Total Victory was now out of the question.
But the tanks had to get to Oosterbeek where 1st Airborne were besieged in a pocket - what
the Germans called the “Hexenkessel” - or witches cauldron.
Over the next two days, the British race north from Nijmegen to get to the paratroopers and
the Germans race south from Arnhem to stop them.
If the British get to Oosterbeek, and if they can get reinforcements across the river, there
was still a chance they could claw their way to victory.
Intro graphic Last time, we saw Frost’s perimeter shrink
to a few houses, while Frost himself is taken prisoner.
1st Airborne was forced back into Oosterbeek to form some sort of defence.
3rd Battalion of the 504th heroically crossed the Waal and took the north side of Nijmegen
bridge as tanks of XXX Corps crossed the span.
German resistance continued in Nijmegen though for several more hours, preventing the British
from striking north.
And the 101st held against a second surprise attack from Panzer Brigade 107.
In this episode I’m going to cover two days, the 21st of September and the 22nd.
Let’s start with the 21st, a Thursday, Day 5 of Operation Market Garden.
At Arnhem bridge, the last gasps of 2nd Battalion could be heard as they held on in the hope
of relief… but it was all in vein.
Organised British resistance collapsed sometime in the morning of the 21st of September.
Although it’s worth mentioning that some lone British paratroopers continued to fight
on until the 23rd.
Arnhem was now totally within German hands.
The last radio message from the bridge, picked up by Germans and not by any Allied unit,
read [Out of Ammunition.
God Save the King.]
Frost’s men were finally overwhelmed at Arnhem and the Germans had access to Arnhem
bridge and the road south.
With the loss of Arnhem Bridge, total victory for the Allies was now impossible, but they
still had a chance to get to the British at Oosterbeek and get a bridge across the Rhine.
At least, that is what Urquhart hoped.
Around 3,600 paratroopers held the newly formed perimeter at Oosterbeek.
The important point to note at this time is that the Heveadorp ferry area was still within
British hands.
Unfortunately, the ferry itself had been sunk the day before, just in case it fell into
German hands, but the area was the best place near Oosterbeek to maybe form a bailey bridge
since there were roads close to the river.
Holding onto this area was therefore the last chance for victory.
It fell to a handful of men from 1st Border to keep Heveadorp in British hands.
At around 08:00, the Germans attacked from all sides of the Oosterbeek perimeter.
They used assault guns and tanks to support their infantry assaults, but there was an
unexpected stiffness to the British defences.
Unlike in the previous days actions, the British had a lot of troops in a very small mostly
wooded or urban area, and they were defending.
This gave them an advantage they hadn’t had in the past.
9th SS, championed by units like Kampfgruppe Spindler, attacked from the east.
German snipers did manage to infiltrate the British positions, since there weren’t enough
British to form a solid defensive line.
These snipers took their toll, but the British resisted strongly.
They took out some of the German tanks, or forced them back with heavy AT fire.
They even managed to capture a Sturmgeschütz assault gun from the Germans, but couldn’t
figure out how to use it, so had to abandon it.
However, 10th Battalion were decimated in the center during the day’s action with
only a handful of men able to fall back.
Despite this loss, the Germans maybe gained a couple hundred meters of ground the entire
day.
In the west, Von Tettau’s untrained troops also made little progress against the tight
British defence, with British sniper fire now taking a heavy toll on the Germans.
However the Heveadorp ferry area was captured by the Germans after a heavy fight, and with
it, the last chance of Operation Market Garden succeeding.
British supplies were once again dropping behind enemy lines.
The Paras set up all manner of signals on the ground to try and sway the RAF to drop
supplies to them, but they failed.
The RAF were now suffering heavy losses, resupplying their enemy, who were then using those supplies
to fight the Paras who the supplies were meant to be for.
But the good news for 1st Airborne was that, today, contact was finally made with XXX Corp.
And XXX Corps had artillery, which the belligerent paratroopers called on to stall the Germans.
Steel rain blunted several German attacks, and the Germans thought their artillery was
firing short, so they tried firing flares to stop their own artillery firing.
Nope, it was British artillery, and this would be a big reason for why the British would
continue to hold out at Oosterbeek over the next few days.
Like at Nijmegen, artillery was useful in preventing attacks from forming, and when
the British paras saw an attack forming, they’d simply call in artillery to disrupt the German
attacks.
More good news for 1st Airborne came in the afternoon.
At 17:00 a new armada covered the skies.
The Polish Independent Parachute Brigade descended from the heavens.
Now, weather in England had delayed the Poles from setting off.
They’d were originally meant to be dropped two days earlier, on Day 3 of the Operation,
and they were supposed to drop near Arnhem.
But the situation had changed dramatically since then, so Urquhart changed the plan at
the last minute to drop the Poles north of Driel, which was south of the Rhine and south
of the Oosterbeek Cauldron.
Their task was to support 1st Airborne as best they could, and if possible, get men
and supplies across the Rhine.
It was also to guard the approaches to the river so XXX Corps could maybe attempt a crossing.
However, things went wrong for the Poles right from the start.
A portion of the Brigade didn’t take off from England.
And whilst the Allies may have had air superiority over most of Europe, they did not over this
battlefield.
You see, in previous months, the RAF and US Air Force had dominated the skies, disrupting
German movements and logistics, and bombed German ground units at the request of Allied
units.
But because the US Air Force feared mixing fighters with transport planes, there were
little to no air support available for the Allied units during Operation Market Garden.
As a result, the German Luftwaffe was able to hunt down a portion of the American planes
taking the Poles to their destination.
General Urquhart was of the opinion after the war that the lack of air support was a
deciding factor in this battle.
Once the Poles reached Driel and parachuted to their destination, they realised two things.
One - only around a thousand men, perhaps less, of their entire Brigade had made it.
And two - that the British at Oosterbeek had lost the area around the Heveadorp Ferry.
This threw off the original plan to have the Poles support XXX Corps in crossing the Rhine.
Their only hope now was to try and assist 1st Airborne as best they could, and maybe
get troops across the river to them.
The Germans were taken completely by surprise by the Polish landing!
They feared the worst - that the Poles would get across the Rhine, or perhaps even swing
around their rear and capture the southern end of the Arnhem bridge!
This would cut off 9th SS’s retreat as XXX Corps would crush them from the front.
This was a fantasy because a thousand or so paratroopers weren’t capable of doing that.
But nonetheless, the Germans reacted quickly, sending all available reserves to form a blocking
line or “Sperrverband”, named after its commander, Harzer.
Sperrverband Harzer consisted of 5 Battalions, perhaps as many as 2,400 men, and now blocked
the route to Arnhem.
This force engaged the 1000 or so Poles in the Driel area as the Poles formed an all
round defense, waiting for XXX Corps to link up with them.
The impact of the Polish drop is significant.
Whilst they couldn’t get across the Rhine, because the Ferry was lost, they did draw
off all German reserves in the area.
According to Robert J. Kershaw in his book, ‘It Never Snows In September’, the Germans
had been planning to destroy the British at Oosterbeek in a planned attack on the 22nd.
But now had to take all their reserves to counter the Polish drop.
If this is true, the Polish saved 1st Airborne from complete annihilation.
The Polish drop would also give the Allies a last chance to cross the Rhine.
XXX Corps sent reconnaissance units forwards into the area known as “The Island”.
In this area, the main road was raised up above the surrounding fields, themselves split,
not by hedges, but by ditches and streams.
Basically, British tanks advancing this way would be exposed to anything the Germans could
fire at them, with little chance of retaliation.
So, even though XXX Corps resumed its attack towards Arnhem at 13:30, it soon got bogged
down in the fighting.
Five leading tanks were hit and set on fire by Panther and 88mm guns and the attack ground
to a halt.
With the tanks unable to proceed, it was decided that infantry should lead the attack.
And the 43rd Infantry Division was picked for this role.
Unfortunately, the 43rd Infantry Division was stuck at Nijmegen, and the traffic up
the one road, now referred to by the Americans as [Hell’s Highway] was awful.
So the attack was delayed.
The Germans were also sending a steady stream of reinforcements into the Island area, meaning
there was little chance of reaching either 1st Airborne or the Poles this day.
The 22nd of September was a Friday, and it was now Day 6 of Operation Market Garden.
Like the day before, there was still hope that XXX Corps could reach the paratroopers
at Oosterbeek and create some sort of victory.
That chance was lost today as Kampfgruppe Walther launched a counterattack, not in the
north at the Island, but at Veghel against the 101st.
They aimed to cut the corridor, as they had tried to do at Son a few days earlier.
Again it was the Panther tanks of Panzer Brigade 107 that headed the attack.
This time though, it was supported by Grenadiers, flak batteries, artillery, Fallschirmjaeger,
a Tank Destroyer Battalion, and more.
They would attack the right flank of the road - which was now nicknamed ‘Hell’s Highway’
by the Allies.
On the left side of the road, another formation - Kampfgruppe Huber - also went in on the
attack.
This had infantry, supported by artillery, AntiTank guns and even four Jagdpanther tank
destroyers.
This force would attack at Schijndel but aimed at Veghel.
Despite a shortage of artillery shells, this was a concerted attack and proved devastating
for the 101st and the British too.
Shortly after 09:00, the German attack went in.
Artillery pounded the American positions and the tanks of Kampfgruppe Walther moved off
ahead of the other infantry units.
Veghel was reached at around 11:00 with Panther tanks and Panzer Grenadiers cutting Hell’s
Highway to the north.
They then turned south to Veghel where a battle erupted with the American 501st Regiment.
On the other side of the road, Kampfgruppe Huber got into the outskirts of Schijndel,
where they were able to fire at the Veghel canal bridge.
The 506th Regiment, supported by British tanks, were able to push them back.
Equally, the 501st, supported by British tanks and an unending artillery barrage, halted
Kampfgruppe Walther.
The Germans found themselves unable to continue the attack as night fell, but they had cut
the corridor, and this meant that XXX Corps’ supplies and reinforcements wouldn’t get
through to the North.
And the British desperately needed infantry reinforcements in the north.
Some elements, including tanks, of 43rd Division managed to reach the Polish Independent Brigade
at Driel sometime in the evening.
But the Island still caused problems and an attack could not be made successfully towards
Arnhem.
Worse, tank units at Nijmegen that could be used to advance north, were sent south to
deal with the Veghel cut.
Clearly, the British attack was losing steam.
Lieutenant Colonel Charles MacKenzie - the staff officer who’d told Hicks he was in
charge of 1st Airborne when Urquhart was missing - crossed the Rhine in a rowing boat and spoke
to Polish commander Sosabowski.
He impressed upon Sosabowski the desperate situation in the Oosterbeek Cauldron, and
said that even a handful of reinforcements could make all the difference.
That night, 60 men from Sosabowski’s Brigade got across the river and reinforced the Oosterbeek
perimeter.
But 60 Polish paratroopers weren’t enough to change the course of the battle.
Harzer had decided that the British in the Oosterbeek pocket would be pounded into submission
by mortars and Nebelwerfers, rather than all out attacks.
There were a few reasons behind this change of tactics.
One was that a good portion of the German reinforcements had moved south to block the
Polish landing and the British tanks.
Essentially, the British pocket at Oosterbeek was now merely a distraction from the main
event further south.
Another reason was that the Germans left at Oosterbeek were mostly untrained conscripts,
backed by only a few veteran kampfgruppen.
These troops would not be capable of mounting the assaults needed to root the British out
of their strong points.
Attacks were still carried out, but it wasn’t the all-out storming of positions that would
overwhelm the Paras from all sides kind of attack the British were expecting.
As a result, the British pocket remained virtually unchanged and the Paras continued to hold.
So, the battle had shifted in the last couple of days.
Frost’s men fought on until the very end.
The Poles had landed, causing the Germans to move reinforcements south, perhaps saving
1st Airborne from annihilation.
XXX Corps had problems linking up with the Poles, especially since Hell’s Highway had
been cut near Veghel.
And with the loss of the Heveadorp Ferry, it now seemed unlikely that the Allies could
still achieve a victory.
If you were Urquhart, and you had the choice of choosing the Polish landing zone, where
would you drop them?
Would you choose Driel?
Would you land them south of Arnhem, or would you land them somewhere on the North side
of the Rhine to support 1st Airborne?
Let me know in the comments below.
Thanks for watching, thanks for subscribing, bye for now.