Al Murray and James Holland are at the John Frost Bridge in Arnhem where paratroopers from the British Airborne Division fought a desperate, bloody battle with the Germans forces as they waited in vain for XXX Corps to arrive during Operation Market Garden in September 1944. They tell the incredible story of one of Al’s heroes of the second world war, the resolute Captain Eric Mackay of 1st Parachute Squadron who led a brave last stand in the school house next to the bridge with a piece of shrapnel embedded in his foot, as well as Lieutenant Colonel John Frost (immortalised by Anthony Hopkins in the 1977 film ‘A Bridge Too Far’) and the heroes of the 2nd Parachute Battalion.
#ww2 #almurray #jamesholland #abridgetoofar #ww2walkingtheground #arnhem #xxxcorps
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3.55 Mark III's
OMG the magnifying lense this episode puts on the abysmal architecture we, the Dutch, built to replace the destroyed buildings…
The pin overlay and its movement on the map to where James and Al are is incredible. I have never seen historical photography done this way. Really gives you an idea exactly what and where things are. Great stuff
fun fact, actress audrey hepburn was in arnhem as a young dutch resistance girl
It would be great to talk about the VC winners or give a small nod to their accounts. I know only a small part of many stories.
14:30 As far as I know Graebners recon unit was part of 9th SS Hohenstaufen
Sir John Killick served as an officer in the Intelligence Corps during World War II, most notably as Officer Commanding 89th Parachute Field Security Section
Was really looking forward to this episode and wasn't disappointed! Brilliant guys! Loved the old photos and aerial shots. Really helped to picture it how it was during the battle. Top work!
Thank you for this great series. Every year in September, on the anniversary of the battle, the bagpipes march over the bridge to figuratively relieve the battered soldiers after all these years. It is so wonderful, as if you can hear their spirits sighing in relief and whispering to each other, "they are finally here".
6:50 Captain Mackay did not escaped with Pegasus operation. In a nutshell: He was captured (did an escape attempt jumping out of a German lorry) and brought to a German collection camp in Emmerich not to far of the border. Here he meets some of his men (Lt Simpson, cpl Charles Weir and Cpl Humphreys who escape once before in Italy). They head towards the river after their escape. They find a rowing boat and tow on the Waal river towards Nijmegen. That were the picture was taken with Nijmegen bridge at the back. This and a few other photos of them reenenacting the moment they enter shore was taken the next day. The battle of the 1st airborne division is still going on in
Oosterbeek. The 4 of them wait north of the Nijmegen bridge to look for survivors of their unit after the withdrawl from Oosterbeek 25-26 september. They meet one soldier who after landing could not catch up with them and fought in Oosterbeek until being withdrawn. Mackay actually wrote a small booklet although he left out the fact that after evacuating the Limburg van Stirum school he goes wih his men in another school next (south) were there are the remains of C-company 3rd battalion and their co Major Lewis. Lewis and Mackay do not mention each other in any report. And they both took their owm positions in the building and more or less ignore each other. It appears that both officers had some dissagreement with each other and therefore chosse not to interfere with each other. Although the wounded of both unit ended up in the same room taken care by a private who was attached to c-company for his medical skills although not being an official medic.
2:20 THOSE trucks and spähwagen were from ss 9th recce and THOSE trucks made it IMPOSSIBLE for the US paras from Gavin to TAKE the Nijmegen bridge at 17th evening !!!
HAd FROST actually HARASSED them at THAT EXACT moment, then the americans from Gavin WOULD have taken the NIjmegen bridge !!!
Had goosebumps when Al was talking about Captain Mackay in the school
It's these individual stories that make it so much more real. It takes you closer to what transpired and the monumental effort it took. Reading about the grand strategy and all the statistics and figures that come with it can give you a detached view of war. It's these smaller stories that put into perspective how horrible it is.
Thank you so much guys!
18:28 notice the youth juvenile criminals on fatbikes KNOWING to HIDE their faces from the camera becozzzz the RISK of getting recognized…
Something I've not seen reproduced elsewhere was an old/new overlay plan of the bridge area up in the tower of St Eusebius.
Much of the bridge approach was built through an existing park which is why it fitted so neatly into the landscape. The rocking-horse-poo book 'B Company Arrived' has a lot of old photos of the area before the Germans and the Allied air forces remodelled it.
0:20 – only a few houses in the block next to the river had to be demolished. The embanked ramp was built over the remnants of the medieval moat in the star-shaped ramparts around the old town, and the remaining ornamental lakes and green spaces in an arc around the town centre that loop back to the old harbour to the west – that still existed in 1944, but now the Roermondsplein under the Nelson Mandelabrug – are all that is left of the old medieval defences.
6:04 – there's a good account of the Royal Engineers using a remote-controlled Bren gun on a tripod to get German snipers to respond and give away their position, and because the RE were not issued with the telescopic sight version of the Lee-Enfield rifle, they used a man with another Bren (a very accurate weapon) firing single shot to take out the German sniper. It's an example of how the RE used their own ingenuity to solve the same infantry problems everybody else had, but they often had to come up with a different approach using the equipment they had.
Source: Engineers At The Bridge: The 1st Parachute Squadron Royal Engineers At Arnhem, John Sliz (2010)
6:40 – first time in this series I've heard Al make a mistake – Mackay does not return on Operation PEGASUS but makes his own escape and evasion from a transit camp at Emmerich in Germany on 21 September with three other men, including Lieutenant Simpson from his own A Troop 1st Para Sqn RE, finding a rowing boat and made their way down the Rhine to reach Allied lines at Nijmegen on 23 September. The photo you show here is the four men reaching Nijmegen. PEGASUS was in late October further west on the Neder Rijn between Randwijk and Heteren in an operation organised by David Dobie of 1st Para Battalion with the help of the Dutch resistance.
12:43 – Captain John Killick was head of the 89 (Parachute) Field Security Section, a counter-intelligence unit attached to the division with 16 men in total. I believe their role was to search German headquarters for documents and arrest known individuals who were collaborators or war criminals.
13:58 – one SS officer's grab for glory? I would dispute that. Gräbner's SS-Panzer-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 9 had been released from Korps control and he was ordered to rejoin the Hohenstaufen Division, but Gräbner was given out of date intelligence on the British presence at the bridge, so while he was expecting to brush aside about 200 paratroopers with small arms weapons he found himself driving into a fortified perimeter with two batteries of pack howitzers in Oosterbeek zeroed in on the southern ramp and two 6-pounder anti-tank guns covering the northern ramp off the bridge. His 3.Kompanie (consolidated from remains of 3 and 4.Kompanie from the original battalion establishment) was completely destroyed on the bridge. Only five armoured cars from1.Kompanie leading the attack had got through before the British opened fire, and the six half-track armoured cars from the original 2.Kompanie had been left behind in Oosterbeek when Gräbner went south to Nijmegen the previous evening. This only left the 5.schwere (heavy) Kompanie, consisting of five or six half-tracks, three with 7.5cm close support Kanon (SdKfz 251/9), and the 6.Versorgungs (supply) company acting as a lorried infantry company with 115 men, trapped south of the river.
14:30 – Gräbner's unit was SS-Panzer-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 9 from 9.SS-Panzer-Division 'Hohenstaufen' based at Beekbergen near Apeldoorn. There is some question over whether they were loaned to 10.SS-Panzer-Division 'Frundsberg' for the initial reconnaissance, because they were ready to move before the Frundsberg's own reconnaissance battalion under Brinkmann located at Borculo, but it seems Gräbner was actually under Bittrich's II.SS-Panzerkorps control to reconnoitre both Arnhem (assigned to Hohenstaufen Division) and south to Nijmegen (assigned to the Frundsberg) to investigate reports of airborne landings in both locations. Gräbner was released back to Hohenstaufen control when Brinkmann arrived in Arnhem, but he couldn't get to Nijmegen because Frost held the Arnhem bridge.
14:47 – they do know where to be, but the readyness state of different units in the II.SS-Panzerkorps and Frost's taking of the Arnhem bridge had disrupted the rapid deployment of the two SS divisions. It made sense for the Frundsberg to go south to stop XXX Corps at Nijmegen, because apart from Gräbner's unit, the Hohenstaufen only consisted of a few 'alarm' companies of panzer crews and artillerymen acting as light infantry without heavy weapons. They had a few heavy armoured vehicles, but these were kept off the books as non-operational and in 'short-term repair' to avoid a Korps order to hand over equipment to the Frundsberg. The Hohenstaufen were due to withdraw their last (alarm) units by train to Germany for the refit on the Sunday of the airborne attack. Although their reaction time was very quick due to Model's order to form alarm units ready to move on an hour's notice, the response was complicated by the administrative subterfuge of the Hohenstaufen's commander in keeping some of his key assets from the Frundsberg. Bittrich was actually shocked to hear from Harzer that Gräbner's unit would be ready to move after a couple of hours to unload the vehicles and make them 'operational' again.
16:55 – the 'bunkers' were actually toll booths – never used as such because the town found alternative funding for the bridge while it was under construction in 1935. The Germans converted the glass toll booths into bunkers, presumably using sandbags to protect the windows with a small opening left open for an MG, and on each pagoda style roof they constructed a wooden Flak tower, each housing a 2cm Flak kanon. The Flak gun and bunker on the east side was hit by the RAF in the morning of 17 September, leaving only the one on the west side to be dealt with by Frost. A 6-pounder anti-tank gun was man-handled up the embankment to engage the bunker, but could not elevate to hit the Flak gun, and I don't think the gun could depress low enough to hit the anti-tank gun either. I believe it was taken out by a PIAT from a building next to the bridge, and the bunker was then attacked by a flamethrower. The Hollywood film used the bridge at Deventer, which was built without toll booths, so the production had to make their own pillbox to recreate the action with the flamethrower and the ammunition huts (also probably accommodation for the bridge guards and Flak crews) that were behind the pillbox.
I just received my copy of Arnhem Black Tuesday! Thanks for these videos. I’ll be rewatching them as I read Al’s book.
Alright, one minute in and I feel the need to comment on that overlay on the picture. That was so incredibly insightful, straight away. Well done.
Just over a year ago my son and I walked that bridge on our mostly military historical tour. Very surreal to be there after countless viewings of “A Bridge Too Far” growing up and now BOB since 2001. And these blokes do such a great job walking it. Great series guys.
Happy new LP Video out 😅
There is a great booklet available at the Airborne museum with a collection of 1st hand accounts on the defence of the school: "With nothing bigger than a Bren Gun" by N Cherry
Great video as always.
Apparently that’s not the original bridge. It was bombed by the allies a few weeks of months later.
Fantastic account gents, absolutely loved it. A complete pox on You Tube’s adverts interrupting the narrative at key points, but top marks for presenting PhD level insight and knowledge in your usual chatty but searingly clear style. Thank you. More please
On you tube, there is a docu about a dutch double agent who worked for the germans and gave the game away about market garden pre operation, its called " the traitor of arnehm Robert Verkaik "
I hope you eventually do operation Varsity as my father was involved with towing gliders as he was a flight engineer on a Wellington. He did not tell us much about his tough end of his time in the RAF.
One story he told was taking ball bearings to Russia where the took some wood pulp gin over to flog to the locals. They consumed it nett and were surprised when some of them went blind. Dad and the rest of the queue had to fly home PDQ !!!
What I admire most about this and your written work is the accessibility, while still being accurate and serious and the human dimension, the description of first hand experience and the clear empathy for the individuals discussed. So much military history, and it has its place is terrain, strategy, units, equipment. You do that, but never lose touch with the human dimension
Loving the location icon marker for James and Al and the references to school , water company etc …. A great idea moving forward 👍🏻
This pair really know how to flog a dead horse
I've read about this bridge for 45 years. You two brought it to life. I can "see it" in my books now. Thank you.
I’ve followed this brilliant series but this was definitely the best so far !, it really gets you to grips how horrific it was. Thanks Al and James I am so looking forward to next upload. All the best from Somerset 👍🏻👍🏻💯🍺🍺
Al has excellent knowledge of this fascinating battle.
I would love a recommendation for a well balanced book on this subject.
This really shows the fight around the bridge covered a much large area than I previously thought. I know you can never judge history from movies but the film makes it out to be just a few buildings nearer the embankment that were occupied.
I have Leo Heaps book Grey Goose of Arnhem.
Anyone else who travel to Arnhem every September to participate in the airborne march? I've been there there at least 10 years and done the march 4 times.
Greetings from Denmark 🇩🇰
Enjoyed this series of historical walks, kudos to you chaps. Would you fellows consider walking the ground of the 51st Highland Division in any future ventures you may be planning? As you no doubt know, they were involved in some pivotal actions during the war from North Africa, Sicily and Northern Europe both at Dunkirk as part of the BEF and after D Day. I feel they deserve to have a light shone on them as they are largely forgotten. The 5th Battalion, The Seaforth Highlanders are of particular interest to me as they are from my local area. I have read the book “Sans Peur” which is basically the War Diary and no doubt there are stories that would benefit from your articulate portrayals. Keep up the good work chaps 🫡🇬🇧
Ernhem