THE MISSED OPPORTUNITY

Improvisation . ..

Arriving at Reinhold's command post inBemmel during the evening of 20 Septem-ber, Harmel frantically tried to retrieve thesituation. Those parts of Panzer-grenadierRegiment 22 and the tanks that had alreadycrossed the ferry were ordered to counter-attack immediately from the east. But theseelements of the reconstituted KampfgruppeReinhold lacked heavy weapons. Only onelight battery of field howitzers had beenbrought across the ferry so far, and theywere positioned east of Flieren. Thecounter-attack, therefore, lacked punch. Bydarkness a rudimentary line had been estab-lished one kilometre north of Lent, and thisgradually thickened into linked outposts asmore units, including the Kampfgruppe'Hartung', became available to Reinhold.By first light German blocking positionsoccupied the crossroads one kilometresouth-west of Ressen, south of the villageitself and south of Bemmel down to theWaal river.Bittrich, the IISS Corps Commander,instructed Harmel to counter-attack at firstlight on 21 September to forestall and spoilthe anticipated Allied thrust on Elst, andthence to Arnhem. 'All the forces availablefrom Pannerden,' ordered the General, 'areto be collected and attack the eastern flankof the enemy vanguards, overwhelm them,and throw the enemy back over the Waalriver.'SS-Captain Schwappacher's 21 ArtilleryBattery, his regimental headquarters, andother collected units, were still holding on tothe 'hedgehog' position around Oosterhout.Apart from imposing a degree of cautionupon any projected Allied thrust to Arnhem,they provided an anchor to the right of thethin screen raised by the KampfgruppeReinhold to cover the approach to Arnhem.Early on 21 September, Knaust arrived fora preliminary reconnaissance and wasbriefed on the Oosterhout situation by

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Schwappacher. New battery positions wereestablished south of Elst. Many of Schwap-pacher's personnel, gun crews and radiooperators, currently manning trenches asinfantry, were needed there. At 1200 the SSArtillery and Training Regiment V finallythinned out as more of Knaust's Kampf-gruppe arrived. Flight was still in the mindsof the soldiers. Schwappacher mentionsthree Wehrmacht batteries originallylocated north-east of Oosterhout which,'despite appeals from me to hold theirpositions during the critical situation theday before, had already withdrawn theirpositions further back to the north-west'.The atmosphere of unease and alarm pre-vailing since the bridges' loss remained.Harmel's punch against the eastern flankof the breakthrough was eventually as-sembled and mounted. Thinly spread over afour-kilometre front, a force of about threebattalions, divided into three to fourKampfgruppen, supported by 16 Mark IVtanks, advanced w e s t w a r d s . Artilleryresources were sparse: a light battery east ofFlieren, and two more from the 10SS Artil-lery Regiment firing from the east bank ofthe Pannerden canal. These were desperatemeasures. SS Panzer-grenadier Regiment21's one and a half battalions could not beincluded, because they were delayed by theferry crossing, and had only got as far asHaalderen, one and a half kilometres westof Bemmel. It was all that could be scrapedtogether in the time allowed by GeneralBittrich. Even ferrying operations wereinterrupted to assist in the attack SS-Captain Brandt at Pannerden recalls:

'Ja - and then there was abreakthrough somewhere, and wewere taken out. Even during actualloading operations I had to take partin the defence of a wooded area withmy headquarters company, and anyother soldiers that could be foundaround, supported also by six tanks.'

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