CHAPTER SEVEN
Heading for DZ B, just over fifteen minutes behind the leading elements of 3 Para Brigade, Brigadier Poett’s 5 Para Brigade aboard 121 aircraft, received a warm welcome from increasing volumes of enemy flak. Consequently, the drop was not as well concentrated as that of 3 Para Brigade. At least two planes were hit on the final approach to the DZ and went down, while others flew on damaged to drop their paratroopers. Having dropped their load, the American Dakotas of 52 Wing, IX US Troop Carrier Command, turned in a loop to the north before heading back to the west. In doing so, however, they crossed the boundary into the heart of 7th Fallschrimjager Division’s positions, where they received even heavier flak. In all, seventy, almost all the parachute aircraft, were hit and damaged, ten of the US aircraft were shot down east of the Rhine and a further seven crashed during the return flight.
According to 5 Para Brigade’s operation order their task was:
5 Para Brigade will:
· a) Seize and hold ground astride rd from incl rd junc 197493 to incl rd junc 187497 and deny movement of enemy through the area.
· b) Secure x rds 167492 and deny passage of enemy res from the NORTH.
To assist the Brigade, there would be the normal attachments of engineers and medics but in this case the Royal Artillery were also well represented, with not only parties from the Airborne Forward Observation unit but also eight 17-pounder and a further eight 6-pounder anti-tank guns. The smaller guns, modified to reduce width for loading in gliders, would land behind the parachute element aboard Horsas, while the 17-pounder, a little heralded British equivalent of the German 88-mm, would be delivered to battle aboard the mighty Hamilcar gliders.
Brigadier Poett recounted:
The Brigade had on call one medium regiment from the west bank of the river and one battery of 53 Airlanding Lt Regt, which was to come down in gliders. The Brigade objective was beyond the reach of field artillery on the west bank’.
The drop of 5 Para Brigade.
Lieutenant Colonel Geoffrey Pine-Coffin, like his divisional commander, also a Devonshire Regiment officer, commented on the airborne concept of operations:
The enemy in this area would be automatically taken on during the forming up process and it was hoped that the sight of a massed drop would so lower his morale that this would not be too difficult. We all hoped very hard that this would be so because a parachute battalion is very vulnerable indeed until it has formed up – in fact it doesn’t exist at all; it is just a collection of individuals, or at best small formed armed bodies of men, moving in the general direction of the RV. To land on top of, or even within small arms range of, an enemy position had long been a parachutist’s nightmare. But on this occasion we did it and got away with it too!
Brigade HQ was first to jump at around 1010, followed by 13 and 12 Para Battalions, 225 Para Field Ambulance, part of 591 Parachute Squadron RE and 7 Para, followed by the remainder of 591. In this case jumping almost last 7 Para was to remain in the area to secure the DZ (covering north and east) for the Brigade’s gliders and supply drop and remain there until 12 and 13 Para had secured their objectives and Brigade position was established. Specified tasks included mounting a standing patrol at an important road and rail crossing in an opening in the big wood between the two Brigades, codenamed FORTNUM. Details of this task will be explained later in this chapter.
Brigadier Poett commented on 5 Para Brigade’s landing and assembly:
Although all three battalions had been dropped accurately [but a little to the east], individual officers and men experienced considerable trouble in working out their exact positions. This period on the DZ was where most of our casualties occurred. Once enemy positions had been located and action taken to deal with them, the troops in them generally surrendered without putting up a serious fight …
Just as our chaps were reaching their RVs, the glider borne element of the Brigade Group began to approach its landing zone … This caused a considerable diversion of enemy artillery fire and provided a most welcome relief for us. …thus only a comparatively small proportion of our anti-tank guns and vehicles carrying the machine guns, mortars and ammunition reached the battalions at their RVs.
A light anti-aircraft gun is towed away from its Horsa.
Considering the circumstances of the landing, our casualties had not been unduly heavy. Our losses were approximately twenty per cent of those who had jumped.
Rather than using coloured smoke to rally the paratroopers to their respective RVs around DZ B, 5 Para Brigade used visual and sound, namely bugles and hunting horns. The Brigade’s operation order laid down the unique calls:
Recognition Aids.
|
a) 7 Para Bn |
Green scrim |
Bugle |
|
b) 12 Para Bn HQ 5 Para Bde 592 Para Sqn RE |
Blue scrim |
Siren whistles |
|
c) 13 Para Bn 225 Para Fd Amb |
Red scrim |
Hunting horn |
|
d) Glider pilots |
White handkerchief |
The author of 6th Airborne Division’s report commented: ‘It is considered that the latter were quite inadequate and the use of smoke and 10-star rocket signals are essential’.
About an hour after the drop, the three battalions were sufficiently complete in their RVs for the Brigade to be able to report that they were ready to start on the second phase of the plan: the securing and consolidating of the Brigade’s objectives.
5 Para Brigade was to protect the northern front of the Airborne Corps area by securing Area B1 and, once in position, 12 and 13 Para were to both cover likely enemy counter-attack routes into the divisional area. When its task on the DZ was complete, 7 Para was to pull back into Brigade reserve.
Meanwhile, the Brigade’s signallers were establishing communication. They had jumped with the new, more powerful No. 52 sets in their kit bags. The communications lessons of Arnhem had been learned and there was a sixty percent reserve of this more powerful rear link set. Where necessary, the risk was taken with opening radio frequencies having been ‘netted by pre-checked crystal wave meters, and the dials locked and sealed before loading’. The risk of compromise of communications security was outweighed by the need for the passage of information from the outset. Not only had the inadequacies of radios on previous airborne operations been addressed but measures were taken to ensure liaison had taken place between Royal Signals officers within Second Army and 6th Airborne Division. In addition, the necessity of the airborne troops having all the Communication Electronic Instructions (CEIs) from relieving and flanking formations had been recognised. The CEIs were at divisional level protected by special ciphers and, at brigade level, they were concealed from enemy eyes in the hollow tubes of radio antennas.
A panoramic view east across DZ B. The tree line now hides the autobhan.
Once on the ground, even though the Brigade Signals Officer, Lieutenant Crawford, was killed on the DZ, radio sets were quickly netted in and communications established. Crucially, the parachute elements of the Forward Observation Unit (FOU) RA were soon speaking to FOU liaison officers at artillery HQs and at medium gun positions west of the Rhine.
Meanwhile, Brigadier Poett had taken the precaution of procuring American types of walkie-talkie radios for himself and his battalion’s commanding officers, which enabled effective communication within the command group. He believes that use of the walkie-talkies cut up to thirty minutes off the passage of information from an event happening to it being reported over the formal Brigade radio net. The value of timely information again outweighed the risk of enemy eavesdropping. Colonel Pine Coffin commented that they: ‘dispensed with all the mumbo-jumbo of RT procedure. There were no link signs … and no station acted as control, it was in fact, a signaller’s horror but it worked and worked well too’.
Brigadier Poett.
Lieutenant Colonel Geoffrey Pine Coffin.
7 Para
Amongst those to jump with 5 Parachute Brigade was 7 (Yorkshire Light Infantry) Parachute Battalion, its commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel Geoffrey Pine Coffin, described his battalion’s task:
My battalion was ordered to establish itself at this end of the DZ and to take on all opposition which might interfere with the other two battalions, which were to capture the brigade objective. In short, 7 Para Bn came down looking for a fight, which is not a bad role for any battalion.
Unusually, even for a plan that envisaged vertically enveloping the enemy, 7 Para was to jump on to its objective! It is usual for a parachute battalion to form up at a battalion RV and then to set out on its task from there, but ‘in this operation speed was even more important than usual and particularly so in the case of this battalion’. Therefore, in order to save time, Colonel Pine Coffin, ordered the companies to drop and form-up by themselves in the position they were to hold i.e. their objectives; ‘this meant that the positions, were manned about thirty minutes sooner than they would otherwise have been’.
The approach to DZ and the drop of battalion was similar to the rest of the brigade, other than the fact that A Company overshot and assembled where they were before moving in an organised body to the their correct RV/objective. As recounted by the Commanding Officer, however, one A Company paratrooper had a lucky escape when he was at his most vulnerable.
At the risk of creating a wrong impression about the opposition, I would like to tell you the story of one of my NCOs who was dropped in the country beyond the DZ. As this man was coming down he could see someone on the ground just about where be expected to land, and, as he got lower, he could see that it was a German parachutist and that he had a Schmeisser in his hands.
There was really nothing he could do about it and so ho just cursed his luck and landed in a heap, as one does, at the German’s feet. He told me afterwards that he shut his eyes and waited for the burst from the Schmeisser but it was so long in coming that he opened them again to see what the hitch was. He found that the German was busy collapsing his chute for him and when he had done this he helped him out of his harness and unpacked his Bren gun from the kit bag – he then surrendered to him. When he had got over the shock of all this, the NCO noticed that about twenty more Germans had arrived and they all surrendered to him too. At the same time and within a mile of all this, other parties of Germans were putting up desperate fights.
The first man to arrive at the small wood that was to be the RV of HQ Company was the company commander. He had worked out his jumping order with very great care so as to land as close to the RV as possible; ‘he got it a bit too accurate because he came down actually on it and got caught up in one of the trees’. Unlike Colonel Nicklin, he freed himself and was busy searching the wood for enemy when the first of his paratroopers arrived.‘They said that he was doing this quite thoroughly, except that he had forgotten to put a magazine on his Sten!’ Fortunately, there were no Germans in this particular area, presumably they too had been called forward to the river line but they had clearly been there a short time before and had as one paratrooper commented ‘… dug some good slit trenches which saved us a lot of bother’.
A vital piece of equipment to an otherwise lightly armed parachute battalion: the Vickers machine gun.
Coming in slightly later than they should have, A Company had the worst time securing and holding their objective. When they arrived, they found that their area was ‘a very nasty spot’. According to Colonel Pine Coffin, a pair of 88 mm guns firing in the ground role, located in a little wood about 700 yards to the east, just to the west of the autobahn, and commanded by a Luftwaffe officer:
… that one could not help but admire. When the drop took place it appears that the gun crews panicked and ran away but this officer managed to turn enough of them back to man one of the guns. He was of course, in a hopeless position but he kept that gun firing and did an immense amount of damage before he was rounded up. Although A Coy suffered badly, 12 Para Battalion and Brigade HQ … got it worse.
A Company’s casualties were heavy, as were those of the mortars and machine gun sections that dropped with them.
Overall, the drop achieved the desired surprise and the Germans were paralysed by the envelopment and were slow to react. According to the CO, ‘The battalion was in this position (area of DZ B) for five hours and during that time there was no really serious attack put in on us’. There were, however, smaller attacks on B Company by enemy of about platoon strength and, at one point, C Company engaged and broke up a company of Fallschrimjager that was working its way round to attack them in a flank. 7 Para, fighting from shallow shell scrapes, remained the focus of the Fallschirmjäger’s probing attacks but they successfully provided time for the remainder of the Brigade to dig in properly.
Battalion HQ also received the attention from the enemy and suffered quite a few casualties, including Colonel Pine Coffin, who lost the tip of his nose to a shell splinter, which was a painful but not debilitating wound. Colonel Pine Coffin reminds us that:
5 Para Brigade – 24 March 1945.
7 Para Battalion was to operate in this position…to assist the other battalions to seize the Brigade objective; it was not intended that it should stay here indefinitely. I am glad to be able to say that the only Germans encountered on the main[Brigade] objective were those that were already there when the landings took place; any that went there from this direction went as prisoners.
13 Para
The Battalion’s war diary records that:
0630 hours. Unit took of in 33 DAKOTAS and 2 Horsas from WEATHERSFIELD airfield and BOREHAM respectively
The aircraft carrying the 585 strong 13 Para, found the area east of the Rhine shrouded with a combination of smoke, spring mist and dust from the bombardment that obscured many of the landmarks. Consequently, they were dropped, at 1010 hours, slightly east of DZ B and were promptly engaged by enemy artillery. In the confusion of orientating themselves, it took 13 Para some time to locate the enemy but when organised fire was brought down on the Germans and they saw the paratroopers forming up to assault, they promptly surrendered. A Company’s commander, Major Watson, recalled:
Once we were on the ground, we were immediately faced with the enemy. One of my platoons to my left captured a machine gun position and we started taking prisoners – the Germans were giving themselves up all over the place. Although there was a lot of firing going on, even 88mm guns being used in the ground target role, one seemed to be oblivious to what was happening because once one had landed, one was in action straight away. There was the objective and that is what we went for – wearing our red berets and shouting our heads off.
Because of this immediate ground action, the Brigade was slightly delayed in assembling at their RV but the use of hunting horns by the companies, each with a distinctive call, not withstanding previous comments, helped considerably.
Moving off to their objective a mile to the south-east of their RV, around a junction on the road to Hamminkeln, the battalion witnessed some harrowing sights:
… the saddest thing I saw was when we were moving towards our battalion objective. There were glider pilots still sitting in their cockpits, having been roasted alive after their gliders had caught fire. One pilot and co-pilot were still sitting there with their hands on their control columns. A lot of people were lost like that. Although we lost a quite lot of casualties in the air, it was nowhere near those of the glider borne troops.
The enemy, such as they were, concentrated around the farms but the Battalion was able to dig-in as ordered on its objective. The battalion war diary recorded:
1500. A Company outpost counter-attacked; strength one company. 35 enemy killed and attack beaten off.
An RAMC officer supervises PoWs recovering a wounded German soldier for treatment in the British medical chain.
By last light the situation was quiet apart from spasmodic shelling. Enemy made no attempt to counter-attack during the night.
The Royal Engineer troop of 519 Para Squadron RE, attached to the Brigade had as its principal task the opening of routes though the area for the tracked and wheeled traffic of 15th Scottish Division. This work included the clearance of enemy mines, obstacles and the filling of craters. As a corollary to this:
Very strict orders were issued in respect of mining. No anti-personnel mines were allowed, and other minefields were confined to denying the enemy egress from roads that were already planned to be blocked by necklaces of [surface laid] 75 grenades to be placed only when the approach of enemy vehicles seemed imminent.
12 Para
The thirty-three Dakotas of Ninth US Troop Carrier Command, bearing 12 Para, flew across the Rhine in very tight Victory V formations and made a successful drop. However, with so much ground obscuration, the Battalion’s RVs were established at the wrong point – a very similar looking wood. Major Frank Bucher, the battalion second-in-command, led 12 Para back across the DZ to the correct location.
As the battalion crossed DZ B in single file, they came under heavy small arms fire and were shelled by the two 88mm guns to the north of the DZ. They were the same guns that was later to give A Company 7 Para considerable difficulty. Even though men were wounded by HE fire, the paratroopers pressed on leaving stretcher-bearers and medics of 225 Parachute Field Ambulance to collect the wounded.
Arriving at the correct RV, they found it was also under fire, this time from artillery at very close range. Under this fire, the companies quickly dispersed to their objectives about a thousand yards to the south. The 6th Airborne Division report commented on this and other similar incidents: ‘Easily discernable landmarks such as copses should NOT be used as rendezvous, as the enemy generally knows the range and shells them’.
Major Ritchie led A Company to its objective, clearing enemy from a farm en route, while a platoon attacked another 88mm position and captured the guns along with their crews without loss. Having rounded up some prisoners, A Company settled down in its objective to dig-in with little serious interference.
Major Steve Stephen’s C Company was, meanwhile, advancing on its objective. The leading platoon assaulted and cleared buildings at the edge of the objective whilst the rest of the company followed. Taking over the lead, they secured much of the remainder of the Battalion’s area.
A Luffwaffe Senior NCO anti-aircraft gunner (holder of the Iron Cross First Class) is questioned by a British paratrooper.
At the same time, B Company was having difficulty reaching its objective. A large platoon of enemy were positioned in several farm buildings and had to be cleared before the objective could be taken. The company under Major ‘Rip’ Croker, now sent forward two platoons to take individual buildings, which was achieved after a stiff fight during which, Lieutenant Cattell was wounded for a second time. 4 Platoon, who had been held back in reserve, seized the company’s objective. The remainder of the company, under the second in command, then joined them. The Company’s casualties were particularly significant amongst its officers and SNCOs.
In its planned position the Battalion dug-in, officers were doing the round of their command, confirming positions chosen from maps and air photographs were suitable and tying up arcs of fire. Lieutenant Colonel Darling later wrote:
The anti-tank layout [which] had been planned through careful stereoscopic examination of air photographs and a trace had been prepared showing the tasks and approximate positions of each machine gun platoon. The battalion locations had been planned so as to include the areas from which the anti-tank defence could be best arranged,
Colonel Darling continued:
Towards the evening, an eerie silence fell over the DZ which had been such a noisy battleground. Enemy resistance had been completely flattened and thus I was able to ride a horse, found on one of the farms nearby, around the battalion area. Special mention must be made of the sterling work of our medical staff: Captain Wilson, who was our Medical Officer, Corporal Houghton and the stretcher-bearers, and our most respected Padre, the Reverend Joe Jenkins, all of whom tended our casualties under fire. These amounted to twenty-one killed, forty-five wounded and twenty-five missing. Many of the latter rejoined the battalion later.
The DZ and Brigade Screen
While the remainder of the Brigade were digging-in, 7 Para, as per orders, remained on the DZ, not only to provide a screen but also to receive and recover as many of the jettison containers dropped by the Dakotas. There was, however, one other task for A Company 7 Para that had been left to last. This was the securing and holding of an important road and rail junction in an opening in the big wood, code-named FORTNUM, between the two parachute brigades. This seemingly simple task was allocated to a platoon and speed was essential. However, the distance from DZ B was a mile, across ground that was likely to be held by the enemy. Lieutenant Colonel Pine Coffin rejected a bald-headed double march across country in favour of a more circumspect approach.
A sniper from one of the Brigade’s Parachute Battalions.
I decided therefore to send off a small party with a wireless set and under an officer to spy out the land and then to send off the platoon when I knew which was the best way for it to go. The officer who was to take this party, however, was killed on the DZ and …I had no option but to send off the platoon without any preliminary reconnaissance. It was commanded by a Lieutenant Patterson, who was one of two Canadian [CANLOAN] officers that came to me in Normandy as non-jumping reinforcements ... He reached the position after many adventures, he hung on there for 22 hours before he was relieved.
From about 1200 hours when the platoon was established at FORTNUM, the Germans attacked Lieutenant Patterson at frequently intervals, from virtually every direction, throughout the hours he was isolated from the battalion. He dealt with these ‘most successfully using his own rather unorthodox methods of defence’. He sized up attacks as they developed and if it were only a weak one, he would stay where he was and beat it off. However:
… if it seemed stronger than he could hold off, he would use the “Patterson Method”, which was as follows. He would leave the position entirely and move his platoon round to one of the flanks; then, when the enemy had struck their blow at nothing and were wondering what to do next, he would rush them from the flank. In this way, he killed a great number of Germans and captured many more.
This was an exemplary independent platoon action and the bag of prisoners added to the substantial number 7 Para dispatched to Brigade HQ.
Once the main Brigade defensive position was established by 12 and 13 Para, and DZ B cleared of men (wounded or otherwise), equipment and stores, 7 Para was ordered to pass through the Brigade into reserve. At 1545 hours, Lieutenant Colonel Pine Coffin started moving his battalion with a view to taking up positions south of the road running north-west from Hammenkeln. This was, however, easier said than done:
The withdrawal was not particularly easy because both B and C Companies were in contact at the time. A withdrawal is not an easy manoeuvre and it seemed a most unlikely thing for a parachute battalion ever to be called upon to do. Not because we thought that we could never get the worst of a battle but because there is normally, nowhere for it to withdraw too. It has no rear. We had never practised it and anyway knew little of the method; however we managed it all right and without loss.
The platoons and companies leapfrogged backwards covering one another as they moved keeping the enemy’s heads down until they came into line with 12 Para and broke clean from the enemy and withdrew through 13 Para.
5 Para Brigade’s drop had been successful and by mid afternoon, they were dug-in, complete with support weapons and artillery defensive fire tasks, ready to take on any serious German counter-attack on the divisional area from the north.