Today, we take a look at the events that transpired during the last days of Operation Market Garden - September 21st through the 25th. Thank you for remembering Operation Market Garden with us this week. Remember, if you've signed up for our mailing list, you will receive an EXTRA exclusive screenshot today!
The following information is quoted from an article written by Retired Colonel William Wilson that originally appeared in the September 1994 issue of World War II. Thanks to Colonel John Antal, US Army Ret. (our military and authenticity advisor) for making this information available.
September 21, 1944 Nijmegan. Irish Guards of Gen. Adair's 'Guards Armored'. A Sherman firefly followed by 4 with the smaller 75mm gun of the earlier versions.
Final Days of the Operation:
"On the sixth day of the operation, we found out. The town of Veghel was to be
the German objective because destruction of the bridges there would stop traffic
for a long time. The Dutch underground had warned the Allied divisions that an
eastern force of more than 400 vehicles was moving toward Veghel and a
western force of five mobile guns was ready to strike. A ferocious battle
developed in this area.
For the men of the 82nd in Nijmegen and the British 1st in Arnhem, cutting the
road was like severing an artery. Food, ammunition and medical supplies all
stopped arriving. The men of the 101st knew they had to open the road. That day
saw a complete change in the disposition of the division, which began fighting
along a solid front concentrating in St. Oedenrode and Veghel.
Down from the north came a stronger German force made up of three parachute
battalions from the 1st and 6th Parachute regiments and a battalion from the
Hermann Göring Division-all from the best of the Luftwaffe. The road was cut.
During the night, the Americans attacked and reopened the road. It was cut
again. Both sides were taking heavy casualties.
My company fought beside the road from the ditches. There were times when
German tanks passed us and did not know we were there. We would let them go
unless we had a bazooka. Sometimes they were so close we could hear the
Germans radio communications from inside the tanks. If German infantry was
involved, it would be brought under fire immediately after passage of the tanks. If
the tanks could locate our positions, it was tough on us, but they did not like to
work without their infantry, so they would normally withdraw. (We put this
experience to great use later in Bastogne.) "
September 21, 1944 Nijmegan. A Bren carrier towing a 6Pounder anti-tank gun.
Timeline of September 21st - September 25th, 1944:
September 21st:
- The remaining of the Panzerbrigade was unloaded that morning and the brigade was at full strength now and massed together in Nuenen. From several directions, the British attacked the Germans, but all attacks failed and one Sherman after another was destroyed by heavy German fire. The Germans had changed Nuenen in a festung (fortress) and they were determined to hold it. But the British VIII corps made progress east of Eindhoven. Its 11 tank divison reached the line Heeze - Someren and was nearly ready to attack the Panzerbrigade in its back.
- On 21 September, Dutch civilians told soldiers of American 506 PIR that the Germans had left Nuenen and were heading for Helmond. At 10.30 hour Nuenen and the area around was free of Germans. The tanks of the Hussars found no resistance at all. All Germans were gone! Why? The answer was given soon. At 16.00 hours, everybody in Nuenen heard the rattling sound of tank tracks. Germans again? No, Shermans of the 23 battalion Hussars 11 tank division. This division had liberated Geldrop and nearly attacked the Germans in the back. That evening civilians reported that German Panther tanks crossed the bridge over the Zuid Willemsvaart and disappeared in the dark. All bridges were blown up by the Germans.
- In the 101st area, German attacks continued all along the route, but by this point, the Allied forces had clearly started to gain the upper hand. Not only were the Germans attacks stalled, the British and 101st continued to take more and more area.
September 22nd (Black Friday):
- Bad weather prohibits supply by air.
- During the previous night, the Germans organized two mixed armored divisions on either side of highway 69 at about the middle of the line between Veghel and Grave. Near Veghel 14 km. north of Son, the corridor was very narrow and Field Marshall Model, ordered a counter attack right there. The Germans had Kampfgruppe Walther available and, very important, the 107 panzerbrigade. Also a battalion of 180th Infantry Division. On 22 September, British reconnaissance cars spotted 4 Panthers heading for the corridor near Veghel. At 12.00 hours, the Panthers reached the corridor northeast of Veghel. That was that. Piece of cake. The corridor was cut off!
- The German attack along the Uden and Veghel Corridor from the east blocks all traffic for 24 hours. A Brigade of the Guards is sent back from Nijmegen to Veghel to give support to the 101st from the north. Any advance on Arnhem was now impossible.
September 23rd:
- To the south, several more German attacks were stopped, but the road was still cut. Kampgruppe Walther attacked 2 battalion of 501 regiment (101 airborne). It was raining and fighting was very heavy: man-to-man. Panthers knocked out several Shermans and a Firefly Tank Destroyer but also lost a Panther, which was shot from behind. In that fight, major von Plüskow, commander of the Panther abteilung, was killed. Kampfgruppe Walther withdrew. Another Panther was abandoned because of fuel shortage.
- XXX Corps then sent a unit of the Guards Armored south the 20km and re-took the road. In the afternoon, the Corridor is open once again.
- In Arnhem, the Germans had figured out what the Poles were attempting to do, and spent the rest of the day trying to cut the British off from the riverside. The British managed to hold on, and both sides suffered heavy losses. The Germans also attacked the Poles on the south side in order to tie them down, but several tanks arrived from XXX Corps and they were beaten off. Boats and engineers from the Canadian army arrived that day, and another river crossing that night landed another 150 troops of the Polish 3rd Parachute Battalion.
September 24th:
- The British infantry and the Polish paratroops try to cross the Rhine at night, but fail.
- Yet another German force attacked the road and the Corridor is blocked for the second time by the Germans, this time between St. Oedenrode and Veghel. Several units were in the area, but were unable to stop them, and the Germans quickly set up defensive positions for the night.
- It was not clear to the Allies at this point how much of a danger these actions represented.
- It was on this day that the operation was essentially stopped and the decision made to go over to the defense.
September 25th:
- The Corridor remains blocked. The newly arrived 50th British Infantry attacked the Germans holding the highway. By the next day they had been surrounded and their resistance ended. The corridor was now secure, but with nowhere to go.
- During the evening and the night: At 10pm, the withdrawal of the remnants of the British 1st Airborne Division began, as British and Canadian engineer units ferried the troops across the Rhine, covered by the Polish 3rd Parachute Battalion on the north bank. By early the next morning, they had withdrawn some 2000 of them, but another 300 were still on the north at first light when German fire stopped the effort. They surrendered. Of the 10,000 troops of the 1st Airborne Division, only 2,000 escaped.
September 21, 1944 Nijmegan. Tanks of the British Guards Armored Division crossing the bridge of the river Waal in Nijmegan.
Epilogue: October 3, 1944
"On October 3, my battalion was ordered forward to the town of Opheusden to
take over a section of the front line from the British 43rd Division. By count, my
battalion received the heaviest artillery barrages of the Holland campaign. I was
in battalion headquarters in the center of town, and for 18 hours there was no
respite from shelling. The 321st Field Artillery Battalion provided us support and
fired 2,600 counter-battery rounds that day. The punishment was severe.
We were ordered to withdraw through the lines of the 3rd Battalion, which had
established defensive positions 1,200 yards to the rear. Evacuation of the
seriously wounded was a problem. There were 120 who had to be carried and
more who could walk with assistance. They were lying in the basements of
houses along the last street, hoping we could hold at least that much of the
village. The regimental surgeon sent six jeeps in after dark, and they successfully
evacuated 20 of the litter patients. Six captured Germans were used to carry out
three more wounded, and the rest were evacuated using the seat carry method
with the M-1 rifle, a painful process for many of the wounded.
About 4 o'clock that morning, we dropped from exhaustion in an open field.
Sentries manned the perimeter. At dawn, the sentries spotted movement across
the field. When the sentries heard the troops speaking German, they opened fire.
As we discovered, a German battalion had bivouacked in an adjoining field. Our
battalion quickly moved into action. B Company circled left and brought flanking
fire on the German unit, and our mortars zeroed in and fired several punishing
concentrations. The Germans surrendered. We captured many more Germans
that morning than we had men in the battalion. If they had known what they were
up against, they probably wouldn't have surrendered.
I was returning alone across the field when I saw the body of Sergeant Mullins.
We had both been assigned to the regiment in the summer of 1942, and he had
been my platoon sergeant for two years. We had trained our eight machine-gun
squads together, taking them through jump school and jumping with them into
Normandy. When I was wounded, I left the platoon, and I hadn't seen him in
several months. I had more respect for Mullins than any subordinate I had ever
known. Mullins was a big man -- over 6 feet, 200 pounds and not an ounce of fat.
He was like a mother hen to our men and probably died trying to protect one of
them. I closed his eyes, cried over his body and left him where he fell. I could do
no more. The battalion, meanwhile, was marching toward Hell's Highway and
another battle. I ran to catch up with them.
Company C had lost all its officers. They had jumped in with 120 men; only 20
were left. I was sent down to take over the company, which made me the proud
commander of two understrength squads.
During the remaining days of the operation, the British 1st Airborne Division
suffered the fate that all paratroopers fear -- the link-up force could not break
through to them. With their backs to the river, the paratroopers were cut off and
surrounded. The greatly superior German forces steadily pushed them back until
the division was confined to a small perimeter west of Arnhem and north of the
lower Rhine. Their continued resistance in that impossible situation is one of the
most heroic in modern warfare. The Allied commanders decided that future
resistance at Arnhem was not justified, and with a gallant effort, using canvas
rafts and improvised floats, withdrew the survivors across the river at night. The
British had taken 10,095 men north of the Lower Rhine -- 3,490 came back after
eight days of fighting.
There was no question that Operation Market Garden was a gallant failure. It had
not placed the Allies across the Rhine, nor had it encircled the German armies in
Holland. It had not bared the right flank of the Siegfried Line.
Though the operation as a whole was a failure, there were some gains. The
Allies' northern flank was advanced 65 miles over a series of rigid obstacles-
specifically, two canals and two rivers. Large parts of Holland were liberated,
making it possible for the strategic port of Antwerp to be reopened. After 10 days,
the campaign became one of normal combat operations. The assault and
counterattacks had drained the forces of both sides. The battle now was an
anticlimax. The airborne forces assumed their mission of assault was over and
that they would be withdrawn and outfitted for another parachute operation. But
that did not happen. The British did not have sufficient forces to hold. The First
Allied Airborne Army was not relieved until 71 days after it jumped into Holland.
...
As my company rode through Veghel, Uden, and Eindhoven, the Dutch
recognized the 101st "Screaming Eagle" shoulder patches on our uniforms. They
also recognized the "All American" shoulder patch of the 82nd. They stopped
repairing their damaged buildings and shouted "September 17." The Dutch had
not forgotten that the American and British airborne divisions were the first to free
them. "
This is the fifth shot of five exclusives that will be released on Gearboxity this week. If you sign up for our mailing list (on the top left of the main page), you'll receive an extra exclusive screenshot LATER TODAY, so sign up now!
Further Resources:
A video about this day in Market Garden can be seen by clicking this link . Gearboxity also offers the words of veteran Ed Peniche in our exclusive video series , and a briefing of Operation Market Garden from the Colonel. For further reading, see:
A Bridge Too Far by Cornelius Ryan, The Epic of the 101st Airborne by
David J. Phillips, and Hell's Highway by George Koskimaki.
