of Henri Knap.  His contact in the underground was a man he knew only as “Jansen” who lived somewhere in Arnhem.  Jansen had a new assignment for him—the Tafelberg Hotel.  A high-ranking German officer had arrived, he was told, and Van de Kraats was to see if any of the staff cars outside “carried an identifying pennant or flag.”  If so, he was to report the colors and symbols on the standard.

Van de Kraats had noticed an influx of German activity around the hotel.  German military police and sentries had moved into the area.  His problem was how to get through the sentries along the road—the Pietersbergweg—running past the Tafelberg.  He decided to bluff his way through.

As he made for the hotel, he was immediately stopped by a sentry.  “But I must get through,” Van de Kraats told the German.  “I work at the petrol station up the street.”  The German let him pass.  Three other sentries gave him only a cursory glance.  Then, as Van de Kraats passed the Tafelberg, he quickly looked at the entrance and the driveway.  None of the parked cars had any identifying markings, but near the front door of the hotel stood a checkerboard black, red and white metal pennant—the insignia of a German army group commander.

On the afternoon of Thursday, September 14, Henri Knap heard from his network.  Several sources reported large formations of panzer troops, tanks and armored vehicles encamped in a semi-circle to the north of Arnhem.  There were units at Beekbergen, Epse and along the Ijssel River.  There was even a startling report of “20 to 30 Tiger tanks.”

Exactly how many units were involved, he was unable to ascertain.  He

was able to clearly identify only one, and that by a fluke.  One of his

agents noted “strange mark-

ings—reverse F’s with a ball at the foot of them”—on some tanks.  Checking through a special German manual, Knap was able to identify the unit.  He immediately called his telephone contact and reported the presence of the 9th SS Panzer Division Hohenstaufen.  From the agent’s report, Knap located its position as lying approximately to the north between Arnhem and Apeldoorn and from there, eastward to Zutphen.

Shortly afterward he received word about the Tafelberg Hotel.  He passed this report on, too.  The significant black, red and white checkerboard pennant told its own story.  There was only one German army group commander in this part of the western front.  Although Knap reported the news as hearsay, it seemed to him the officer had to be Field Marshal Walter Model.

Twenty-five miles east of Oosterbeek at his II SS Panzer Corps

headquarters in a small castle on the outskirts of Doetinchem, General

Wilhelm Bittrich held a meeting with his two remaining division

commanders.  Bittrich was in a bad mood, barely able to contain his

temper.  The outlook for his battered panzer corps was now far worse

than it had been a week earlier.  Impatiently Bittrich had awaited

replacements in men, armor and equipment.  None had arrived.  On the

contrary, his force had been whittled down even more.  He had been

ordered to send two combat groups to the front.  One was with the

German Seventh Army trying to hold the Americans near Aachen; the other

was dispatched to bolster General Kurt Student’s First Parachute Army

after British tanks successfully breached the Albert Canal line,

crossed the Meuse-Escaut Canal and grabbed a bridgehead at Neerpelt almost on the Dutch border.  Now, at a time when the British were massing to renew their offensive—an attack that the intelligence chief at Army Group B called “imminent”—Bittrich had received through Field Marshal Model a “crazy directive from the fools in Berlin.”  One of his shattered divisions was to be cannibalized and pulled back into Germany.