A Bridge Too Far Page 5

  On Friday Major Mervyn Dennison had found himself in the Vreewijk Hotel at the Utrechtseweg-Stationsweg crossroads, after being laid out on a stretcher and, with another man, tied down to a Bren carrier and driven there with both considerable speed and skill. The hotel was under the supervision of Corporal ‘Chirpy’ Couling of the 16th Parachute Field Ambulance. Dennison said of him, ‘He was a man without equal when it came to caring for the wounded. Quite a few men survived that battle because of his unstinting care and devotion to his patients. He deserved so much more.’ Couling was awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal.

  Another man whom Dennison came into contact was an SS-Obersturmbahnführer who had been wounded in both legs and feet. He was offered some morphine for his pain, but refused this because he believed that the medical personnel were trying to poison him. Dennison lay next to him, ‘He turned out to be a very agreeable companion, speaking good English and as a result received his fair share of what food and cigarettes the Dutch were able to smuggle in to us. When the sad news arrived that the remnants of the Division were to retire across the Rhine, the Germans moved into the hotel. They threatened us with their shouts and curses and told us to get up and get out. We owe something to our friend the SS Colonel who sat up on his blanket, gave them hell and told them to mind their manner to these British, who were both soldiers and gentlemen!’

  ‘Most of the survivors would confirm the chivalry of one brand of good soldiers to another. Colonel Graeme Warrack the Divisional Director of Medical Services had spent many hours during the battle driving to and from the German headquarters organising cease-fires to permit the removal of our wounded, or, on several occasions, to permit the exchange of wounded prisoners. And so the wounded began their journey to prison camp. A few evaded their guards and hid up in the homes of those wonderful Dutch families. Most went into Germany in great discomfort in those ‘40 hommes, 8 cheveaux’ [40 men or 8 horses] bare wooden wagons. Stalags for other ranks ranged from bad to tolerable. Officers did much better in Oflags, but wherever it might have been, one has to remember that it was within five or six months of the end of the war and the Germans were as short of food and necessities as the prisoners.’8

  General Urquhart told Colonel Warrack that he wanted him to remain with all his staff to care for the many wounded, who were scattered at the Dressing Stations and Regimental Aid Posts in the battle area and behind the German lines. In one of the dressing stations in German hands, Urquhart’s ADC, Captain Roberts and Captain Murray were asked by Warrack to try and get a message through to XXX Corps’ gunners not to drop shells in the area while this and another dressing station in German hands were being evacuated. They walked out past the guard, Roberts with his leg in a splint and Murray with a bullet hole in his neck and found a Red Cross jeep beyond a house full of corpses of men who had died from their wounds. They got into it and drove unchallenged to the British lines to hand Warrack’s message in for transmission. Those men too badly wounded to move would fire rifles and machine-guns and operate radio sets during the night to give the impression that all positions were still occupied. By now the area that bordered the river was little more than 600 yards and it was essential therefore that artillery support from XXX Corps across the river should be extensive and well directed; and that the Germans should learn nothing of the evacuation. But before the evacuation could begin there remained one more day of fighting and one of the most bitter. Even before the conference had finished the enemy made a determined effort to cut the perimeter with repeated mortar and shellfire. ‘The German attacks that morning were of a most violent nature’ reported Alexander Johnson. ‘They threw everything at us except Big Bertha. Half way through the battle Peter yelled at me, ‘Take over Mike’s flight. He’s wounded.’ I did and found myself commanding - two men. Shortly after I found myself at the wrong end of a submachine gun and having no ammunition with which to argue, was forced to obey the screeched words of command of my captor, a spotty-faced creature of about 12 - or so he looked.’

  It was late, dark and raining hard. For once there were no flares illuminating the sky and there was no sound of gunfire. Rain hammered down on what was left of the farmhouse roof and a few sorry looking paratroopers stood guard while water collected in large muddy pools around them. The large cellar under the farmhouse had been converted into an HQ, hospital and store room. The dead and dying lie all around and there was hardly any room to move. The few senior officers left tried to make themselves heard while a dirty radio operator sat hunched over a radio transmitter. Everyone quietened down. The order has been given that they were to move out in something called Operation ‘Berlin’. Len Moss and a few other soldiers thought it was a code word for an allied push, a counter-attack but then they realised it was the code name for retreat. A murmur of disquiet and confusion went through the room. A skeleton crew would keep up radio transmissions and some level of fire while the main force retreated to the Rhine. By the time Jerry knew what was happening, it would be too late. Wounded men unable to travel were to stay behind to man the positions. Doctors and orderlies were to remain also. The men were told that when they left no man was to fire unless fired upon. Secrecy was vital. Their guides would mainly be glider pilots following their own white tape paths which were already in place. They should be able to get everyone down to the river where the Beach-Masters would load everyone into powered assault boats which had been brought up by some Canadian engineers. Moss rested like a boxer, slumped on a stool staring into space while holding a mug of tea. He was tired. A private in his early 20s approached and tapped him on the shoulder. He asked if Moss was coming with them. Moss stared blankly into space. The young private explained that they were moving out tonight. He advised Moss to pair up with someone wounded and offer to help them escape. Moss followed him across the room, stepping over the dead and dying. He quickly found himself a walking wounded soldier named Jenkins to help evacuate.

  ‘There was a rumour going around that an evacuation was going to be tried to get us across the river’ recalled Jack Bird of the South Staffs. Orders were given out by Major Buchanan that we would commence to move for the river at 2345 on Monday night. I spent the biggest part of that Monday inside the church, which by now was practically in ruins and the spire was practically down, but the walls still provided good cover. I was with Jimmy Renwick but lost sight of Ernie Young who left the church and I never saw him again; where he went to I don’t know. In the early part of the evening soldiers of the Dorset Regiment came into the church. Apparently they had come across the river to contact us, but not many had got across, most of them were killed or captured. Well Jim and I found some grub and had a scoff, which was badly needed in my case anyway. Then we waited for the order to move and left the church for a slit trench, where we encountered ‘Mucky’ Hall. By now it was dark and raining, so the weather would be in our favour, so we dozed until the time came to move and this came soon enough.

  ‘It was an eerie procession that wound its way out of the village and set off across country for the river which lay about 1½ miles on our left. It was a long column and of course we had to move cautiously and quietly, so naturally it seemed a long way as we had to halt frequently on account of flares, very lights and machine gun fire, which troubled us. After about two hours we reached the ferry and our feelings can be visualised when I say that for the job of evacuating about eight hundred men there was only two small boats, each of which held about fourteen men. The men were told to line up in an orderly manner, but they were beyond control and were dashing about and shouting and generally making enough row to wake the dead. The officers were helpless to deal with things, most of them being more concerned to get on the boats. In the move up to the river I lost contact with Jimmy Renwick, but I met up with him later. I could see it was hopeless as regards getting across, as by now it was 3 o’clock and would soon be breaking dawn. Many men tried to swim across but it was a very fast moving current and the majority of those who attempted it were drowned.
Daylight came and with it I gave up hope of getting across, as we were caught like rats in a trap, exposed to murderous machinegun fire which came from left and right and alas behind us. The last boat to go across was riddled and I doubt if there were many alive when it reached the other side. Dozens of men were shot as they attempted to swim across as they had to face a veritable hail of lead. I should imagine Jerry was enjoying himself immensely at the plight we were in. There was not a vestige of cover on the river bank at all and tracers were weaving about in all directions and I saw plenty of blokes get hit, but I suppose as there didn’t seem to be one with my name on it I was fortunate. It would now be about six o’clock and there seemed to be no escape from the position and shortly afterwards from somewhere a white flag went up and this was followed by more. This did not however stop the machine gun fire from Jerry, but there was such confusion, or maybe he thought it was a ruse on our part... because I’m quite convinced that Jerry never anticipated taking such a bag of prisoners as there were about five hundred of us. At length we were picked up by Jerries, who were jubilant as they escorted us into Arnhem, where we went to their Div HQ for interrogation and to be searched. On the way, as we marched into town, a photographer jumped from a car and started taking pictures, but when the lads started giving him the ‘V’ sign he packed in.’

  Lieutenant Jack Reynolds of the 2nd South Staffords was so angry that when he was captured he defiantly gave the propaganda cameraman ‘the Agincourt sign’ when the prisoners were told to put their hands on their head. Reynolds thought that he might get a bullet for it, but the Germans must have thought that he was just giving the V for Victory sign. He had survived on adrenalin and water for the best part of three days but sleep caught up with him eventually and he did have the odd catnap. ‘The tanks stopped at night - they were too vulnerable to attack - but then at first light they were off again.’ A tank that fired a solid shell into the bank in front of him shot debris up and hit him in the face, ramming his lucky pipe halfway down his throat and breaking four or five of his teeth. By the end Reynolds’s group numbered just three. They had taken cover in a slit trench and just before dusk fell the tanks rolled in over the top and passed them so they knew then that they were surrounded. ‘I got up in the middle of the night and there was something standing by the trench - it was a German tank. I put my hand on it. But there was no way we could break out, because the Germans had got men everywhere. So, in the morning, the battalion intelligence officer, who spoke German, got up and addressed a German officer. He marched us off.’ Reynolds felt a sense of ‘absolute fury at High Command’ that the whole thing could have been so ‘utterly incompetent’: ‘I was just thinking of all the people that I’d seen there, people I knew, who had been needlessly wounded or killed in an operation that was quite frankly ill conceived, ill planned and ill executed. There was nothing to commend it and I believe it was merely the megalomania of a certain field marshal.’9

  ‘I noticed many Tiger tanks on the road which had been knocked out by our guns’ wrote Jack Bird. ‘After the search had been completed I found myself in a party about seventy strong and we were marched out of the town in the opposite direction to that which we came in by, to a camp, but after a while we were marched back into Arnhem and taken to the railway sidings there. By now it was well after noon and we had our first meal in captivity, although I won’t insult the word - for I’m firmly convinced that Jerry doesn’t know the meaning of the word as regards feeding prisoners of war; anyway that was my experience during my short period of captivity. We had four tins of meat and a loaf between about eight men, so you can see there was not much meat. After this huge feed we were lined up and counted - this was a continual source of amusement to me for they never tired of counting us and I think it was just an example of the German mentality. Then we were set to work in a warehouse adjoining the sidings and we emptied it of all its contents, which I put at five hundred tons, roughly, comprising rolls of wire, iron bars, etc. It was loaded into trucks, each holding about thirty tons.

  ‘We slept for the first night in a disused garage, but when the RAF got busy we were moved to a place on the outskirts of Arnhem. The funny thing about it, a bomb was dropped on the garage so we were fortunate in our move. I might mention that we saw the Typhoons send down their rockets on many occasions and did it do us good. The guards used to beat it when our planes were about and left us to it, except our unfriendly little sergeant who used to whip out his revolver. I don’t know whether he thought any of us were going to make a break for it, or whether he intended to bring one of them down. I might add we were being guarded by Luftwaffe troops. I reckon that as Jerry had lost most of his planes this was one of the jobs they were doing. We were treated fairly well and would receive our rations before we went out in a morning, usually it comprised a third of a loaf, a portion of butter and cheese. This we would eat at mid-day and then we would get soup at night when we got back to our billets. While we were working on the railway we used to get apples and pears, as many as we could eat. These were got out of trucks which were in the sidings, so we got plenty of fruit - you lucky people. Who wouldn’t be a prisoner of war?’10

  Tanks were knocked out or disabled by PIAT and Gammon bombs at close quarters and by 75mm howitzers firing over open sites, some at 50 yards’ range. After hard fighting the enemy were driven back and the positions more or less restored, but with yet more casualties and expenditure of ammunition. If this attack had succeeded it would have spelt disaster for the Division in the forthcoming difficult withdrawal. A group of three SP guns and a Tiger tank had, however, succeeded in infiltrating into the woods south of here and started to move towards Airlanding Brigade HQ. The leading tank stopped close to the HQ, where it was hit three times by a 6-pounder anti-tank gun and was disabled, which deterred the others and they later withdrew. Everywhere that afternoon the fire seemed heavier than ever. The Tafelberg Hotel was hit three times and a nurse and two orderlies were killed as well as several wounded. The place became uninhabitable and Colonel Warrack ordered the rest of the wounded to be taken out. As they were trundled out on wheelbarrows and trolleys the building was burning fiercely.

  Snipers had by now crawled through the hedge of the ter Horst’s orchard. ‘They fired shamelessly into the house, into the rooms and corridors, crowded with helpless people’ Kate ter Horst recalled. ‘Nobody dares leave the house, two medical orderlies have been shot down while they passed the windows with a stretcher between them-from outside the wounded are calling... More wounded come in and... all around they are dying - must they breathe their last breath in such a hurricane? Oh, God! Give us a moment’s silence. Give us quiet - if only for a short moment - so that at least they can die... On the cellar steps there are again a few soldiers. The Germans are all round us, everybody knows it now; it is only a question of hours... ‘Will you please go upstairs now?’ We ask it after a long hesitation; but if the Germans find them here, then it is all up with us... In the cellar opening we have put a cushion against the shells, the door to the stoke hole is closed. And then it happens - a tremendous shock. Over our heads we hear the thunder of bricks rolling down, stifled cries from all sides, the cracking of timbers.

  In view of the isolated positions, permission was given for some groups to pull back to the houses just north of the main Utrechtseweg and this was successfully completed by 1400. Major Geoffrey Powell recalled: ‘I gathered my men together; they were tired, dirty, but still determined and their weapons were clean and serviceable. There were 33 - all that remained of our battalion. When I told them that we were pulling out that night there was, at first, a muttered protest, that we can hold out longer and finish the job and they were angry that the ground troops hadn’t relieved us. Then they fell silent and I sensed relief had replaced anger. They had seen so many of their friends of many years killed or maimed and their battalion destroyed, that they had resigned themselves to the same fate; but now there was a chance to get out, alive. Later, I borrowed a razor and hac
ked off my scruffy beard, as my soldiers looked on in disbelief. Then someone else took it and it was passed around and they all shaved. We were the better for it and felt ready for the difficult and dangerous night ahead of us.’

  Sergeant Bill Higgs’ luck finally deserted him: ‘We were just fighting and running in the end because we were outnumbered, all our ammunition had gone. We were in a beer garden, I can remember having a bottle of Cherry Herring in my hand and the officer was looking at the map and he said: ‘We’ll get up there, Staff and stay up there and try and hold that until we get news of what’s going on.’ But as we set off up the brow of the hill they could see us coming and they let us have it from a house up there. The officer said, ‘Let’s get in’ and so we ran towards it. I fired a burst of my Tommy gun and the next thing I knew I was down on the deck. I thought I’d lost my arm because the bullet went through it and into my chest, through my lung and out my back. I was lying on the ground and then I felt the Tommy gun and I thought, ‘Oh my God, I haven’t lost my arm’. Two guys turned me over on to my back and then dragged me down - I could still hear the bullets hitting the top of the road. They got me under the brow of the hill and into the yard of a house. There was a young Dutch couple in it. They’d got an old velvety armchair and they sat me in this. I could see how frightened this young couple was, so I said, ‘Get me out of here, they’ll mortar this place, let’s get down to the main road, these people are frightened to death.’

  Higgs was taken to an old farmer’s hut and left there with another twenty wounded men: ‘The blood was running out of my mouth. It was filling up my lung, my breath was coming shorter and shorter and I felt I was going to drown in my own blood, so I thought I’ve got to move, I was panicking. I thought if I don’t move I’m going to die. Behind me was a rusty old rail they’d used to tie up the cattle and I got hold of this and I pulled myself over and as I did this I pulled off the patch the Red Cross blokes had put on my back where the bullet had come out. I could feel the hot blood running out of my lung down my back and within five minutes I was breathing again. And then the Germans came.’ Higgs was put into a German ambulance and bumped along the road to hospital. On the ward he asked a medical orderly the name of the hospital: ‘The orderly said, ‘I’m sorry, I can’t tell you that.’ ‘He wouldn’t tell me anything. I’d thought, if I can get through the window, if XXX Corps are coming our way... but of course they never did come our way, did they? That was the tragedy.’11