Operation Market Garden Day 2

The second day of Operation Market Garden saw action that was immortalised in a famous scene in the film, A Bridge Too Far.

With the Devons and Dorsets on their way into town, Daimler armoured cars of ‘C’ Squadron, 2^nd Household Cavalry, moved off at first light Monday morning, watchful of the misty dense pine forests and flat sandy heaths they traversed, as they located the next German defensive obstacle in the village of Aalst just south of Eindhoven. Here they discovered the remnants of a German Fallschirmjaeger battalion: as many as 11 anti-guns, a 2 cm Light Flak battery, reportedly a couple of Jagdpanzer IVs, and possibly a Jagdpanther. Accompanying HCR was a sergeant from 101^st Airborne tasked with liaising with US forces at Eindhoven.

The Irish Guards moved up and cleared Aalst by mid-morning, but at the next bridge over the Dommel, Daimlers from C Squadron HCR were engaged by four 8.8cm Flak guns, which proved difficult to dislodge with both artillery and Shermans from No. 2 Squadron Irish Guards swapping shots. At this point, two other avenues of approach were recced to bypass the blockage. 32^nd Guards Brigade were ordered east to Leende and to advance north to Helmond via Heeze and Geldrop, which is where their advance stalled against heavy German resistance, leading to this eastern approach being abandoned.

There was initially more luck with the second approach, which saw the Grenadier Guards Group tasked with manoeuvring to the west around Eindhoven towards the bridge at Son, located just north of Eindhoven. Using their speed and elan, Major Bignall’s B Sqn 2^nd Household Cavalry Regiment met up with elements of the US 506^th PIR at Son by 1230. However, whilst the reconnaissance vehicles were able to negotiate the bridges and water obstacles with ease on their way to Son, the progress of the armoured Grenadiers in their 32-ton Shermans was slowed considerably by the limited weight-bearing capabilities of the local bridge system, with the advance only reaching a position level with Aalst by late evening.

By this time, the Irish Guards Group had pushed into Eindhoven, with heaving throngs of joyous civilians greeting the liberators, and then onto the destroyed bridge at Son by 1900hrs, following the German abandonment of the Flak 8.8cm position at Aalst by late afternoon and the US 101^st Airborne Division’s securing of the city of Eindhoven itself. By 2100hrs, a requested Bailey bridging unit had arrived, and construction over the Wilhelmina Canal was underway. To summarise, the situation for the Guards Armoured Division by late Monday was that the Grenadier Guards Group were rerouting back to Eindhoven, the Welsh Guards were in Geldrop, south-east Eindhoven, and the Coldstream Guards Group was further back at Valkenswaard. To give some idea of the scale of the operation, the rear of the Guards Armoured Division’s logistic tail was still wagging back into Belgium.

It was a different situation for 1^st Airborne Brigade at Arnhem as the Germans initial shock gave way to action, with quick reaction forces beginning to arrive in numbers and start to form Sperlinnie—blocking positions around the three Para Battalions’ positions, containing movement and preventing reinforcement from the rest of 1^st Airborne located at the dropping and landing zones. Here, Kampfgruppe Spindler’s 1,000 or so troops were supported by a couple of Jagdpanzer IVs, some Panzer Grenadier halftracks, an 8.8cm Flak gun, and a number of 2cm Flak guns, mainly from 9^th SS Hohenstaufen.

Reinforcements in the shape of other Kampfgruppe were also deployed, including KG Brinkmann, 10^th SS, on their way from the east and KG Knaust arriving from the north. The German aim was to contain the British until they had concentrated enough of their forces to destroy the British around Oosterbeek.

But at this stage of the action, immortalised in the famous scene in A Bridge Too Far, it is the armoured assault by Kampfgruppe Graebner over the Rijn bridge, which sticks in the memory. Moving from Elst seven miles to the southwest, Hauptsturmführer Graebner’s SS Aufklärungs Abteilung 9 KG moved off towards Arnhem. Reaching the south ramp of the bridge, Graebner, reputedly commanding from his captured Humber Scout Car, was relying on shock and surprise to carry the attack against the British paratroopers at the north end. Deploying his five heavy Sd.Kfz 234 armoured cars in column at the front, followed by up to eight halftracks mounting machine guns and short barrelled 7.5cm guns, along with a further eight trucks adorned with improvised armour made from sand-filled oil drums, Graebner’s force was initially misidentified by British lookouts as being advanced elements from the XXX Corps. However, the mistake was quickly rectified with a short artillery fire being called down on Graebner’s position. Once up the ramp, the bridge itself was 200m long, and Graebner’s force could expect some protection from the camber of the road and the bridge’s girders before they would be exposed to the full force of the British paratrooper’s fire. Another problem for Graebner’s force was maintaining a constant speed so that gaps in the column would not appear, allowing the vehicles to be isolated and picked off, which was not helped by the wrecks of four trucks that littered the road from the previous evening. Daisy-chain mines had been laid, but these appear to have been fairly ineffective.

With the armoured cars across the bridge and down the northern ramp, the open-topped halftracks now came into view. Firing from elevated positions in the buildings either side of the ramp, the Paras were able to pour fire down onto the occupants, and two 6-pdr anti-tank guns were able to engage them. Halfway down the ramp, one of the leading halftracks tried to reverse, causing a pileup with the following vehicles blocking the road.

With the AFVs and trucks now stalled on the road the paratroopers rained fire down on them with their collection of rifles, automatic weapons and PIATs to cries of ‘Whoa Mohammed’ – their North African campaign battle cry. Graebner was dead, and his attack had stalled with the survivors withdrawing back over the bridge littering the road with burning vehicles and their dead.