The advance on Arnhem could therefore not begin before 2.45 p.m. It was led by the 2nd Battalion of General Lathbury's 1st Parachute Brigade.
Lieutenant-Colonel Frost, who commanded the battalion, was struck by the large number of Dutch men, women and children who gathered around his troops, who were offered apples, pears, jugs of milk, cups of tea. Too polite to refuse, the English soldiers were late in accepting the presents and expressing their gratitude to this population, which no doubt believed that the war was over.
Some of his men even pushed the delicacy to the point of asking permission from the inhabitants to enter the houses where the Germans might have been in ambush, taking great care not to damage the flowerbeds or the fences which surrounded the greater part of these small gardens so well maintained.
There were other reasons for the delay as well:most of the maps were not accurate and included, as one company commander complained, "far fewer roads than there are." actually had.”
The road along which Colonel Frost's men were advancing was the southernmost of those leading to Arnhem, passing through Heelsum and the southern edge of Oosterbeek. It was also the least well covered by the German "emergency measures", but if the opposition was neither powerful nor well organized, it was nevertheless sufficient to slow the progress and even stop it. General Urquhart, whose radio links with his subordinates were very poor, found himself obliged to go in person to ask the 2nd Battalion to increase the pace. Evening would soon fall and the bridges were still far away.
The 3rd Battalion of the Lathbury Brigade, commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel Fitch, was also experiencing difficulties and was not advancing quickly. He was heading towards Arnhem further north, via Oosterbeek. But, having arrived at a crossroads, some 3 kilometers from the town (at the place where General Kussin, major of the garrison of Arnhem, who had arrived in a whirlwind from Wolfheze in a Citroën, was killed), the leading section and , soon, the whole battalion had to come to a standstill, taken under violent mortar fire. rocket shells which exploded in the trees, spreading terror in all directions.
Lathbury, considering that "it was suicide to want to stay longer on this infernal crossing", gave the order Colonel Fitch to resume the advance'
However, the 3rd Battalion was not to go much further. Kraft's men, having been reinforced by the 9th Division's battle group, fought hard and were now supported by several assault guns. On the outskirts of Oosterbeek they again forced the British to pause. As night fell, Lathbury suggested that Fitch and his people take a few hours' rest. Patrols were dispatched in the direction of Arnhem and a message was sent to Frost that the 3rd Battalion would not attempt to reach the bridge again until the following day.
Besides, the the battalion of Lathbury's brigade was also not going to reach the bridge before morning. This battalion, commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel Dobie, had originally been planned to occupy the heights north of Arnhem and to close the roads leading to Apeldoorn and Zutphen, but as soon as they left Wolfheze north they had been hit hard by tanks, guns and infantry' Whichever way we tried to move, said a young Northumberland soldier, Andrew Milbourne, we were pinned down by a thunderous game' Dead bodies littered the ground on all sides, wounded cried out for water, groaning and the air was filled with cries of pain and screams. />In the meantime, what was left of the battalion had fought its way through the woods, passed Johanna Hoeve and reached, with extremely heavy losses, the northern outskirts of Arnhem. Colonel Dobie could no longer have any illusions:the Germans occupied the ground to the north of the town too firmly for him to hope to take possession of it as planned. He therefore preferred to give the order to rush on the bridge at first light.
Frost, who had just reached the bridge, would have needed Dobie's support. He had hardly more than 500 men with him (elements of his own battalion, some from a company of the 3rd battalion, some others from a reconnaissance squadron, a detachment of engineers, a quarter of quartermasters, finally the staff of the brigade)' He had detached his 3rd company to guard the railway bridge which had been blown up before the men reached it; she was now fighting, in town, for the station'
With the troops at his disposal, Frost had managed to hold the northern end of the bridge and occupy the buildings all around' But two attempts to seize the other end had been repulsed by Harzer armor' And if, at the enemy, reinforcements of infantry, artillery and even brand new "Royal Tiger" tanks arrived from the group armies B to reinforce it, it didn't seem that, on Frost's side, reinforcements were ever to appear.
General Urquhart already knew that “he was losing control of the battle”. No longer able to direct the division's operations by radio, he had decided to remain at the side of General Lathbury, who was himself with the forward elements of the 3rd Battalion. On Monday morning, when this battalion resumed its march into Arnhem, he soon found himself engaged in a violent and confused fight where tanks and assault guns were deployed all around the massive Gothic construction of the Saint-Elisabeth Catholic hospital. The confusion was at its height when the
Dobie's battalion, attempting to break through to the bridge, came under heavy fire from mortars, armored cars, tanks and snipers in the area of the station, very close to the hospital' You would have sworn that They had hundreds of tanks, those bastards! said an English soldier 'We had the impression to hear them from all sides. They also had a lot more mortars than us and they knew how to use them! The shells kept falling on us.
It must be said that not all the shells came from the enemy! It was that the British units were tangled up in each other, scattered in countless number of narrow little streets and buildings of all kinds, so much so that it became difficult to discern friend from foe or to know which houses housed paratroopers or Germans.
In the midst of this disorder, Lathbury was hit in the spine by a bullet and was paralyzed. As for Urquhart, he found himself surrounded by panzer grenadiers and was forced to hide in the attic of a villa in Zwarteweg. Accompanied by a platoon leader and an intelligence officer, he had to spend the night in this hiding place with, in front of the house, a German assault gun.
At the P.C. division, General Hicks had taken command. His 1st Airborne Brigade had spent the previous day covering the landing zones, but now that the Lathbury Brigade seemed on the verge of annihilation, it was quite clear that the time had come to reinforce the remnants of it that were still trying to attack the bridge.
How many elements of Lathbury's Brigade were still in existence? This Hicks could not determine because the radio links were still so poor. Several posts had been destroyed by enemy fire and all those that were still functioning could hardly carry beyond 5 kilometres' As the HQ was about twelve kilometers from the bridge, only a few inaudible crackles reached him with a few snatches of message.
When, under these conditions, Hicks sent two companies of the 2nd South Staffordshire Regiment into Arnhem, he had no exact idea of the situation they would find there. Anyway, he didn't dare to do more, because, in spite of the optimistic forecasts of the weather, the fog on the ground confirmed to remain on the aerodromes of England, so that the second wave of transport, had to be delayed. He also had to keep forces to defend the landing zones until the arrival of the 4th parachute brigade.
Knowing that this arrival was to take place (we had found a copy of the plan of the operation on a killed British officer), Bittrich was precisely endeavoring, by all means, to drive the British out of the landing zones' Thus, when General Hackett presented himself with his 4th Brigade , he found weakly protected areas.