Groups and Single Decorations for Gallantry M.C. London Gazette 20 September 1945: ‘In recognition of gallant and distinguished services at Arnhem.’


The original recommendation states: ‘Early on the night of D Day (September 17) Captain Briggs was given command of a mixed force of Brigade HQ, Signals, RE and Ordnance personnel, and ordered to hold an important sector East of Arnhem Bridge. The position was difficult to hold as fruit trees and shrubs gave the enemy a covered line of approach. During the following two days the enemy repeatedly attacked this position with tanks and infantry in greatly superior numbers. They were driven back each time with heavy losses. The position was under continuous mortar fire. During the afternoon of D + 2 and morning of D + 3 the situation was made more difficult by the enemy setting fire to the houses Capt Briggs' party was occupying. In spite of this and resulting enemy infiltration he continued to hold the position until every house was burnt down. He then skilfully withdrew the remnants of his force to "A" Company’s position and continued to fight with them. Captain Briggs’ skilful and inspiring leadership was an example to all and it was undoubtedly largely due to his efforts that the most important and difficult position was held for so long.’


M.I.D. London Gazette 10 October 1952: ‘In recognition of gallant and distinguished services in Korea, during the period 1st January to 30th June, 1952.’


Bernard Walter Briggs was born in 1914 and was commissioned 2nd Lieutenant in the Royal Warwickshire Regiment on 27 April 1940. He was promoted War Substantive Lieutenant on 27 October 1941 and Temporary Captain on 12 March 1942. A founder member of the Parachute Regiment, he served with them in North Africa, Sicily and Italy before joining 1st Parachute Brigade H.Q. as Staff Captain prior to Operation Market Garden.


1st Parachute Brigade at Arnhem


The 1st Parachute Brigade’s objectives during Operation Market Garden were to seize the crossings over the Lower Rhine at Arnhem and hold them for 48 hours until relieved by XXX Corps, coming 60 miles from the south. Commanded by Brigadier G. W. Lathbury, the Brigade was part of the the British 1st Airborne Division (Major-General R. E. Urquhart) and consisted of the 1st, 2nd and 3rd Parachute Battalions, together with Brigade Headquarters (of which Briggs was Staff Captain) and their Defence Platoon and 1st Airlanding Anti-Tank Battery, R.A., 1st Parachute Squadron, R.E., and 16 Parachute Field Ambulance, R.A.M.C. A total force of 9000 airborne troops were scheduled to arrive at Arnhem over 3 days with the 1st Parachute Brigade among those arriving on day one. Having encountered light flak but suffering no casualties en-route, 145 Dakotas of the USAAF took just ten minutes to drop 2700 men of the 1st Parachute Brigade Group on Drop Zone ‘X’, seven miles west of Arnhem Bridge. Briggs recording in his diary ‘dropped Arnhem 1407hrs 17 Sep 44’.


Falling in with his unit, 1st Brigade HQ, under Major Tony Hibbert, Briggs immediately set off for Arnhem: ‘John Frost, commanding 2nd Para Battalion, got off at good speed along the Southerly route next to the river, followed by 1st Brigade HQ. Moderate fire opened up early on 1st and 3rd Battalion fronts. After we'd been marching for two hours up roared General Urquhart. He was a reserved, gentle person but now he was really angry and asked me what the hell we were doing. I said we were advancing on the bridge, and he said, “I can see you're doing that but you're moving too bloody slowly, get your Brigade moving, Hibbert. Where's your Brigade Commander?” I told him he was back with the 3rd Battalion trying to push them forward faster, and off Urquhart went in a cloud of steam to find him. His parting words were, “Unless we can get to the bridge before those bloody tanks this is going to be a cock-up.” I passed on the gist of the message to John Frost who was advancing along an unreconnoitred route and was up against more vigourous opposition than we'd been led to expect. We continued to advance behind the 2nd Battalion, and by now it was getting dark. We were in single file and strung out; it was our task to slip through to the bridge without getting involved in street fighting and it was important we kept quiet as the Germans were only two streets away.’ (Major T. Hibbert’s personal account refers).


Defence of the Perimeter


Brigade HQ arrived at Arnhem Bridge at 20:45 just as the first men of 2nd Battalion were moving into buildings on the waterfront and each side of the ramp, establishing a firm hold on the northern approaches to the bridge. After conferring with Lieutenant-Colonel Frost it was decided that Brigade Headquarters would be established in the large three storey office building neighbouring Frost's own headquarters. This building had at one time been a hospital, but was now the headquarters of the Provincial Roads and Waterways Department. As only a portion of the 2nd Battalion had reached the Bridge at this time, and the arrival of Brigade Headquarters had more than doubled their strength, Hibbert in consultation with Major Digby Tatham-Warter, A Company, split his men into groups and posted them to a number of buildings which extended the perimeter as far as possible and increased the effectiveness of the defensive positions. Captain Briggs was given command of a combined force of Brigade HQ, Signalmen, Medics, Engineers and Ordnance personnel operating in infantrymen roles and positioned in a group of buildings east of the bridge. A night of sporadic fighting followed and at this stage Lt. Col. J. Frost, in overall command of troops at the bridge, believed the plan was still intact. However, no further members of the Parachute Brigade had yet managed to join the 750 or so now under siege at the bridge and during the Monday morning a sudden eruption of violent contacts with the enemy and persistent artillery fire left copious wreckage and dead and wounded on both sides. Amidst this continuing chaos, Briggs’ force defended their positions for the next few days under continuous sniping, mortaring, shelling and enemy infantry infiltration, a task made even more difficult by the fruit trees and shrubs which provided the enemy with a covered line of approach to their positions. Movement was extremely dangerous but the dead were removed and the wounded taken to the comparative safety of cellars. With the coming of dusk on D+2, the perimeter had become ringed with flames as buildings were set on fire and German reinforcements, including Tiger tanks, started to converge on Arnhem from all directions:


‘After a lull, the Germans started exerting more pressure. A new phase had begun. Rather than mount costly infantry attacks, the Germans would now destroy by artillery and tank shelling the houses in which the British were positioned. Some of the shells used were phosphorus to set the houses alight. The methodical bombardment which started that afternoon would, with the usual mortaring, continue until the end of the bridge action and the effects of it would eventually bring about the collapse of the airborne men’s resistance. One building after another was hit, usually in one of the upper storeys, and started to burn or was steadily battered down... During the evening the first Tiger tanks, with their 88-millimetre guns, appeared and ran along the street between the Van Limburg Stirum School and the nearby houses [where Briggs and his men were positioned], systematically shelling each house as it went past, and spraying with machine-gun fire the crew of an anti-tank gun who tried to unsuccessfully to engage it... Sapper George Needham was in one of the first buildings, the school, to be hit by the tank: “Suddenly there was a terrific explosion underneath this flight of stairs. It was the first time the building had been hit by such a big shell. There was a tank on the ramp firing at point-blank range. We had been used to small arms fire and mortaring, but it was absolutely stunning when this explosion took place.”


Another recipient of the tank’s shelling was a house occupied by a mixed party of twelve Royal Army Ordnance Corps and Royal Signals men [under Briggs]. The RAOC party were weapons and ammunitions specialists whose duty on this operation should have been to examine captured German stores. They had followed the 2nd Battalion into Arnhem on the Sunday evening and now found themselves defending this house. Private Kevin Heaney of the RAOC describes the shelling: “A shell came whooshing through the open bedroom window and hit the back of the house. The back wall became a pile of rubble, and the floor fell in. One of the signallers, resting on a bed in the back bedroom, came down with the floor and was trapped. He could not move, as his back was broken. Sergeant Mick Walker, one of our men, climbed down to give him a morphine injection. My pack was in the back bedroom and I was disappointed when this lost; I had not touched the rations inside. We then took shelter in a cellar and started hoping for the best. There was a noise at the top of the stairs, and someone started to wave a white handkerchief, but Mick Walker knocked this out of his hand. It was probably only more rubble falling down.”


www.dnw.co.uk all lots are illustrated on our website and are subject to buyers’ premium at 24% (+VAT where applicable)


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68  |  Page 69  |  Page 70  |  Page 71  |  Page 72  |  Page 73  |  Page 74  |  Page 75  |  Page 76  |  Page 77  |  Page 78  |  Page 79  |  Page 80  |  Page 81  |  Page 82  |  Page 83  |  Page 84  |  Page 85  |  Page 86  |  Page 87  |  Page 88  |  Page 89  |  Page 90  |  Page 91  |  Page 92  |  Page 93  |  Page 94  |  Page 95  |  Page 96  |  Page 97  |  Page 98  |  Page 99  |  Page 100  |  Page 101  |  Page 102  |  Page 103  |  Page 104  |  Page 105  |  Page 106  |  Page 107  |  Page 108  |  Page 109  |  Page 110  |  Page 111  |  Page 112  |  Page 113  |  Page 114  |  Page 115  |  Page 116  |  Page 117  |  Page 118  |  Page 119  |  Page 120  |  Page 121  |  Page 122  |  Page 123  |  Page 124  |  Page 125  |  Page 126  |  Page 127  |  Page 128  |  Page 129  |  Page 130  |  Page 131  |  Page 132  |  Page 133  |  Page 134  |  Page 135  |  Page 136  |  Page 137  |  Page 138  |  Page 139  |  Page 140  |  Page 141  |  Page 142  |  Page 143  |  Page 144  |  Page 145  |  Page 146  |  Page 147  |  Page 148  |  Page 149  |  Page 150  |  Page 151  |  Page 152  |  Page 153  |  Page 154  |  Page 155  |  Page 156  |  Page 157  |  Page 158  |  Page 159  |  Page 160  |  Page 161  |  Page 162  |  Page 163  |  Page 164  |  Page 165  |  Page 166  |  Page 167  |  Page 168  |  Page 169  |  Page 170  |  Page 171  |  Page 172  |  Page 173  |  Page 174  |  Page 175  |  Page 176  |  Page 177  |  Page 178  |  Page 179  |  Page 180  |  Page 181  |  Page 182  |  Page 183  |  Page 184  |  Page 185  |  Page 186  |  Page 187  |  Page 188  |  Page 189  |  Page 190  |  Page 191  |  Page 192  |  Page 193  |  Page 194  |  Page 195  |  Page 196  |  Page 197  |  Page 198  |  Page 199  |  Page 200  |  Page 201  |  Page 202  |  Page 203  |  Page 204  |  Page 205  |  Page 206  |  Page 207  |  Page 208  |  Page 209  |  Page 210  |  Page 211  |  Page 212  |  Page 213  |  Page 214  |  Page 215  |  Page 216  |  Page 217  |  Page 218  |  Page 219  |  Page 220  |  Page 221  |  Page 222  |  Page 223  |  Page 224  |  Page 225  |  Page 226  |  Page 227  |  Page 228  |  Page 229  |  Page 230  |  Page 231  |  Page 232  |  Page 233  |  Page 234  |  Page 235  |  Page 236