Schwerpunkt: From D-Day to the Fall of the Third Reich (35 page)

Patton reported that when he first got to Metz and before he was stalled there, the Siegfried Line was not much more than a nuisance. Now, from the reports coming in, this Defensive Line is becoming a real pain in our ass. The Krauts are pouring whatever they can into strengthening it and it’s no longer going to be so easy to breach it. I wonder if Ike is having second thoughts about having given Monty priority of supplies because up north, things weren’t exactly flying towards perfection on gossamer wings. We received a report that British General Dempsey, in a stroke of good fortune, reached the port city of Amsterdam before those lousy Krauts could blow it up which theoretically would have been a masterful achievement but for the fact that the Germans still held both sides of the long banks along the River Scheldt. In other words, the bastards still controlled the ports. Because of that, Monty’s goal of opening the Antwerp port to allow for a new supply route to the Allieds was unachieved. Fuel was still in short supply and now so were ammunition and medical supplies. Christ, even body bags are needed. Glad it was Monty who got to lead the charge of that Light Brigade.

Speaking of Monty, if I take one more phone call or read one more report from His Royal GMOW (“Getting My Own Way”) Montgomery about how a “knife-like thrust”; a “single thrust”; or a “dagger thrust” is the only proper way to march into Germany, I think I will eat a bullet myself. His ego knows no bounds! He thinks he is a military genius and is the only general who knows how to win a war. I know for a fact that Ike never intended to let Monty push through to Germany at the expense of leaving the other armies sitting idly on the sidelines. Ike knew that Germany itself was well defended, maybe not across all its borders but certainly in its interior. We needed all forces to bear on more than one point of impact once inside Germany and that was something Monty could just not fathom. Did he think he alone could whip the Hun? Jesus H. Christ. Sometimes, he just makes me want to puke. Eisenhower’s plan all along has been to clear the Germans from a wide border front before invading Germany. His strategy is to keep the Boche hopping, never allowing them to throw everything they have against us at one point. Once both the northern and the southern objectives are in place, the German border will be crossed but it will be crossed on a broad front towards both the Ruhr and the Saar.

No one takes this into consideration but Eisenhower can’t let one Army Group go into Germany in a “single thrust” while the others wait it out on the sidelines sitting on their thumbs. We had a hard time just getting everyone on board for entering Paris, for Chrissakes! Maybe just for yuks, Eisenhower should agree with Monty’s point that a single entry point into Germany is the best idea and that it will be General Bradley’s or better yet General Patton’s Army who is to make that solo entry. Jesus, I bet that would change Monty’s mind quicker than he could say “Bob’s your uncle.” But since Ike won’t tell him that and Monty is a Field Marshal now, he keeps arguing with him. Personally, I’d demote him just to get him out of our hair. I heard that even Prime Minister Churchill has considered doing that at one time or another. The little prick is getting under everyone’s skin.

So even though the ports at Antwerp are still not available for us, Monty tried again with a different strategy for getting Ike to allow him to be the first to bring his army over the Rhine River. General Patton also had an invasion plan but that one, which called for him to push into the Siegfried Line through the Meuse River, was not approved. I heard that he told some reporter that if Ike would only give him the fuel he needed instead of giving it to Montgomery he (Patton) would go through the Siegfried Line like “shit through a Christmas goose.” Nevertheless, it was early to mid September when Montgomery came up with the phrase that pays. Patton was fighting for Metz and Monty had a new plan. It was a plan to get to Germany the way he thinks Germany should be gotten to, namely by him, and still alleviate the supply problems.

Montgomery’s plan was for him to take the port city of Antwerp in the northern drive towards Germany. Naturally, Montgomery thought that the northern approach was the most important because of Antwerp and its outstanding ports, and that he, HRS (“His Royal Selfcenteredness”) Montgomery had to be the one leading the charge. After capturing Antwerp (presumably, this time with its ports) Monty’s plan was to reach Arnhem in the Netherlands and cross the Rhine River from there. Monty was then going to continue to push east until he reached the industry heavy Ruhr Valley. He kept saying he was going to make a “knife-like” thrust “into the heart of Germany” and even General Bradley apparently had enough of this bluster because he once said under his breath that it was more likely to be a butter knife thrust. I guess I’m not the only one who thinks that Monty is a third rate general who never won a battle that most any other general couldn’t have won as well or better.

Montgomery’s new plan was code named Operation Market Garden. He saw that the Krauts were falling back east towards the Siegfried Line so he planned not only on crossing the Rhine River, but bagging a bunch of Krauts whilst he was at it. One airborne division was to be dropped behind the Rhine River around the city of Arnhem in the north of Holland and another two drops would be made further south to secure a few critical bridges south of Arnhem. Then, with Arnhem in our control, a bridgehead across the Rhine would be created over which we would be able to invade Germany. And capture a pocket full of Krauts. I forgot to mention, this was all going to be done within three days. Then, voila! The war would be over and we’d all be home to eat Thanksgiving turkeys. His plan was bold and daring to say the least and Brad couldn’t believe it was conservative Monty who thought it up.

The “Market” part of the plan was that four airborne divisions would drop more than 60 miles behind enemy lines to secure five necessary bridgeheads over three rivers and two canals from Eindhoven to Arnhem, a distance of 64 miles. Two U.S. Airborne divisions, the 82
^nd
and the 101
^st
, were again called on to get the ball rolling. They would be placed under Monty’s command and they were to be dropped at two zones where they were to secure access points over the Meuse and the Waal Rivers. The British 1
^st
Airborne was to be dropped behind the Rhine River at Arnhem where they were to secure the high ground north of Arnhem and then hold it for the planned two or three days with the help of General Sosabowski’s 1
^st
Polish Parachute Brigade. The major bridges that had to be captured were, from north to south, Arnhem, Nijmegen, Grave, Vehegel and Eindhoven. A 64 mile distance between the two end bridges was not a conservative plan by anyone’s reckoning and I had considerable doubts as to whether the two end objectives weren’t simply too far away to be attainable. But I’m not running this damn war, Ike is.

The “Garden” part of Monty’s plan was that with these five River crossings secured, the British 2
^nd
Armored Army XXX Corps, would advance from the Belgian border along this corridor and cross the bridges secured by the two U.S. Airborne divisions. The drive could
only
take place over the bridges because the land next to the rivers and canals was too marshy to support heavy tanks. A plan with no contingencies is a pretty big gamble if you ask me but then no one asked me because if they did, I would have also said that just this part of the plan was a virtual impossibility. The part where the British XXX Corps would chassé 64 miles through the “opened” corridor from Eindhoven to Arnhem seemed to gloss over the fact that we’d have to outflank the German defenses in order to secure the bridges which, while not impossible, was hard to do given the single narrow path our tanks could travel on. Once at the end of this corridor in Arnhem, the British Infantry would have arrived at the farthest bridge where they would then link up with the First British Airborne and General Sosabowski’s Parachute Brigade who would be holding the high ground and the bridge over the Rhine. According to Monty’s plan, once all these objectives were reached, Monty’s troops would cross the Arnhem bridgehead for a “powerful, full-blooded thrust” over into Germany. It seemed to me (and a few others) that the plan was far too aggressive and too full of unknowns to work.

Another thing that was glossed over by Montgomery were the reports we received from the Dutch Resistance. Monty brushed aside reports of more German defenders than he originally thought he’d be facing. I know he thought that there would only be SS recruits, a couple of guns and some static divisions defending his points of impact but the Resistance men on the ground told us there were far more Kraut defenders than that and they even told us we’d be flying right over Field Marshal Model’s headquarters which was just a couple of miles east of Arnhem. They told us they observed some Kraut tank units right next to the bridges and that they also observed heavy concentrations of some strong German divisions around the landing sites. Monty thought that was nonsense and paid this information no mind. When the Dutch Prince Bernhard, who was himself the head of the Dutch Resistance Movement, came to personally tell Monty that this info was correct and also that both the 9
^th
and 10
^th
SS Panzer Divisions were not only in the immediate area, they were being resupplied with new Tiger tanks outfitted with 88s, I got a sinking feeling in the pit of my belly. Yet Monty continued to discount this info and went ahead with his plan and got Ike to go along with it too. He was planning on landing these guys right next to the Jerry Reichswald which to me spelled “Counter-Attack.”

Monty must have hypnotized Ike. What in the hell was Ike thinking when he gave this idea the green light unless it was to shut Montgomery up for good when the whole thing went south? I guess Ike liked the idea of the British getting a bridgehead over the Rhine River in the north while Patton could still continue his approach to the Rhine River in the south. And there was the fact that we had just kicked the shit out of the Kraut’s 5
^th
and 7
^th
Armies at Falaise so maybe the thinking was that it we wouldn’t be facing too much opposition for so aggressive a plan. Whatever the reasons, Ike gave Monty the go ahead for Allied troops to push for the German border led by none other than HBP (“His Brilliant Planner”) Montgomery himself. Operation Market Garden was approved but I sure heard some grumblings, especially by the guys who listened to what the Dutch guys had to say about it.

The British Airborne won’t fly at night any more which is why it was a daylight operation. Market Garden took off on the morning of September 17, 1944 with the greatest airborne force of the war so far. I know I keep saying this but every time Monty launches a new offensive, he calls for more fire power than he had for the one before. I saw ledger numbers that showed over 1,500 aircraft were put to for this operation. When they took off that morning, the fog was so heavy and visibility was so bad that most of the sticks were dropped off course. In fact, some of the British paratroopers had to hoof it four hours or more just to get to the bridges. The British landed the 2
^nd
Battalion of paratroopers eight miles away from their objectives, the railway bridge and the roadway bridge at Arnhem. After listening to Paul tell me all about paratroopers, I know they could do that march blindfolded but I have to ask myself, why were they dropped so far away and what was the point of wasting all that time to get them to the bridges at Arnhem? And if that wasn’t bad enough, it appeared that the Brits actually did fly over the headquarters of the Jerry Field Marshal, Walter Model, just as the Dutch Resistance had warned! Wherever they flew, they alerted somebody in authority because both the 9
^th
and 10
^th
SS Panzer Divisions reported with all due haste to the British drop zones and the bridges at Arnhem as well as to the Nijmegen Bridge further south. This meant, of course, that while the British were hiking, the Germans were reinforcing and the SS Panzer divisions arrived before them.

The Brits had severe problems with their two bridges up north and they were not taken as planned. Monty planned for all advances to meet up so that no one area could be cut off from the rest, encircled and eventually sacrificed. His plan notwithstanding, no link ups were made as scheduled and the Krauts were still beating the hell out of the British paratroops at Arnhem. What was left of the British Airborne continued to move towards Arnhem, fighting the whole way. Battling as they were to get to their objectives took time and they were severely delayed and seriously depleted. But then we found out that the 2
^nd
British Battalion, who had been marching since their drop, finally reached their objectives even though they had marched right into an SS tank battalion. Heavy fighting ensued and only some of the paratroopers managed to fight their way out of that mess and get to the railroad bridge. We were informed that even before the British Paratroopers reached the railway bridge over the Neder Rijn River (which I found out means the lower Rhine River) that first evening at Arnhem, the Krauts blew the whole thing up.

We were told that these heroes continued their march from the rail bridge and went for their second objective but they didn’t arrive at the Arnhem road bridge until the ass end of that first night. They took the northern end of the road bridge at Arnhem but there they faced another big battle. We heard that there were only about 750 men left from several different units who were shooting with not only guns and what little artillery they had, but also with flamethrowers. Stores of Jerry ammunition were reportedly detonated setting everything around them on fire, including the remaining part of the Bridge they were holding. At the end of this hellacious first day, what was left of the British First Airborne hadn’t taken the Railway Bridge and they couldn’t move past the burning part of the Roadway Bridge which they are still holding, so they turned back to where they had come from, looking for shelter in nearby buildings where they spent their first night. Then things turned horrific.