Arnhem

On Sunday 17 September, the Dorsets were raring to go. They were assembled in a country road to take their place in the XXX Corps column that would break through the German lines and smash its way to Arnhem and beyond. The area was heavily wooded and very beautiful, Longmate recalled. ‘It was a nice day, with just a few puffy clouds in the sky, perfect for a quiet Sunday walk in the country. Around midday we were told to mount up. All of a sudden there was a cheer, as if someone had scored a goal at a football match, followed by applause. Up above us, we could see the sky filled with our planes and gliders heading east. The instruction was immediately given to start engines, and the Armoured Division moved off.’ Up ahead, any opposition on the immediate route through enemy-held territory had supposedly been softened up by an hour-long RAF attack and a bombardment of big guns. But enough German anti-tank units were untouched to slow progress almost as soon as it began. Within minutes, nine tanks were knocked out. Those behind took cover and their accompanying infantry flung themselves into ditches. Typhoons had to be called in to rocket enemy pockets and tank-moving equipment brought forward to clear away the wreckage blocking the narrow road, all of which took precious time. When Longmate eventually got to move off, ‘the division was so long and the pace so slow that we didn’t get more than two miles before we were directed off the road into a wood for the night.’ The front of the column had managed to get only halfway to Eindhoven before it too stopped for the night, miles short of its first objective.

But surely the pace would pick up. Lieutenant-General Brian Horrocks, commander of XXX Corps, reasoned that this tough initial opposition was because the enemy had grouped its forces at the border. Once through this ‘crust’, as he called it, they would swiftly cut into the meat of the pie. He was wrong. He and his men would have to struggle for every foot of road. ‘It wasn’t a case of getting in your vehicle and just driving,’ Longmate recalled. ‘It was a constant battle. We were shelled, and we were mortared, and those at the head of the column got it even worse than we did. As we went through the countryside, houses were burning and we saw dead cattle, dead men.’ Even the optimistic Field Marshal Montgomery was beginning to perceive that his master-stroke was already in severe danger of being bogged down. The complex of caravans and tents that had been his mobile tactical headquarters since the Normandy landings was now parked on heathland near the Belgian town of Leopoldburg, just 10 miles from the Dutch border. His band of young liaison officers had been beetling up and down the difficult and traffic-jammed road to Nijmegen and bringing him back their personal assessments. From their reports he could see the problems piling up. ‘The advance is being made on a single road,’ he noted at the time, ‘and movement by wheeled and tracked vehicles off the road is extremely difficult owing to the low-lying nature of the country which is intersected by ditches and dykes and which has been made very wet by recent heavy rain.’ Critics of his might well think the state of the terrain was not an unknown factor and should have been added to the equation at the planning stage rather than now, when it was too late.

By mid-afternoon of the next day, Longmate had covered the 12 miles to Eindhoven, to find that American troops who had been parachuted in to clear the bridges there were still fighting to hold the town. German big guns peppered the column with shells. Delay piled on delay, so that British tanks were only just leaving Eindhoven when, according to the plan, they should have been entering Nijmegen, 30 miles further on. A timetable that had been ludicrously over-optimistic to start with was not just being missed, it was crumbling to dust. When the head of the column reached Nijmegen, already the best part of two days late, it was to a town that was proving to be an unexpectedly tough nut to crack. At the start of Market Garden, American paratroopers had dropped in to seize the crossings over the Waal but they had been denied by a fierce German defence. The Americans were forced to cross the river by assault boat in broad daylight further downstream before they could seize its northern end. It cost many lives and time. Then, when the first of the British tanks arrived and crossed, instead of charging on to Arnhem, they cautiously stopped to wait for their infantry to catch up. Given the uncertain nature of the terrain ahead, this was probably a wise decision, but it meant more delay.