Magnificent Disaster: The Failure Of Market Garden, The Arnhem Operation, September 1944 by David Bennett

Author:David Bennett
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Operation Market Garden, World War II, 82nd All American Airborne, US Army, eBook, Airborne, WWII, Military, ETO, History
ISBN: 9781932033854
Publisher: Casemate
Published: 2008-03-15T04:00:00+00:00

8

POLONIA RESTITUTA

The terrain north and west of Nijmegen was not suitable for an armored advance. North to Elst, stretches of the road were on top of a dyke, with deep ditches at the sides. Anti-tank guns concealed in woods adjacent to the road would make Adair’s armor a sitting target. If the road were blocked, it was sometimes possible to move along the embankments, partly for concealment and partly to bypass the obstacle. Along these stretches, maneuvering was impossible, something well known to the Dutch military establishment. Such conditions pertained also among some stretches of the western route to the Rhine through Oosterhout, though here the main problem was small and muddy roads, again with ditches at the sides, from which stuck vehicles could not be easily extricated. The heavier the vehicle, such as the DUKW amphibians, the worse the going, something which afflicted the Germans’ heavy tanks as much as it did the British. Added to this, the weather worsened from D+4 on, making the going even tougher.

As armored vehicles crossed south over the Arnhem road bridge on the afternoon of D+3, the continuing German priority was to block the northward progress of the British ground forces. When the Poles landed on the south bank of the Rhine around 1700 hours on D+4, Harzer feared that they would head for the Arnhem road bridge. The Germans took the Polish parachute drop so seriously that Harzer was made responsible for opposing the Poles south of the Rhine as well as 1st Airborne north of it.

For SS-Colonel Lippert on the western face of 1st Airborne’s perimeter, the concern was that the Poles would reinforce the British by crossing the Rhine on the Driel-Heaveadorp ferry, which he had not yet captured (but unknown to him had already been destroyed). There was a grand mix of false expectations: Lippert had correctly divined the purpose of the Poles’ mission, but neither he nor Sosabowski before the drop was aware that the ferry was gone. Harzer anticipated a Polish advance along the south bank of the Rhine to the road bridge, but this was never Sosabowski’s intention, even after he ascertained that the ferry was lost.

Harzer was ordered to set up a Sperrverband, or blocking line, running from Elst up to the Rhine. In addition to the troops at his disposal, Kampfgruppen Knaust and Brinkmann were in Elst, under the command of Frundsberg. Bittrich detached Brinkmann and put his Kampfgruppe under the command of Hohenstaufen (Harzer) to lead an attack on the Poles. Harzer then got a regimental HQ from Model and the blocking line became Sperrverband Gerhard, with its HQ at Elden. Knaust was given responsibility for the sector from Ressen in an arc southwest to Oosterhout and the Rhine. The Germans then had a line to hold XXX Corps advancing north and northwest and a blocking line to prevent the Poles from moving toward the Arnhem road bridge.

For Horrocks on the morning of D+4, the aim was still the Rhine at the Arnhem road bridge, the north end of which, as far as he knew, was still held by 1st Airborne.

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