Arnhem

Those who did make it, Longmate among them, found themselves at the foot of a wooded hill, the top of which was held by enemy troops armed with grenades, which they tossed down. But from one pinned-down man to the next went the word that an officer had made it to a building ahead of them. When he blew his whistle, they were to get up and charge to him – easier said than done up a steep, wooded slope under flare-light as bright as day and with grenades landing at your feet. But that’s what they did. ‘We charged, bayonets fixed, firing away until we eventually got to the top. Once we’d got our breath back, we were ordered around some woods, though every tree seemed to be hiding the enemy – and mortars and grenades were falling, making our force ever smaller.

‘Finally, there were just three of us left. It was still raining, all was quiet and there was no movement. And we were debating what we were going to do when a German patrol appeared, about a dozen men coming in our direction. I put a new magazine on my Sten and said to the two lads with me, “Are we going to kill or be killed? It’s them or us.” It was pretty poor odds with a dozen of them and three of us. But I told the other two to hold their fire and when the patrol came in range I fired the Sten. I’d never killed at such close quarters before, literally seeing the whites of the eyes. I saw the bullets hit, saw them go down, all of them.’

Longmate was changing magazines when he heard a voice say ‘Good shooting.’ Three figures stood up from a bush and one spoke. ‘It’s all right. We’re Airborne.’ They were a sorry sight, Longmate thought – dirty, unshaven and tired, in a much worse state than he was. They’d been told reinforcements were coming and had set out from the Hartenstein to find them, and here, for better or worse, they were, these three at least. Not that there were that many more who made it. The outcome of that disastrous last crossing makes for grim reading. More than three hundred Dorsets clambered into those flimsy boats to make their way over. At least two hundred lost their way and paddled or drifted straight into enemy hands. Many others died in the water or in fighting on the far bank. Only a small number emulated Longmate and linked up with the 1st Airborne inside the shrinking Oosterbeek perimeter. So this was it. The long-awaited relief column – whose expected arrival had been central to the thoughts and hopes of every soldier and civilian in Arnhem and Oosterbeek for days and nights on end and had been invested, in their minds, with almost mythical, battle-turning powers – was here. Just a handful of men. This failure of the Second Army reinforcements to arrive in numbers that could make any difference was a crushing blow.

12. Chaos and Compassion in No man’s Land

The thousands of wounded on both sides did not care who treated them as long as it was someone with the skills to ease their pain and keep them alive. British medics ventured out into the woods, the fields and streets to gather in casualties of both sides, protected by no more than a hurriedly waved red cross. The flag of mercy was not always respected as, under fire, they lugged stretchers loaded with shattered bodies over rough terrain back to casualty stations and makeshift field hospitals. These were rare fixed points in the swirl of battle in Oosterbeek and took in all-comers. The fighting went on around them, and they changed hands, sometimes more than once, as the front line shifted. With commendable adherence to the Hippocratic Oath, the doctors, medics and orderlies who manned these places cut, stitched and staunched, irrespective of nationality. This led to bizarre scenes of fraternization in what was otherwise one of the most ruthlessly fought battles on the western front. Padre George Pare remembered a night in the ‘hospital’ in the Schoonoord Hotel at Oosterbeek where British soldiers, young Dutch civilians and three German SS troopers were mingling in the kitchen, ‘a packed throng of humanity’, as Pare described it. ‘The German boys brought out photographs of their girls, which we politely scrutinized.’ One of the Dutch youths was unimpressed. ‘I hate German girls,’ he whispered in Pare’s ear. ‘They’re too fat.’ The talk moved on to Normandy, the Russian Front, Jews. There were exchanges of the ‘You started the war. No, you did’ type, leading Pare to the conclusion that ‘we are all puppets in the game of survival, each believing in his own cause.’