Arnhem

by John Nichol

  That night, the van Maanens and the Aalbers, a dozen of them in all, crammed into the candle-lit cellar. ‘Some of us go to sleep right away, in spite of the stuffiness and the tension. But with such a crowd you cannot expect to be comfortable. Eventually, everyone is settled and sleeps, or at least pretends to. Then, at midnight, we all stir, and some start to toss about. I get up and go upstairs for some fresh air. Outside, I look up at the stars and the scarlet sky. There seems to be fire everywhere around us. Paul and I go to the top of the house and look out hoping to see Monty’s army. There are an awful lot of lights out there. That must be Monty now. We rush downstairs to tell everyone the good news and with a feeling of reassurance we go to sleep again.

  ‘From time to time I am woken by funny little sharp cracks outside, around the house, as if someone is throwing gravel on the pavement. Most peculiar. Maybe it’s pistol shot. I hear thunder in the distance and shooting. Out there, thousands of men are wide awake, fighting for our freedom …’

  Liberation still seemed the likely outcome – the Germans would be forced away again and the Allies would win this battle. After all, even if Monty’s army was more enquired about than actual, some reinforcements had come. The day before, everyone had thrilled to the sight of more British parachutists and gliders arriving in open ground to the west, a bit further out from where the original landings had been. Anje had noted excitedly ‘thousands of aeroplanes filling the sky and all sorts of coloured parachutes dropping – red, blue, white, orange, green, yellow, like a bunch of flowers. We wave and jump around.’ Marie-Anne was excited too, as also were the soldiers in her house. ‘It is a magnificent sight to see those large gliders landing and red, white, blue and green parachutes bringing more munitions and food.’ And men. Surely they would turn the tide back in the Allies’ favour? This second ‘lift’ of parachute and glider troops would make all the difference, wouldn’t it?

  It was always part of the Market Garden plan to drop troops into the Netherlands. There was no other choice. The Allies simply did not have enough transport planes and glider tugs to get a total of 34,000 men, 2,000 vehicles, 568 guns and 5,000 tons of equipment behind enemy lines in one go. If Arnhem had been the sole objective of the operation, then a single lift would have been possible, but the Americans also had to be fed into the Eindhoven and Nijmegen areas on day one in order to secure the ‘carpet’ for the land forces to get to Arnhem. This, however, restricted the number of planes available to the British for their initial assault and therefore the number of men they got on the ground in the early stages. It was a crucial compromise that, in the event, jeopardized the entire mission. The second lift should have turned the tide of the battle in favour of the Airborne, but it was in trouble before it even began.

  It came in on the afternoon of Monday 18 September, hours later than planned because fog over the airfields in England delayed take-off. As he finally boarded his plane, sapper Arthur Ayers, a plasterer by trade before the war but now a parachutist, was, as he freely admitted, ‘raring to go’. The last time he had been in Europe was at the time of Dunkirk; he had managed to escape in one of the very last boats home. Going back four years later completed the circle from defeat to what seemed certain to be victory. As he peeped out of the window at the sea below, he got the jitters. ‘What the hell was I doing here, waiting to jump into enemy-occupied territory? I must be mad to have joined the paratroopers. Why did I? Was it the glamour of the red beret and the blue wings insignia? Was it the sense of adventure or the challenge of the unknown?’ If so, all too quickly the ‘unknown’ was staring him in the face, and it wasn’t nice.

  Unlike the ‘piece of cake’ first lift, when the Germans had been taken by surprise and put up little anti-aircraft fire, now the flak gunners on the ground were all action. Black puffs of smoke filled the sky. As Ayers stood by the door of his Dakota for the run-in, he wondered, ‘My God, how can they miss us?’ He could see other aircraft in the formation, and one was suddenly lit up by a bright flash. ‘It seemed to shudder then banked slowly away. Yellow flames and dirty black smoke trailed from one of the engines as it turned in a half-circle, then with horrible inevitability spiralled earthwards. It dropped out of my vision and I felt sick inside, imagining all too clearly the scene inside – the trapped paratroopers waiting like ourselves for the order to jump. Even if they had the presence of mind to jettison themselves, it would be of no avail because they would be too close to the ground.’ Another aircraft came into view, with both engines alight, and he counted five jumpers before the plane erupted in a sheet of flame. ‘I stared in disbelief as bits of flaming aircraft and small black objects’ – men – ‘started to fall to the ground. I felt a desperate urgency to get out of this flying death-trap, and I could see from their strained faces that the others in my stick had the same desire.’ The moment the green light flashed, they were out.

  Meanwhile, down on the ground, sapper Jo Johanson was relieved to see the mass of Dakotas overhead at last. He was part of the force held back from the advance on Arnhem to protect the drop zones to the west of the town. When the planes were late and the skies remained ominously empty, a terrible thought had passed through his mind that perhaps they had all been shot down or forced to turn back. He considered an optimistic possibility – that Monty’s army had already made it to the Arnhem bridge and the second lift had been cancelled as unnecessary – but on second thoughts, ‘this seemed too good to be true.’4 As the weather-delayed armada winged its way over and the parachutes began to fall like dandelion seeds in the wind, he found himself taking fire from a substantial enemy force hidden in the woods around the heather-topped DZ. Clouds of white smoke were billowing, punctuated by the bright flashes of the recognition flares sent up by the British ground party.

  Ayers drifted down, enjoying those few fleeting seconds of tranquillity beneath the canopy that were every paratrooper’s special experience. ‘The silence was broken by the sound of automatic weapons below. Little red lights were flying up towards me and strange sighing noises going past in the air. It was enemy tracer bullets. They were trying to pick us off as we floated down. I heard a scream nearby and saw a paratrooper, falling parallel with me, clutching his stomach. He had a pained, surprised look on his face and I realized he’d been hit. A shudder went through my body. That could have been me.’ As he neared the ground, he felt every German gun around was trained on him.

  And then he was down. A clumsy landing, falling on his back, striking his head heavily on the ground, lying there dazed. He grabbed for his kitbag and his Sten gun. It was useless, the barrel bent into a U by the impact with the ground. This was not good, especially when he got to his feet and surveyed the chaos and the menace of the landing zone. Instead of the soft scent of heather, ‘a heavy pall of smoke hung over us and I could smell the acrid tang of cordite and burning vegetation.’ He was in enemy-occupied territory – and unarmed. ‘The sound of rifle fire and the staccato burst of an automatic weapon echoed across the heath.’ As he looked for his RV, his rendezvous point, he saw dark figures advancing towards him. ‘Friend or foe? I had no idea.’ Then he recognized the familiar green camouflage smocks of the British paratrooper. ‘It’s all right,’ one of them called out. ‘He’s one of ours.’ The implication was that there were plenty of theirs on and around the landing zone that day.

  Captain Theo Redman, a para medical officer, ran into them the instant he landed. ‘They appeared through the trees,’ he recalled, ‘no more than 20 yards away, firing as they came.’ He and two other men with him tried to find cover as bullets kicked up earth around them. One of his companions was shot dead and he himself was hit in the arm. ‘There seemed little future in trying to take them on with my revolver so we gave ourselves up.’5 Such was the opposition now amassing to fight off the airborne attack, his war was over before it had even begun.

  Meanwhile, Arthur Ayers had found his squadron of engineers in a wood and was relieved to be back among friends. ‘Considering the reception we had,
I was surprised to hear about 80 per cent had reported to the RV.’ He was given a replacement Sten, which had belonged to a poor lad ‘who wouldn’t need it any more’. The troops lined up for what they imagined would be the march towards Arnhem. They looked pretty shambolic – ‘like a circus’, according to Johansen. ‘Every jeep was towing a trolley or a cart with the heavy kit on. Some men were walking, some riding motorcycles, some riding pushbikes and the rest perched on the mountains of kit.’6 Already the plan of action was changing. The direct route ahead – the one they had been briefed to take – was impassable due to enemy action, and the men were sent a different way, winding through the woods. Ayers remembered seeing a German soldier lying face up in a ditch with a neat round hole in the centre of his helmet. ‘Derogatory remarks were made as we filed by about the only good German being a dead one, but my thoughts were for his mother and father, perhaps a wife and young children.’ From the sky came the sound of low-flying aircraft. ‘Spitfires,’ said a hopeful voice. ‘Air cover for us.’ He was wrong. ‘Jerries!’ the shout went up, and they dived for a ditch. Bullets sprayed down the road and through the foliage. Ayers pressed himself into the rich Dutch earth and prayed not to end up like the German he’d just seen. ‘They made one more swoop over our position, then made off as quickly as they had come. We clambered out of the ditch, miraculously without any casualties.’

  It wasn’t supposed to be like this. According to the plan, the bridge should have been secured by now and the men of the second lift having an easy passage along enemy-free roads to reinforce the battalions already there. Instead, the advance slowed to a crawl and then to a stop as they took up defensive positions along the Ede–Arnhem railway line, miles from the bridge. When they set off again, they came under another aerial attack from three Me109s, so low that Ayers could see the black crosses on their fuselages. ‘I crouched low, feeling exposed and vulnerable. I heard a man scream out in pain, as a bullet found its mark. A few brave souls returned the fire with their automatic weapons but their efforts were unfruitful.’ After the strafing, they advanced a little, then dug in; a pattern, slow and morale-sapping, was setting in. In their latest slit trench in a pretty, wooded valley, Ayers chatted to his mate, a 21-year-old from Leeds with an attractive blonde wife and chubby six-month-old baby son back at home. Photographs were swapped, Ayers pulling a small snap of Lola from his wallet. He wondered what his bride of three weeks was doing. Suddenly, thoughts of home were interrupted by a shout. Black dots had been seen in the distance, advancing their way. Germans! Ayers lay, waiting, for the order to fire. ‘My nerves tingled. This was my first encounter with enemy troops. My heart beat faster and there was a tightness in my stomach.’ He peeped over the top at the distinctive bucket-shaped helmets, a dozen of them, automatic weapons at the ready, getting closer.

  The voice of his sergeant ended the suspense: ‘Let ’em have it, lads’ – and the troops let loose with everything they had. ‘“How can we have failed to hit them,” I thought, “with that withering field of fire?” But apparently we had, because they were soon returning fire. Bullets streaked by, thudding into the tree trunks and branches just above our trench.’ A man nearby screamed in pain, and a gutsy medic dived through a hail of bullets to get to him. The firing stopped, to be followed by an unearthly silence, the sound of men waiting to know if they were about to die or not. But there was no fresh attack. The enemy had gone, leaving two dead bodies behind. ‘We conjectured it had been a small patrol scouting the area.’ But conjecture was all it was. The bigger picture eluded them, as it did many similar parties of men caught up in skirmishes like this all over the western approaches to Arnhem as the master battle-plan disintegrated in the face of tougher than expected enemy opposition. Over the radio came news confirming that Frost’s battalion was at the bridge but under constant attack and fighting to hold on. The second lift had come to reinforce them, but now there was little chance of getting anywhere near them. ‘It was becoming a grave possibility that they would soon be cut off from the rest of the division,’ Ayers solemnly noted. ‘This was disheartening.’

  He and his men continued in the direction of Arnhem. What else could they do? The battlefield had descended into confusion. Some units were retreating, others were holding defensive positions, but the bridge still needed reinforcing and, in the absence of any other orders, Ayers and his men went on. ‘We marched along a dusty road in files of twelve men on alternating sides, keeping on the alert for any signs of the enemy. The road seemed to stretch for miles.’ There were more brushes with the enemy, with more bloody outcomes. Ayers passed lines of the dead – ‘some dressed in para-smocks and others in field-grey uniforms. British and German alike, they lay there together, pitiful bundles of rag and blood. Pitiful reminders of the waste and uselessness of war.’ At a crossroads, they encountered a British patrol with new instructions. There was still no way ahead and they were to make for a large country mansion on the edge of Oosterbeek and take up defensive positions. It was around this, the Hartenstein Hotel, that the 1st Airborne was re-forming.

  Despite this order to pull back, ‘we were still in good spirits. There was no thought that it might all end in disaster. We still thought the Second Army would be here in two or three days to relieve us.’ But not everyone was so upbeat. A para major who came in on the second lift was appalled by what he saw as a disastrous lack of leadership on the ground. The further he progressed from the drop zone, the more frustrated he became. ‘We could hear the sound of heavy fighting not far ahead but no one seemed to know what was going on or why. There was a good deal of speculation among those from whom I tried to obtain information, most of it somewhat defeatist. No one seemed to be in overall command, and the men appeared to have lost confidence in their officers. The euphoria had evaporated and morale had sunk to a dangerously low level.’7

  Gliders dropped in, too, on that second lift, and for those in the back and in the cockpit the ride was not just bumpier than the first lift had experienced but downright dangerous. Captain Harry Roberts, a REME (Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers) officer, hated being in a Horsa – ‘such a flimsy plywood contraption’ – and would much rather have been on the end of a parachute.8 He was caught short on the trip – too many cups of tea before take-off – and, somewhere past the Dutch coastline, was standing to urinate into the rubber tube that served as the on-board ‘facility’ when the plane bucked violently. A gaping hole in the fuselage opened up between his legs. Shrapnel from ack-ack shells had raked the plane and nearly robbed him of his manhood. It was only the start of his troubles. The glider pilot slipped the tow rope and nosed downwards, spotted his landing zone, lined up to cruise in … but was forced to bank away as the plane in front disintegrated in mid-air and another spun sideways out of control.

  This was supposed to be an unopposed landing, protected by the men who had dropped the day before. In fact, a wholesale battle was under way between the perimeter defence force and German troops, and the gliders were coming down plumb in the middle of it. As his glider finally touched down and was sliding to a halt, Roberts threw himself out while it was still moving. A machine-gun burst from point-blank range hit him in the back. His gas-mask, strapped across the small of his back, took the edge off the impact. The bullet chipped his spine and flicked through the muscles in his back before stopping short of a vital organ. He was paralysed from the waist down but alive – unlike his driver, who had jumped beside him, and the two glider pilots.

  Dick Ennis, co-pilot of another glider, was also in deep trouble. The minute he dropped the tow-rope and went into free flight near the landing zone, the aircraft was hit by flak. ‘A shell burst smashed our port wing-tip and the kite rocked and heeled.’9 The first pilot was slumped in his seat, blood from his head spreading across the perspex windscreen. Ennis grabbed the controls. ‘My one thought was to get down.’ But his flaps had gone and parts of the wing were breaking up. It was do or die. ‘I pulled the kite into a steep turn, stuck the nose down and h
eaded for a patch of the field. I was overshooting, without enough height left to turn in. Straight ahead was a wood. I pulled back on the stick in an effort to pancake on top of the trees, but the damaged kite was slow to respond. We hit the trees head-on with well over 100mph on the clock. I should have been killed but I went straight through the perspex instead. I ploughed along the ground and finished up among the trees about 20 yards from the glider.’ He came to, still strapped to his seat, and struggled to his feet to find a Dutch woman offering him a drink. ‘It may have been port, or sherry or even cocoa,’ he recalled, ‘but it did pull me together a little.’ He dashed back to his plane, now virtually matchwood, with a couple of trees lying across it. ‘Everything was deadly quiet. I called out the first pilot’s name but there was no answer. I made for the tail and heard movements inside. I hammered on the door and forced it open. Our two passengers alighted, very shaken, but quite safe and sound. We found Allan [his first pilot] lying with the jeep and trailer on top of him, but in all probability he was killed in the air before we crashed. I removed his identity disc and we buried him quietly beside the glider.’