Operation Pegasus - Operation

Operation

On 20 October the Germans ordered residents of nearby villages to leave their homes by the 22nd. Deciding to take advantage of the confusion this would cause, the operation was thus brought forward to the night of 22–23 October. The men were brought together from their various hides to an RV in the woods north of the river. The German presence in this area was very heavy after the Arnhem fighting and the men assembled in a location only 500 metres from German machine gun nests.

By dark 139 men had assembled. They were mainly from the 1st Airborne Division, but there was also a US 82nd Airborne Division trooper, a number of aircrew, some Dutch civilians and some Russians wishing to join the Allies. The men were organised into platoons and at 9pm began moving south towards the river. Tatham-Warter recorded that the Germans were almost certainly aware of their presence, but perhaps unsure of their numbers and wary of American patrols they kept some distance. There was one ‘contact’ with a patrol and a brief exchange of fire, but no-one was hurt.

At midnight the group reached the riverbank and moved to the crossing point indicated by the Bofors tracer fire. Once there they flashed a V for Victory signal with their torches, but there was an anxious wait of twenty minutes for the boats. In fact, on the south bank Dobie, the engineers and a patrol of E Company, 506 PIR observed the signal and immediately launched their boats, but the British were some 500-800m upriver of the crossing point. Upon reaching the north bank E Company established a small perimeter while men headed east to locate the evaders. The men quickly moved downstream and in the next 90 minutes all of them were evacuated, with the exception of a Russian who was caught and arrested by the Germans. The Germans opened fire sporadically and some mortar rounds fell near the crossing, but the fire was inaccurate. Once on the other side the escapees were led to a farmhouse for refreshments, before being driven to Nijmegen where Dobie had arranged a party and champagne. The men were later flown back to the UK, rejoining the men who had escaped in Operation Berlin.