Arnhem Courage
During the ill-fated battle at Arnhem, Operation Market Garden, no less than five VCs were awarded.
It was 19 September 1944, day three of Operation Market Garden, and the 1st Parachute Brigade launched its attack against Arnhem Bridge, held by Major John Frost’s battalion of the Parachute Regiment. The 1st Battalion, the Parachute Regiment, led the attack supported by the 3rd Battalion. The 2nd Battalion the South Staffordshire Regiment was on the 1st Battalion’s left flank. The 11th Battalion of the Paras followed behind.
The attack met heavy fire and the Paras and South Staffs were cut to pieces. The 4th Parachute Brigade suffered similar losses in the woods around Wolfheze, and Major General R E Urquhart, Commanding Officer of the 1st Airborne Division, had no choice but to withdraw the remnants of his forces into a defensive perimeter at Oosterbeek, a suburb of Arnhem. Here, Urquhart hoped to maintain and hold a bridgehead until ground forces arrived.
As the 1st Parachute Brigade withdrew to the eastern side of Oosterbeek, German armour followed in cautious pursuit. Faulty intelligence failed to detect the presence of the 9th SS-PanzerDivision Hohenstaufen at Arnhem, the British being unprepared and illequipped to counter such force.
Just short of Oosterbeek, the brigade was met by Lieutenant-Colonel William ‘Sheriff’ Thompson, commanding 1st Airlanding Light Regiment, Royal Artillery. As his guns were in position only a short distance to the rear, he asked the Paras and South Staffs to establish a defensive line, facing the German advance. There, on the eastern perimeter of Oosterbeek, the men of the South Staffs awaited the inevitable attack.
The South Staffs had eight anti-tank guns at Oosterbeek, but at 11.15 hours on the 19th these were called forward to the defensive screen organized by Thompson and included a single 17-pounder. Twenty-two-year-old LanceSergeant John Daniel ‘Jack’ Baskeyfield, of the Support Company’s Anti-tank Platoon, was part of this screen with a section of two 6-pounders. His guns were placed on the Y-junction of two roads – Benedendorpsweg and Acacialaan, the six-pounders
facing up Acacialaan, which joined the Benedendorpsweg from the north, covering the likely enemy approach from open ground to the north-east. His right flank was covered by another antitank gun commanded by Lance Sergeant Mansell.
By nightfall, losses of the 1st Parachute Brigade were so severe that it could only muster 416 men, of which the South Staffs numbered just 150. The Brigade came under mortar and artillery fire throughout the night, the 17-pounder put out of action. The next morning all infantry in the eastern sector of the Oosterbeek perimeter was put under command of Thompson and designated ‘Thompson Force’.
Soon after dawn on Wednesday, 20 September 1944, the Germans pushed hard against the eastern perimeter with infantry, tanks, and self-propelled guns. According to Major Lonsdale of the 11th Battalion, Parachute Regiment, it was about 06.00 hours when the first attack came:
“I was standing at the doorway of my HQ, a house set back from a crossroads, when I heard a shout ‘Look out, they’re coming’, and sure enough, they were. A quick glance showed me three German tanks edging out of a wood two hundred yards away. Immediately, we let drive at them with every automatic we had.”
It was German mortar fire, at times reaching a density of 50 bombs a minute,
that caused the heaviest casualties. There was no safe cover from it, not even in a well-dug and well-sited slit trench. One survivor said some of the dug outs looked more like graves than trenches.
As the enemy advanced, Private Jim Gardner of the 1st Battalion, the Parachute Regiment, was involved in the close-quarter fighting:
“They came at us with all the fury they could muster. We got out of our trenches to meet the infantry and more than held our own, but we gave ground against the tanks. Between the mist from the river, the explosions of mortars and shells, etc., we could not see one another after a while – it was a mixture of dust, smoke, and fog. I felt oddly alone, when out of the smoke, etc., a figure emerged with rifle and bayonet out in front of him. I waited a while to be sure who was there. At about four to five feet, I could see by the helmet he was one of ‘theirs’. I turned to face him, but he stopped in his tracks and, realising who was confronting him, turned, and scarpered back inside the smoke.”
Not all the men of the South Staffs were able to withstand the relentless pressure of the German attack. Glider pilot Sergeant Bob Leeder:
“I saw a woman with a pram running down the road towards me. Following her were ten to fifteen more civilians. Behind them, a batch of 30 to 40 South Staffs. Most of them didn’t have rifles, but I saw two, who did have them, throw them down on the roadside as they ran. A jeep burst through this group and, when it was clear, stopped, and an officer got out and started firing his revolver in the air. Everyone stopped, except the woman with the pram. The officer spoke to the South Staffs. I couldn’t hear what he said, but it must have been something like, ‘Get back, you silly sods’, because they turned about, and he got an NCO to form them up and march them back. I asked the jeep driver what was happening. He said, ‘Flamethrowers up there, and it started a panic’.”
German tanks pressed forward against the eastern perimeter, firing down from
a railway embankment straight into positions held by the British. The German self-propelled guns attacked over the Benedendorpsweg and the South Staffs anti-tank guns immediately came into play, the rest of the battalion ordered to pull back to 300 yards north-east of Oosterbeek church.
Private John Wilkinson of the 2nd Antitank Platoon, ‘S’ Company, recalled: “…my gun commander Corporal Wade called for a brew of tea. I went to the jeep that was hidden between two semi-detached houses. I whipped across the Acacialaan to make a brew and came back with the tea and a hot treacle pudding, which was part of our rations. I felt like a waiter, and after serving our crew, we all felt ready for action.
“As I was packing the kit back into the jeep a machine-gun opened-up using armour-piercing bullets. Although I’m not very big, I cleared the back of the jeep and landed on top of a paratrooper who had dug a trench down the side of the vehicle. With oil and petrol pouring from the jeep, I told him to get out before we all went up in flames. This was the start of an attack and Jerry started to knock the hell out of us with his 88s.
“Back at our gun, we were firing like hell. When we ran out of shells, there was little we could do. A Para sergeant ordered us back to the church. Just before we ran out of ammo, there was this terrific amount of noise on our left where
Jack’s [Baskeyfield] gun was positioned overlooking the railway bridge. I heard later when I was at the church, that he stopped two SPs and one or two Tiger tanks that came up. His own gun was hit, so he dashed over to Corporal Hutton’s gun to his left and, although wounded, operated it single handed knocking out one Tiger and was hit by the other.”
Baskeyfield’s heroism, outlined by Wilkinson, was set out in detail in the citation for his Victoria Cross, below.
The fact that the surviving men in his vicinity were held together and kept in action was due to his magnificent example and outstanding courage. The successful defence of the eastern perimeter had prevented the Germans from cutting the 1st Airborne Division off from the Rhine. Had the German attack succeeded, the entire division would have had no possible avenue of retreat across the river. What had already become a disaster would have turned into catastrophic defeat.
The scene of Baskeyfield’s action was seen on the 25 September by Corporal Raymond Corneby of 18 Platoon ‘C’ Company:
“After I was taken prisoner, the Germans brought us behind the frontlines. As a lot of our lads were brought to Arnhem, a few others and I were kept behind to bury some of our comrades still lying around in the area. I distinctly remember a headless body under one of our 6-pounder guns. Since there were no identity discs on the body, I took out his AB 64 [Army Pay book] and noted it had a 50 ... Army number, originally a North Staffs number. I took the body to a house where the Germans had some kind of HQ, and there it was buried in the garden. After I came back to England in the spring of 1945, I reported this.”
It is quite likely the body Corneby helped bury was that of Baskeyfield who today lies in an unknown grave.