A Bridge Too Far Read online

  ‘Let them go. You’ll capsize it, ‘he whispered urgently and immediately those who were still trying to struggle aboard abandoned their efforts and moved back to wait for the next boat. The Germans, quiet at first through ignorance of what was really happening and deceived by a brave and skilfully executed diversion by the small force of Dorsets which had crossed the river the night before and by another diversion carried out further west by 129 Brigade, had understood by now what was happening. ‘Since darkness’, Otto Felder says, ‘we had been listening to the roar and crash of shells in the streets and fields outside and we thought that the British had reached the river in force at last and would soon be coming across. Then word came that the parachutists were retreating. We cheered with happiness. And then my unit was sent out to try and stop them getting away.’ By midnight mortar bombs were falling heavily on both sides of the river and Spandau bullets were spattering into the water, while from the high ground at Westerbouwing heavy German guns were dropping shells amongst the boats which chugged so slowly back and forth across the wide expanse of water.

  When the moment of departure came Sergeant ‘Tex’ Banwell of the 10th Parachute Battalion and Company Sergeant Major Lashmore of Support Company decided to find their way to the embarkation area. The day before both men were searching for food in woodland inside the Perimeter when they were fired on by a German machine-gunner and a bullet struck Banwell’s right hand, removing the tops of his index and middle fingers. The two men ran to cover, where Banwell did what he could to bandage his hand and they waited until it was dark when they were able to make their way back to Divisional HQ.

  Though they could hear the engines of motor boats passing back and forth and the sound of mortars landing in the water, they failed to locate the crossing point. They stripped themselves and tried to swim the river but, realizing that the current was too strong and would likely drown them, they backed away and resolved to stay in what would soon be German territory. Banwell decided they should return to the Hartenstein, where he hoped to find a supply container filled with food and ammunition which would keep them both alive until they could contact the Dutch Resistance. When daylight came they were in the dense woodland around the area of the Driel-Heveadorp Ferry and had located a food container tangled up in a tree. Banwell climbed the tree to cut it down, but when it fell it hit the ground with a loud crash. As the two men struggled to open the container and get at the food, not having eaten for several days, Banwell felt a machine-gun barrel pressed hard in the small of his back. Surrounded by ten Germans, they had no choice but surrender.

  7 Loder-Symonds was killed in an aircraft accident on 11 November 1945 in the Far East. He is buried in Jakarta War Cemetery. Thanks are due to Bob Hilton for compiling his biography.

  8 Major Dennison was taken to Oflag IXA/H. With the assistance of the Red Cross and their completely valid examinations, he was able to sit his Bar finals during his stay. When he had finished this, the camp was emptied and its occupants marched westwards, away from the advancing Russians. Once outside the Castle, Dennison, with Lieutenant Tony Baxter, the commander of ‘A’ Company’s No.2 Platoon, slipped away under cover of ‘smoke’; quite literally, the guard dogs accompanying the party were distracted when the prisoners covered for the escapers by blowing cigarette smoke at them. The pair successfully found their way to the American lines and were subsequently repatriated. Dennison returned to the Parachute Regiment but in 1945 he was called to the Bar in Northern Ireland and two years later he joined the colonial legal service and became a Crown Counsel in Northern Rhodesia. In 1960 he became a QC and a year later was a High Court Judge in Zambia. Dennison returned to his homeland in 1967, where he worked as a clerk at Fermanagh County Council until he retired in 1973. He was thereafter a part-time member of the Royal Ulster Constabulary Reserve and was also President of the Northern Ireland Branch of the Parachute Regimental Association. Following a brief illness, Mervyn Dennison died on 12 January 1992, aged 78.

  9 Quoted in ‘D-Day To Berlin’ by Andrew Williams (Hodder & Stoughton, 2004).

  10 Thanks are due to Jack’s nephew, Craig Wood, for compiling this story.

  11 Higgs was incarcerated for ten grim months and on release spent two years receiving treatment in a sanatorium in England. When he was released from hospital he was fit only for ‘a light job in the open air.’ Quoted in ‘D-Day To Berlin’ by Andrew Williams (Hodder & Stoughton, 2004).

  12 For his conduct during the battle Major Robert ‘Dickie’ Lonsdale DSO MC was awarded a Bar to the Distinguished Service Order. He was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel and commanded the 3rd Battalion until 1945. Thereafter he served in Palestine. Returning to England and settling down in Salisbury, he led what was described as a turbulent life in business and politics. He died on 2 November 1988 aged 74 and is buried in Aldershot Military Cemetery.

  13 Captain Allsop was twice wounded, yet he made it to the over side of the river and despite an injury to his thigh he managed to walk unaided to Driel, where his wounds were dressed. For his leadership of the 1st Recce Squadron during the battle, Allsop was awarded the Dutch Bronzen Leeuw.

  14 His conduct throughout the battle led to Major Bush being awarded the Military Cross.

  15 Quoted in ‘Victory In Europe’ by Julian Thompson.

  16 For his actions at Arnhem, Geoffrey Powell was awarded the Military Cross. He continued to serve in the Army after the war, attending the Staff College, Camberley, the British Joint Services Staff College and the United States Command and General Staff College. After 25 years service Powell retired in 1964 at the rank of Colonel and from then on pursued a career in writing. To date he has published a total of eight books. These include The Devil’s Birthday (Buchan & Enright), an excellent work detailing the entire ‘Market-Garden’ operation and the acclaimed Men at Arnhem, a fictional tale, written under the pseudonym of Tom Angus, following the experiences of a Company of men throughout the battle. He has contributed many articles and reviews to both military and historical journals and he is a BA of the Open University and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. Many thanks are due to Philip Sturtivant for all his help with this biography.

  17 Bill Griffin, who was awarded the MBE and a MiD was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel on 24 September 1972. Thanks are due to Bob Hilton for this account and Arnhem, The Fight To Sustain by Brigadier Frank Steer.

  Chapter 3

  ‘We Have No Regrets’

  ‘On that final night there was heavy shelling and we all hoped for a crossing by 2nd Army. I fell into a fitful slumber and I woke to a strange silence around the Schoonoord. I was told that the Division had gone and that it was my unpleasant task to tell the wounded. Soon German ambulances drove up to take us away to Arnhem. There was no rancour and all the Dutch, British and Germans worked together. During the morning a piano was pushed into a large room and everyone started to sing ‘Roll out the barrel’ and ‘White cliffs of Dover’ - The Germans couldn’t understand this! I tried to bring in large numbers of dead at the back of the hotel, but was prevented by the Germans, who said that these brave men must be buried properly. In the event they were buried in a common grave behind the hotel, over which was placed a cross marked ‘English soldiers’.’

  Reverend Charles Pare, Chaplain No 1 Wing Glider Pilot Regiment

  We were fighting in our last house in Oosterbeek village when we were told that we were to retreat’ recalled Laurence Scott GM of the 2nd Airlanding AntiTank Battery. ‘The house belonged to a Dutch dentist. It was in a mess and some of his family were hiding in the cellar. We used to throw in sweets and other food when we could. We had heavy mortar and artillery barrage all the time - it was all noise. When the noise stopped we got worried, because then the troops would be coming in. We were told we were to withdraw across the Rhine at 10pm. When we knew, we went round telling the Dutch civilians. We didn’t want to go; didn’t want to leave them behind. We were resigned to fighting, to being killed. I felt so angry. It seemed such a wast
e. Nine days of fighting and all those people killed and wounded and we had to leave the Dutch people behind. We wanted to stay. We formed up in platoons outside on the grassland in the village at about 9.30pm. It was pitch black and raining really hard. We’d cut up bits of blanket and tied them over our boots and bayonets. The tails of our camouflage smocks were loose and it was so dark we had to hold onto each other’s tails as we walked. Some people just sat down and went to sleep, they were so tired. I could see shadows on the ground. We were meant to leave with 1 Platoon but it was so dark that somehow we were left behind. It was lucky that we were left behind as 1 Platoon ran into a machine gun ambush and some were killed and wounded. Our CO, Major ‘Boy’ Wilson, was hit by a bullet that scraped the bridge of his nose and he was knocked out.

  ‘We knew that the British artillery was across the river and were firing shells from two points on the far bank, about half a mile apart. So we knew where to head for and where the boats were going to be to get us across. Somehow four of us got separated from the platoon - Snowy Wheatley,18 Fred Weatherley, Lol Colbrooke and me. We huddled together in the woods by the river bank. I had my emergency rations of chocolate so we shared it and drank the rain. All the time there were lights going overhead, people shuffling past us - just shadows - and the Germans were mortaring us. We were so tired we carried on plodding along in the woods, past shadows of bodies on the ground - some dead, some asleep and so missing getting the boats and escaping.

  ‘We eventually passed Oosterbeek church and Kate ter Horst’s house and finally came across the tail end of the queue waiting by river for the boats. The front of the queue was in the water. Suddenly about 50 men panicked and rushed forwards to get to the boats. We decided to move away and walk down the river bank. Out of nowhere one of the boats came drifting towards us and into the bank right by us. It had broken down. We got in. It was a Canadian engineer’s boat. They got the engine going but it failed again about halfway across. We were meant to have got rid of our rifles but I’d kept a German rifle - much better than ours - and used it to paddle across.’

  The survivors of the Airborne Division stumbled through the darkness down to the river, holding hands or each other’s smocks, felling their way along the lines of tape fastened between the trees, hearing gratefully the whispered instructions of the guides. Some parties got lost and stumbled into German patrols; others waited while a man, disobeying orders, went off to offer a wounded man a chance to escape, All those unable to walk had been ordered to remain behind, but many bandaged figures were carried down to the river’s edge. Padre Watkins had collected 30 ‘bloody, ragged wrecks of men’ from the ter Horst house and with two medical orderlies took them across the garden ‘strewn with the unburied dead’ who had been removed to make room for new casualties and then down to the river. ‘It did not seem possible that they could get far’, Watkins says. ‘They were so weak. But Bolden (the medical orderly) had chosen well. They were soldier everyone. By dawn they were south of the river and not one of them was lost.’

  ‘When at last the order came for us to pull out’ says Robert ‘Dad’ Cojeen, ‘I was one of the guides. I was posted to a small footbridge over a big ditch about ten feet wide and had to show our men where this bridge was, about 300 yards from the River Lek. I was there from eight o’clock on Monday night until four o’clock next morning. Fellows who were wounded but could walk were helped down to the river. It was grand to see the spirit of these men and of those who were really badly wounded, yet refused to stay at the first aid post, but came back to us.’

  Shortly after 0400 Cojeen proceeded to the riverbank and was taken across in a small flat-bottomed boat with an outboard engine. Back in liberated territory, the men then had to walk four miles to a reception centre where they received a hot drink, blankets if they were lucky and a ride on the back of a lorry to Nijmegen. Arriving at 1000, they got fresh clothes, had a chance have a wash and rid themselves of nine days of beard growth, were issued with 10 cigarettes each and given a meal. ‘It was only stew, but it seemed the finest meal in all my life’. As they were led to their billets, men were about to get into bed when a German anti-personnel mine went off alongside the building and set it on fire, but this was quickly dealt with and the exhausted airborne men got their first proper sleep for over a week.19

  It was nearly zero-hour when Captain Z called Louis Hagen to the Officers’ Room and told him ‘to stick to him all through the withdrawal’. Hagen had got his gun ready and clean, had collected odd Sten gun rounds from all the rooms in the house and filled the empty mags. He had been hoping for two hours’ rest, but firing had increased so much that everyone had to go out and man all the positions. ‘We didn’t want to run any risks at this particular moment’ he wrote ‘and we wanted to give an impression of complete normality. We had been specially warned at the briefing not even to discuss the coming withdrawal among ourselves, for fear of listening Germans or civilians. Any leakage would have resulted in a bloody slaughter. All our boots were to be covered in sacking and those who got hold of civilian shoes were to hang their boots round their necks. We were supposed to blacken our faces, but this was hardly necessary, with a week’s growth of beard and no washing: The order for the whole Division was to withdraw in single file fully armed and without noise.

  ‘More and more men from the other houses were coming down to our position, waiting for Captain Z to lead them to safety. We moved off; Captain Z and myself leading. Behind us, a silent long file of about 50 glider pilots. We made our way steadily to the Division HQ. It was easy for us as we had been this way every night. We wound our way through the mass of slit trenches, trying to avoid any obstacle which might break the long chain. It was a black night and the noise of the dripping from the trees covered the sound of our footsteps. We passed within 50 yards of the Prisoner-of-War compound. Up to now we hadn’t met a single soul’ and even when I looked over to the old tennis court I could not see any movement whatsoever. Firing ahead of us could be heard quite distinctly, mostly bursts of machine gun and the thud of exploding mortars. We were leaving our old perimeter now and moving through a kind of no man’s land towards the river. The Germans had not been able to occupy this part thoroughly, but machine gun nests and strongpoints were dotted about in the woods. It was about four miles from here to the river and the problem was to get there, avoiding these danger spots.

  ‘Captain Z still seemed pretty sure of the route he was taking, but the denser the woods and undergrowth became, the more difficult it was to follow the path. In front of us was a large meadow and we had to find a way round it; we could not risk crossing it openly. From then onwards it was more or less intuition and the colossal luck of Captain Z that brought us to our destination. He felt his way forward, muttering to me: ‘We’ll make it yet, don’t worry, you stick to me... Do you think we are all right, old boy?’ I didn’t have the slightest idea whether we were all right or where we were, nor had anyone else, I felt rather like the blind leading the blind. Miraculously, we came upon a farmhouse, which we recognised as having been marked on the map. We knew we had to take the lane to the left of this and we followed it. Machine guns could be heard ahead of us and as our column halted to climb over a fence, a breathless officer appeared out of the darkness and told us to turn round immediately as his column had run straight into a German Spandau and he thought he was the only one who had survived. His head was bleeding and he had tied a bandage round it himself. We turned round, everyone following the man in front, until the leading part of the column had overtaken the tail. They were remarkably silent and disciplined and there was no shuffling or pushing. Captain Z asked me to go along the line and call all the men with Sten guns to the front. This was the most dangerous part of our journey; we might run into the enemy at any moment. On and on we walked through the dark wood, turning and winding whenever we felt we were too near the enemy. I was walking in front of Captain Z, my finger on the trigger, prepared for anything. I had lost all sense of time or distance and gro
ped my way forward wherever he directed me. We emerged from the wood and in front of us stretched a wide plain. This was the approach to the river. Someone came up and led us along the fringe of the wood. We followed him until we came to a white tape which was stretched across the plain. We were to follow this until we reached the river. ‘We’ve done it again, we’ve done it again!’ Captain Z whispered excitedly to me as the long column followed the seemingly endless white tape across the meadows. From the wood behind us firing could be heard and we wondered if they had found us out. Mortar shells were passing over, exploding not very far in front. The crossing was not going to be easy; we knew that by now.