AIRBORNE UNDER SIEGE ARNHEM

For nine days the heroic 1st Airborne fought desperately, waiting vainly for relief that never came

- ANTHONY TUCKER-JONES

In the early hours of 26 September 1944, the exhausted survivors of British 1st Airborne began to evacuate the northern bank of the Rhine. This was the shameful culmination of Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery’s Operation Market Garden. It had commenced nine days earlier with high hopes of ‘bouncing the Rhine’ at Arnhem and thrusting into the Ruhr – the Nazis’ industrial heartland. Instead, it turned into a nightmare race against time as Lieutenant General Brian Horrocks’ British 30th Corps fought to first reach the US 101st Airborne Division at Eindhoven and then the US 82nd Airborne Division at Nijmegen. The third step of relieving the British 1st Airborne Division at Arnhem and Oosterbeek infamously became a ‘bridge too far’. Horrocks failed thanks to German resistance at Nijmegen and the presence of the much-depleted 2nd SS Panzer Corps at Arnhem.

Although Lieutenant Colonel John Frost and his gallant 2nd Battalion, 1st Parachute Brigade seized Arnhem bridge on 17 September, General Roy Urquhart with the rest of his 1st Airborne at Oosterbeek could not reach him. Driving Frost from Arnhem became a priority for Field Marshal Walter Model once Horrocks’ 30th Corps had reached Nijmegen on 19 September. “Since the British won’t come out of their holes, we’ll blast them out,” ordered SS-Brigadier Heinz Harmel, commander of the 10th SS Panzer Division. He instructed his gunners to leave nothing “but a pile of bricks”.