Armageddon - Max Hastings [37]
Through the three hours that followed, Krafft’s men held the paratroopers in play. By the time the British at last found side roads by which they could outflank Krafft’s little force, it was too late. Other German units were converging on the battlefield. Meanwhile, a detachment of ninety Luftwaffe signallers attacked the British landing zone. They were ineffectual, but 1st Airborne’s men had to expend more time and effort upon fending them off. An SS party consisting of eighty men with one 88mm flak gun and one 20mm cannon came under fire as they rolled through Arnhem. The Germans had no idea what was going on. They simply leaped out of their vehicles and engaged 1 Para. Four lorry-loads of passing assault pioneers were exasperated to see tracer flying across the road. “ ‘Idiots!’ we thought, ‘they are on exercise!’ ” said Corporal Wolfgang Dombrowski. “But then a Wehrmacht major called across: ‘That’s live ammunition—the Tommies have landed!’ ” The pioneers, too, were thrown into the battle.
“Head for the sound of gunfire! That’s where the front is!” was the German motto that afternoon. Staff-Sergeant Erwin Heck, a twenty-four-year-old instructor at the SS NCO school in Arnhem, was at the Dutch coast with most of the school’s trainees when they heard of the landings. Heck, an SS veteran since 1938, still limped from a leg wound he had received on the Eastern Front in June. But on 17 September he commandeered a motorcycle and reached the battlefield around 1900, well ahead of his men, who were following on pedal cycles and even horses. One of Heck’s comrades said afterwards that the unit’s movement was such a chaos of improvisations that it looked more like the retreat from Moscow than an advance into battle.
Early in the evening of 17 September, 1 and 3 Para were at last able to outflank Captain Krafft’s men. But by now a new German line had been formed between themselves and the town, manned by another scratch force commanded by thirty-four-year-old Colonel Ludwig Spindler, a much decorated veteran of Normandy and the Eastern Front. Before the battle was over, Spindler’s force embraced elements of sixteen units. Most of them were gunners and dismounted tank men fighting as infantry. There were a hundred assault pioneers, and even a party of hastily armed civilian pioneers. There were also, importantly, some self-propelled anti-tank guns, armoured half-tracks and three tanks.
Not all the units of 1st Airborne Division won German respect for their performance. An SS dispatch rider was among a party which ambushed a British column of 1 Para marching towards Arnhem. The Germans killed most of the lead platoon and took more than thirty prisoners. “They were so beaten and submissive that it only needed one man to march them off to the rear,” said Corporal Alfred Zeigler contemptuously. “We were not too impressed by this lot. They were completely surprised. I ask you, they came marching straight down the road in a company file! What a nonsense! We were so few! They should have taken a route through the trees . . . perhaps they were too arrogant or too cocksure.” Neither 1 nor 3 Para ever reached the bridge at Arnhem. As early as Monday evening, 18 September, they had already suffered heavy attrition. Both battalions contained some brave