"Were there any British commandos or SAS troops at Arnhem?" Topic

I am looking for details on British paras at Arnhem . Were there any commandos or SAS involved in Market garden, with Frosts 2nd Battalion?

There was a section of Dutch Commandos from No.10 (Inter-Allied) Army Commando with 1st Airborne Division (and I think, possibly the 82nd and 101st). Jedburgh Teams (resistance liaison teams, recruited from special forces, SOE, OSS, etc) also went in with all three airborne divisions.

Not British but here is a link to a pretty good summary of Jedburgh operation during the campaign.

link

VR
James Mattes

Great link voj … very interesting …

Following conversations with Sqn Ldr David Nutting (retd) of 30AU in 2004: by this phase of the war the RAF element had separated, with the majority of 30AU operating along the coast. The role of the 'muscle' was provided by a re-rolled RAF Regt armoured car coy. During Market Garden they dashed ahead of XXX Corps and seized the Phillips factory. His comment was that 'they had almost as much trouble with Yanks looking for souvenirs as with the Germans'.

Several of the Air Technical Intelligence chaps were 30 AU and there had been 6 officers and 12 gunners from the RAF Regt trained at Auchnachary as the core of 35 Troop, which seems to disappear from the records when they created A, B and X troops.

So, if you want an interesting group of specialists operating behind the lines for Market Garden you couldn't get much better. Armoured jeeps, armoured recce cars and James Bond type missions!

What was important about the Phillips Factory?

Adam,

I had no idea that Sqn Ldr Nutting was still around so recently. I read his book on 30 Assault Unit in the College Library at Cranditz in 1989 and would love to have met him, but I assumed that he was long gone. Is he still with us?

@lord Ghee

It was full of the latest radio and radar parts.

@RMark

I don't know, I cannot find his name in the 30 AU remembrance pages. I called him a couple of times to try to find out about 35 Troop. His grouping on D-day did not contain RAF Regt, yet I have seen the entry for the 6+12 in the records at Auchnachary. Sometimes there is too little to go on to accurately state what was around and we are left with supported guess work.

>His comment was that 'they had almost as much trouble with Yanks looking for souvenirs as with the Germans'.

An awful lot of valuable equipment went walkies during and after the war. A derailed train, carrying Zeiss optics, was looted by US troops who had no appreciation of their value. Then the allies, especially the Russians, carried off whole factories as part of reparations.

>What was important about the Philips Factory?

They produced valves, radios, TVs (not during the war) and light bulbs. I used to work at the Advanced Systems and Applications lab, and Philips Optical Storage, which are also in Eindhoven, back in the 90s. There wasn't much left of the historical city after the war.

On a mild tangent Frits Philips, or Meneer Frits as he was known in Eindhoven, also saved several hundred Jews in a similar manner to Oscar Schindler.

Nothing to do with Arnhem but an interesting doco on the box tonight about the SAS operation codename Loyton in the Vosges. The SAS parchuted behind the German lines ahead of Patton's advance but were left up the proverbial creek when Third Army's supply lines over extended.

The murders of some captured SAS men resulted in a number of war crimes convictions.

Brief overview:
link

Hornswoggler

Thanks for posting that link. What a fascinating operation that was. Sadly I missed the programme.

Kind regards

Vulture

(My Blog link )