The trucks carrying the boats were promised for late that afternoon, but they were delayed because the Germans were putting heavy fire on the single road running back to the start point in Belgium. So effective were these attacks that the GIs were calling the road Hell’s Highway. Hitler authorized one of the Luftwaffe’s final mass raids on the clogged road: 200 bombers hit Eindhoven, while another 200 went after the troops and vehicles jamming Hell’s Highway Jabos in reverse.
At 1530 on September 19 Gavin flung Vandervoort’s battalion at the bridges. Vandervoort’s men rode into the attack on the backs of more than forty British armoured vehicles. They got to the centre of Nijmegen without much difficulty. There Vandervoort split the regiment, sending half for the railroad bridge and the other half for the highway span. Both attacks met fierce opposition.
Lieutenant Coyle and Sergeant Sampson’s platoon led one assault. As two Shermans in front of Coyle moved across a traffic circle, hidden 57-mm antitank guns fired. The tanks shook, stopped, began to flare up. The tank beside Coyle backed into a street leading to the traffic circle. Coyle had his platoon retreat into houses, then take up positions on the second floors.
From there the GIs could see Germans on foot and bicycle coming across the bridge. The men wanted to set up their machine guns in the windows and fire at the enemy, but Coyle ordered them to stay back because he didn’t want the Germans to know he was there, not until those antitank guns had been found and knocked out.
Looking out, Coyle saw the Germans manhandling an antitank gun from behind some bushes in the park, bringing it forward, and pointing it up the street. Just then Vandervoort came into the room. Coyle showed him the German gun and said he wanted to coordinate an attack with the British tanks. Vandervoort agreed. He told Coyle to open up in five minutes; then he dashed downstairs to find the tanks and put them into the attack. But before Vandervoort could get the tankers organized, someone opened fire from a building adjacent to Coyle’s. The Germans started firing back. Private John Keller fired a rifle grenade at the antitank gun in the street and knocked it out. Then Coyle pulled his platoon out of the house and occupied the cellar of another. By now dark had come on. Coyle received orders to button down and wait for morning.
DAWN, September 20. One mile downstream from the bridges, Major Cook’s men were ready to go, but the assault boats had not arrived. Vandervoort’s battalion, meanwhile, was unable to drive the Germans out of the park, despite great effort. Sergeant Sampson was badly wounded that morning by shellfire.
While Cook’s battalion waited for the boats. Cook went to the top of a tower at a nearby power station to survey the opposite bank of the Waal River. A young captain with Cook, Henry Keep. wrote in a letter home, “What greeted our eyes was a broad, flat plain void of all cover or concealment . . . some three hundred metres, where there was a built-up highway where we would get our first opportunity to get some protection. We could see all along the Kraut side of the river strong defensive positions, a formidable line both in length as well as in depth-pillboxes, machinegun emplacements.”
Ten British tanks and an artillery battery were lined up along the river to give covering fire when Cook crossed. But not until 1500 did the trucks arrive. They brought only twenty-six assault boats, instead of the thirty-three that had been promised. And they were the frailest of craft-six metres long, of canvas, with a reinforced plywood bottom. There were only three paddles per boat. The Waal was almost 400 metres wide, with a swift current of about ten kilometres per hour.
The paratroopers pushed off into deep water, thirteen men to a boat, plus three British engineers with the paddles. As they got out into the current and headed for the far bank, the Germans opened fire. Cook and Keep were in the first boat. “It was a horrible picture, this river crossing,” Captain Keep wrote to his mother, “set to (lie deafening roar of omnipresent firing. It was fiendish and dreadful. Defenceless, frail canvas boats jammed to overflowing with humanity, all striving desperately to cross the Waal as quickly as possible, and get to a place where at least they could fight.”