IT NEVER S N O W S IN SEPTEMBER

of numerous gun batteries sited between theoil refineries at Spyck and the Reichswaldforest. In the distance the constant andforbidding crump and crack of gun firecould be discerned. Refugees from theNijmegen area began to arrive at the Rhineferry. Dirty, irritated and dishevelled, theycarried only a few belongings. Some werewounded. It was a depressing scene, show-ing in a sinister way what could happen next.Other military preparations were also inevidence. The home front was being mobil-ised. The Gauleiter of Essen, doubling asthe Reich Defence Commissioner, wasdirected hastily to assemble a home guard.As they moved out, these hardly convin-cing replacement formations met the firstcasualty convoys from the front on theElten road. As the home guard rodethrough Emmerich by train and truck, theywitnessed the unsettling spectacle ofwounded going the other way. Soldierswith blood-soaked bandages could be seenlying on thin layers of straw on a motleyassortment of vehicles, ranging from ambu-lances to farm carts. It was not an aus-picious beginning.At the same time stragglers from theearlier retreat from Belgium were gatheredon the Geist market square in Emmerich.They were about to be sent to the frontagain. Furtive glances and an air of resigna-tion were the only outward signs of thegut-rending nervousness they must havefelt. Amongst them were brown-uniformedSA - Sturmabteilung men - who had orig-inally been despatched to the Netherlandsto conscript foreign workers to labour onthe West Wall, or Siegfried Line. Otherswere railway guards left over from theheadlong flight from France. There werealso a number of intimidated-looking sig-nallers from the Wehrmacht's womenauxiliaries. All were despatched to thefront, apart from the Blitzmaedel - the'lightning girls' named after the flashemblem they wore on their sleeves.

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Scratchreinforcements . . .

Hastily-formed ad hoc formations sufferedmore casualties than regular units. Nor-mally lacking both experience and capablecommanders, they were thrown into battle,and had to look to neighbouring units forassistance or any expertise. Sergeant EmilPetersen was in command of a 35-manplatoon of the Reichsarbeitsdienst - Reicharmy pioneers - waiting at Arnhem stationfor transportation back to Germany whenthe call to action came. Plucked off theplatform on the first Sunday of the land-ings, his dismayed comrades found them-selves incorporated into a combat group250 strong. Nobody had any weapons,apart from Petersen and four others whohad machine pistols. Weapons were issuedat an SS barracks. Petersen commentedcynically:

'The situation was laughable. Firstnone of us liked fighting with theWaffen-SS. They had a reputation forbeing merciless. The arms they gave uswere ancient carbines. To break openmine, I had to bang it against a table.The morale of my men was not exactlyhigh when they saw these oldweapons.'

Nevertheless, they were put into the fightnear the Arnhem bridge. By first light theirunit of 250 had shrunk, through death orwounds, to less than half the original size.'It was nothing less than a massacre,'Petersen recalls.Competition for the available manpowerwas fierce, and units topped up theirstrengths by fair means or foul. It was notonly the front in southern Holland thathad to be stabilised. The West Wall wascrumbling too. SS Panzer-grenadier Div-ision 17's solution to the problem was thatof all German units deployed in Reich

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