Armageddon - Max Hastings [39]
It was Tuesday afternoon before a large body of Germans approached the police station purposefully. Somebody said to a British NCO, Sergeant Galloway: “Are you going to take that lot on?” No, said Galloway, “XXX Corps are going to be here in forty-eight hours.” He walked out of the door with his hands in the air, and was shot at once. Chaos followed. Peatling bolted to the attic at the top of the building. He heard uproar as bursts of fire disposed of his comrades. Then the Germans broke in to release the prisoners. At last, the shooting stopped, and the enemy moved on. No one searched the attic. The frightened soldier assuaged his thirst by slipping downstairs when he dared, to drink water from the toilet bowl. He settled down to wait for British tanks.
YET THE RELIEF column was a long, long way off. At Arnhem bridge, half-tracks of 10th SS Panzer were now deployed on the south bank. Their firepower enabled the Germans to halt every attempt by Frost’s men, holding the north end, to cross over. In a clash between armies, lightly protected half-tracks and armoured cars were regarded merely as tools for reconnaissance and transporting men. In Arnhem, however, every German fighting vehicle capable of withstanding small-arms fire was a menace to the paratroopers, equipped with only hand-held PIATs—British counterparts of the American bazooka—and two six-pounder anti-tank guns. From now on, the Germans were able to reinforce steadily, while the British haemorrhaged irreplaceable men, weapons and ammunition. The whole of 1st Airborne Division save Frost’s little band was engaged in a desperate, ill-coordinated series of battles to break through into Arnhem while retaining control of its landing zones north-westwards. In the days that followed, the British perimeter shrank under relentless pressure. Historians have devoted so much attention to the heroism of 1st Airborne’s struggle outside Arnhem that some have lost sight of the essential reality: within twelve hours of their landing, the British were no longer engaged in an operation with any chance of securing Arnhem bridge, but were battling for personal survival. Frost’s men did not hold the bridge at Arnhem, they merely possessed a toehold at one end of it, which enabled them to dispute passage with the Germans. Extraordinary success would have been required from the relieving ground force to undo the consequences of the paratroopers’ initial failure.
On Monday morning, 18 September, Lieutenant Jack Reynolds of the South Staffordshires had just assembled his platoon on the landing zone outside Arnhem, when he heard the booming voice of his brigadier, forty-seven-year-old “Pip” Hicks: “Reynolds—I want you to go forward. You’re my ‘eyes’.” The young officer thought his brigadier “a pompous old fool with a First World War mentality and no idea how to deploy troops.” But he obediently hitched a lift on a motorbike down the tramline towards Arnhem. They saw a tram on fire and heard distant gunfire, but at first met no enemy. Like hundreds of men that morning, Reynolds passed the German Stadtkommandant of Arnhem, Kussin, still hanging dead from his staff car at Wolfheze where British fire had caught him the previous day. He noticed that the cigarette the general had been smoking was burned down to his fingers. Reynolds returned to report that the road was open. The rifle companies began to advance, the mortar platoon following with its weapons on clumsy trolleys. Soon, they began to take incoming fire from the far side of the river. They could not get off the road, because every Dutch house and garden they passed was solidly fenced. The mortarmen found themselves among D Company, pinned down and suffering a steady drain of casualties. “From then on, it was a muddle,” said Reynolds. He sited his mortars and went forward with a signaller, though the unit’s 18 sets had not worked since they landed. He met a few stragglers, whom he