| Orginal caption: “Original wartime caption: Glider troops take cover after their glider had crash landed.” The United Kingdom Royal Army 6th Airborne Division took off from various airfields around Great Britain. Secretary of State for Air Sir Archibald Sinclair (October 22, 1890 – June 15, 1970) and Marshal of the Royal Air Force (RAF) Arthur W. Tedder (July 11, 1890 – June 3, 1967) watched the Airborne force taking off from RAF Earls Colne. Smoke and dust occluded the landing sites by the time the 6th Airland Brigade, the final major unit, arrived. The glider pilots could not even make out the Rhine River. Gliders cast off at 1025 Hours and spiraled down to land. The Nazi Germans had a range of anti-aircraft artillery, and the gliders were under heavy fire as they landed. Many were hit in the air and several were shot down or exploded. The United States Army 17th Airborne Division was also landing, and because of the visibility problems and the flak, Allied paratroops landed in the wrong zones. A unit of 17th Airborne assisted the British paratroopers in securing Hamminkeln. L. Marsland Gander (1902-1986) of the Daily Telegraph filed this report afterwards: “Arnhem is deservedly extolled as the finest expioit of British airborne troops, but I doubt whether the men of the First Airborne Division felt any more excited, tense and apprehensive than we who waited behind barbed wire for an unspecified operation in March 1945. We glider types were held incommunicado at a camp known as Mushroom Farm — a small town of Nissen huts somewhere near Braintree in Essex.” “Merely to mention the name of that camp revives in me the sense of sickening foreboding I felt as, wearing a new red beret conferred by the courtesy of Major-General Eric Bols [(June 8, 1904 – June 14, 1985) Commander, Sixth Airborne Division], the Divisional Commander, I passed through the gates to what I felt convinced was certain doom. Even the magnificent bearing camaraderie of the trained sky-troops could not entirely banish my depression.” “All that we knew about the coming operation, at that time, was that it would be the biggest of the war, with two complete divisions taking part — one British and one American – in close coordination. There were rumors that we were going to Denmark; even that we were going to beat the Russians to it by seizing Berlin itself. On the whole, however, it seemed most probable that we were destined to establish a Rhine bridgehead to open the way for the Second Army into the heart of Germany.” “General Bols Unfolds His Plan” “The men of the Sixth Airborne, many of them heroes of D-Day drops, spent their time in preparation and occasional revelry. On these social occasions they liked to roar out their swashbuckling, blood-freezing choruses. One which ran to the tune of John Brown’s Body had as its theme: ‘Glory, glory, what a helluva way to die ‘Cause we ain’t going to live no more !’” “Another, sung to Red River Valley, concluded with: ‘So come stand by your glasses so ready Here’s a toast to the men of the sky. Let us drink to the men dead already And here’s to the nest man to die!’” “Despite this fatalism the air-troopers were in fine fettle, and if they had any fears they concealed them beneath a nonchalant, good-humored, bantering manner.” “We were each served out with equipment which seemed to anticipate every possible form of violent or lingering death. First, a Mac West lifejacket in case we fell in the sea. Then a little red light (with battery) to insure against falling in at night, and a great of stuff to color the sea yellow lest should fall in in daylight. We were given emergency rations and shell-dressings, domed steel helmets, vests like fishing nets, and camouflage jackets. The one thing we were not given was parachutes, for the theory that in gliders either you all landed together or you did not land at all. We war correspondents, whom there were six with the Sixth Airborne, took an increasingly dim view of it all.” “One morning General Bols, debonair, supremely confident, unfolded his plans to us. We hardly knew whether to feel relieved or disappointed when he said that, after all, the operation – known by the code name of Varsity – might not come off if the weather did not suit. Sure enough, it was to be the Rhine crossing. But the airborne show, comprising ourselves and the Seventeenth United States Division under Major General Matthew B. Ridgway [(March 3, 1895 – July 26, 1993)], commanding the United States Army Eighteenth Airborne Corps, was merely a ‘bonus’ to the land attack.” “Applying the hard-learnt lessons of Arnhem, it was intended that our landing, north of Wesel, should be supported from the start by the medium artillery of Twenty-First Army Group. This meant that we should drop only a mile or two ahead of the land forces, which should be able to make a junction in a matter of hours, instead of days or weeks. If all want well, overnight a Commando brigade would have stormed into Wesel in the van of Thirtieth Corps which was to cross the Rhine on a wide front. Then. with any kind of luck, we should be linking up with Fifteenth Scottish Division shortly after landing.” “This was a wise plan. The airborne boys were being used to widen and deepen a hole already made in German resistance. They were not to be left isolated for days or weeks in an island attacked by an ever-increasing weight of heavy weapons that could not be brought by air. So far so good. But the Germans, it seemed, were extremely well informed of our plans. Despite continuous defeat and collapsing morale they showed every intention of giving us a warm reception. This knowledge, plus the fact that the London newspapers, a day or two before our operation was due, began to discuss its possibilities openly, made farcical the elaborate pretense of a security black-out.” “We knew that the Nazi Germans had packed the probable dropping zone with small combat groups of parachute and Schutzstaffel SS troops trained to tackle glider troops and parachutists before these had had time to organize. He had also massed light flak for our reception. We were reassured, however, by intelligence officers, who said that the RAF were putting ‘the biggest blitz ever, a terrific stonk’ which would wipe out every flak gun long before we arrived. The only omission on the Nazi Germans’ part was that, probably through lack of time, he had not studded the fields with anti-glider poles and wires or put down minefields in the likely dropping zones.” “Greeted With a Torrent of Fire” “I was invited to study an aerial photo of the field, on the fringes of Diersfordter Wald, where my particular glider supposed to land. Noticing som: was white mirks in the ditches I asked, innocently, what they were supposed to be. ‘Oh don’t worry about that!’ said my cheerful adviser. “Those are German machine guns, but the RAF will take care of them.” Though I am the last to disparage the RAF I am bound to say that on this occasion all the rosy optimism at Mushroom Farm was unjustified. Somehow the flak batteries eluded the scouring Typhoons, and when on the morning of March 24 our air armada arrived it was greeted with such a torrent of fire that only eighty-eight out of 416 gliders landed undamaged. But I am racing somewhat ahead of my story.” “I had bean assigned to a Horsa glider carrying men of the Divisional Headquarters defense company. The weather held good, and on a calm, sunny, Saturday morning I climbed into the glider at Shepherd’s Grove airfield with eighteen stalwart infantrymen, a Colonel of the Royal Engineers, and the Senior Chaplain as fellow passengers. We sat opposite each other on benches, trussed-up with equipment and strapped in. You could not see much through the small portholes. Somebody likened it to traveling in a tube. Half-sick and taut with nervous excitement which each hoped was not apparent to his neighbors, we fell ourselves, after an eternity of waiting, pulled off into the air. I was able to move from time to time into the pilot’s cockpit, from where I could see the blue bowl of sky swarming with the silver ‘flying fish.” High above sparkled the shoals of fighter minnows, paradoxically protecting the bigger fish below; just ahead of our glider wallowed the whale of our bomber tug, a long sagging cable in between.” “The eye could hardly take in the spectacle. Tugs, gliders, parachute aircraft everywhere: the landscape rolling sluggishly below. We Passed over the field, of Waterloo. Then, at 1020 Hours, fifteen minutes before we were due to land, I saw a Wonderful, exhilarating spectacle – the stream of American tugs, with gliders towed two by two, joining us. More than three thousand aircraft, carrying ahout sixteen thousand airborne troops, filled the sky while Allied troops below (whom we could not see) waved their hats, thrilled with awe and pride. It was the crowning achievement of the war, the aerial transport fleet of two nations stretching seventy-five miles from van to tail.” “Foggy World Peopled by Spectres” “I expected to see the Rhine, but straining over the pilot’s shoulder I discerned instead a drifting black cloud of smoke obscuring everything beneath. The pilot shouted back, ‘Casting off. Strap yourselves in!’ Then for a few hectic minutes we were banking. twisting and plunging, the ” unneutralized” flak bursting all around. Mercifully hidden was the sight of Wellington tugs and gliders dissolving in flames and rocketing to earth.” “Then, with a bump we hit the earth. Our landing flaps did not work, and the shock broke off our tail. We prayed that those German machine-guns had been ‘dealt with,’ little knowing that on this field where gliders were crashing, gamboling and bursting into flames, some gallant United States parachutists of the 513th Parachute Regiment, dropped by mistake, were already beginning to do our job of cleaning-up and capturing Kipenliof Farm as Divisional Headquarters. Most of the gliders, lost in the unexpected fog — apparently caused by our smokescreen and gunfire — landed far from their intended place. But we were not a hundred yards from the right spot, and the only casualties were two or three men in the tail with broken bones.” “No individual sees much of a modern battle, least of all the kind of diffused affair of small parties that follows an air drop. 1 saw men running about with tommy guns and heard a few bullets whining over. Then, flat on my belly, I saw dozens of submissive prisoners lining the distant hedge, hands above their heads. Frankly, in this dangerous, foggy world: peopled by wild spectres, I had no idea which way to turn for safety. But, guided by the Colonel, I at last found my cautious way to the farm.” “Contrary to the reports published at the time there was no effective link-up between Sixth Airborne and the Fifteenth Scottish for at least twenty-four hours, during which time the situation was extremely mixed and hazardous. Snipers were busy all round us in the Diersfordter Wald; a German company almost stumbled into our headquarters by mistake during the night and I was rushed into a trench, unarmed non-combatant though I was, to help repel them. General Ridgway himself, who visited our headquarters during the night on bis way back to his command post, drove into a party of Germans moving east. In the mad. contused melee which ensued he was slightly wounded in the shoulder, but he shot one German dead.” “The most heroic exploit of that memorable day was accomplished by Sixth Air Landing Brigade, whose headlong assault on the Issel bridges and the key village of Haminkeln was a modern Balaclava, While their comrades of the Third and Fifth Parachute Brigades, rallied by hunting horns, were clearing the flanks, and in some cases dropping among the German batteries and receiving terrified submission, the Sixth Air Landing Brigade made good its objectives but at the expense of heavy losses.” “Gliders carrying coup de main parties of the Royal Ulster Rifles and the Oxfordshire and Bucks Light Infantry landed near enough to their objectives to secure them within an hour. But a number of gliders carrying the Oxfordshire and Bucks men were set in flames by light flak, the funeral pyres burning throughout the action. That night – we had a message that a German counterattack had been launched against the Sixth Air Landing Brigade, headed by a Tiger tank which was ‘brewing-up’ gliders on the ground, The counterattack, though it necessitated blowing up one of the captured bridges, petered out. In twenty-four hours the link-up with Fifteenth Scottish was firm and the Red Devils had begun to swing towards Bocholt.” “German Flak Exacted High Price” “Battle casualties in the Sixth Airborne Division on that first day totaled 108 officers and thirteen hundred men killed, wounded, and missing out of a divisional strength of eight thousand, and although some of the missing have since turned up, it was a high price. The Germans, admittedly, were not fighting with the discipline and fanatical resolution of 1940-44. Nevertheless they wrought terrible execution with their flak, and in places resisted with the courage of despair.” “As Montgomery’s armor flooded through the hole torn in Germany’s last defenses, on the victory tide, the British public tended to forget the part played by our airborne boys. A picture comes to my mind of a figure lying dead, his half-opened parachute lying beside him where he fell. His body was complete, apparently uninjured, yet every bone must have been broken, and on the hard earth was an exact impression, 2 inches deep, of a human form. Sergeant James P. “Jimmy” Christie (March 9, 1920 – December 1979), Number 5 United Kingdom Royal Army Film and Photo Section, Army Film and Photographic Unit, trained as a paratrooper but landed with the gliders early in the morning of June 6, 1944. He then landed in Arnhem, Netherlands in September 1944, and Crossed the Rhine in a British glider on March 23, 1945. He was also present at the liberation of Bergen Belsen. | |
| Image Filename | wwii0855.jpg |
| Image Size | 191.75 KB |
| Image Dimensions | 1377 x 1451 |
| Photographer | James P. Christie |
| Photographer Title | Number Five United Kingdom Royal Army Film and Photo Section, Army Film and Photographic Unit |
| Caption Author | Written or Adapted by Jason McDonald |
| Date Photographed | March 25, 1945 |
| Location | |
| City | Wesel |
| State or Province | North Rhine-Westphalia |
| Country | Germany |
| Archive | Imperial War Museum |
| Record Number | BU 2278 |
| Status | Caption ©2026 MFA Productions LLC Please Do Not Duplicate or Distribute Without Permission; Image in the Public Domain |
Author of the World War II Multimedia Database