The battalion landed on the second day of the
Battle of Arnhem and unable to reach their assigned objective, it was
gradually destroyed over two days of fighting. The surviving men managed to
withdraw into the divisional position at
Oosterbeek.
After holding a position in the perimeter, the handful of men left were
evacuated south of the
River Rhine. The battalion never recovered from the heavy casualties,
sustained during the battle and was disbanded. The surviving men being posted to
the battalions of the
1st Parachute Brigade.
Additionally on 22 June 1940, a
British Commando unit,
No. 2 Commando was turned over to parachute duties and on 21 November,
re-designated the 11th Special Air Service Battalion, with a parachute and
glider wing.[4][5]
It was these men who took part in the first British airborne operation,
Operation Colossus, on 10 February 1941.[6]
The success of the raid prompted the War Office to expand the existing airborne
force, setting up the Airborne Forces Depot and Battle School in
Derbyshire
in April 1942, and creating the Parachute Regiment as well as converting a
number of infantry battalions into airborne battalions in August 1942.
Upon formation, the battalion had an establishment of 556 men in three rifle
companies. The companies were divided into a small headquarters and three
platoons.
The platoons had three
Bren machine guns and three
2-inch mortars, one of each per
section.[11]
The only heavy weapons in the battalion were a
3 inch mortar and a
Vickers machine gun platoon.[12]
By 1944 a headquarters or support company, was added to the battalion,
comprising five platoons: motor transport, signals, mortar, machine-gun and
anti-tank. With eight 3 inch mortars, four Vickers machine guns and ten
PIAT anti-tank
projectors.[11]
All members of the battalion had to undergo a parachute training course
carried out at
No. 2 Parachute Training School at
RAF Kirbrit in Egypt.[9]
Initial parachute jumps were from a converted
barrage balloon and finished with five parachute jumps from an aircraft.[13][nb
3] Anyone failing to complete a descent was returned to
his old unit. Those men who successfully completed the parachute course, were
presented with their
maroon
beret and
parachute wings.[13][15]
Airborne soldiers were expected to fight against superior numbers of the
enemy, armed with heavy weapons, including artillery and tanks. So training was
designed to encourage a spirit of self-discipline, self-reliance and
aggressiveness. Emphasis was given to physical fitness,
marksmanship
and
fieldcraft.[16]
A large part of the training regime consisted of
assault courses and
route marching.
Military exercises included capturing and holding airborne bridgeheads, road
or rail bridges and coastal fortifications.[16]
At the end of most exercises, the battalion would march back to their barracks.
An ability to cover long distances at speed was expected: airborne platoons were
required to cover a distance of 50 miles (80 km) in 24 hours, and battalions 32 miles (51 km).[16][nb
4]
The 4th Parachute Brigade only had the 10th and 156th Parachute Battalions
available to take part in the landings. On 9 September 1943, the same day as the
Salerno landings by the
U.S. 5th Army, the battalion having crossed the
Mediterranean in
HMS Penelope landed at Taranto unopposed.[21]
Landing at Taranto
Their first objective was the airfield of
Gioia del Colle 30 miles (48 km) inland, was secured on 16 September.[22]
However on route to the airfield near the town of
Castellaneta, the battalion came up against a German roadblock defended by a
Fallschirmjaeger unit of the
1st German Parachute Division.[23]
During their assault on the roadblock, the divisional commander
Major-General
George F. Hopkinson observing the action, was hit by a burst of machine gun
fire and killed.[24]
At the same time, the 156th Parachute Battalion at
San Basilio, carried out a successful
flank attack on Fallschirmjaeger defending the town.[25]
Two days later, having been only involved in minor skirmishes, the battalion
reached Bari and
Brindisi.
Playing no further part in operations in Italy, the battalion were withdrawn by
sea to the United Kingdom, arriving in November 1943.[18]
Arnhem
Further information:
Battle of Arnhem and Operation
Market Garden
The 10th Battalion and the rest of the 4th Parachute Brigade landed to the
west of Arnhem on the second day of the battle 18 September 1944. Their
objective was to hold a position on the high ground north of Arnhem at
Koepel.[26]
With the
156th Parachute Battalion leading on the right, the 10th Battalion followed
slightly behind on the left. By dawn the following day the battalion was just
north of the Rotterdam to Arnhem railway line. When they came under attack from
German
88 mm guns.[27]
Both battalions were ordered to start an assault on the position at 07:00, but
after repeated attacks the battalion had got no further forward. The defenders
from the
9th SS Panzer Division had been here for two days and were well dug in.[28]
Casualties were heavy and brigade headquarters obtained permission to withdraw
south of the rail line into
Oosterbeek.
The battalion started to pull back but found most of their intended new
positions already occupied by the Germans and by 15:00 had lost communications
with brigade. To cross back over the rail line the battalion first had to
capture the crossing point at
Wolfheze.[29]
Just before the attack a diversion was provided by the arrival of the
1st Polish Parachute Brigades gliders. Unaware the landing-zones had been
captured or were under fire 10 percent of the Poles were killed during the
landings.[30]
The battalion withdrew remaining in contact with the advancing German tanks and
infantry and under mortar fire. Part of the rearguard left behind was commanded
by
Captain
Lionel Queripel who was awarded a posthumous
Victoria Cross for his actions during the withdrawal.[31][32]
As the battalion left the woods they moved onto the open ground of landing-zone
L, occupied by the Poles who had just landed. In the confusion both sides open
fire on each other, at the same time coming under fire from the following
Germans.[33]
The battalion headed towards
Wolfheze
and prepared to defend the village assisted by 'B' and 'Support' Companies,
156th Parachute Battalion which had become separated from their battalion.
Casualties had continued to mount and by 20 September the German tactics were
to bombard the British positions with tank and mortar fire.[35]
The remnants of the battalion were withdrawn into the perimeter formed by the
division around Oosterbeek. Only 60 men were able to continue fighting and this
small force were given a position on the north eastern side to defend. One of
them was the
commanding officer
Lieutenant-Colonel Ken Smyth who although wounded remained with the
battalion.[36]
By the 21 September pressure from the German attacks had squeezed the perimeter
to less than 1,000 yards (910 m) across.[37]
A German
self propelled gun now drove up and down the battalions position, shooting
high explosive shells into any buildings they believed to be defended. The
battalion having expended all its anti-tank ammunition were unable to do
anything to stop the gun.[38]
The gun was followed up by infantry who fighting at close quarters forced the
battalion out of their defensive positions. All the battalions surviving
officers were killed or wounded during this attack and the battalion was in
danger of being overrun. However small isolated units managed to hold out until
reinforced by the Pathfinders of the 21st Independent Parachute Company.[39]
On the 22 September the bulk of the
1st Polish Parachute Brigade were dropped south of the river. This drew off
some of the Germans from around the divisional perimeter to confront the new
threat. The defenders now had to cope with over 100 German artillery guns firing
onto their positions.[40]
By the 23 September the battalions position was subjected to constant mortar
and artillery fire and incursions by tanks and infantry were becoming more and
more frequent. Casualties forced a contraction of the perimeter but first the
Germans had to be evicted from the houses behind them which they were to occupy.[41]
On 24 September the decision was made by
Lieutenant-General
Horrocks commander
XXX Corps to withdraw what was left of the division south of the Rhine.[42]
The remnants of the battalion were evacuated over the night of 25/26 September.[43]
The casualties sustained were never replaced and the battalion was disbanded
after the battle.[44]
Of the 582 men of the battalion who landed on the 18 September, 92 were
killed, 404 became prisoners of War and 96 were evacuated.[45]
Territorial Army
The 10th Battalion was disbanded in November 1945, but when the
Territorial Army was reformed in 1947, a new battalion now called the 10th
(City of London) Parachute Battalion (Territorial Army) was raised.
Re-designated 10 PARA (Volunteer) in 1967, the battalion existed until it was
disbanded in 1999.[46]
The battalion is represented by 10 (London) Company,
4th Battalion, Parachute Regiment. UNQUOTE This
is on the right lines.
The 10th Parachute Battalion in Somerby 1943-1944 As members of 10 (V) Para in the closing stages of the Cold War
in the 1980s, we were very proud to attend the commemorations of the
wartime 10 Para in the Leicestershire village of Somerby. The men of The
Tenth regaled us with stories from the nine months they spent in the
area before Operation Market Garden in September 1944, where the
battalion was effectively destroyed. Many of them recalled their time in
Rutland, as it then was, as the best time of their lives.
When wartime 10 Para veteran Vic Gregg appeared on Good Morning
Britain in February 2019 to discuss his book about the Dresden
fire-bombing in 1945, which he witnessed as a prisoner of war, he was
wearing the new 10 Para tie. Vic is one of three known survivors
of The Tenth and hopes to be back in Somerby in September 2019 for the
75th anniversary of Market Garden and for the unveiling of
the memorial to The Tenth, as reported in Alec Wilson’s article in the
Winter 2018 issue of Pegasus.
The memorial, which owes much to the dedication of the men and women
of Friends of The Tenth (FoTT), will be across the road from the
entrance to the Burrough Court Estate, which overlooks the valley that
served as a drop zone for 10 Para––and also for 156 Para, stationed up
the road in Melton Mowbray. Major General Ranald Munro CBD TD VR, a
former ‘Tom’ and officer of 10 (V) Para and a Patron of FoTT, described
Burrough Court as “a place of significance to the Battalion.”.
However, we shall come to that in due course. The new battalion tie,
speedily approved in 2018 by our Colonel Commandant Lieutenant General
Sir John Lorimer KCB DSO MBE, can also be worn by former members of 10
(V) Para, disbanded in 1999, and by members of FoTT in recognition of
their support not just of the idea of a 10 Para memorial but of our
Regiment in general. As we know all too well, the Parachute Regiment
always needs friends and FoTT are very good friends.
The old 10 (V) Para tie, which was worn by some wartime 10 Para men,
was black with parachute wings and the red Roman X of the Battalion DZ
flash. It was said that the black DZ flash honoured the fallen of the
wartime Tenth and the red the blood they shed for the people of Europe
enslaved by the Hitler regime. The new tie comprises the regimental
badge on a maroon background with stripes recalling the wartime
battalion colours worn on Battle Dress shoulder straps and a weathercock
motif.
The weathercock has two holes in it but as with Burrough Court, we
shall come to that later on. The aforementioned wartime battalion slip-ons
consisted of the sky blue of the Army Air Corps, under whose
administrative command the Parachute Regiment was placed in 1942 with
the Glider Pilot Regiment, and the dark blue and yellow gold of The
Royal Sussex Regiment, reflecting the Battalion’s origins. The 10th
(Sussex) Battalion, The Parachute Regiment was formed in Egypt in
December 1942 with around 200 men from 2nd Battalion, The
Royal Sussex Regiment.
Most of these men were survivors of the Second Battle of El-Alamein.
The rest of the 582-strong Battalion was recruited from the Infantry
Base Depot at Geneifa, some 120
kilometres
east of Cairo by the shores of the Great Bitter Lake, through which the
Suez Canal runs. These recruits came from various regiments and
corps and were for the most part combat veterans recovering from light
wounds. However, The Tenth remained proud of its Sussex links and was
initially known as ‘S’ Battalion.
S Battalion duly underwent parachute training at RAF Kabrit at the
southern end of the Great Bitter Lake. They made their first jumps into
the shimmering void from a converted barrage balloon eight-hundred feet
above the hard, rocky ground, landing like sacks of potatoes, sustaining
all manner of bruises, cuts and broken bones. Those who did not refuse
the balloon progressed to aircraft and after carrying out the requisite
descents, were awarded their parachute wings.
Parachute training completed, The Tenth was posted to Palestine for
field-training. Some of the lads had their parachute wings tattooed onto
their upper arms by Arabs with nails and coloured dyes in the local
souks. In May 1943, the Battalion moved to Libya, ready for the coming
invasion of Sicily that July. Much to the disgust of everyone from the
CO, Lieutenant-Colonel Kenneth Smyth, downwards, the shortage of
transport aircraft saw The Tenth left behind, cooling its heels in
Tripoli.
However, The Tenth did take part in Operation Slapstick, the invasion
of mainland Italy on September 9th 1943, albeit by sea rather
than air because of the continuing lack of aircraft. 10 Para landed at
Taranto with other elements of 1st Airborne Division,
including 156th Parachute Battalion, which would also have a
close association with Rutland, when it was stationed near The Tenth in
Melton Mowbray after its withdrawal from Italy.
Fortunately, the landings were unopposed, the German and Italian
defenders having retreated from Taranto. The Tenth was tasked with
capturing an airfield at Gioia del Colle, some fifty kilometres up the
national highway to the Adriatic port of Bari. Approaching the small
town of Castellaneta about halfway to the objective, The Tenth ran into
a rear-guard defensive line set up by German paratroopers of I./Fallschirmjäger-Regiment
1.
The ensuing fight was ferocious and Major General Hopkinson,
commanding 1st Airborne Division, was killed, but The Tenth
cleared the Green Devils out of Castellaneta. Proceeding to Gioia del
Colle, the Battalion fought off attacks by skirmishers from II./FJR 4
and I./FJR 1 but managed to beat them off and capture and secure the
airfield. The Tenth then proceeded to the ports of Bari and Brindisi.
The regimental battle honour for Taranto covers these operations.
Withdrawn from Italy in November, The Tenth arrived in Somerby on
December 10th 1943. Surrounding villages including Twyford,
Burrough-on-the-Hill and Thorpe Satchville would also host the men and
boys of the Battalion for the next nine months. Veterans of The Tenth
often said they had the best time of their lives in Rutland before they
boarded the lorries taking them to RAF Spanhoe on September 17th
1944 and the American planes that would fly them to Holland the next day
with the Second Wave.
Stood to and stood down for no less than sixteen cancelled airborne
operations during this time, the men of The Tenth sometimes got a bit
nervy, to say the least. That they played hard and sometimes got a bit
out of hand was only to be expected but veterans of The Tenth never
forgot the kindness and generosity of the local people, who even forgave
them for burning down Burrough Court during a raid on the wine cellar
that went wrong.
The demolition charges used to blow open the cellar door set the
mansion alight. The guilty parties redeemed themselves to some extent by
bravely entering the blazing building and saving as much of the
furniture and contents as they could. They even managed to evacuate the
grand piano from the ballroom, which was played with gusto on the lawn
as the well-oiled young paratroopers entertained the Fire Brigade with
songs, toasting them with the contents of the wine cellar.
The people of Somerby also forgave The Tenth for shooting the
weathercock on the tower of All Saints’ Church. There again, perhaps
they were grateful: if the metallic screeching and groaning of this
Victorian relic whenever the wind caught it grated on the nerves of
hardened young paratroopers trying to get a decent night’s sleep, it is
probably safe to presume that the villagers did not think too charitably
of their weathercock either. They gave it away after renovation work to
the tower in 1989.
The beneficiary of their generosity was 10 (V) Para, which had always
been proud of its links to The Tenth. In honour of the shooting skills
of Lieutenant Pat Glover, who had managed to put two holes in the
infernal bird at a distance of sixty meters as it pirouetted and
screeched in the wind, the Somerby weathercock became 10 (V) Para’s
shooting trophy and resided behind the bar of the Sergeants Mess at the
Battalion’s White City location in West London until 10 (V) Para was
disbanded in 1999.
The weathercock was returned to Somerby in 2013 but, we note, has not
been replaced on the church tower. Memories die hard in the countryside.
It must be said, mind you, that Lt Glover had nothing personal against
poultry as such. The Lieutenant had a pet chicken called Myrtle. Her
arrival in Lt Glover’s life was the consequence of a booze-fuelled
argument about whether or not anything with wings and feathers could
fly.
Determined to prove his point, Lt Glover took Myrtle with him on an
airborne exercise, tucked into his Dennison smock. Some distance from
the ground in the valley in front of Burrough Court, Lt Glover released
Myrtle, who managed to flap her wings frantically enough to avoid piling
into the DZ. For a few seconds, the chicken flew and Lt Glover proved
his claim. As he would also point out in later years, the RAF classes
parachuting as flying although this is a stretch as Myrtle was not using
a parachute.
Nonetheless, when Myrtle was killed in action at Arnhem, Lt Glover
and his batman interred her with parachute wings. During their time in
Rutland, the men of The Tenth trained hard to maintain their combat
readiness, participating in exercises on the Yorkshire Moors and
bombed-out areas of London, where they honed the urban combat
skills––FIBUA––they would need in Holland when covering the advance to
and the retreat from Arnhem Bridge.
The story of Arnhem needs no retelling here but we should note that
of the nearly 600 paratroopers of The Tenth seen off by the people of
Somerby and the surrounding villages on that Sunday morning seventy-five
years ago, just thirty of them returned to Somerby after the battle. As
well as the VC awarded to Captain Lionel Queripel, one of the original
Sussex regimental officers, the Battalion won numerous bravery awards
during the savage fighting around Oosterbeek and Wolfheze.
Sergeant Reid of A Company, would say of Captain Queripel after the
war: “He was one of the finest men I was privileged to serve under,
always the last officer to return to his mess. His first thought
was for his men. One hears of VCs being given for impulsive bravery, but
not Captain Queripel. Anyone who knew him would have expected him
to do just what he did.”. Captain Queripel VC’s citation is easily
found on the Internet.
People say that The Tenth was annihilated at Arnhem but that is a
simple way of putting it. Ninety-two men were killed in action. The
first causalities were sustained during the parachute descent onto
Ginkel Heath, as the Germans had by then had ample time to rally and
were staking out the heather-covered drop zone, much of which was
ablaze. German cameramen even filmed what one veteran bitterly recalled
as the “grouse shoot”.
Ninety-six men of The Tenth managed to escape back across the river
Rhine on the night of September 25th and 26th.
That two-thirds of them did not return to Somerby bears silent witness
today to their post-battle state and to the state of many of the 404 men
who had to be left behind. Some 10 Para prisoners or war are known to
have been murdered but it now seems certain that their killers were
local Dutch SS men. The Tenth’s CO Lt-Col Smyth died of his wounds on
October 26th.
In fairness to the Germans, they did the best they could for the
British wounded but medical supplies were as scarce as other resources
by that stage of the war and many wounded prisoners died as a
consequence. Those who survived captivity and came home afterwards faced
the same challenges as veterans of current conflicts in places like Iraq
and Afghanistan but there was not the same understanding in those days
of what we now describe as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.
Never reformed, The Tenth was disbanded in November 1945. However,
the battalion number was bestowed upon a new London-based Territorial
Army unit in 1947: the 10th (City of London) Battalion, The
Parachute Regiment. This became the 10th (V) Bn in 1967,
known simply as 10 Para. 10 Para was, as we know, disbanded in 1999 but
lived on briefly as 10 Company, 4 Para. The White City location, once
home to HQ Coy and 1 Coy, 10 Para, is now occupied by B Coy, 4 Para.
The boys of B Coy, 4 Para are very aware of their 10 Para lineage.
PSIs posted to White City have asked about 10 Para history on the
battalion’s social media webpages. There are photographs of the old Red
X DZ flash unofficially worn in Afghanistan and Iraq. I speak for many
old 10 Para hands when I say that we were very touched by the speed with
which General Lorimer acted to approve the new tie. As the images of the
99-year old Vic Gregg on television show, we are all very proud of it.
This memorial
honours
those men who served in Egypt, Palestine, Libya, Italy and Holland and,
by extension, the men of the post-war battalion who served in various
conflicts after the Cold War years. It is our memorial and we shall
treasure it.
