MARKET GARDEN
Inside the 1st airborne division’s failure at arnhem
William F. Buckingham uncovers the real reasons for 1st Airborne’s disastrous failure at Arnhem
For 75 years the underlying reasons for the failure at Arnhem have gone largely unremarked upon, despite being in plain sight
The Battle of Normandy effectively ended on 21 August 1944 with the closing of the Falaise Gap, 76 days after Allied troops first set foot on the D-day landing beaches. The battle cost the Germans around 10,000 dead and 50,000 prisoners along with almost all their heavy equipment and vehicles, and an estimated tide of 20,000 survivors fled eastward as far as southern Holland, where the local civilians dubbed Tuesday 5 September ‘Dolle Dinsdag’ or ‘Mad Tuesday’.
The Allied pursuit began on 28 August with British tanks reaching Arras on 1 September, Brussels was liberated two days later and by 6 September the advance was approaching the Dutch border in the face of stiffening German resistance. In an effort to maintain the momentum Allied Supreme Commander General Dwight D. Eisenhower authorised Operation Market Garden, which was intended to bypass the Westwall fixed defences guarding the German frontier and open a route into the North German Plain and thus the heart of the Third Reich.
Operation Market was the largest airborne operation in history and involved landing 40,000 men from three Allied Airborne Divisions along a 60-mile corridor running north from the Belgian border to the Dutch city of Arnhem on the Lower Rhine, tasked to seize and hold 17 bridges across eight separate waterways starting at the Wilhelmina Canal just north of Eindhoven. The operation began on 17 September 1944 with the US 101st Airborne Division assigned to secure the southern third of the corridor, the centre portion including the city of Nijmegen was the responsibility of the US 82nd Airborne Division and the furthest third was allotted to the British 1st Airborne Division.
The ground component of the Operation, codenamed Garden, tasked British 30 Corps – spearheaded by the Guards Armoured Division – to break through the coalescing German defence on the Belgian border and advance rapidly up the Airborne Corridor, relieving each crossing in turn. All this was scheduled to take a perhaps optimistic 48 hours. In the event the two US Airborne divisions secured all their allotted objectives, although the first bridge across the Wilhelmina Canal was destroyed, prompting a 36-hour delay compounded by the tardy performance of 30 Corps, while the road and rail bridges across the River Waal at Nijmegen were not secured until the evening of 20 September, 24 hours behind schedule.
Matters went most awry at Arnhem however, despite a near flawless delivery. The 1st Airborne Division’s plan was to despatch the
1st Airborne Reconnaissance Squadron and the
1st Parachute Brigade to secure the objectives in Arnhem. The bulk of the first lift would remain at the landing area until the second lift arrived the following day, after which the entire division would also move into Arnhem.
In the event only a small part of the 1st Parachute Brigade managed to slip through to the north end of the Arnhem road bridge, where they held the objective for 80 rather than 48 hours before being overwhelmed after an epic siege. The remainder of the 1st Parachute Brigade fought itself to destruction trying to reach the bridge before being driven back to the main body of the 1st Airborne Division, which was blocked and surrounded at Oosterbeek, midway between the landing area and Arnhem.
After another epic six-day siege that reduced Oosterbeek to rubble and the failure of three attempts to push reinforcements across the Lower Rhine, around 2,500 survivors were evacuated in small boats on the night of 25-26 September 1944. The evacuation effectively marked the end of Operation Market Garden.
“THE REMAINDER OF THE 1ST PARACHUTE BRIGADE FOUGHT ITSELF TO DESTRUCTION TRYING TO REACH THE BRIDGE”
Popular reasons for the failure
The search for reasons and outright excuses for the 1st Airborne Division’s failure at Arnhem began virtually the moment Market Garden ended, and several recurring favourites have emerged over the years. These include: landing the division in daylight, spreading the division landing across three lifts on successive days, and the seven mile or so distance between the landing area and Arnhem. All of these were mandated by external factors however, and they did not impact adversely on events at Arnhem.
First, because Market was launched in a no-moon period, a daylight insertion was unavoidable because paratroopers and glider pilots alike required a degree of natural light to judge depth and distance for landing. It should also be noted that the Market first lift was widely hailed as the most successful to date by experienced commanders from all three Airborne Divisions.
Second, the 1st Airborne was not alone in being delivered in multiple lifts spread over several days simply because there were insufficient transport aircraft available to deliver three complete Airborne divisions simultaneously. The shortening autumn days ruled out flying more than one lift per day because it would involve taking off or returning in darkness, and while RAF aircrew were trained in night flying and navigation techniques, their USAAF counterparts largely were not and also lacked trained navigators and ground crew.
Third, the landing area was selected because it was the closest site to Arnhem suitable for large-scale glider landings, as contemporary maps show. While the area at the south end of the Arnhem road bridge could have been used as a parachute landing zone, the planners considered it too soft and riven with deep, wide drainage ditches for safe use by heavily laden gliders. Furthermore, the distance between the landing area and the objectives in Arnhem was not the handicap it is often painted. The 2nd Parachute Battalion reached the Arnhem road bridge in just over four hours, fighting several small actions en route and while shepherding a number of personnel and vehicles from the Brigade column and a variety of support units. This shows covering the seven miles was perfectly feasible providing the attackers moved with sufficient speed and application.
The myth of enemy action
Enemy action is another often repeated reason for the failure, usually relying on two specific examples. SS Bataillon Krafft, an approximately 400-strong replacement training unit billeted near Oosterbeek, is routinely credited with single-handedly holding back the 1st Parachute Brigade’s advance to Arnhem until after dark on 17 September, largely due to a highly embellished and self-serving report by its commander, Hauptsturmführer Sepp Krafft.
The reality was rather more prosaic. Krafft serendipitously deployed his unit along the eastern side of what was to be the 1st Airborne Division’s main landing area to avoid Allied preparatory bombing, but its impact was far less than popularly claimed, amounting to a handful of relatively minor clashes. One element was wiped out by the 2nd Parachute Battalion after straying onto the landing area, another spent several hours inconclusively skirmishing with a British unit defending the landing area and a third caught two of the 1st Airborne Reconnaissance Squadron’s Jeeps as they belatedly began their move from the landing area to the Arnhem bridge.
The most significant clashes were with the 3rd Parachute Battalion on the outskirts of Oosterbeek, consisting of a brief hit-and-run ambush in the late afternoon followed by an inconclusive two-hour fight with the tail end of the 3rd Battalion column at dusk that ended when the SS element withdrew. None of this materially impacted the 1st Parachute Brigade’s advance toward Arnhem however, and any connected consequences were attributable to other factors.
The second popular myth with reference to enemy action is the recurring idea that the 1st Airborne Division landed atop two fully functioning panzer divisions. While
II SS Panzerkorps, consisting of 9 and
10 SS Panzer Divisions, had been in the
vicinity of Arnhem since 8 September, the fighting in Normandy and the retreat across northern France and Belgium had reduced them to a fraction of a single division in total, with a relative handful of vehicles and heavy equipment, the bulk of which were despatched south to Belgium to block the Allied ground advance on 13 September, four days before Market commenced.
By 17 September, 10 SS Panzer Division had been ordered to refit in place in Holland at three locations up to 30 miles east and north of Arnhem, while 9 SS Panzer Division had been ordered to hand over its surviving heavy equipment to its running mate and the bulk of its personnel had already been despatched to Germany by rail to be reequipped by the time Market began. The remainder, mainly service and supply personnel denuded of almost all heavy equipment and motor transport, were scattered across locations north and east of Arnhem between 16 and 35 miles from the landing area.
It is therefore clear that neither of II SS Panzerkorps’ badly depleted formations were close to being under the 1st Airborne Division’s landing and more importantly, none of 9 SS Panzer Division’s elements were located between the landing area and Arnhem. They were therefore unable to seriously interfere with the 1st Parachute Brigade’s advance into Arnhem in the first vital ten to 12 hours immediately following the landing, when the British formation’s battle for its objectives was won and lost.
Apart from the riverside loophole that permitted the 2nd Parachute Battalion to slip through to the Arnhem road bridge, German reactions and deployments were exemplary, however. II SS Panzerkorps HQ issued warning orders less than an hour after receiving reports of the landing, 9 SS Panzer Division’s denuded units were on the way to the scene of the action within three hours and within four hours Feldmarschall Walther Model had issued orders that framed the subsequent successful German conduct of the battle.
Unwarranted arrogance and poor discipline?
All this suggests that the reasons for the 1st Airborne Division’s failure at Arnhem were a little closer to home, and at first glance the problems appears to be with the division’s attitude as a whole. Although the glider and parachute operations carried out by two of its constituent brigades in Sicily were effectively fiascos, the 1st Airborne Division returned from the Mediterranean in November 1943 with an overwhelming sense of its experience and capabilities; tendencies noted not least by the division’s new commander Major-general Robert Urquhart, who observed a reluctance to accept the necessity of any additional training.
Similarly, Lieutenant-colonel Mark Henniker from the division’s Royal Engineer contingent referred to many surrounding themselves with a mystique that was not entirely justified by experience while Major Philip Tower RA, who joined the division after its return to the UK, recognised the quality of his new Airborne comrades but felt they overestimated their abilities, and noted an unwillingness to acknowledge that any worthwhile experience was to be had outside the Airborne fold. This is illustrated by an incident when umpires ruled against a particularly poorly co-ordinated attack by a 1st Airborne Division unit during Exercise Mush in April 1944, after which a company commander protested loudly that “you can’t do this to us, we are the original Red Devils!”
The attitude manifested itself as indiscipline in the lower ranks, particularly within the 1st Parachute Brigade. Lieutenant-colonel John
Frost, who commanded the 2nd Parachute Battalion at Arnhem bridge, referred to low level disciplinary problems across the whole brigade from ‘hard cases’ disinclined to obey regulations, along with widespread absenteeism which interfered with training and disrupted unit cohesion, while the commander of the
3rd Parachute Battalion was relieved after his Battalion was unable to march on a test exercise.
The epicentre of indiscipline was the 1st Parachute Battalion where one commander was posted away after tightening discipline with the aid of a Guards RSM, which the troops considered to be “treating battle hardened men like children” and his replacement was not popular either. The feeling was mutual. Lieutenant-colonel Kenneth Darling later recalled, “Frankly, I was horrified by 1 Para, they thought they knew all the answers, which they did not, and their discipline was not what I expected.” The upshot was a mutiny on 30 March 1944 when the Battalion refused to draw parachutes for a jump which led to Darling being replaced by Lieutenant-colonel David Dobie, who led the 1st Battalion into Arnhem. In some instances the indiscipline spilled over into outright criminality. For example, on 12 February 1944 the local fire brigade had to be summoned after a smoke marker was ignited outside the Battalion Orderly Room, and just over a month later the safe in the Battalion’s NAAFI canteen was broken into and the funds stolen.
The obvious conclusion to draw from all this was that unwarranted arrogance and poor discipline were the reasons for the 1st Airborne Division’s failure. However, events in Holland clearly show this was not the case. With regard to the 1st Parachute Brigade, the 2nd Parachute Battalion reached the Arnhem road
“THIS SUGGESTS THAT THE REASONS FOR THE 1ST AIRBORNE DIVISION’S FAILURE AT ARNHEM WERE A LITTLE CLOSER TO HOME, AND AT FIRST GLANCE THE PROBLEMS APPEAR TO BE WITH THE DIVISION’S ATTITUDE AS A WHOLE”
“BY MIDDAY ON TUESDAY 19 SEPTEMBER THE 1ST PARACHUTE BATTALION HAD BEEN REDUCED TO AROUND 200 MEN FROM THE 548 WHO HAD JUMPED IN TWO DAYS EARLIER WHILE THE 588-STRONG 3RD PARACHUTE BATTALION HAD BEEN REDUCED TO JUST 60”
bridge in just over four hours accompanied by the brigade column and other elements totalling approximately 740 men.
This force held the north end of the bridge for three and a half days, losing 81 dead and approximately 280 wounded in the process, almost 50 per cent of the force. They were only overwhelmed after running out of ammunition and food, and being literally blasted out of mostly burning buildings by artillery and tanks.
The 1st Parachute Battalion spent 11 hours trying to reach its objective north of Arnhem, losing 11 dead and over a hundred wounded, before moving immediately to reinforce Frost at the road bridge. It then joined the 3rd Parachute Battalion in repeated unsuccessful attempts to break through the German blocking line in the western outskirts of Arnhem, during which both units fought themselves virtually to destruction. By midday on Tuesday 19 September the 1st Parachute Battalion had been reduced to around 200 men from the 548 who had jumped in two days earlier, while the 588-strong 3rd Parachute Battalion had been reduced to just 60.
Neither was this level of raw courage and application unique to the 1st Parachute
Brigade, as the fight in the outskirts of Arnhem took a similar toll of battalions from the 1st Airlanding Brigade and 4th Parachute Brigade and was then replicated across the entire gamut of the 1st Airborne Division’s units in the subsequent six-day siege of Oosterbeek. This all strongly suggests that the 1st Parachute Brigade’s indiscipline was largely a case of good field soldiers making poor garrison soldiers, and that there was little wrong with the 1st Airborne Division up to the battalion level or equivalent, arrogance notwithstanding.
Poor planning and leadership
In fact, the root of the 1st Airborne Division’s failure was higher up the chain of command, and at the very top. A Regular officer commissioned in 1920, Major-general Robert Elliot Urquhart assumed command the 1st Airborne Division on 10 January 1944, having risen from the rank of major to major-general in the course of war service in a variety of staff positions, including a 13-month stint on the staff of the 51st Highland Division in North Africa. This was followed by his sole operational command appointment, four months commanding 231 Infantry Brigade in Sicily and southern Italy; he never commanded or served with an airborne unit prior to assuming command of the 1st Airborne Division.
His relatively rapid progress and elevation to the latter command over better-qualified candidates was due to the intervention of Fieldmarshal Bernard Law Montgomery. Urquhart had been a Montgomery protégé since coming to the latter’s notice when serving on the 3rd Infantry Division staff in October 1940, and he was given command of the 1st Airborne Division after Montgomery raised the idea with the commander of British 1st Airborne Corps, Major-general Frederick Browning. To be fair there is no evidence Urquhart sought the appointment and he created a good impression at his new command, but circumstances conspired to prevent him properly grasping the operational implications, restrictions and realities of his new role.
In the five months before D-day, Urquhart attended numerous conferences and planning meetings in or near London over a hundred miles from his HQ in Lincolnshire and after the invasion he was fully involved in preparing for a total of 15 cancelled operations. This was a punishing schedule and was likely a cause of the severe bout of malaria that hospitalised him for almost a month in April 1944. Urquhart’s lack of airborne experience was clearly apparent in his planning for Arnhem, which elicited disbelief among senior US Airborne commanders. For example, Brigadier-general James Gavin, commanding the 82nd Airborne Division and the most experienced of all Allied airborne commanders, later likened Urquhart’s scheme to a peacetime exercise.
Urquhart gave assembling his division in its entirety as much attention as accomplishing its mission, and his assumption that the Germans would permit it to sit in place for 24 hours before moving into Arnhem was fanciful, as the fact that the bulk of the 1st Airborne Division covered less than half the distance to Arnhem before being blocked and surrounded shows. Urquhart’s thinking appears to have been rooted in conventional ground operation rather than what was required for an airborne insertion 60 miles behind enemy lines, and thus suggests a fundamental misunderstanding of the realities of airborne operations.
Urquhart compounded his unrealistic planning with a series of poor decisions after Market was launched, to the extent it can be argued he did not make a single correct decision in his first two days on the ground in Holland. He failed to clarify the division
command succession until boarding the glider for Arnhem, a basic precaution and a vital one in airborne operations, given the routine risks inherent in aerial delivery even without enemy action. In the event his chief of staff was obliged to mitigate the consequences with diplomacy in the midst of the battle when Urquhart abruptly left his HQ shortly after landing in response to an erroneous rumour that the 1st Airborne Reconnaissance Squadron had failed to arrive in Holland.
Instead of checking the veracity of the rumour, Urquhart summoned the Squadron Commander, Major Freddie Gough, to Division HQ by radio before racing off in a Jeep to inform Brigadier Lathbury and the 1st Parachute Brigade in person. The kneejerk summons separated Gough from his command for the remainder of the battle and effectively ended the squadron’s coup-de-main mission.
More seriously, it can be argued that at this point Urquhart effectively abdicated command of the 1st Airborne Division as he disappeared with no explanation or contact arrangements and then deliberately severed radio contact with his HQ, which was never re-established. His arrival at the 3rd Parachute Battalion at dusk was instrumental in that unit abandoning its move to Arnhem and halting in Oosterbeek for the night. Urquhart then chose to remain with the 3rd Battalion, still out of contact with his HQ and the rest of the division, and thus unable to exert any influence on the developing battle, until the late afternoon of 18 September. He then made an ill-advised attempt to regain his HQ accompanied by Brigadier Gerald Lathbury that ended with Lathbury being badly wounded and captured and Urquhart trapped in an attic for 12 hours, before finally regaining his HQ at 7:25am on 19 September, after a 40-hour absence. By that time the initial window of opportunity had gone and the Arnhem portion of Operation Market had effectively failed.
That is not to say that Urquhart was a bad or incompetent commander. He did a more than adequate job of rallying his division and establishing a defensible perimeter at Oosterbeek while in contact with the enemy, and then orchestrated the defence of that perimeter under ever increasing German pressure. When it became clear this was unsustainable and permission was granted to withdraw across the river, Urquhart planned and implemented an evacuation inspired by the retreat from Gallipoli during the First World War codenamed Operation Berlin, which succeeded in lifting over 2,000 men across the Lower Rhine on the night of 25-26 September. All that came after the airborne assault at Arnhem had
“URQUHART’S LACK OF AIRBORNE EXPERIENCE WAS CLEARLY APPARENT IN HIS PLANNING FOR ARNHEM, WHICH ELICITED DISBELIEF AMONG SENIOR US AIRBORNE COMMANDERS”
morphed into a conventional defensive infantry battle however, and the evidence strongly suggests that Urquhart did not fully grasp the realities of airborne operations.
That lack of understanding contributed significantly to the failure of the 1st Airborne Division at Arnhem and, by extension, to the failure of Operation Market Garden.
The Arnhem portion of Market might still have succeeded in spite of Urquhart’s errors had the 1st Parachute Brigade managed to seize and hold the objectives in the city. This was not to be however, as the Brigade commander was only marginally more experienced himself. Brigadier Gerald Lathbury was commissioned in 1926 and his war service consisted of a number of separate staff appointments at the War Office, interspersed with eight months overseeing the raising of the 3rd Parachute Battalion and subsequently four months performing the same role with the 3rd Parachute Brigade.
He assumed command of the 1st Parachute Brigade on 25 April 1943 and led its operation to seize the Primasole Bridge in Sicily three months later. The operation was a fiasco as the Brigade was scattered up to 20 miles from its objective, the ground force took 48 rather than 12 hours to arrive and Lathbury was wounded in the back and legs during the fighting. These circumstances have concealed the unsuitability of Lathbury’s plan however, which employed six widely separated landing zones before dispersing the Brigade over three separate locations spread across more than five square miles. This ruled out mutual support and breached the military maxim on maintaining
focus on the primary aim. In fairness, there was not a great deal of airborne experience to draw upon in 1943, but Lathbury went on to commit exactly the same errors at Arnhem where again circumstances conspired to conceal the fact.
Lathbury’s Arnhem plan was a slight reworking of an earlier scheme codenamed Comet and envisaged sending the armed Jeeps of the 1st Airborne Reconnaissance Squadron ahead to seize the Arnhem bridge followed by the Brigade’s three battalions moving along three parallel and widely spaced routes. The
1st Parachute Battalion was allotted the northern route codenamed Leopard, the 3rd Parachute Battalion was assigned the centre Tiger route and the 2nd Parachute Battalion was allocated the southern Lion route along the Lower Rhine. This dispersed the Brigade’s combat power, ruled out mutual support and obliged each battalion to fight in isolation and the plan thus resembled a peacetime training exercise, an impression reinforced by the objectives selected. These isolated a third of the brigade on high ground north of Arnhem, dispersed a third across the pontoon bridge, the Arnhem rail bridge and the German HQ in the centre of Arnhem with the remaining third holding the Arnhem road bridge.
Given that most of these tasks required a full battalion at minimum, the plan was a classic case of trying to do too much with too little, and virtually guaranteed that the 1st Parachute Brigade’s sub-units would be isolated, overwhelmed and defeated in detail.
Once on the ground in Holland, Lathbury exacerbated the flaws in his plan by micromanaging his subordinate commanders to a degree that interfered with their ability to carry out their assigned missions. This began by needlessly holding the battalions at the landing area for over an hour before releasing them despite the time sensitive nature of the operation, and then motoring between the widely dispersed Battalion routes urging the commanders to greater haste.
By early evening Lathbury was running the 3rd Parachute Battalion over the head of its commander near Oosterbeek. He ordered an unnecessary counter-attack against elements of Bataillon Krafft that fired on the tail of the battalion column as it was moving away from the attackers and then compounded this by ordering the 3rd Battalion to halt in Oosterbeek for the night, presumably to protect Major-general Urquhart after he turned up unescorted at dusk. Lathbury then refused a radio appeal for assistance from his brigade major at the Arnhem road bridge, on the grounds that his men were tired.
Thereafter he effectively abdicated command by accompanying an equally passive Urquhart in remaining with the 3rd Parachute Battalion until he was wounded and captured while attempting to regain his HQ on 18 September. All this is does not necessarily mean Lathbury was a bad or incompetent officer. His inadequate planning was attributable to inexperience and lack of higher guidance. His micromanaging was presumably due to his formation’s disciplinary problems, and abandoning his mission to protect his superior was likely the result of his conditioning as a Regular officer. Nonetheless, it is perhaps instructive to note that the elements of the 1st Parachute Brigade that reached the Arnhem road bridge or fought themselves to destruction trying to reach it did so without the benefit of Lathbury’s direct involvement.
It can therefore be seen that there was more to the failure of the 1st Airborne Division at Arnhem than popular assumptions about landing areas, drop arrangements and enemy action, and that the underlying reasons were poor planning and leadership at the brigade and division level. Given the exemplary courage and tenacity exhibited by the men of the 1st Airborne Division in Holland, it is interesting to speculate on how the Arnhem portion of Operation Market might have turned out with more experienced hands at the helm.
“THE PLAN WAS A CLASSIC CASE OF TRYING TO DO TOO MUCH WITH TOO LITTLE, AND VIRTUALLY GUARANTEED THAT THE 1ST PARACHUTE BRIGADE’S SUB-UNITS WOULD BE ISOLATED, OVERWHELMED AND DEFEATED”