Battlefields (2001) s01e04 Episode Script

This is the Reichstag in Berlin.
In 1945 it was captured by the Russians.
The victory helped confirm the division of Germany, and later of the whole of Europe, into east and west.
But this is the story of a battle which might have changed all that, a battle for the bridges over the Rhine, which might just have put the Union Jack on the Reichstag instead of the red flag, The concept was brilliant and it could and should have worked and the war would have ended six months earlier.
It's the story of Operation Market Garden.
With the D-day landings in June 1944, the Western Allies' assault on Nazi Germany began triumphantly, But fighting their way off the beaches and through northern France became a bitter struggle, I don't think it's generally appreciated that the speed at which a battalion bled to death was higher in Normandy than it was on the Somme.
Extremely thick hedges, some of them a thousand years old.
An absolute defender's paradise.
The Germans fought hard in Normandy for nearly three months and then at last the dam broke, Near Falaise, the Germans were caught between the Americans and the British and their armies were shattered, As the survivors fell back towards Germany, the Allies pursued them, advancing more than 250 miles in less than 3 weeks, It was beyond our wildest dreams.
We did 97 miles in something like 12 hours, which was the fastest advance of a division in history.
First Paris then Brussels were liberated, The Belgians were wonderful and they all jumped on our tanks with bottles of champagne and we had a wonderful time in Brussels.
The troops were elated, the Germans were weak and just a few hundred miles away lay the Reich's industrial heartland, the Ruhr, where its weapons and ammunition were made, If the Allies could capture that, the road to Berlin would be open, But there was a problem, the web of rivers and canals separating Germany from France and the Low Countries.
This is the Waal, one of the biggest rivers.
Getting across these was, in its way, as hard for the Allies as it was for Hannibal to get his elephants over the Alps.
Attacking across them was difficult enough, but then the Allies would have to send over a mass of trucks, supplies and guns.
There were few places where this was possible, even if the bridges hadn't been blown.
Yet solve the problem and the war might indeed be over by Christmas.
The British Commander was Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, He had planned and led the D-day Landings, As the extent of his success became clear, Montgomery became desperate to exploit the German weakness, His headquarters came up with a daring plan, but it had to be carried out within a week before the Germans could reorganise, The plan was called Market Garden, The plan called for British tanks, under Lieutenant General Brian Horrocks, to punch their way over the waterways through Eindhoven and Nijmegen to the Rhein at Arnhem, Once across the Rhein the British would be able to threaten the Ruhr, or perhaps even push forward to Berlin, There were eight bridges and eight major waterways between Germany and the Allied front line, Each one of them would have to be taken intact and held if Market Garden was to succeed, So the Allies decided on a daring and original idea, They would mount the biggest airborne operation in history, 30,000 men of the First Allied Airborne Army would land behind the German lines and capture those eight vital bridges which Horrocks' tanks would have to cross, They'd been kept in reserve since D-day, Operation after operation had been cancelled, Now they had their chance, Well, my first reaction was one of enormous enthusiasm and excitement because this was the first time that anyone on our side had contemplated the proper strategic use of airborne forces en masse.
There would be three airborne divisions, two American and one British, Dropping by parachute and in gliders, these divisions would land near Eindhoven, Nijmegen and Arnhem to take the bridges, The planners called this an airborne carpet, over which the advancing British army could push through to Germany, The airborne corps commander was the British Lieutenant General "Boy" Browning, He and his men had just seven days to prepare, What nobody knew precisely was how many Germans the airborne troops would face when they landed, but information was flowing in from a variety of sources.
First there was aerial photography, which produced pictures like this.
And there was signals intelligence from broken German codes.
As the soldiers prepared for battle, all this information began to build into an alarming picture.
The code-breakers suggested that there were two SS panzer divisions in the Arnhem area.
Panzer divisions, with their large numbers of armoured vehicles, could be devastating to the lightly armed paras, At least one intelligence officer became seriously concerned.
Major Brian Urquhart was on General Browning's staff at corps headquarters, His analysis was chilling, He took me into his office and he showed me photographs of German Panzer 4s, mainly, I think they were, tucked in underneath woods.
He went to General Browning and said that in his view the operation, Market Garden operation, was could not succeed.
The operation was on a timetable and nearing its deadline.
Should it be delayed or even cancelled? In real war, intelligence is often imprecise and Urquhart might have been wrong.
Time was getting short.
Browning decided that Market Garden would go ahead.
He sent Urquhart on sick-leave.
They said that his nerve had broken which, of course Browning had every right to make his own judgement.
My own view is that Urquhart was a very brilliant chap.
He knew what he was suggesting and that was the end of it.
But Urquhart was right, The Germans were strengthening their defences, With only seven days in hand, the planning for the operation exposed flaws in the Allied set-up, British and American, soldiers and airmen, all had their own agenda, There were disagreements and the inevitable compromises, The air operation was commanded by an American Air Force general, Lewis Brereton, He decided that there were simply too few aircraft to deliver all the airborne troops in one go.
Therefore they would be dropped over three days.
Some British airmen disagreed.
They suggested that because British pilots were used to flying over Europe at night, there could be two lifts, at least on the first day.
But some British airborne soldiers were also unhappy.
They were concerned about where they were to be dropped.
In some cases this was up to eight miles from their objective, the Arnhem bridges.
The vital element of surprise, which had worked so well in Normandy, would be lost.
But Brereton was adamant.
All in all, nobody was really happy with the plan, and over all this loomed one great unanswered question.
How many Germans were there on the ground? Nobody really knew, The soldiers who were to fight their way up the airborne carpet to Arnhem, the troops of 30 Corps, were in good spirits after several spectacular weeks, As far as 30 Corps was concerned, it was a flush of delight to be out of the bloodbath and the Normandy bocage.
This, the beginning of Market Garden, was great fun.
In a cinema behind the front line General Horrocks briefed his officers, He was a charismatic officer who had fought with Montgomery in the desert campaigns, He stimulated people.
He he brought a sense of urgency and confidence.
He radiated confidence.
Well, the Horrocks briefing was pure theatre.
Horrocks strode in and very nonchalantly said, "I'm now going to tell you about an operation that you can tell your grandchildren about.
"And mighty bored they'll be.
" I can remember thinking what a very good salesman Horrocks was.
On Sunday 17th September, the air armada took off, It was spread right over the sky.
You You just stood in wonder.
You didn't know we had so many aircraft.
You were surprised.
And of course, don't forget, they were trailing gliders as well.
Watching from a factory near the front line, General Horrocks saw the planes with the airborne troops pass over him on their way north, He gave the order to attack, 600 guns opened fire, The tanks moved forward, with the Irish Guards in the lead, The offensive had begun, It was down this road that the Irish Guards attacked that afternoon.
Behind them the column stretched back for 50 miles.
Troops, trucks, guns, bridging equipment and assault boats, The road was only wide enough for two vehicles to pass and every single bullet, bomb and tin of bully beef would have to come this way.
A few hundred yards ahead of them, British guns laid down a wall of high explosive, a creeping barrage that moved slowly forward at just eight miles an hour.
We were somewhat wary, because one had a front one road wide, going sixty miles into Indian territory.
So, you kept your eyes east and west, in case you were going to be attacked.
As they rumbled forward behind the barrage, they had little idea of the German positions, In fact, the Germans were waiting for them just three miles from the British start line, These hollows are the remains of German trenches, They'd been dug in here with anti-tank guns, but the barrage had destroyed the guns.
All they had left were light hand-held, anti-tank weapons, As the British came up the road, the Germans sat tight and waited for their chance, The Germans let eight tanks pass their position before opening fire, then they made their move, All of a sudden, we stopped and the bad news began to filter back, and you could see the black smoke going up, and we'd lost nine tanks in a row.
The whole 50-mile column ground to a halt.
A few German foot-soldiers had stopped an army.
If the plan was to work, every minute counted and it took the Irish Guards another 40 minutes to resume their advance.
That morning, the men of the British Airborne Division also had a sense of confidence as they took off, September 17th, there was an enormous feeling of excitement.
A lot of the ones who had fought in North Africa, and realised how tough the Germans could be, were a bit sceptical, but in the main the rest were so fed up with being buggered about after 16 cancelled operations that they said, "Oh, for Christ's sake.
Let's get on with it! "Let's go.
Let's do it.
" The British paratroopers' drop zone was near Arnhem, north of the Rhine, 60 miles behind the German lines, There was almost no opposition on the landing grounds, The British had achieved total surprise, It was an immense armada.
It was a lovely day.
Hardly any flack.
No German fighters to upset us.
So as a ride it was a dolly, as a drop it was perfect, and the whole brigade was ready to move off in an hour.
The paratroopers were in a hurry, They had to collect all their kit and march on towards their objective, Arnhem and its bridges, which lay six miles away through woods and villages, The first problem that I realised was that on both sides of this road were some fairly high wire fences.
I realised that if we ran into trouble we were gonna have a very narrow front to organise ourselves on.
We wouldn't be able to do anything about it.
The British commander, Major General Roy Urquhart, was fighting with one hand tied behind his back, Only half the division had landed that day and half these men would have to dig in, to protect the landing zones for the next contingent, This left only a quarter of the division to strike out for the bridge, General Urquhart sent his reconnaissance squadron ahead in jeeps to make a dash for the bridge, but the German troops near Arnhem had already reacted to the landings, German rifles, machine-guns and mortars pounded the advancing British, This is where the battle took place.
You can still see where the mortar bombs fell.
Here, where the grass is growing thicker in the craters.
There was now no chance of a lightning seizure of the all-important bridge, just as with the Guards' tanks, 60 miles away to the south and at about the same time, a scratch group of German infantry was holding up a much larger British force.
The German line on that ridge lay squarely in the path of two of the three parachute battalions.
Neither would be able to reach the bridge as planned that day.
We'd actually run into the main defence line that had been set up by the Germans to defend Arnhem.
It was evident to all of us on the ground that we weren't gonna get there by going forwards, so we'd either got to go left or go right, and all it needed was an answer to go left or right.
But Cleminson and his fellow officers didn't get their answers, Due to some peculiarity of the land at Arnhem, the radios the airborne men had brought with them didn't work very well, Company commanders couldn't speak to their COs who in turn couldn't reach the senior commanders, With his troops split up, in contact with the enemy and with faulty radios, no one knew what was happening, Urquhart was in a very difficult position, Luckily for him, one of his battalions found a way around the German line, Led by Lieutenant Colonel John Frost, they targeted a road running along the river into the town, It was almost unguarded, They could soon see the outline of the railway bridge, but as they approached the Germans blew it up, Undaunted, the soldiers pressed on towards the town, hoping to reach the road bridge before the Germans could close the gap, At about 8 p.
m.
, after only five hours of marching and fighting, Lieutenant Colonel John Frost's paras reached the road bridge.
It was the divisional objective and they'd got it.
Today none of the buildings which surrounded the bridge in those days survive, In 1944 buildings crowded close to the bridge and dominated the approach, In these houses, Frost's men worked up defensive positions, Of course, the first thing you do is knock all the glass out of the windows and break up any furniture you required to give yourself protection from your firing position.
That evening, Tony Hibbert managed to contact his brigadier, He urged him to send more troops down the river road to the bridge, He replied that he wouldn't, that they were fully engaged, and that they would rest for the night.
Of course, they'd only been fighting for about five hours and that's not the moment to start resting.
It was a very very unwise decision, in my view.
About 700 men were holding the north end of the bridge as night fell on the first day of Market Garden.
They waited for their comrades to join them in the morning.
About 60 miles away, Horrocks's tanks were bedding down for the night already well behind schedule.
They had come only seven miles from their start line, They stopped for the night here in the town of Valkenswaard, They'd had a hard day, Their tanks needed refueling and were desperately vulnerable in the dark, But they were still six miles from Eindhoven, their first objective, and ten from the American airborne forces with whom they were to link up.
We'd lost other tanks.
We'd lost infantry.
Nobody liked stopping.
We knew, and we were very aware, of the need to press on.
We'd been given the rough timetable, even down to me, knew how important, vitally important it was to get up to the airborne.
The operation was behind schedule and all the time the SS panzer divisions which had so worried the intelligence men were reinforcing, Moving forward on the second day of the operation, Horrocks's tanks eventually reached the first of their airborne stepping stones, the bridge at Son, Here Americans of the 101 st Division had captured both sides of the canal crossing, But they had to do more than hold the bridge for the operation to succeed, They had to hold the road up which Horrocks's thrust would push, The Germans were in force all around, The only ground the Allies actually held was the road itself.
The American commander, General Maxwell Taylor, called it "Indian fighting", remembering the US cavalry protecting wagon trains as they crossed the Old West, Throughout Operation Market Garden, The Germans were continually trying to cut the road.
If they succeeded, the plan would fail, At the same time, the British in Arnhem were fighting to reach Frost's force at the bridge, but they ran into strong SS opposition, For the British General Urquhart, the position was extremely frustrating.
He couldn't talk to his commanders in the town, so he grabbed a jeep and drove forward to find out what was happening, He found himself caught up in the thick of the fighting, around the hospital over there.
As soon as we poked our nose out, we were shot at with machine-guns.
I'd just pulled back to decide what to do next when a big chap turned up, whom I didn't know, and Gerald Lathbury, he said, "Well, this is General Urquhart.
" General Urquhart said, "Come on, Gerald.
We'll go and have a look.
" He set off, straight across this road junction.
All hell broke out from the left.
I realised how much room there is around bullets 'cause I was getting sprayed with bits of brick breaking away from the wall on my right and scattering.
By some miracle, Gerald Lathbury was the only one that was hit.
We got him into the first house and a German with a machine-gun appeared in the door.
Roy Urquhart told me afterwards, "You know, I'm the only serving general who's shot a German soldier with a pistol in a battle.
" I said, "You weren't the only one.
We all shot him.
He was riddled!" This is the house they were in.
It was clearly too dangerous.
So, leaving the wounded Lathbury, they ducked out of the door, stepped over the dead German and raced off round the corner.
A Dutch civilian let them in but they saw that outside in the street in front was a German gun and its crew shooting at British soldiers, They went upstairs into the attic, Urquhart and his companions found themselves cooped up here.
They couldn't move until the German gun left the next day.
Urquhart was eventually away from his headquarters, unable to influence the battle, for 36 hours.
His absence meant that during this crucial period the British airborne troops were almost leaderless, No one knew if he was alive, Coordination between units was seriously damaged, As the airborne general languished in his attic, the guards began to push on at speed, With the Grenadiers in the lead, they covered 20 miles in just a few hours to link up with the American 82nd Division, which had captured the bridge at Grave on the first day, Well, my name is Moffatt Burriss and I'm from Columbia, South Carolina.
I was Company Commander of I Company 504 Parachute Regiment, 82nd Airborne Division.
The operation just went right.
It went as planned.
As soon as we got within rifle and machine-gun range of the bridge and fired, they started waving a white flag.
It was one of them's undershirt.
They surrendered.
And at that point we felt real good and we said, "Maybe we will be home by Christmas.
" The British sped across the bridge towards Groesbeek, which dominated the town of Nijmegen, There were now just two bridges left between them and the German heartland, There was a good chance that Market Garden would work.
The Guards' tanks were here, Horrocks was on his way up the column and the Americans were already fighting in the streets of Nijmegen.
To succeed, the British and Americans had to capture the bridge there, the last before the bridge at Arnhem, just eight miles away.
On the fourth day of the operation, General Horrocks arrived to join his tanks in Nijmegen, He made straight for the best viewpoint in town, the power station by the river, Today it has been replaced by a new one, but the view is still substantially the same, This is what Horrocks would have seen.
In front of him was a huge river, the Waal.
To his east, the ancient city of Nijmegen with its two bridges.
The nearer one carries the railway.
The further one, at that stage amongst the largest in Europe, the road.
The town was already wreathed in smoke from the street fighting which was taking place.
But he could see more smoke away to the north.
He could see smoke from the fighting at Arnhem, Frost and his men had held the bridge for three days now, without reinforcement, But the tanks of the SS panzer divisions were beginning to blast them out, The tactic was to fire high explosive into the sides of the building to break the wall down.
Then fire smoke shells through that.
The smoke shells have got phosphorus in them.
The phosphorus sets light to anything inflammable in the house, and they then burned the perimeter down bit by bit over the next 48 hours.
Once the water ran out and the flames became uncontrollable, you had to get out of the building quickly, get into another one and set that up for defence.
Just a few miles away in Nijmegen, Horrocks's soldiers had had no success in crossing the bridge, They were still fighting in the streets of the town, It was time to try another approach, Horrocks held a conference here at the power station.
The plan was to cross the river in force, in boats.
To do so in daylight was a fearsome undertaking.
The Germans were securely ensconced behind a dyke on the far bank of the river, making the attack doubly dangerous.
But if the Allies were to reach Arnhem in time, risks had to be taken.
Having been ordered up from Grave the previous night, Moffatt Burriss was at the conference, When we got to the top floor, already there was Colonel Tucker, our regimental commander, and General Browning and General Horrocks.
And General Horrocks asked Colonel Tucker, "This is an awesome task.
Can your lads do it, Colonel Tucker?" Tucker's response was, "Well, General, "if we take the bridge, will your troops be lined up ready "Will your tanks be lined up ready to go?" I can remember his words as if he said them yesterday.
He said, "My tanks will be lined up in full force, hell-bent for Arnhem, "and nothing will stop them.
" Horrocks's confidence seemed boundless, Those tanks would come from the Grenadier Guards, who were now in the middle of a bitter battle in Nijmegen, fighting through houses and streets, and finally through a wooded park which overlooked the bridge, It was very slow and difficult fighting, At two o'clock that afternoon, the guns of 30 Corps opened fire on the German positions across the river.
We were really horrified that we would be crossing that swift river in those canvas paddle boats, because with only three, four, five or six paddles, the men had to paddle with their rifle butts.
While the crossing was in progress Horrocks and Browning watched from the top of the power station, almost like monarchs looking out over some 18th-century battlefield, unable to influence things and well aware that triumph or disaster hinged on the sheer courage of the men down here.
When the lead boat got about a third of the way across, all hell broke loose.
That's when the rifle fire, the machine-gun fire, 20-millimetre fire, just opened fire.
Men started slumping in the boat, some of them killed, some of them wounded.
I remember in my boat I was sitting on the back seat with the engineer and he was standing there with the boat paddle acting as a rudder.
One hand was on the side of the boat and I noticed his wrist turned red and he said, "Captain, take the rudder.
I've been hit.
" Just as I reached for the rudder, he caught a 20mm high explosive right through his head and it just blew his head apart, blew it off.
I was just covered, my head and shoulders and side, with his blood and brains.
I caught some of the shrapnel in my side.
When we hit the opposite bank, I said, "All right, let's go head straight for the dyke.
" Well, as we started to cross that pasture, those machine-guns just had a complete field of fire there, that it was just running through a hail of bullets.
Nobody stopped, unless they were hit.
The Waal crossing was one of the bravest attacks of the entire campaign.
Crossing the river and taking this dyke cost Burriss about half his company.
But the survivors then had to go on and take those bridges, to help the tanks to get across.
When they reached the road leading to the bridge, the Americans achieved complete surprise, but then they heard the sound of tanks, They thought the tanks were German, But they weren't, They were the tanks of the Grenadiers, led by a sergeant from Lord Carrington's squadron, He and his tanks, three tanks, whatever they were, went over and I followed him over.
I thought they were gonna blow the bridge up at any moment, and I imagine so did he.
I was astonished that we got over the bridge.
We just swarmed over the tank and started hugging the guys.
The guy's head was sticking out of the turret.
I just hugged him around the neck.
I said, "You guys are the greatest sight I've seen in years.
" I kissed the tank and told them to head on to Arnhem.
But the tanks didn't move, Ahead of them on the road was a German anti-tank gun, So I went over and said, "Why are you stopping? Why are you not going to Arnhem?" He said, "Well, I can't go up there.
That gun will knock out my tank.
" I said, "We'll go with you and get that gun.
" He said, "No, I can't go without orders.
" The guards had fought their way onto the bridge through tough resistance and they were worried about the ground on the other side of the bridge, The road from the bridge was on a sort of embankment.
It would have been quite difficult to go ahead.
It would have been difficult in the daylight.
You were a sitting duck for anybody who was there.
But I should have thought at night when we'd just stormed the bridge, it would have been difficult to push through in the dark.
Well, I felt betrayed.
I'd just sacrificed half of my company to capture that bridge in in the face of dozens of guns, and they were stopping because of one gun and they had a whole corps of tanks.
The tanks didn't move that night, The Grenadiers' war diary speaks of the need to consolidate the captured bridge, But it's clear that Horrocks's sense of high tempo hadn't percolated down the chain of command.
Although the Grenadiers weren't to know it, there was almost nothing between them and Arnhem, eight miles away.
The plan might yet have worked because in Arnhem Frost's men still retained their handhold on the north end of the bridge.
We had by this time about 300 wounded in the cellars, but I still believed that 30 Corps would be coming up, certainly up to the south bank, within a matter of almost hours, and we could hear 'em.
I think Lord Carrington was across the bridge before we were overrun.
Very A very close-run thing.
At eight o'clock I realised that our little battle was finished.
We just didn't have the ammunition.
When the other side can run tanks right up to your front window, with no chance of you retaliating, there comes a moment where you can't go on.
There was never any question of surrender, 100 of those who weren't seriously wounded tried to fight their way out, Most of them were captured or killed, The Market Garden plan had called for Arnhem Bridge to be held by a whole brigade, nearly 3,000 men, for two days.
In the event, 740 men held it for three and a half days.
It was a heroic defence and it's been justly celebrated.
But the story doesn't end here.
Three miles away, the rest of the division were still holding out around the village of Oosterbeek.
At Oosterbeek, there was a ferry across the river, If the British could manage to build a bridge here, they could still push on into Germany, Here the airborne troops made their stand, They'd been reinforced by another landing but they'd also suffered grievous losses, Of the division's 10,000 men, only 3,500 remained to defend the crossing, The ground here behind Oosterbeek Church is still scarred by the pits they dug or their light field guns.
They form part of an enclave, a mile deep by half a mile wide, going up into the village of Oosterbeek, If they could hold this bridgehead, it was still possible that Horrocks could get his tanks across the Rhine after all.
Psychologically this was a sea change, 'cause until then we'd been fighting to get to the bridge and now we were going to be put into a defensive situation to hold a perimeter so as to enable the second army to come across the Rhine there and to hold this, come what may.
Oosterbeek was an unlikely setting for a battle, A perfectly peaceful Dutch, suburban, large village, in apple-pie order, as though nothing had ever happened.
I had not expected to run into armour.
I was certainly surprised at the resilience that the Germans were showing, considering all that we'd been told was that they were demoralised and that they were old men and boys and so on.
In fact, we had SS soldiers in front of us.
As Horrocks's tanks pushed forward, after taking the bridge at Nijmegen, the airborne soldiers put up an increasingly desperate defence, Casualties were very heavy as the battle raged, Among them was James Cleminson, He was sent to a makeshift hospital in the house of a Dutch civilian next to the church, She used to come round every evening and read from the 91 st Psalm and encourage people and she was the most marvellous example, a fantastic woman who kept everybody's courage up.
Only a few hundred yards away, across the river from the airborne soldiers, help began to arrive, First, by air, some Polish paratroopers, Then Horrocks's forward parties, If they could get across the river in strength, the division and the plan might be saved, Eventually Horrocks himself came forward to take a look.
Some say he was looking pale and ill as the result of his desert wounds.
He climbed the tower here at Driel, directly across from the Oosterbeek enclave, He could see that the key to the crossing was the small but steep hill called Westerbouwing, which dominates the ferry, Once held by Urquhart's men, this position had now been taken by the Germans, who could sweep the ferry with their fire.
He himself later said that this was his blackest moment of the war.
With the Germans reinforcing from the east, his own force risked being cut off completely.
Horrocks ordered his men to attack across the river in strength, but the assault was a disastrous failure, Horrocks and Browning realised the game was up, Rather than reinforce them, they decided to evacuate the airborne men, The following night, the surviving soldiers at Oosterbeek came out, Only some two and a half thousand eventually made the crossing, Guided by mine tapes, they crept through the woods, down to the river through a storm of fire, The battle to force the bridges into Germany was over, A very eerie silence the following morning.
None of us knew what in fact had happened.
The Airborne Division had left behind nearly 1,500 dead and more than 6,500 prisoners, many badly wounded, One of our doctors came and told us that our soldiers had withdrawn over the Rhine and that we would be taken to a German hospital.
That that was a horrible feeling, 'cause it was totally unexpected.
But it was a very Ionely feeling, when you're abandoned.
It would be another four months before the Allies crossed the Rhine again and captured the Ruhr, But by that time the Russians were in sight of Berlin, The Allied failure was tragic, because the operation might indeed have shortened the war, Europe might have been very different and millions of people would not have died had Market Garden succeeded.