Having parachuted nine miles to the west of ARNHEM during the early afternoon of 17th September 1944 2nd Parachute Battalion, reinforced by elements from the 1st Parachute Brigade reached the road bridge at dusk.
In total this was a force of approximately 750 men with over 300 from 2nd Parachute Battalion, elements of C company from 3rd Parachute Battalion, over 100 each from the Royal Engineers and Brigade HQ, 30 from Royal Army Service Corps, 5 Six Pounder Guns and crews from 1st Airlanding Anti-tank Regiment as well as a dozen Glider Pilots,
Also Major Freddie Gough and some men of the Reconnaissance Corps, Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers, Provost Company and Royal Army Ordnance Corps. German opposition at the bridge would eventually total over 1,000 backed by armoured vehicles.
With the kind permission of ParaData
The Battle of ARNHEM was fought during the Second World War, as part of the Allied Operation Market Garden. It took place around the Dutch city of ARNHEM and vicinity from 17th to 26th September 1944. The Allies had swept through France and Belgium in August 1944, after the Battle of Normandy.
Market Garden was proposed by Field Marshal Sir Bernard Montgomery, who favoured a single push northwards over the branches of the Lower Rhine River, allowing the British Second Army to bypass the Siegfried Line and attack the important Ruhr industrial area.
The First Allied Airborne Army was to capture the bridges to secure a route for the Second Army with US, British and Polish airborne troops dropped in the Netherlands along the line of the ground advance, being relieved by the British XXX Corps.
Farthest north, The British 1st Airborne Division landed at ARNHEM to capture bridges across the Nederrijn (Lower Rhine), with the 1st Polish Parachute Brigade following on. XXX Corps was expected to reach ARNHEM in two to three days.
The 1st Airborne Division landed some distance from its objectives and met unexpected resistance, especially from elements of the II SS Panzer Korps.
Only a small force was able to reach the ARNHEM road bridge while the main body of the division was stopped on the edge of town. XXX Corps’s advance north from NIMEGEN was delayed due to the failure, in the BATTLE OF NIMEGEN, to secure the bridge before the ground troops arrived and the British were not relieved on time. After four days, the small British force at the bridge was overwhelmed and the rest of the division was trapped in a small pocket north of the river.
The paratroops could not be sufficiently reinforced by the Poles or by XXX Corps when they arrived on the southern bank, nor by Royal Air Force supply flights. After nine days of fighting, the remnants of the division were withdrawn in Operation Berlin. The Allies were unable to advance further and the front line stabilised south of ARNHEM. The 1st Airborne Division lost nearly three quarters of its strength and did not see combat again.
Montgomery’s plan involved dropping the US 101st Airborne Division to capture bridges around EINDHOVEN, the US 82nd Airborne Division to capture crossings around NIMEGEN and the British 1st Airborne Division, with the Polish 1st Independent Parachute Brigade, to capture three bridges across the Nederrijn at ARNHEM.
Lieutenant General Lewis Brereton commanded the First Allied Airborne Army but his second-in-command Lieutenant-General Frederick Browning took command of the airborne operation. The British Second Army, led by XXX Corps, would advance up the “Airborne corridor”, securing the airborne divisions’ positions and crossing the Rhine within two days. If successful, the plan would open the door to Germany and hopefully force an end to the war in Europe by the end of the year.
The division was told to expect only limited resistance from German reserve forces. A serious challenge to their operation was not expected and many men believed that their work would lead to the ending of the war. Some – anticipating a period of occupation in Germany – packed leisure equipment in their kit or in the sea tail. Browning’s intelligence officer – Major Brian Urquhart obtained information from the 21st Army Group in Belgium and Dutch resistance that German armour was present around ARNHEM. This was backed up with aerial reconnaissance that he ordered to be flown. Browning was dismissive and ordered his chief medical officer to have Urquhart sent on sick leave. SHAEF was aware that there were almost certainly two Panzer divisions at ARNHEM but with the operation looming chose to ignore them. Such information would have been gleaned from Ultra intercepts that the First Allied Airborne Army was not privy to and therefore could not act upon themselves.
ARNHEM was a victory for the Germans (albeit tempered by their losses further south) and a defeat for the Second Army. Many military commentators and historians believe that the failure to secure ARNHEM was not the fault of the airborne forces (who had held out for far longer than planned) but of the operation.
John Frost noted that “by far the worst mistake was the lack of priority given to the capture of NIMEGEN BRIDGE” and was unable to understand why Browning had ordered Brigadier General James M. Gavin, the commander of the 82nd Airborne Division, to secure the GROESBEEK HEIGHTS before NIMEGEN BRIDGE.
In his analysis of the battle, Martin Middlebrook believed the “failure of Browning to give the 82nd US Airborne Division a greater priority in capturing the bridge at NIMEGEN” was only just behind the weakness of the air plan in importance.
The air plan was a grave weakness in the events at ARNHEM. Middlebrook believes that the refusal to consider night drops, two lifts on day 1 or a coup-de-main assault on ARNHEM BRIDGE were “cardinal fundamental errors” and that the failure to land nearer the bridge threw away the airborne force’s most valuable asset – that of surprise. Frost believed that the distance from the drop zones to the bridge and the long approach on foot was a “glaring snag” and was highly critical of the “unwillingness of the air forces to fly more than one sortie in the day [which] was one of the chief factors that mitigated against success”
Allied casualties
The battle was a costly defeat and the 1st Airborne Division never recovered. Three-quarters of the division were missing when it returned to England, including two of the three brigade commanders, eight of the nine battalion commanders and 26 of the 30 infantry company commanders.
About 500 men were in hiding north of the Rhine and many of these were able to escape during the winter, initially in Operation Pegasus. New recruits, escapees and repatriated POWs joined the division over the coming months but the division was still so understrength that the 4th Parachute Brigade had to merge with the 1st Parachute Brigade; the division could barely produce two brigades of infantry.
Between May and August 1945, many of the men were sent to Denmark and Norway to oversee Operation Doomsday, the German surrenders; on their return the division was disbanded. The Glider Pilot Regiment suffered the highest proportion of fatalities during the battle (17.3 per cent).
Honours and memorials
Although the battle was a disaster for the British 1st Airborne Division, their fight north of the Rhine is considered an example of courage and endurance and one of the greatest feats of arms in the Second World War. Despite being the last great failure of the British Army, ARNHEM has become a byword for the fighting spirit of the British people and has set a standard for the Parachute Regiment.
Montgomery claimed that “in years to come it will be a great thing for a man to be able to say: ‘I fought at ARNHEM'”, a prediction seemingly borne out by the pride of soldiers who took part, and the occasional desire of those who did not to claim that they were there.
Within days of Operation Berlin, the British returned to a heroes’ welcome in England. A list of 59 decorations was quickly published for the 2,000 men who had returned and an investiture ceremony for the division was held at Buckingham Palace in December. Decorations for the 6,000 who had not returned were not published until September 1945 and numbered only 25. Five of the British participants in the battle were awarded Britain’s highest award for gallantry, the Victoria Cross. Four were members of the Airborne forces and one was from the RAF. They were:
- Lance-SergeantJohn Baskeyfield, 2nd Battalion, South Staffordshire Regiment
- MajorRobert Cain, 2nd Battalion, South Staffordshire Regiment
- Flight LieutenantDavid Lord271 Squadron, Royal Air Force
- CaptainLionel Queripel, 10th Battalion, Parachute Regiment
- LieutenantJohn Grayburn, 2nd Battalion, Parachute Regiment
The British and Commonwealth system of battle honours recognised participation in fighting at Arnhem in 1956, 1957 and 1958 by the award of the battle honour Arnhem 1944 to six units. After the liberation of the Netherlands, the Grave Registration units of 2nd Army began the task of identifying the British dead. They were buried together in a field that is on permanent loan to the Commonwealth War Graves Commission just north of Oosterbeek. There are nearly 1,800 graves in what is now known as the Airborne Cemetery, Threequarters of which are for those killed during the 1944 battle. By 2003, there were still 138 men unaccounted for, and human remains, equipment and weaponry continue to be dug up in the farmland around the city.
I have been to the Battlefield and it is a sobering place to be to reflect on the courage and endurance of the men who fought there. The local Dutch population helped where they could duting the battle at some cost to themselves and to this day the young people of the town tend the graves of the fallen.
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Gillygangle 2024
