Operation Market-Garden. February, 1944
Watching the lights of Athens harbour blinking away in the night, we were leaving so many things behind as well. Having set our feet on these shores nearly a year ago, we have found here valiant people with a hope for peace, who became our friends eventually, beautiful, pristine villages and towns, some of them still untouched by war and flame, but we also said our goodbyes to so many brothers in arms, who laid down their heads on the slopes of too many mountains and hills.
We were sailing west. No clear destination was yet known to us, but single thought was in our heads - Germany! We were finally entering the lair of the beast.
Big advance on Germany was anticipated by the press. February 8, 1944.
We already knew that Americans and British have set their foot on German soil in several places - south, towards Freiburg, close to the Swiss border, passing the Siegfried line, also in Saar, where American armour was being massed, and further north - Aachen was in British hands already. But along the news of these advances, we also read reports of fighting getting more and more fierce as well, and no quick break-through was expected, at least not until end of winter.
Within few short days, by February 10, we have reached Marseille, and were on our way north by train in the morning of the 11th. The guys from volunteer divisions were sent by ships to Cardiff though, for some rest and re-fit, before re-joining us.
Lyon, Dijon, Paris, Amiens - off-loading, waiting, riding again, sleeping in the stations, box cars. All along the way we saw signs of war, which passed these placed not too long ago. Burned down churches, tank and truck wrecks, cratered fields with the remnants of trenches here and there, several scorched villages, which seemed empty and desolate. Of course, there were also those, which were being rebuilt, with roofs being hastily raised or fixed to have some shelter in the chill of almost-passed winter.
It started snowing when we reached Paris, and the scars of war were not that frightening anymore. February 13, 1944
It took us 5 days to reach Antwerp, our final destination point. Without waiting for more than it took us to find our barracks, I was summoned by our division commander Maj.Gen. Vitkus for a briefing. And what a briefing it was! After leaving one theatre just mere two weeks ago, we were being thrown into another mess, based on sketchy intelligence reports, betting on sheer luck and hoping for best results. As far as I understood, neither our Division commander, neither Corps Commander Lt.Gen. Zemaitis were overly excited about the plane, but, since this was already decided by the higher rank brass, there was not much we could do.
The command for the whole operation was assigned to Field Marshal Gough of the Royal Army (he was also the commanding officer of Operation 'Husky' back in 1942) currently in charge of the whole northern part of the Western front. Supreme Allied commander Field Marshal Davies, an American, must have had quite a dilemma on his hands, as American troops of the 2nd Army, led by General have already entered German soil and were closing on Stuttgart, with armoured spearheads reaching the Rhine further north. With reports of Germans crumbling or surrendering en masse, even if exaggerated, led to an opinion that the Rhine can be forced and even the Ruhr region could be captured on the go, and then there would be only an easy ride to Berlin, or even a capitulation of Germany by the end of spring.
Battle plans for Operation 'Plunder' - crossing the Rhine at Coblenz and Duisburg.
I recalled then, that when passing the straits of Messina, I had some talks with sailors, still remembering our landings in Sicily in 1942. Among other things, jokes were being passed around by Lithuanian sailors about allied ships going back and forth to Belgium and Northern France from the ports southern England - apparently part of our transport fleet was used for supply duties there. As I managed to gather, the sole available deep-water port east of Cherbourg was Antwerp, liberated just few weeks ago by Americans and Australians, and at that, Germans have managed to sabotage some of the port facilities before leaving, same as with Dieppe, Calais, Le Havre, and others.
The supply lines for the advancing Allied armies now stretched thin for hundreds of kilometres, stalling all big operations on land and grounding the planes due to the lack of fuel. February, 1944
Under these circumstances, the common opinion among the guys was that either the Germans break real soon, or a big port was to be captured intact. And single one that could make a difference was Rotterdam, even with one third of port facilities destroyed by Germans upon taking the city back in 1940, and occasionally bombed by RAF raids in the past months.
It was also the position of Field Marshal Gough, a long-time advocate of well-supplied and cautious, calculated advances. It was thus surprising to many that the operation proposed for alleviating the supply situation for the whole front was so daring and unconventional, if not, some would say (and some did say), reckless and outright stupid.
The operation consisted of two main parts - Market - a series of amphibious landings, and Garden - a dash along the Eindhoven - Arnhem highway to link-up with the Market troops.
Market forces, led by Operational HQ of Lt.Gen.Zemaitis consisted of 1 Marine Division, 2 Infantry, supported by one Volunteer division - 35,000 men in total.
'Market' was firstly designed to secure the dam - Afsluitdijk, a 32 km long dike, separating the sea from inner Ijsselmeer, along with its shipping locks and discharge sluices. Only then could the second phase commence - swift and unexpected landing in the newly reclaimed land, to the north west of Zwolle with the objective of seizing the polder system there, which was presumably mined by Germans in order to inundate the lands in case of Allied attack. Second objective was to secure the bridges at Zwolle and Deventer (just to the east from Apeldoorn) over the river Ijssel and then link-up with Garden forces at Arnhem.
Garden forces were led by Gen Liatukas himself, and comprised of 1 Infantry division, 3 volunteer divisions, directly supported by combined Australian brigade of engineers and mounted rifles, lead by Maj.Gen. Cliffton - 25,000 men in total. Their mission was to seize the bridges over the Maas and Lower Rhine at Nijmegen and Arnhem, in order to secure the supply route for Market forces.
Map of Dutch lands under the threat of inundation by Germans. We had to do everything possible in order to avert the catastrophe. February, 1944.