Nijmegen: US 82nd Airborne & Guards Armoured Division

By Tim Saunders

This WWII battlefield guide offers a detailed history of the Allied Liberation of Nijmegen during Operation Market Garden—with maps and photos throughout.
 
On September 17th, 1944, the 82nd Airborne dropped Allied parachute infantry along the Waal River in the Netherlandish city of Nijmegen. Their goal was to seize the city’s two major bridges and reinforce the British troops in nearby Arnhem. Though the Allied forces faced a desperate struggle, they ultimately secured both bridges and liberated the city.
 
This comprehensive guide offers detailed information on all of the units, personalities and actions of this heroic episode in the Allies’ failed Operation Market Garden. Fully illustrated with maps and photographs, this volume covers all the monuments and major battle sites, as well as contemporary local facilities.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Oct 20, 2008
• ISBN: 9781783461141

Tim Saunders

Tim Saunders served as an infantry officer with the British Army for thirty years, during which time he took the opportunity to visit campaigns far and wide, from ancient to modern. Since leaving the Army he has become a full time military historian, with this being his sixteenth book, has made nearly fifty full documentary films with Battlefield History and Pen & Sword. He is an active guide and Accredited Member of the Guild of Battlefield Guides.

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

BACKGROUND AND THE MARKET GARDEN PLAN

‘Had the pious teetotalling Monty wobbled into SHAEF with

a hangover, I could not have been more astonished than I was by

the daring adventure he proposed!’

General Omar Bradley.

It is not within the scope of this book to give a detailed analysis of the controversial background to Operation MARKET GARDEN. What follows, is a distillation of the political and military factors that shaped the plan in sufficient detail for the operation to be clearly set within the context of the North West European Campaign as a whole.

After D Day, the Allies initially made slow progress in terms of captured terrain, with the rate of progress, measured against Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) planners’ expectations not being met. However, by mid-August, after some hard fighting, the Germans collapsed into defeat. The Normandy campaign was won and the German defeat, when it came, was as complete as was Montgomery’s victory over his many critics. The remnants of the German Seventh Army, who had escaped destruction in the Falaise Pocket, streamed eastwards. The Germans made successive attempts to halt the Allies on the Seine (reached fifteen days ahead of Montgomery’s target) and, subsequently, on the River Somme and any other topographic feature of tactical significance. However, the Allied armoured divisions’ momentum was such that each obstacle was ‘bounced’ and the advance continued, at rates of up to fifty miles per day. The lack of opposition and the Allies’ reception as liberators, led to a feeling that the war was almost at an end. The contrast between the hard slogging of the Normandy battles and the swift advances, served only to sharpen in the minds of both commanders and front-line soldiers, the prospect of an early end to the war. The reader should judge the MARKET GARDEN plans against the contemporary, and seemingly reasonable, expectations of victory in Europe before the end of 1944.

The sure sign of German defeat in Normandy – a road crammed with destroyed men and equipment.

Alliance Politics

General Dwight D Eisenhower took over conduct of the campaign from the newly promoted Field Marshal Montgomery on 1st September 1944. The extent of the Allied victory and the speed of the advance eastwards eclipsed SHAEF’s ability to plan and led to Eisenhower not having a detailed military strategy to follow when he took full command. Eisenhower has been criticised for not being a decisive commander but, after Normandy, there was no shortage of plans being put forward by his generals. At one stage, it seemed as if he was agreeing to support all of them. However, Eisenhower’s problems in selecting a strategy following the German collapse, became even more difficult, as national pride and his generals’ personal ambitions became pre-eminent. In short, British and American plans were no longer subordinated to the common goal of defeating a powerful enemy. With such notoriously difficult characters as Patton and Montgomery to deal with, along with their respective press corps, Eisenhower’s command was never going to be easy. In what at the time was the most frankly reported campaign of the Twentieth Century, the Supreme Commander was working primarily at a political level. Whatever the arguments in favour of Montgomery’s narrow front advance into Germany, it would never have been politically acceptable to US public opinion to have Patton’s Third Army halted, with the victor’s laurels going to Montgomery. It is clear that Eisenhower found considerable favour with the arguments for the northern route to Berlin but political realities forced him to adopt the ‘attack everywhere’ philosophy that underpinned the US broad front strategy of the day.

Montgomery was a notoriously difficult subordinate. This photograph of Montgomery and Eisenhower together illustrates, through body language and expressions, the problem between the two commanders.

Other than his generals’ prestige and national pride, Eisenhower had other pressing political factors to consider as he came to his decisions on Sunday 7 September 1944. Firstly, there was the fact that after five years of war, Britain was at the end of her resources and, ideally, the war in Europe needed to be over by Christmas 1944. Secondly, V2 ballistic missiles, launched from north-west Holland, were falling on London. The need to clear the enemy from the area of the launch sites and thus take the missiles out of range, was one of Churchill’s key requirements. Thirdly, another purely European factor was that the Prime Minister did not want a Soviet presence in the heart of Europe and, therefore, gaining as much territory and being the first to Berlin was important. Fourthly, the Ruhr industrial area, despite the Strategic Bomber Offensive was still the power house of Germany and in 1944 tank production actually rose to a record 19,002 vehicles. It was estimated that capturing the Ruhr Triangle would end the war within three months. All these factors had to be considered and balanced as the Supreme Commander made his decisions.

The fact that the Supreme Commander pleased none of his ‘difficult’ subordinate commanders, is illustrated by Patton’s comment that Eisenhower was ‘the best general the British have’. This indicates that he was at least even-handed. Another prophetic quote from Patton in 1944 summed up Eisenhower’s role in the European campaign; ‘he’d make a better president that a general’.

Logistics

Logistics lay at the route of Eisenhower’s political and military problems: in early September, he could not sustain all or even a half of his forces in offensive operations at any one time. The rapid advance eastward led to his armies, still without a major port, being largely supplied through the artificial Mulberry harbour and across the Normandy beaches. Two hundred and fifty miles forward of their supply bases, commanders were prepared to lobby hard, in competition for all the supplies that they could get. Typically, they would paint an over-optimistic picture of the prospects on their front in order to secure additional resources: General Patton is widely acknowledged as the master of this technique. However, the further the front advanced eastwards, the fewer troops were able to pursue the Germans. Infantry divisions were ‘grounded’ and their trucks stripped from them to transport combat supplies needed to keep the armoured divisions mobile. Fewer troops at the front meant a reduction in combat power and at, the same time, they were having to cover wider frontages. Consequently, there was an increasing likelihood of an ad hoc German defence assembling sufficient force to halt the advancing Allies. To make the situation worse, it should also be borne in mind, that Allied soldiers were, understandably, increasingly unlikely to risk their lives in what they perceived to be the final weeks of the war.

The shoulder patch worn by staff of HQ 1st Allied Airborne Army.

The general situation in North West Europe by September 1944.

First Allied Airborne Army

Airborne forces had been embraced by the US Army prior to the war and, following their successful use by the Germans in 1940, the British formed their first airborne units in 1940. By 1944 airborne forces were sufficiently strong to warrant grouping into their own Army, with a headquarters to look after their interests and advance their cause. Considerable resources, as strategic bomber commanders saw it, had been diverted into transport aircraft to support the new arm. The First Allied Airborne Army was also Eisenhower’s only strategic reserve, contrary to the impression that the Germans still held as a result of the OVERLORD deception operation; FORTITUDE. In addition, the US Chief of Staff, General Marshall, was pressurising Eisenhower to find a use for this expensive asset, as the airborne divisions were ‘coins burning holes in SHAEF’s pocket’. Attempts had been made to utilise 1st (British) Airborne Division but the speed of the ground advance had, frustratingly, eclipsed all plans for its use. However, as the armies in France and now Belgium began to lose momentum an opportunity for their use presented its-self. Eisenhower could easily support Montgomery’s plan to enhance an earlier divisional plan (Operation COMET) to a corps level airborne operation, as Bradley was far from keen on airborne forces. He and other main US commanders would have preferred to have the air transports used in the logistic effort to support his armies. The allocation of an airborne corps to Twenty First Army Group was a way of satisfying the demands of both Montgomery and the Pentagon. However, would there be sufficient combat supplies available to support full execution of the plan? In short no. Alliance politics prevailed over pure military interest.

Intelligence

Not only were the impressions of soldiers at the front shaped by lack of opposition and the speed of advance but even normally reserved staff officers were optimistic that the war’s end was near. As early as mid August, SHAEF’s Intelligence Summary declared:

‘Two and a half months of bitter fighting, culminating for the Germans in a blood-bath big enough even for their extravagant tastes, have brought the end of the war in Europe within sight, almost within reach.’

All indicators were that the German collapse was total. Tens of thousands of German soldiers were, in many cases, isolated or almost cut-off, in the fortified ports of France and the Low Countries. In addition, in early September 1944, the Volksarmies that were later to confront the Allies in the Ardennes and, during early 1945, on the Rhine, did not yet exist.

During early stages of planning for Operation COMET, some remarkably accurate intelligence that painted a less rosy picture, was received on 7 September 1944:

‘... it is reported that one of the broken panzer divisions has been sent back to the area north of Arnhem to rest and refit; this might produce some 50 tanks.’

This was the Resistance passing on details of the arrival of the leading elements of the shattered II SS Panzer Corps (9th and 10th SS Panzer Divisions) from France to refit north of the Rhine. The report continues:

‘To-day’s photographs together with ground reports from Dutch sources, indicate that the main direction of German movement is NW to SE; not only has 347 Div come down, but many of the SS training units which were near AMSTERDAM are now quartered in the excellent barracks at NIJMEGEN. There seems little doubt that our operational area will contain a fair quota of Germans, and the previous estimate of one division may prove to be not far from the mark; moreover it would not be surprising to find the high ground south of NIJMEGEN, Pt 83 the highest point in Holland - protected as it is by the MAAS - WAAL Canal to the west, the MAAS to the south, and the WAAL to the north, and guarding a vulnerable outpost of the Fatherland’s frontier has been made into a hedgehog defensive position ...’

Major Brian Urquhart, Dorset Regiment, warned of the presence of panzers around Arnhem and was promptly sent on leave.

This is an early recognition of the dominating nature of the Groesbeek Heights. In MARKET GARDEN this area had to be seized and held by 82nd Airborne Division, if ground troops were to reach Arnhem. In the optimism of the time, the presence of a shattered panzer division and numerous ad hoc units did not seem to count as a significant planning factor, although some junior commanders had reservations about their missions. As recounted by Geoffrey Powell:

‘At one battalion briefing, a company commander, on hearing the task allocated to a colleague, had leaned over to him and whispered That should provide you with either a Victoria Cross or a wooden one.’

This tendency to ignore the enemy is highlighted by, Polish airborne commander, General Sosabowski’s outburst ‘But the Germans, General, the Germans’. Ignoring the enemy became even more marked as planning for MARKET GARDEN got under way. A little more than a week later, the intelligence planning documentation for the larger, corps scale, operation failed to mention most of the enemy positions and movements outlined above and ignored the significance of much more material. Accusations of ignoring intelligence, as it stood in the way of the conceived plan (cognitive dissonance), have been levelled against Montgomery and 1st Airborne Division in particular. Colonel Michael Hickey provides one explanation:

‘Monty was very competitive. He wanted, as a battalion commander, his battalion to win all the trophies available in the Egyptian Command in the 1930s, and they probably did He competed against other generals, particularly in north-west Europe with General Patton, with whom his relationship was a pretty unstable one. They couldn’t make each other out as men, because they were so radically different from each other: Patton the dashing, swashbuckling Southern cavalryman in the American army, Monty the ascetic, non-smoking, non swearing, non-drinking Cromwellian. And the competition grew to a head as the Allies broke out of the Normandy pocket and made their bid to go for the German border in the high summer and early autumn of