Operation Market Garden Day 1

Eighty years ago, on Sunday 17th September 1944 Operation Market Garden commenced. 

1,534 transport aircraft, and nearly 500 gliders enacted Operation MARKET, dropping the first wave of paratroopers and glider units from three Allied airborne divisions at various strategic landing zones in German occupied Holland. Their objectives were to secure five main river crossings from Eindhoven to Arnhem in Field Marshal Montgomery’s ‘single thrust’ strategy.

The second part of the plan, GARDEN, involved armoured units from XXX Corps, led by Guards Armoured Division, who were to advance 60 miles and link up with 1^st Allied Airborne Army: 101^st Airborne, 82^nd Airborne and 1^st Airborne Divisions. The aim was to avoid the Westwall defences, threaten the heart of Germany’s industrial base, the Ruhr, and thrust into the north German plain. Supporting Guards Armoured Division in XXX Corps were the 43^rd Wessex and 50^th Northumbrian Infantry Divisions, and on the flanks, VIII Corps on the right and XII Corps on the left.

Arranged against the Allies were the remnants of German forces, which had managed to retreat from Normandy. Known as ‘the Ruckmarsch’, those units that had escaped the destruction in the Falaise pocket of mid-to-late August were retreating a step in front of the Allied advance into Belgium and northern France. After 5 September, the Germans started to firm up their defences at the same time as the Allies started to suffer supply shortages due to increasingly long logistic chains. What had looked like a rout was now becoming a more attritional grind through Belgium as the German defences started to harden.

The Germans started forming ad hoc units, Kampfgruppe, which were named after a specific commander; for instance, Kampfgruppe Walther, responsible for screening the Neerpelt bridgehead. Approximately ten understrength battalions were directly opposing XXX Corps, equipped with Panzerfausts and Panzerschrecks and a few anti-tank guns (PaK 40 and 7.62 PaK 36(r)). Due to boggy terrain, most of the guns had to be sited on or near roads. Armoured support was limited to 12 Jagdpanzer IV tank destroyers from SS Panzerjager Abteilung 10.

With the first wave of 1^st Allied Airborne Army already on the ground, a column of Irish Guards in their Shermans were prepped for the ground phase; GARDEN. Operating as the vanguard of the Guards Armoured Division, they were due to move off at H-Hour, 1430 hours on Sunday 17th, at the Neerpelt bridgehead. Supplied with six days of rations and additional fuel for 250 miles, their first objective, Eindhoven, was seventeen miles away. They were expected to reach it by 1700 to link up with elements from the US 101^st Airborne Division.

Mounted in their Shermans and half-tracks, the Irish Guards Group, consisting of 2^nd Armoured and 3^rd Infantry Battalions, watched as their advance was heralded by a 35-minute barrage from 350 artillery guns that targeted known German positions and then moved in two hundred-yard increments for a further twenty minutes towards Valkenswaard, seven miles away.

At 1455 hours, RAF Typhoons from the 2^nd Tactical Air Force were then tasked with providing fire support for the advance.  Ahead, Daimler scout and armoured cars of 2^nd Household Cavalry were recceing the route, whilst Royal Engineer and bridging assets were kept to the fore in anticipation of meeting destroyed bridges.

The artillery bombardment initially suppressed the entrenched German defences, but it didn’t last long. Ten minutes up the road, the rear Sherman Troop from No. 3 Squadron and the lead Shermans from No. 1 Squadron were ambushed. In just two minutes, six Shermans from No. 1 and three from No. 3 had been knocked out by Major Kerutt’s forces, and a deadly game of hit-and-run began with the surviving eight Jagdpanzer IVs from the wooded areas.

With burning hulks on the road and the verges mined, a grim battle raged with Shermans in defensive positions, supported by infantry, the 2^nd Devons, and 1^st Dorsets, close air support, and artillery barrages. By 1830, the bridge over the Dommel had been secured, and lead elements were able to push into Valkenswaard, reaching the main square by 2030hrs through burning buildings and cheering locals. By the end of day eleven bridge objectives had been secured by the 101^st and 82^nd Airborne Divisions, but the Guards were still 11 miles from Eindhoven.

The halt for the night has been seen as symptomatic of the Guards Armoured Division’s overoptimistic approach to the time it would take to push through to Eindhoven, compounded by XXX Corps’ Operational Order that ‘No units were permitted to move along the main axis of advance at night’. This provided the Germans with respite and the time to form up and prepare more extensive defences. Added to this was the rather sketchy intelligence on German dispositions and the very real lack of enough infantrymen to support the advance and hold the ground. Unfortunately, given the lack of German defences in front of them, the overnight stop in Valkenswaard was a missed opportunity to push on to Eindhoven across the water obstacles, keeping the Germans off balance and maintaining a high tempo.

Some sixty miles up the road at Arnhem, 1^st Parachute Brigade’s task was to proceed from their drop zones, situated to the west of Arnhem, and travel the six miles eastwards along three separate routes, LEOPARD, LION, and TIGER, to capture and hold the road bridge. Consisting of 1^st, 2^nd and 3^rd Parachute Battalions, each battalion could deploy 550 men and was equipped with the PIAT anti-tank weapon at the platoon level, with the attachment of a RA troop of 6-pounder anti-tank guns to provide a longer-range tank killing capability.

Thirty-two 6-pounder anti-tank guns along with sixteen 17-pounder anti-tank guns were dispatched to Arnhem, but a number of these were lost in transit or landing, and the survivors were employed defending the landing grounds.

Unfortunately, the three separate routes ended up dispersing rather than concentrating 1^st Parachute Brigade at their primary objective, the road bridge, with only elements of Lt. Col. Frost’s 2^nd Battalion securing the buildings at the north end of the bridge by the end of the first day. Distance from the DZ/LZ, command indecision, tactics, and communication issues had all diluted the initial surprise that 1^st Airborne Division’s landing to the west of Arnhem had created.

The first armoured contact at the bridge was with the captured French Panhard armoured cars of Hauptsturmführer Brinkmann’s SS Aufklärungs Abteilung 10, which were engaged by Frost’s men at 2000 hours and withdrew in surprise.

The following days would become a grim struggle for survival against an increasingly powerful adversary as the weight of two SS Panzer Divisions, the 9^th SS Panzer Division Hohenstaufen and the 10th SS Panzer Division Frundsberg, who were in the area refitting, would be brought to bear.