Armageddon (11 page)

Field-Marshal Model, who received the surprise of his life when British paratroops began to land within two miles of his headquarters as he sat down to the lunch later sampled by John Killick, at first flattered himself that the attack was intended as a coup-de-main to seize his own person. He leaped into a car, papers spewing out of his briefcase as he ran down the steps of the Tafelburg, and shifted his command post six miles south-eastwards. Model was fifty-three, a music-master’s son from Magdeburg whose undoubted military competence was less important in Hitler’s eyes than his loyalty. Army Group B’s commander was untainted by aristocratic connections, a blunt professional who still asserted that the war could be won. Model and his senior officers now urgently assessed the nature of the Allied threat, and began to assemble resources to meet it. The 9th SS and 10th SS Panzer Divisions possessed about 3,000 men apiece, together with a company of Mark IV tanks, and assorted support weapons. The strength of each division amounted, in total, to that of a weak Allied brigade.

At 1340* 
⁵
all units of the two divisions were ordered to stand to. General Walter Bittrich, commanding II SS Panzer Corps, quickly guessed that Allied intentions focused upon the bridges to the Rhine. He ordered 9th SS to address itself chiefly to dealing with the British at Arnhem. Tenth SS was to defend the Nijmegen bridge, ten miles southward. By 1540, 9th SS had assembled a force of thirty armoured cars and personnel carriers. “These soldiers were thinking about their families, as everything had virtually been packed for the move to [Germany],” said Captain Wilfried Schwartz. “The mood was a resigned: ‘Here we go again!’ They were inevitably disappointed at first, but the officers and NCOs were able to overcome this and get the soldiers quickly into action.” At 1800, some two hours before British paratroopers reached the Arnhem bridge, Captain Viktor Graebner’s 9th SS armoured column roared between the great sweeps of girders traversing the Rhine at Arnhem and headed for Nijmegen. Afterwards, there were recriminations among the Germans about a confusion of orders: Bittrich had intended 9th SS to secure both ends of the Arnhem bridge before proceeding to Nijmegen, and he had wanted Graebner on the south bank. Yet German success in reinforcing Nijmegen before the Americans got there was to prove even more important than events at Arnhem. Graebner’s dash, along with the commitment of some 10th SS units, decided the outcome of the entire Market Garden battle, by pre-empting the Allies and attaining a vital objective on their road. We should note the timings. The British had begun to land five hours—
five hours
—before Graebner crossed Arnhem bridge. Frost’s men were still not even in sight. This was a prodigious amount of leeway to allow German soldiers with motor vehicles to respond to a surprise assault. To have a chance of success, the Allies needed to seize the Dutch bridges within minutes of landing. The British and German timetables were already perilously out of step, to the detriment of the attackers.

General Maxwell Taylor’s 101st Airborne Division was responsible for seizing the objectives closest to the Allied ground advance: the bridges at Eindhoven, thirteen miles from the XXX Corps start line; Son, five miles beyond; and the Willems Canal, five miles further. The moment the “Screaming Eagles” hit their drop zones, they moved with all the urgency that had been expected of them to secure four crossings over the River Aa and the Willems Canal. They gained the road bridge over the Dommel river and the canal bridge at Best. As they approached the bridge over the Wilhelmina Canal at Son, four miles north of Eindhoven, it exploded before their eyes. Paratroopers swam the canal to establish a bridgehead on the southern side. By midnight, though Taylor’s men were facing heavy fighting, the 101st held a fifteen-mile corridor. And although Allied plans were optimistic, they had made ample provision for German demolitions. On 800 trucks and tank transporters, 5,000 British engineers and hundreds of tons of Bailey bridging stood in readiness to span the gap at Son and other river obstacles—granted only the hours necessary to get the equipment forward and to do the job.

The landing of Gavin’s 82nd Airborne was an overwhelming success: 7,467 men reached their landing zones. One regiment, the 504th, dropped two miles east of its objective, the 1,500-foot Maas river bridge at Grave. They rushed the crossing, and seized it intact. The 505th and 508th had to cover six miles between their landing zone on the heights of Groesbeek and the town of Nijmegen. By 1930, they had secured intact a crossing over the Maas–Waal canal. This was a considerable achievement. Yet they faced the same problem as the British 1st Airborne. It took time for units to assemble on the ground and get into action. Given the decision to land the 82nd so far from its key objectives, no more could have been expected of the paratroopers. Yet once again a six- or seven-hour delay, against an enemy who could deploy in motor vehicles, was critical. Gavin’s last objective, the 1,960-foot road bridge at Nijmegen, was the most important of all. Yet here his men were frustrated. As the 1/508th advanced through the streets into the town, they encountered heavy German fire. The Reconnaissance Battalion of 9th SS Panzer had got there before them. Though it had taken Graebner’s men some hours to make their vehicles fit to travel, and to probe warily down the road south of Arnhem looking out for paratroopers, they had only fifteen miles to cover and suffered no interference. It remains a mystery why Allied fighter-bombers were not deployed to patrol this vital link, to deal with just such enemy movements as those of Graebner.

Gavin acknowledged long afterwards that he made a mistake by assigning Roy Lindquist, least impressive of his regimental commanders, to take Nijmegen. The 82nd’s commander considered that Lindquist did not address the town and its vital bridge “either intelligently or aggressively,” partly because the 508th had been given too many assignments, across too wide a front. American planning focused on the threat of German intervention from the Reichswald Forest north and east of Nijmegen, and laid much emphasis upon holding their dropping zone at Groesbeek, to frustrate such an enemy movement. Knowing the critical importance of Nijmegen, Gavin regretted not giving the job to Colonel Reuben Tucker’s 504th, his best unit. Yet, for any airborne soldiers, the Waal was bound to be a tough assignment, once surprise had been lost and it became necessary to fight through urban streets to reach the bridge.

Some of the best troops in the German army were now deployed in readiness to fight the Americans for possession of Nijmegen bridge. Model had explicitly forbidden its demolition. He wanted to hold open the road to move reinforcements southwards for a counter-attack. Many accounts of Market Garden have concentrated on the “might-have-beens” of British failure at Arnhem. Yet it seems at least as relevant to examine those of Nijmegen. If elements of the 82nd Airborne had been landed closer to the bridge, and if the vast Allied force of fighter-bombers had been used to block German armoured vehicles dashing into battle along open Dutch roads, that crossing could have been taken on the first day. As it was, failure swiftly to secure Nijmegen was at least as damaging to the outcome of the battle as British inability to capture both sides of the bridge at Arnhem. If paratroopers were able quickly to seize objectives, they might realistically be expected to hold these against enemy counter-attacks. But if they were required to fight a long battle to capture their prizes, while the enemy was able to reinforce, then it was most unlikely that the airborne force could prevail.

The three British parachute battalions which set out to march into Arnhem on the first afternoon did not approach the town until evening. The Germans faced grievous problems in responding to the Allied assault. Many of their men, too, had to advance into battle on foot. Others travelled on bicycles and in commandeered civilian vehicles. But the defenders possessed just enough transport and were given just enough time for small forces to throw themselves across the paths of the paratroopers. It has often been suggested that the assault on Arnhem was frustrated by SS panzergrenadiers. This is a half-truth. In the first hours after the Allied landings, decisive delay was imposed by a miscellany of German sub-units. These created a thin screen east of the town where most of the available British soldiers expended hours, and suffered serious casualties, attempting to break through. By chance, SS Captain Sepp Krafft’s 16th Training and Replacement Battalion, scarcely a crack force, was exercising that Sunday afternoon in woods less than two miles from the British landing zone—and between the paratroops and Arnhem. Krafft dispatched two patrols to investigate. He guessed immediately that Arnhem’s bridge must be the British objective. He deployed his men to cover the two main roads into the town. By 1530, his force amounted to thirteen officers, seventy-three NCOs and 359 men, with some mortars and anti-tank guns. This was the force which first engaged the leading elements of 1 and 3 Para Battalions, to critical effect.

Through the three hours that followed, Krafft’s men held the paratroopers in play. By the time the British at last found side roads by which they could outflank Krafft’s little force, it was too late. Other German units were converging on the battlefield. Meanwhile, a detachment of ninety Luftwaffe signallers attacked the British landing zone. They were ineffectual, but 1st Airborne’s men had to expend more time and effort upon fending them off. An SS party consisting of eighty men with one 88mm flak gun and one 20mm cannon came under fire as they rolled through Arnhem. The Germans had no idea what was going on. They simply leaped out of their vehicles and engaged 1 Para. Four lorry-loads of passing assault pioneers were exasperated to see tracer flying across the road. “ ‘Idiots!’ we thought, ‘they are on exercise!’ ” said Corporal Wolfgang Dombrowski. “But then a Wehrmacht major called across: ‘That’s live ammunition—the Tommies have landed!’ ” The pioneers, too, were thrown into the battle.

“Head for the sound of gunfire! That’s where the front is!” was the German motto that afternoon. Staff-Sergeant Erwin Heck, a twenty-four-year-old instructor at the SS NCO school in Arnhem, was at the Dutch coast with most of the school’s trainees when they heard of the landings. Heck, an SS veteran since 1938, still limped from a leg wound he had received on the Eastern Front in June. But on 17 September he commandeered a motorcycle and reached the battlefield around 1900, well ahead of his men, who were following on pedal cycles and even horses. One of Heck’s comrades said afterwards that the unit’s movement was such a chaos of improvisations that it looked more like the retreat from Moscow than an advance into battle.

Early in the evening of 17 September, 1 and 3 Para were at last able to outflank Captain Krafft’s men. But by now a new German line had been formed between themselves and the town, manned by another scratch force commanded by thirty-four-year-old Colonel Ludwig Spindler, a much decorated veteran of Normandy and the Eastern Front. Before the battle was over, Spindler’s force embraced elements of sixteen units. Most of them were gunners and dismounted tank men fighting as infantry. There were a hundred assault pioneers, and even a party of hastily armed civilian pioneers. There were also, importantly, some self-propelled anti-tank guns, armoured half-tracks and three tanks.

Not all the units of 1st Airborne Division won German respect for their performance. An SS dispatch rider was among a party which ambushed a British column of 1 Para marching towards Arnhem. The Germans killed most of the lead platoon and took more than thirty prisoners. “They were so beaten and submissive that it only needed one man to march them off to the rear,” said Corporal Alfred Zeigler contemptuously. “We were not too impressed by this lot. They were completely surprised. I ask you, they came marching straight down the road in a company file! What a nonsense! We were so few! They should have taken a route through the trees . . . perhaps they were too arrogant or too cocksure.” Neither 1 nor 3 Para ever reached the bridge at Arnhem. As early as Monday evening, 18 September, they had already suffered heavy attrition. Both battalions contained some brave men, but neither seems to have fought imaginatively or skilfully.

The outcome of the later stages of the Arnhem battle, when the Germans had time to deploy major units, was unsurprising. But it was an extraordinary achievement by low-grade troops, taken utterly by surprise, that in the first hours they were able to halt elite British units, thoroughly briefed and trained for the operation. Much of the credit lies with Colonel Spindler. Something is also due to the unidentified German sergeant who searched a crashed Waco glider, no doubt looking for loot. Instead, he found a copy of Market Garden’s air plan, inexcusably carried into battle by an Allied officer. By the evening of 17 September, Model knew the Allied objectives and order of battle.

THE DÉBÂCLE

T
HE FIRST HOURS
decided the fate of Market Garden. If the British ground advance had started better, if the Americans had gained Nijmegen bridge, if the British had been able to occupy Arnhem in force and create a defensive corridor along the river to their dropping zone, they might, just might, have been able to hold out until relieved by XXX Corps. Instead, only a mixed force of some 500 men, based on Colonel John Frost’s 2 Para, was able to reach the north end of Arnhem bridge at 2000, having chanced upon the only road into town which was not blocked by Krafft’s or Spindler’s men.

Captain John Killick on his captured BMW motorbike joined the tail-end of 2 Para’s long march column, snaking through the streets in failing light. The British soldiers saw the railway bridge over the Rhine suddenly explode, as the Germans detonated demolition charges. In the deepening darkness, one of Frost’s men said crossly to Killick: “Take that fucking motorcycle away.” Its exhaust had been punctured by a bullet and emitted vivid blue flames. Killick ditched the bike, together with his pack, an action which caused him lasting guilt, because it contained his notebook, listing names of Dutch Resistance contacts. The paras trudged on towards the road bridge, infantrymen mingled with assorted stray bodies such as himself. Eventually, Killick’s group came to rest in a Dutch police building close to the pontoon below the road bridge. There, among men of 2 Para’s A Company, the intelligence officer fell into uneasy sleep.