A Bridge Too Far Read online

  ‘The tape led us to a hedge and continued alongside of it, eventually passing through to the other side, on to a path running down towards the river. The mortar, barrage must have shifted or even stopped and the relief at the thought of a safe crossing was wonderful. Captain Z said: ‘Look, the poor dead cow.’ Then we began to see human bodies lying all along the path. As we continued, we saw that some of them were moving and heard groans and weak cries for help. A voice in the dark was muttering and talking in delirium. This was more than I could stand and I knelt down by one of the injured men. I called for three of our chaps to help me take him down to the river. The wounded man begged us not to leave him behind and to help him across the river. We tried to lift him, but he groaned with pain and we had to lay him down again. Someone with an authoritative voice came up from the river and told us to leave the wounded where they were, as they could not be got over just now and a doctor would be sent over to look after them. All along this path there were mortar pits and the bodies of dead and wounded soldiers. We reached the banks of the Rhine and joined a long queue of men waiting to be ferried across.

  ‘Someone came up to us and told us to spread out as the mortaring might be resumed any minute. There were at least 100 men in front of us and no sign of a boat. There were other parties like ours all along the river, waiting. The splash of oars could be heard now and then. I suppose this was how they felt at Dunkirk. A small rowing boat was approaching at last. It took ten men across. Then we realised our desperate position. Any moment the mortaring might start again. There was no cover at all and we crouched in the deep squelchy mud; we were frozen with cold and soaked from the rain.

  ‘The mortaring started up again, not directly where we were, but near enough to be frightening. After trenches and street fighting and even the cover of the woods, we felt helplessly exposed. The thought of those ghastly bodies and the groans of the wounded lying in the meadows was in everyone’s mind, but no one said anything. We just crouched there shivering.

  ‘I had to get out of this. I told Captain Z that I couldn’t stand this any longer and that I was going to try and swim for it. Now we had got this far, I didn’t intend to take any more risks than were necessary. The boat system was obviously hopelessly inadequate and apart from relieving some of this awful congestion on the bank and leaving the boats, such as they were, to the non-swimmers, I honestly thought it was the best way out. He agreed with me and shouted to the rest of our glider pilot section that we were going on to a promontory where the river narrowed a bit.

  ‘A large crowd followed us, but I doubt if any of them realised where we were going or what we intended to do. They just came after us because at least we seemed to have some kind of plan. We had to climb some large boulders on our way to the promontory. At the end, it went steeply down into the water and would have made a far better landing stage for the rescue boats than the mud flats, as at least the bank gave a little cover. From here, the opposite bank didn’t look too far, we judged about four hundred yards and the prospect of doing something after the misery of queuing up on all fours in the mud, made Captain Z and me feel quite cheerful. ‘We’ll do it again, you and me!’ he said. We proceeded to take our boots off and hung them round our necks. Captain Z gave his rifle to Lieutenant X who unfortunately couldn’t swim and remarked that he must keep his haversack with him, as the Company’ Office,’ etc was in it. I kept all my arms and ammo, as we couldn’t be sure what would greet us on the other side. I put my Sten gun across my shoulders and, by the time I was ready, Captain Z was in the water and swimming away from the bank.

  ‘In I went; the water was pleasantly warm, the air filling my battle smock kept me easily afloat. I felt happy and full of confidence. Captain Z was about twenty yards in front of me, but drifting fast downstream. The current was very strong and I tried hard to work against it so as to reach the other bank more or less opposite where the promontory stood. Captain Z seemed to be getting on all right and I couldn’t catch him up, as my battle smock gradually, deflated and swimming became harder and harder. I began to get worried and breathe fast and I was only half way across. Next, I wasn’t doing proper strokes anymore and I began to panic. Like a flash it came to me that this was the one fatal thing to do and the best possible way to get drowned. How ridiculous it would seem that I, brought up as I had been by a lake and a swimmer since I was four, should die of drowning in the calm warm waters of the Rhine, after evading every kind of violent death for the last seven days.

  ‘I turned over on my back to rest and pull myself together. I realised that I had to get rid of my Sten gun, but that would be pretty difficult as it was strapped round my back. I had to let myself sink vertically, while I eased the gun up and over my head. A moment later I heard it go bubbling to the bottom. Next, I methodically rid myself of all the impedimenta that my battle smock contained, also my boots and steel helmet. There were Sten gun mags, hand grenades, writing materials, my fountain pen and every conceivable thing I had managed to save. Unfortunately I couldn’t discriminate in the water and all my belongings, including my AB 64, went floating down the Rhine. The difference was marvellous. I felt like I had when I’d been bathing a fortnight ago in the Thames, except that it was dark. I looked round for Captain Z but there was no sign of him at all. I shouted and began to swim round, but there was no reply and I supposed he had already got to the far bank. I swam on alone. Fires were burning on both sides of the river and the mortaring was still going on. There was an increased rattle of machine guns from the wood we had left only an hour ago, but I felt I was beyond this, enclosed by the still warm waters. I might never have been on the other side.

  ‘I was about twenty yards from land when I saw two figures gesticulating, wildly and heard shouting: ‘Hold on, mate, hold on, we’ll be there in a moment. Don’t panic, it’s OK, you’re safe now.’ They were preparing to plunge into the water and pull me out, when I shouted to them not to bother and that I was perfectly all right. Two pairs of hands seized me and pulled me out. Nothing would convince these enthusiastic life-savers that I didn’t need artificial respiration. Maybe they’d been on a course some time and this was their unique chance to practise the real thing. They tried to turn me upside down, but only succeeded in pushing me face downwards into the mud. They wouldn’t let me walk on my own, but tried to lift me. This was quite impossible on the slippery ground and anyway I would, probably have been more able to carry them as they were rather undersized.

  ‘I did all I could to persuade them to let me go on alone, while they stayed behind to watch for other swimmers, especially Captain Z. I began to be very worried about him when they told me that no one had come across this way and I was the first they had’ saved.’ But they insisted on coming with me.

  ‘I was shivering and slipping about oh the muddy ground but what the hell? I was here and so was the Second Army. We slid and stumbled along for about fifteen minutes until we met a medical orderly. The two cockneys instructed him to take me to the First Aid post and not to stand any nonsense if I tried to escape. They said in very important voices: ‘He swum the Rhine and we fished him out.’ As far as they were concerned I was still drowned.’

  Sapper Vincent Brimble managed to get in a boat and cross to the south bank of the river, still with full kit including his Sten gun. En route he had heard the sound of heavy boots, thought to be those of a German patrol and the sappers of HQRE were forced to lay low until these had passed. In the early hours of the morning Brimble met his former Chief Engineer 1st Airborne Division, Lieutenant Colonel Henniker who had transferred to the 43rd Wessex Division. Henniker recognised Brimble’s voice and he came over to speak to him. At 0500 Henniker ordered the ferrying operation to stop, as the crossing site was now under direct observation and fire from both flanks. There were still 300 men on the north bank. Some of these got back into the woods and houses and were able to escape to safety later, but most were captured during the coming day as the Germans moved in.

  ‘When we rea
ched the far bank’ recalled Laurence Scott GM ‘one of the Canadians said, ‘Go that way’ and I set off in the pitch blackness and found myself alone. I kept falling into shell craters, climbing out and then falling into another until I eventually reached a road. As I walked on every now and then a British soldier would step out of the darkness and say ‘not far now’ and point up the road. It was actually about five miles, but I was so tired I just kept trudging along. I still had blankets on my boots but I was too tired to stop and take them off. Then, finally I reached a small tent with one of the Medical Corps in there. They gave me a cigarette and a small drink of rum or brandy. I waited until transport arrived and was taken to Elst, then to Nijmegen, which was held by the US. It was light by then and we were led into a big German school or barracks, given a bed in a dormitory and left to sleep.

  ‘The next day, I went to the cookhouse and queued for tea. Some of the company had found each other and we stayed together. Then we saw our CO, Major Wilson, at the end of the queue and we cheered as he’d survived, he’d made it across. [Major Wilson’s boat had hit a mud bank on the way over and capsized, throwing its cargo into the river. Faced with little alternative the men swam for the other side and Wilson successfully reached the southern bank].20

  He had a plaster over his nose where the bullet had hit him. At first he didn’t recognise us as he was still dazed. Later in the day we left for Belgium in the TCVs and got shelled some of the way. We passed the British tanks and they’d really taken a hammering. Dead bodies were strewn everywhere. What a waste.’

  It had stopped raining, although water dripped down from leaves and branches. The moon peered out through a small break in the clouds silhouetting the hedges, lanes and trees all around. All that remained of the group that Len Moss and his wounded friend were in was twelve men including the sergeant,. The men huddled for shelter under some trees feeling pretty despondent. The Bofors guns were still firing tracer rounds. Moss stared intently at them. The Sergeant was examining the map and looked worried. He was losing it. The sergeant turned the map around in his hands not sure which way up it should be. Moss said that for quite a while now those two Bofors guns had been firing tracers, the trajectories of which were crossing high in the night sky and he suggested that they head for that. The sergeant dismissed this idea as stupid. Moss said that’s the way he was going. The sergeant ordered everyone to stay together and tried to stop him. Moss pulled his pistol. He said, ‘Listen, you bastard, I’ve just about had enough of you. I’m going to walk towards those guns and if you try and stop me I’ll shoot you right now. I think I’m right and even if none of you care for the idea I’m going on my own.’

  The sergeant glanced at the rest of the men who were looking for leadership. A couple of them stepped forwards to follow Moss. Pretty soon the sergeant was isolated and he looked defeated. Led by Moss, the small column of men marched silently in single file silently down a narrow lane. Only their boots made any kind of noise - a trudge, trudge, trudge in the mud. Pistol in hand, Moss led, his eyes darting all over the place. The moon appeared through the clouds and glinted on something stretched across the road just beside his feet. He raised an arm. Stop! Trip wire! The column halted immediately and taking a closer look Moss could see a metal trip wire extending six inches above the ground into the hedge either side of the road. Carefully he stepped over it. They carried on marching down the road before it started to lead away from the tracer fire. Moss signalled to the column to halt. He opened a field gate and the men walked into the field. Distantly they could hear mortar and machine gun fire. Halfway across some parachute flares were launched into the sky and started to drift down illuminating the whole area. Everyone hit the floor and lay still until the flares died and faded. The men then got up and trudged on their weary way again. Approaching a hedge, a short burst of Sten gun fire and the illuminating muzzle flash, brought the men to a halt.

  A British soldier stepped out of the shadows, looked them up and down and then melted back into the gloom. The column walked on, out of the field and onto a small lane, towards the Bofors guns, which still fired at regular intervals. There was another burst of Sten gun fire from the hedge and another disembodied voice. As they walked on down the lane, their pace quickened. The mortar and machine gun fire they heard earlier was getting louder. They trudged on to the end of the lane and through a gate into a wide field. German mortar fire whooshed overhead either exploding in the field or dropping into the River Rhine. There were soldiers everywhere, some on guard marshalling the queues of Allied servicemen waiting to leave. They stretched off into the distance, snaking all over the place down towards the river where boats were ferrying them across. Hundreds of them extended backwards in loose lines through meadows and woodland. The Germans attempted to fire on the area but generally the incoming mortar and artillery rounds were inaccurate. They were hopeful more than anything else.

  ‘The end came very suddenly’ wrote Wilhelm Rohrbach. It was the 26th and Brigade 280 was supposed to go into action during the morning. They were running their motors to warm them up but no orders to start off came. Rohrbach had had one or two close calls, like the day he had wanted to get into the same tank as his sergeant. But it drove off down a small side-street before he could get in. A 92mm anti-tank gun fired from an overhanging balcony. The whole crew was killed. Another time a phosphorus bottle was heaved out of a window and hit the side of their tank. If it had hit a few inches further forward it would have landed on the hot motor and exploded. All he could think was ‘Thank God’. One day they decided to have a bit of fun. When the English fired red flares they did the same. As a result they received supplies from the English aircraft. There were tinned goods, chocolate and best of all, coffee. Towards the end there was jubilation when 70-ton Tiger tanks appeared. As someone in his unit said, they were like life insurance. The English were very scared when they saw them. They did have some respites. During the cease-fire and the wounded were brought out from the perimeter through no-man’s-land to the hospitals in the city they had driven right by their self-propelled guns. What he took to be Dutch firemen also helped in evacuating the wounded. These were the only Dutch people he remembered seeing during this time. Rohrbach was very impressed by the cease-fire. It was not like his experience in Russia and he was amazed at the difference in the behaviour of soldiers on this front.

  And then the German prisoners came from the tennis courts, marching at the head of a column of British prisoners. Everyone wondered what had happened and finally an officer told them it was all over. They hardly had time to rest before being ordered to get their guns into running condition before reassignment to another sector.

  Craftsman Stan Turner, a vehicle mechanic with the 1st Airborne Divisional Workshops, woke up and it was daylight. Immediately he knew something was wrong because British troops always stood-to before dawn. ‘The grounds of the hotel looked deserted compared to how they had been over the past couple of days. I went over to the German PoWs in the tennis courts hoping one of them could speak English and one of them told me ‘Tommy, they have all gone’. Scarcely able to believe what had happened, I and the other REME soldier who shared my trench wandered over to the hotel building. We were astounded to see a pile of British dead, all of them very young. It is a sight I will never forget. We met a Medical Officer who told us that the 1st Airborne Division was evacuated in the night. He has been left to look after the wounded and told us we would be taken prisoner.21

  Lieutenant Derrick Randall awoke about dawn. He thought it was because it was so quiet. ‘In fact it seemed unreal’ he recalled. ‘I checked the casualties in the regimental aid post and then went outside in the uncanny quiet. I first started my tour around the regimental aid post. There were a number of Germans around, including some stretcher-bearers. As I was widening my search I was somewhat surprised to see the assistant director of medical services drive up in a jeep. I never did ask him where he came from! He took over my maps of the evacuation routes, said that he wou
ld deal with these as he had the jeep, leaving me to spend the day collecting the local casualties and putting them into ambulances or trucks for evacuation. During the course of my searches, I had come across the royal artillery trailer with which I had originally left England, so when I had finally finished my collection of casualties, I went back to examine it. I found that although it was pretty badly damaged, quite miraculously the small pack of my personal things was still there, unharmed, so I collected it before the Germans got it and must have been one of the few PoWs from Arnhem who had a clean shirt etc!

  ‘Eventually the central area was cleared of all British personnel, so I too climbed onto the last truck and trundled through the sad tattered streets of Arnhem and on to Apeldoorn. Here, quite unknown to me was Lieutenant Colonel Martin Hereford of the Royal Army Medical Corps, who had earlier come across the Rhine in an attempt to negotiate with the Germans to allow some medical supplies to be sent over for our troops. He had not succeeded in that, but had succeeded in getting them to agree to set up some accommodation for our wounded. The place chosen was a block in an empty pre-war Dutch barracks. There were no facilities but with incredible negotiating skill, helped by a German fear of an impending further allied advance, he gradually built from nothing the beginnings of a dressing station, even the primitive basis of a hospital. The Germans tried to keep us isolated but the Dutch people were quite wonderful, gathering at the gates trying to pass in food and what limited medical supplies they had. I shall never forget some nurses standing there with some bottles of much needed blood which were eventually allowed through. Intense negotiation gradually got some rudimentary facilities such as cooking and a few medical supplies. It was my fist introduction to proper bandages and ‘feltstuf’, paper substitute for cotton wool and similar dressings. Although pleased to get even these, I never really got used to them.