Arnhem by William F. Buckingham

Author:William F. Buckingham [Buckingham, William F.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781848681095
Publisher: Amberley Publishing
Published: 2019-03-14T00:00:00+00:00

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Fifty miles to the south at Son the end of the German Tuesday evening attack along the Wilhelmina Canal sparked a furious bout of redeployments and defence building that lasted into the early hours of Wednesday 20 September. In the immediate aftermath of the attack the 1st Battalion 327th Glider Infantry Regiment was brought down from the landing area to establish a defensive perimeter south of the Wilhelmina Canal, reinforced with two more 57mm anti-tank guns from the 81st Airborne Anti-Aircraft Battalion and augmented by a ‘narrow minefield’ laid by a platoon from the 326th Airborne Engineer Battalion. As the partial delivery of the third lift had left the glider battalion understrength, the 2nd Battalion 506th Parachute Infantry was brought up from Eindhoven and deployed east of Son on the north side of the Canal, and at 05:00 the 15th/19th Hussars were also put on standby to move south over the Son bridge to assist if necessary.84 These precautions proved to be prudent as Panzer Brigade 107 renewed the attack along the south side of the Wilhelmina Canal at 06:15, on the assumption that the US defenders would not be expecting an attack on exactly the same point so soon, and because Major von Maltzahn considered a daylight attack feasible owing to the amount of self-propelled flak deployed by his formation ‒ around 250 assorted 37mm, 20mm and 15mm weapons.85 The attack once again came during a US reconnaissance effort, this time involving two Jeeps carrying Captain T. P. Wilder and nine men from the Division Reconnaissance Platoon, who were despatched to locate the German concentration area and ascertain how and where they were moving men and vehicles across the canal. Departing while it was still dark, Captain Wilder’s party came upon an unidentified British Colonel after a mile or so, likely Lieutenant-Colonel Anthony Taylor commanding the 15th/19th Hussars, who was on the same mission in an armoured scout car. The three vehicles therefore travelled together for another mile or so before Taylor stopped in the pre-dawn gloom to allow a 150-strong party of what he assumed were US troops to cross the road. The infantry were in fact Germans and realised that the vehicles were enemy as Taylor and Wilder tried to quietly reverse back to where the road was wide enough to turn their vehicles around. The scout car and Jeeps then escaped unscathed under a fusillade of German fire, and the Captain Wilder set up two mutually supporting machine-gun posts back down the road toward Son that successfully held the German column back until the Reconnaissance Platoon was relieved later in the day.86

Back at the Son bridge Panzer Brigade 107’s 06:15 attack fell on the sector occupied by Captain Walter L. Miller’s Company C from the 327th Glider Infantry Regiment, which, due to the fragmented glider lift, consisted of just the Company HQ element, 1st Platoon and the Company mortar and machine-gun squads. The attackers overran and wiped out an outpost that nonetheless managed to raise the

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