Arnhem

The crucial development causing all this was that, after exiting Oosterbeek at high speed, his abandoned lunch still on the table at the Tafelberg, Model, the German commander, had passed through Arnhem and established his headquarters 20 miles to the east of the city. There he rallied his forces and drew up plans. He had realized that the aim of the operation was not to grab him but the bridge at Arnhem, and this was confirmed as reports came in of an intelligence coup. The singed remains of written orders outlining part of the Market Garden air operation had been found on the body of a dead American officer pulled from the wreckage of a glider shot down not long after it passed over the Dutch coast on its way to Nijmegen. The Germans had no trouble recognizing the Allies’ plan to lay down an airborne carpet over rivers and canals. It was the same one that the Wehrmacht had employed when invading the Netherlands four years earlier, except from the opposite direction.

Model took overall charge. The Prussian-born soldier was in his element. He was not from the same mould as field marshals like Rommel, never happier than when on the offensive. But Model was unsurpassed when it came to defence strategy. He had proved this on the eastern front, where his leadership and unshakeable confidence that he could turn around any situation had avoided a complete rout and, for the time being, slowed if not stopped the advance of Stalin’s Red Army. This achievement made him Hitler’s most favoured fire-fighter, and the Führer sent him west to perform the same feat against the British and the Americans. Noted for his ability to instil Kampfwillen – the resolve to fight – into his men, Model called on all that resolve now to stop the Allies’ attempt to snatch control of the Netherlands. He sent troops to counter the American landings at Eindhoven and Nijmegen. But his crucial strategic decision was to concentrate his efforts on Arnhem. Whatever the cost, the bridge there must not be lost to the Allies, nor must the XXX Corps relief column be allowed to get through to it.

Model was the master of the counter-attack, which, with two crack SS panzer divisions fortuitously on his patch to recuperate and refit after Normandy, he was now mounting. So much for the briefings to the likes of Ron Brooker that they would be up against old men and second-rate troops. The reality, as he was now discovering amid the deafening sound of explosions and the scream of mortar shells, was ‘unexpectedly heavy resistance’. It was coming from one of those SS battalions that had been on a training exercise in the woods around Wolfheze when the landings began. Guessing before everyone else that the Arnhem bridge was the target, its commander deployed his machine guns and heavy guns in the woods and on the key roads to slow the British advance almost before it had begun. With more troops and tanks soon on the way, a crucial blocking line was beginning to be established between Oosterbeek and Arnhem.

Reg Curtis ran into it as he and his company nosed their way forward. ‘Suddenly there was a loud explosion up ahead and sporadic machine-gun fire as our lead company came under hit-and-run jabs from the enemy. Mortar bombs whined and bullets slashed the undergrowth. The smell of war was in my nostrils.’ The whole battalion was forced to lie up in woods ‘for what seemed like hours, pushing on occasionally but cautiously’. The dismaying fact, as he now realized, was that the enemy were all around. He could even see their vehicles from time to time. Any advance was ‘rough, tedious, plodding along winding lanes and woods’. Hope soared when scouts reported that the main road into Arnhem was just ahead. But then, disaster. Cruising up and down the road were lines of heavily armed German half-tracks. ‘We lay doggo beneath the trees not 80 feet away and watched this display of enemy armour. We had no choice. To take on this little lot would have been slaughter for us.’ There was going to be no quick march into Arnhem. It was back to groping their way slowly through the woods.