A Bridge Too Far Read online

  ‘On what turned out to be the last day of the battle’ recalled Staff Sergeant Bert Harget ‘came the news that we were to retreat across the river that night. Later that day I went to the dressing station to see the glider pilot I had carried in there some days before. While there I was asked to help take the walking wounded to the river, as the medical staff were staying behind. ‘It was a terrible night, pouring with rain and pitch black when we set off in a line, a fit man at the front and me bringing up the rear. We each held onto the smock of the man in front. At one point we passed within a few metres of a German position - we could hear them talking - but the heavy rain deadened any noise we made and we were not seen. After about 15 minutes I slipped on a muddy bank and lost my grip on the man in front. By the time I had regained my feet the column had disappeared. I was completely alone, so I walked in the general direction of the river and finally made contact with others near the river bank. Early in the morning I was lucky enough to get into a ‘duck’ and was taken over to the other side. Then I had another walk to an aid post where I was given half a loaf and a large tot of rum. Later at Nijmegen we were given a meal and I slept for almost 24 hours. That was the end of my part in Operation ‘Market-Garden’. The next time I saw the River Rhine it was in March 1945 as I flew over in a Hamilcar Glider on Operation Varsity.’

  For the remainder of the day, whilst the enemy concentrated their efforts upon the Lonsdale Force near to the Rhine, there was little in the way of enemy interference to the 156th Battalion’s position, bar the customary mortar barrage and snipers.12 When he told his men of the plans to withdraw, Geoffrey Powell noted that they looked equally as shocked as he had been that ‘Market-Garden’ would not be stuck with to its bitter conclusion. However this feeling quickly gave way to one of relief that after a week of hard fighting they would finally be pulled out. Powell wanted to have a shave and asked whether anyone had a razor. One man did and after he had finished with it another man asked if he could have lend of it next. More men did likewise and they cleaned their boots and tried to tidy themselves up somewhat, with the intention of withdrawing like British soldiers.

  Major Blackwood, commanding 6 Platoon, 11th Parachute Battalion, one of those still fighting in the final stages around Oosterbeek, ‘snitched’ an umbrella from a ruined house and set it above the open space. It was ‘unmilitary’ he wrote, ‘but useful.’ ‘A few score Dorsets had got over the river in the night. Stout lads. Our gunners called down a barrage of 2nd Army mediums to crush a threatened counter-attack. Some of the guns were firing short and we got the full benefit. The whole earth quaked with the explosions; so did we. It was a study to hear the boys when later they crawled out and viewed the huge craters around our position.

  ‘In the afternoon the enemy drove in a tank and infantry attack in an attempt to split our position in two. There are few more terrifying noises than the whine and rattle of an approaching tank. I ordered part of my small force up over the hill to meet the attack and myself went up the slope with one man and a Bren. (As I learned afterwards, the Spandau bird [German machine gunner] down by the railway gave me a burst as I went and scored the ground just behind me). From the crest of the ridge we could plainly see a Tiger in the valley below. He was moving slowly back and forth, shepherding his infantry across open ground covered by our fire. With my man and Bren I hared down the forward slope of the crest and dropped unharmed into a trench half way to the tank. Then we got cracking at the infantry as they rushed to the cover of the tank. Once I thought we’d ‘had’ it. The Tiger stopped and his great 88 gun slowly, very slowly moved round and faced us. For some reason he did not fire: and as soon as he traversed his turret again to move away, we up and had another whack at the Hun. Good shooting too. Something grimly humorous in seeing a frantically scurrying Hun legging it in vain with bullets kicking up the mud at his heels. I saw the blast of a Spandau open up immediately across the valley. At the same instant I received a mighty blow on the right temple: and heard my companion scream. We fell back into the trench, bleeding like pigs; he from a smashed jaw. As laboriously we applied field dressings, crouching there in the mud and rain, the Tiger opened on us with his gun. The crack of passing shells and the violent explosions made our eardrums bleed: and when for good measure he called down heavy mortar fire, the whole crest quivered and smoked.

  ‘It was almost an hour before we risked climbing out on to that exposed forward slope. Although I felt tired to death, result of not enough food or sleep, I covered the distance from trench to crest in an incredibly short time, expecting at every second a burst of bullets in my back. We swept over the fence at the ridge top and plunged down into the gunners’ command post as Jerry returned operation with his mortars. And here I learned that the remnants of the 1st Airborne Div were that night to return across the Rhine. It was a bitter moment: but, with food and ammunition exhausted, anti-tank guns all knocked out and men dazed with nine days shelling and mortaring, there is no alternative.’

  ‘Around 1700’ noted Father Bruggeman ‘there was an air battle going on. A lot of people were watching, Fathers, Brothers and Germans. At once there was a shout ‘Bombers! Bombers!’ and the Germans, who knew the danger, ran and we followed. From the south we saw planes coming and a little later exploding bombs. The first attack missed, but it was clear that the recently placed artillery was the target. From a distance we saw a second group of bombers coming and we all ran. Father Thijssen and several other brothers ran through the woods to Farmer Verholt, but most of us went into the shelters. The second attack missed too, which was fortunate for us because there wouldn’t have been much left of the Lichtenbeek or its inhabitants. Several evenings now, people from Arnhem had come to seek shelter for the night. They slept in the dormitory. After hearing what they had been through we must be thankful to the Good Lord. Most of the brothers were in the basement. There was a lot of shooting from the south. Many tracer bullets and fires could be seen. Above the Leeren Doeden was a red glow. Is this the Second Army?’

  Perhaps the withdrawal is best described in the words of the BBC correspondent Stanley Maxted (who had landed with the Division nine days previously) in a broadcast: ‘Late on the afternoon we were told that the remnants of the Division were going to pull out that night. The enemy was making it impossible for the elements of the 2nd Army to relieve us. BBC’s Guy Byam, Alan Woods of the Daily Express and I were told to destroy all our equipment with the exception of what would go into one haversack. We were told to muffle our boots with bits of blanket and be ready to move off at a certain time.

  ‘When the various officers were told to transmit this news to that thin straggle of hard-pressed men around the pitifully small perimeter, a great silence seemed to come upon them even in the middle of the shelling - you see, day or night the shelling and mortaring never stopped. The ones I saw just drew a deep breath and said: ‘Very good, sir.’ Then those staring eyes in the middle of black, muddy masks saluted, as they always would and faded away to crawl out on their stomachs and tell their men.

  ‘Perhaps I should remind you here that these were men of no ordinary calibre. They had been nine days in that little space, being mortared and shelled, machine-gunned and sniped from all round. When a tank or a self-propelled 88 gun broke through, two or three of them detached themselves and somehow or another had put it out of business.

  ‘For the last three days they had had no water, but very little small arms ammunition and rations cut to one-sixth. Luckily, or unluckily, it rained and they caught the water in their caps and drank that. These last items were never mentioned they were airborne, weren’t they? They were tough and knew it.

  ‘Well, at two minutes past ten. We clambered out of our slit trenches in an absolute din of bombardment - a great deal of it our own - and formed up in a single line. Our boots were wrapped in blanket so that no noise would be made. We held the tail of the coat of the man in front. We set off like a file of nebulous ghosts from our pock-marked and tree-strewn piece of ground
. Obviously, since the enemy was all round us, we had to go through him to get to the River Rhine.

  ‘After about two hundred yards of silent trekking, we knew we were among the enemy. It was difficult not to throw yourself flat when machine-gun tracers skinned your head or the scream of a shell or mortar-bomb sounded very close - but the orders were to ‘keep going.’ Anybody hit was to be picked up by the man behind him.

  ‘Major Oliver had reconnoitred the route earlier on with a Headquarters officer and had it memorised. The back of my neck was prickling for that whole interminable march. I couldn’t see the man ahead of me - all I knew was that I had hold of a coat-tail and for the first time in my life was grateful for the downpour of rain that made a patter on the leaves of the trees and covered up any little noises we were making.

  ‘At every turn of the way there was posted a Sergeant Glider Pilot, who stepped out like a shadow and then stepped back into a deeper shadow again. Several times we halted - which meant you bumped into the man ahead of you - then when the head of our party was satisfied the turning was clear, we went on again.

  ‘Once we halted because of a boy sitting on the ground with a bullet through his leg. We wanted to pick him up but he whispered ‘Nark it. Gimme another field dressing and I’ll be all right. I can walk.’

  ‘As we came out of the trees - we had been following carefully thought-out footpaths so far - I felt as naked as if i were in Piccadilly Circus in my pyjamas, because of the glow from fires across the river. The .machine-gun and general bombardment had never let-up.

  ‘We lay down flat in the mud and rain and stayed that way for two hours till the sentry beyond the hedge on the bank of the river told us to move up the dyke and be taken across. Mortaring started now and I was fearful for those that were already over on the bank. I guessed it was pretty bad for them.

  ‘After what seemed a nightmare of an age we got our turn and slithered up and over on to some mud flats. There was the shadow of a little assault craft with an outboard motor on it. Several of these had been rushed up by a field company of Engineers. One or two of them were out of action already. ‘We waded out into the Rhine up to my hips - it didn’t matter. I was soaked through long ago had been for days. And a voice that was sheer music spoke from the stern of the boat saying: ‘Ye’ll have to step lively, boys. T’aint healthy here.’

  ‘It was a Canadian voice and the Engineers were Canadian Engineers. We helped push the boat off into the swift Rhine current and with our heads down between our knees waited for the bump on the far side - or for what might come before.

  ‘It didn’t come. We clambered out and followed what had been a white tape up over a dyke. We slid down the other side on our backsides and we sloshed through mud for four miles and a half-me thinking ‘Gosh! I’m alive. How did it happen?’ In a barn there was a blessed hot mug of tea with rum in it and a blanket over our shoulders. Then we walked again - all night.

  ‘After daylight we got to a dressing station near Nijmegen and then we were put in trucks and that’s how we reached Nijmegen. That’s how the last of the few got out to go and fight in some future battle.

  ‘No matter what battle that is, I know they won’t let you down.’

  ‘The main portion continued on its way across the open space around the Hartenstein Hotel, where Divisional Headquarters had been housed but which now loomed ghostly and lifeless through the darkness’ wrote Colonel Payton-Reid. ‘The noise of the shelling was terrific, mostly caused by XXX Corps artillery covering our withdrawal, though this we did not fully realize at the time. When we reached the woods we ran into the tail of a party of parachutists, who had a ‘guide’. Unadvisedly we tacked on behind this party until the ‘guide’, having led us into the darkest and most impenetrable part of the wood, announced that he was ‘lost’. There followed the usual recriminations and parleys, after which the parachutists decided to go back and start again. Being thus on our own once more and now thoroughly lost, we had recourse to that somewhat maligned instrument, the marching compass. Fortunately there was no difficulty regarding ‘bearing’, since all we had to do was to march due south and we were bound to strike the river somewhere near the right spot. The hazards were provided by the wood, which seemed to develop into a vast impenetrable jungle as we proceeded. Consequently progress was desperately slow and I began to feel worried that we should arrive too late or fail to reach the right place at all. So far as the others were concerned I think they had resigned themselves to any fate, except for Captain Walker who, with a Gunner’s faith in instruments, put complete reliance on the compass. Anyhow, we did eventually emerge into the open and found that somehow we had actually arrived at our correct rendezvous. As we passed it I glanced at my watch and saw, to my utter amazement, that we were dead on time.’

  In the cellar of the Hartenstein Captain Charles Pare, padre of the Glider Pilot Regiment said prayers. When he had finished, those at Divisional HQ set about burning all their papers. Sergeant Major Lord handed out benzedrine pills. Urquhart found the bottle of whisky that he had brought in his pack and promptly forgot about and so he passed it around for everyone to have a sip. He visited the wounded in the cellars to say goodbye to those who were conscious and aware and then HQ departed in single file, following the lengths of parachute tape down to the riverbank. They left in single file, Mackenzie leading.

  ‘We were the last section out’ an Intelligence officer said. ‘A fair spraying of bullets came down the road at intervals, so we ran across singly or in pairs... There was plenty of halting and crouching down... It was very slow moving. The night was black and wet, making it impossible to see the helmet or body of the man in front. At 2100 the field guns of 43rd Division and two medium artillery regiments opened up with a barrage of shells on all the German positions around the perimeter. Shortly afterwards the Germans opened up with their artillery and this hindered the forming up of some units and also caused some groups already on the move to become split. Then, at about 2130 a clatter of mortar bombs came down - lighting the woods and roads with a queer blue light. The men scattered like demons in a pantomime. I was lifted off my feet with the blast of one bomb and I came to, lying against the foot of a tree. There was no one about so I pushed on quickly and eventually contacted two of my section... A machine-gun was firing at us... After much blundering about we hit into the tail of an enormous snake of men. Every unit seemed to be there but our own. Utmost confusion, no one caring whether he showed over the sky line or not. We went on, finally contacting the end of our section near the river. Again the Hun tossed over mortar bombs and many men were wounded. There was plenty of screaming. A boat turned over too-terrible cries. Shortly after I contacted Captain Allsop who was wounded in the left thigh. We got into the same boat together squatting near the bow. We shouted to the others to move down.’13

  The night was pitch dark and the rain had turned to a steady downpour, through a strong wind which nonetheless helped to deaden any noise of the movement. ‘Somebody went round distributing little packets of sulphanilamide and morphia’, a soldier remembers. ‘The password was ‘John Bull’. If we became separated each man was to make due south for the river.’ The survivors kept contact by holding hands or grasping the tail of the airborne smock of the man in front. Some groups became split due to enemy fire or contact with enemy patrols, as well as by the inevitable stopping and starting. From across the river the heavy guns of the 2nd Army began their comforting barrage to cover the withdrawal. The C.R.A. had sent a fire plan for covering the withdrawal to XXX Corps; and the guns of a battery of 7 Medium Regiment, a troop of 84 Medium Regiment, 43rd Divisional Artillery, 419 Heavy Battery and 64 Medium Regiment were all firing before the night was over. The heavy bombardment appeared to the Germans as cover for a crossing of the river in strength by reinforcements. A number of German machine-guns in the woods or on the edge of the fields near Oosterbeek caused a certain amount of confusion. ‘We heard a German challenge,’ says one account, ‘and then a second or two
later a blaze of light some fifty yards away, into which, after moving to a flank, we flung hand grenades.’

  A road running east and west across the base of the perimeter was the start line and at 2145 the first troops (those positioned in the north, the KOSB) started to cross on their way down to the river. The eastern route ran past a red-roofed farmhouse just to the west of the Old Rectory and the western route was 300 yards west of this route. The last troops, the Borders and South Staffords, would cross this line at midnight. German patrols were inside the perimeter and close to the two routes but the withdrawal went more or less as planned and for some hours the Germans did not realize that an evacuation was in progress. In some cases it was difficult to stick to the routes and some groups went astray. Two Bofors guns south of the river fired bursts of red tracer shells at 30-second intervals to indicate the outer limits of the lines of withdrawal.

  In driving wind and rain, a column of about forty or fifty men, with the fit helping the wounded, marched slowly into the night away from the farmhouse. Len Moss and Jenkins, the wounded soldier he was helping, were at the rear of their column, snaking out in huge lines, the men holding onto the one in front. Visibility was down to just four feet. The badly wounded left manning radio and machine gun posts resigned to their fate watched their comrades go. Moss and Jenkins passed two bandaged paratroopers occupying a Bren gun position under a tarpaulin, sheltering from the rain. Artillery fire went on in the distance. Red tracers could be seen in the sky to the south. There was white tape on the trees and rubble to show the retreating paratroopers where to go. It was a slow and sombre retreat, made all the more eerie by the strange silence. No one uttered a word unless necessary. They had old socks and material wrapped around their boots in an attempt to keep the noise down. Those that had them wore waterproof smocks. Soon the column was out of sight. Rain continued to drive down. The first hurdle presented itself very soon; a near solid five foot hedge which Moss had to push his wounded groaning colleague over. Jenkins rolled onto the top and fell over the other side into the mud, groaning as he hit his wounds. Moss climbed over the top and fell awkwardly too, causing Jenkins to groan even louder. He helped the man up but it was hard to tell who was in a worse way. Hurrying on they caught up with the rest of the column. In the darkness, off the path, someone called out. It was a young paratrooper, badly wounded by the sound of it. He was in great pain, weeping in fear and panic. The continuous pitiful cries made the marching column uneasy, but most men just put their heads down and tried to ignore it. When Moss passed by the cries, he started to break off from the column to investigate. He could just make out the prone shape of a paratrooper lying in a ditch, reaching out, when a hand landed upon his shoulder. It belonged a hard-looking sergeant who had not shaved or washed in days. Reluctantly, Moss does as he was told and rejoined the column and supported Jenkins again. The pitiful cries of the young paratrooper were soon blotted out by the rain. Later the column came to a halt. Moss and Jenkins were still at the back, soaked to the skin and shivering. Up ahead at the front of the column they could hear the sounds of vociferous arguing. A torch went on and off and it soon became clear that whoever was map reading was not making a very good job of it. The sergeant and several other soldiers gathered around a map, trying to shield it from the rain while using a torch to illuminate it. The hushed and muffled arguments suddenly got louder; more boisterous. He seemed to be talking mainly to a private. Momentarily anyway the arguments ceased and the column started moving again off into the night.