Bridge Too Far (22 page)

I’m in trouble!”  The next instant, he cast off.  “We seemed to come to

a dead stop in the air,” Nunn remembers.  “Then the glider’s nose

dropped and we careened earthward with the tow rope streaming alongside

like a broken kite string.”  Nunn sat “petrified,” listening to the

wind screaming along the fuselage, “hoping that the chains holding a

jeep in the glider would take the strain.”  Then he heard the pilot

warn them to “Brace up, blokes.  Here we come.”  The glider hit the

ground, bounced, hit once more, and came slowly to a stop.  In the

sudden

silence, Nunn heard the pilot ask, “Are you blokes all right?” Everyone was, and the men were returned to Keevil to fly out in the second lift on September 18.

Others were not so fortunate.  Tragedy struck one glider serial over Wiltshire.  R.a.f. Sergeant Walter Simpson, sitting in the plexiglass turret of a Stirling bomber, was watching the Horsa glider trailing along behind.  Suddenly, “The glider just seemed to part in the middle; it looked as if the back end just dropped off the front.”  Horrified, Simpson shouted to the captain, “My God, the glider’s coming apart!” The tow rope broke and the front of the glider sank “like a rock falling to earth.”  The Stirling left formation, gradually lost height, and turned back to locate the wreckage.  The front half was spotted in a field.  The tail was nowhere to be seen.  Marking the spot, the crew returned to Keevil and drove by jeep to the crash location.  There, Simpson saw what appeared “like a match box that had been stepped on.” The bodies of the men had remained inside.  Simpson had no way of estimating how many dead there were—“it was just a mass of arms, legs and bodies.”

By the time the last serials reached the English coast—the northern streams passing over the checkpoint at Aldeburgh, the southern columns flying over Bradwell Bay—thirty troop- and equipment-carrying gliders were down.  Tug engine failure, broken tow ropes, and, in places, heavy clouds had caused the abortions.  Although by military standards the operation had begun with eminent success—casualties were light, and many of the men and most of the downed cargo would be flown in on later lifts—the losses were sure to hurt.  On this vital day when every man, vehicle and piece of equipment was important to General Urquhart, twenty-three of his glider loads were already lost.  Not until the Arnhem force reached its drop and landing zones would commanders discover just how crucial these losses would be.

Now, as the long sky trains swarmed out over the English Channel and

the land fell behind, a new kind of expectancy began to permeate the

armada.  The “Sunday outing” mood was fast disappearing.  As American

serials passed over the seaside

resort of Margate, Private Melvin Isenekev of the 101/ Airborne saw the white cliffs of Dover off to the right.  From the distance, they looked like the wintry hillsides of the Adirondacks near his home in upper New York State.  Corporal D. Thomas of the 1/ British Airborne, staring out through an open plane door until his country’s coastline disappeared, felt his eyes fill with tears.

From the marshaling points at March and Hatfield, the airborne columns had been aided by various navigational devices: radar beacons, special hooded lights and radio direction-finding signals.  Now, beacons on ships in the North Sea began to guide the planes.  Additionally, strings of launches—17 along the northern route; 10 below the southern flight path—stretched away across the water.  To Flight Sergeant William Tompson, at the controls of a plane towing a four-ton Horsa glider, “there wasn’t much navigating to do.  The launches below us were set out like stepping stones across the Channel.”  But these fast naval vessels were much more than directional aids.  They were part of a vast air-sea rescue operation, and they were already busy.

In the thirty-minute trip across the North Sea, men saw gliders bobbing on the gray waters as low-flying amphibious planes circled to mark their positions until rescue launches could reach the spot.  Lieutenant Neville Hay, of the Phantom fact-gathering liaison unit, watched “with complete detachment two downed gliders and another ditching.”  He tapped his corporal on the shoulder.  “Have a look down there, Hobkirk,” Hay shouted.  The corporal glanced down and, as Hay remembers, “I could almost see him turn green.”  Hay hurriedly reassured the man.  “There’s nothing to worry about.  Look at the boats already picking them up.”

Staff Sergeant Joseph Kitchener, piloting a glider, was equally

impressed by the speed of the air-sea rescue launch that came alongside

a floating glider he had spotted.  “They picked up the men so fast I

don’t even think they got their feet wet,” he recalls.  Men in a glider

piloted by Staff Sergeant Cyril Line were less fortunate—but lucky to

be alive.  In an aerial train of swaying black Horsas, Line observed

one combination drop slowly out of

position.  Mesmerized, he watched the Horsa cut loose and descend almost leisurely toward the sea.  A ring of white foam appeared as it hit the water.  He wondered “who the poor devils were.”  At that moment, the starboard propellers on the Stirling pulling his glider slowed, and stopped.  As the plane’s speed was reduced Line found himself “in the embarrassing position of overtaking my own tug.”  He immediately released the tow line and his copilot called out, “Stand by for ditching!”  From behind in the cabin, they could hear rifle butts crashing against the side of the glider’s plywood fuselage as the frantic passengers tried to open up an escape route.  Rapidly losing altitude, Line looked back and was horrified to see that the desperate troopers had “cut through the top of the glider and the sides were just beginning to go.”  Line screamed out, “Stop that!  Strap yourselves in!”  Then, with a heavy thud, the glider hit the water.  When Line surfaced, he saw the wreckage floating some thirty feet away.  There was no sign whatever of the cabin, but every one of his passengers was accounted for.  Within minutes, all were picked up.

In all, eight gliders ditched safely during this first lift; once they were on the water, the air-sea rescue service, in a spectacular performance, saved nearly all crews and passengers.  Once again, however, it was Urquhart’s force that was whittled down.  Of the eight gliders, five were Arnhem-bound.

Apart from some long-range inaccurate shelling of a downed glider, there was no serious enemy opposition during the Channel crossing.  The 101/ Airborne Division, following the southern route, which would bring it over Allied-held Belgium, was experiencing an almost perfect flight.  But as the Dutch coastline appeared in the distance, the 82nd and the British troopers in the northern columns began to see the ominous telltale gray and black puffs of flak—German antiaircraft fire.  As they flew on, at an altitude of only 1,500 feet, enemy guns firing from the outer Dutch isles of Walcheren, North Beveland and Schouwen were clearly visible.  So were flak ships and barges around the mouth of the Schelde.

Escorting fighters began peeling out of formation, engaging the

gun positions.  In the planes men could hear spent shrapnel scraping against the metal sides of the C-47’s.  Veteran paratrooper Private Leo Hart of the 82nd heard a rookie aboard his plane ask, “Are these bucket seats bullet proof?”  Hart just glowered at him; the light metal seats wouldn’t have offered protection against a well-thrown stone.  Private Harold Brockley, in another C-47, remembers one replacement wondering, “Hey, what are all those little black and gray puffs below?”  Before anyone could answer, a piece of shrapnel came through the bottom of the ship and pinged harmlessly against a mess kit.

Veteran troopers hid their fears in different ways.  When Staff Sergeant Paul Nunan saw the “familiar golf balls of red tracer bullets weaving up toward us” he pretended to doze off.  Tracers barely missed Private Kenneth Truax’s plane.  “No one said anything,” he recalls.  “There was only a weak smile or two.”  Sergeant Bill Tucker, who had gone through antiaircraft fire in Normandy, was haunted by a “horrible fear of getting hit from underneath.”  He felt “less naked” sitting on three air-force flak jackets.  And Private Rudolph Kos remembers that he felt “like sitting on my helmet, but I knew I would need it on my head.”

One man was more concerned with the danger within than that without.  Copilot Sergeant Bill Oakes, struggling to hold his Horsa glider steady in the air, looked back to see how his passengers were faring.  To his horror, three troopers were “calmly sitting on the floor brewing up a mess tin of tea over a small cooker.  Five others were standing around with their mugs, waiting to be served.”  Oakes was galvanized into action.  He handed the controls over to the pilot and hurried aft, expecting the glider’s plywood floor to catch fire at any minute.  “Or, worse still, the mortar bombs in the trailer we were carrying could explode.  The heat from that little field stove was terrific.”  He was livid with anger.  “We’re just having a little brew up,” one of the troopers told him soothingly.  Oakes hurried back to the cockpit and reported the matter to the pilot, Staff Sergeant Bert Watkins.  The pilot smiled.  “Tell ‘em not to forget us when the tea’s ready,” he said.  Oakes sank into his seat and buried his head in his hands.

Although the escort fighters silenced most of the coastal flak positions, some planes were damaged and one tug, its glider and a troop-carrier C-47 were shot down over Schouwen Island.  The tug crash-landed, and its crew was killed.  The glider, an 82nd Airborne Waco, broke up in mid-air and may have been seen by Major Dennis Munford, flying in a British column nearby.  He watched, aghast, as the Waco disintegrated and “men and equipment spilt out of it like toys from a Christmas cracker.”  Others saw the troop-carrier go down.  Equipment bundles attached beneath the C-47 were set on fire by tracer bullets.  “Yellow and red streamers of flame appeared in the black smoke,” recalls Captain Arthur Ferguson, who was flying in a nearby plane.  Within minutes the C-47 was blazing.  First Lieutenant Virgil Carmichael, standing in the door of his plane, watched as paratroopers jumped from the stricken aircraft.  “As our men were using camouflaged chutes, I was able to count them as they left and saw that all had escaped safely.”

The pilot, although the aircraft was engulfed in flames, somehow kept the plane steady until the paratroopers jumped.  Then Carmichael saw one more figure leave.  “The Air Corps used white parachutes, so I figured he had to be the crew chief.”  He was the last man out.  Almost immediately the blazing plane nosedived and, at full throttle, plowed into a flooded area of Schouwen Island below.  Carmichael remembers that, “on impact, a white chute billowed out in front of the plane, probably ejected by the force of the crash.”  To First Lieutenant James Megellas the sight of the downed C-47 had a “terrible effect.”  As jumpmaster in his plane, he had previously told his men that he would give the command “to stand up and hook up five minutes before reaching the drop zone.”  Now, he immediately gave the order.  In many other planes, jumpmasters reacted as Megellas had and gave similar commands.

To them, the battle was already joined—and, in fact, the drop and

landing zones for the airborne men were now only thirty to forty

minutes away.  2

Incredibly, despite the night’s widespread bombing, and now the aerial attacks against Arnhem, Nijmegen and Eindhoven, the Germans failed to realize what was happening.  Throughout the chain of command, attention was focused on a single threat: the renewal of the British Second Army’s offensive from its bridgehead over the Meuse-Escaut Canal.

“Commanders and troops, myself and my staff in particular, were so overtaxed and under such severe strain in the face of our difficulties that we thought only in terms of ground operations,” recalls Colonel General Kurt Student.  Germany’s illustrious airborne expert was at his headquarters in a cottage near Vught, approximately twenty-one miles northwest of Eindhoven, working on “red tape—a mountain of papers that followed me even into the battlefield.”  Student walked out onto a balcony, watched the bombers for a few moments, then, unconcerned, returned to his paper work.

Lieutenant Colonel Walter Harzer, commanding officer of the 9th SS

Panzer Division Hohenstaufen, had by now transferred as much equipment

as he intended to his rival, General Heinz Harmel of the 10th SS Panzer

Division Frundsberg.  Harmel, on Bittrich’s orders and without Model’s

knowledge, was by now in Berlin.  The last flatcars containing Harzer’s

“disabled” armored personnel carriers were ready to leave on a 2 P.m.

train for Germany.  Having been bombed repeatedly from Normandy onward,

Harzer “paid little attention to planes.”  He saw nothing unusual about

the huge bomber formations over Holland.  He and his

veteran tankers knew “it was routine to see bombers traveling east to Germany and returning several times a day.  My men and I were numb from constant shelling and bombing.”  With Major Egon Skalka, the 9th Panzer’s chief medical officer, Harzer set out from his headquarters at Beekbergen for the Hoenderloo barracks, about eight miles north of Arnhem.  In a ceremony before the 600-man reconnaissance battalion of the division, he would decorate its commander, Captain Paul [email protected], with the Knight’s Cross.  Afterward there would be champagne and a special luncheon.

At II SS Panzer Corps headquarters at Doetinchem, Lieutenant General Wilhelm Bittrich was equally unconcerned about the air attacks.  To him, “it was routine fare.”  Field Marshal Walter Model, in his headquarters at the Tafelberg Hotel in Oosterbeek, had been watching the bomber formations for some time.  The view at headquarters was unanimous: the squadrons of Flying Fortresses were returning from their nightly bombing of Germany, and as usual, other streams of Fortresses in the never-ending bombing of Germany were enroute east heading for other targets.  As for the local bombing, it was not uncommon for bombers to jettison any unused bombs over the Ruhr and often, as a result, into Holland itself.  Model and his chief of staff, Lieutenant General Hans Krebs, believed the bombardment and low-level strafing were “softening-up operations”—a prelude to the opening of the British ground offensive.