Restored 1st Airborne Division slit trenches in the woods at Papendal, on the north side of the railway between Wolfheze and Oosterbeek. Volunteers cleared the holes and reinstated them in April 2004, and in 2012 a plaque went up. The plaque says 4th Parachute Brigade Headquarters. That is the attribution on every website that covers the site.
It is wrong. Brigadier Hackett’s headquarters was not here. The men who dug these holes were the sappers of 4th Parachute Squadron Royal Engineers.
What the brigade was doing on 19 September
4th Parachute Brigade dropped on Ginkel Heath on the afternoon of 18 September 1944, the second lift, four hours late because of fog over the airfields in England, onto a heath the Germans were already contesting. 156 Parachute Battalion moved off at five that evening, east along the railway, and ran into fire at the edge of the landing zone as the light went. It halted in the dark and waited for dawn. 10th Parachute Battalion stayed on the drop zone covering the field ambulance. At first light on the 19th both battalions went forward, 156 along the high ground north of the railway toward Johannahoeve, 10th along the Amsterdamseweg on its left. Both ran into a German blocking line on the Dreijenseweg, dug in on a wooded bank with armoured cars, self-propelled guns and flak guns firing over open sights. A Company of 156 Battalion charged the road under Major Pott. Pott, wounded, and six of his men were all that got through. By mid-afternoon the attack had failed. Urquhart came up to Hackett’s headquarters, and the brigade was ordered south across the railway into the Oosterbeek perimeter.
That order created a problem. The railway runs on an embankment here and jeeps, anti-tank guns and trailers could not get over it. There were three ways through: the level crossing at Wolfheze, a small tunnel under the line near Wolfheze that the jeeps could just fit with windscreens folded, and a cattle crossing. The two 17-pounders were too wide for any of them and had to be manhandled over the embankment. Getting the brigade’s transport through those bottlenecks, with Polish gliders landing in the middle of it and German infantry closing in from the east, was engineer work.
The sappers’ war diary
4th Parachute Squadron RE was the brigade’s own engineer unit, commanded by Major Perkins. He had dislocated his shoulder on the drop the day before and handed over to Captain Thomas overnight, but was back in command by the 19th. The squadron’s war diary for that day puts it at a crossroads in the woods at map reference 677802, with the task of getting the brigade’s glider-borne transport south of the Arnhem-Wolfheze railway “using level crossing, tunnel and embankment”.
Put 677802 on the 1944 map and it falls on the track junction in the woods just north of the railway, 900 metres east of the tunnel. That is where the restored foxholes are.
The diary also records the cost. Lieutenant G.S. Harris, the squadron sergeant major and eight sappers went missing that day. So did Lieutenant W.H. Skinner and three men of the field park company attached to the squadron. That is two of the squadron’s officers and a dozen men gone before it had reached the perimeter.
Where Hackett actually was
The brigade headquarters war diary gives its own positions. Around midday on the 19th: “Bde HQ set up new location (rd track junc 684799)”. That is 700 metres east of the sappers’ crossroads, on the ground that falls away from the 30-metre contour toward the railway and the Johannahoeve farm. A reverse slope, out of direct view from the Dreijenseweg. At dark the headquarters group dug in as a defended locality around point 232, and at 1845 Tac HQ moved west again to the area of the hotel at 647813, by the Wolfheze crossing, once 133 Field Ambulance and the King’s Own Scottish Borderers were clear of the axis.
None of those grid references touch Papendal. The brigade’s vehicles went through the tunnel further back from the foxholes, but the headquarters never set up here. The holes belong to the men who were working the crossings.
Why the attribution stuck
The confusion is easy to understand. The trenches are in the 4th Parachute Brigade area, on the brigade’s axis, dug on the day the brigade came through. “Brigade Headquarters” is a name people recognise; “4th Parachute Squadron RE” is not. Once the plaque was cut, every guidebook and website copied it. Nobody went back to the two war diaries and laid the grid references on the map.
The correction does not diminish the site. If anything it sharpens it. The men in these holes were not staff officers waiting for orders. They were sappers holding a wood while they pushed guns and jeeps through the line behind them, and they lost two officers and a dozen men doing it.
We stop at the Papendal foxholes on our two day Arnhem tour.
The squadron’s diary for the next day, 20 September, is written from Sonnenberg inside the Oosterbeek perimeter: a tank sighted, small arms fire, six more sappers wounded and two missing.