Arnhem

Anje had no stomach for any of these horrors at first and took shelter in the darkened cellar. Here, there was a terrible personal decision to make. Finn, her dog, was not allowed into this refuge, and her aunt decided it would be better all round if the boisterous animal was disposed of. Anje was distraught. ‘I loved that dog. He was such a comfort to have around, to hug and to hold on to. And he hadn’t done anything wrong. He didn’t understand the war and what was going on, but he trusted me. But Aunt Anke says he must be shot, poor thing. We say goodbye to him and she takes him upstairs to ask some Tommies to put a bullet in him. The Tommies refuse. Such a nice dog, they say, and they tie him to a table up there with them and give him some rugs to lie on. Finn lives on and we are happy.’

But she was not pleased with herself. ‘There are many wounded people from Oosterbeek as well as British wounded but I am frightened to go up and help.’ She forced herself to do so and sneaked into the kitchen, where she joined two British soldiers peeling apples, about the only food left now. In her shyness, she said not a word to them. But she glanced at them when they weren’t looking and liked what she saw. ‘Ken is tall, slender, has fair curly hair and blue eyes. The other, Stan, is short with reddish hair and sparkling eyes. At first we are silent. I feel a very silly, little shy girl.’ In time she overcame her embarrassment and they began to chat. ‘I ask Ken how things are in England and whether he has seen Gone with the Wind. We talk for an hour. Stan joins our conversation, and we laugh and chatter and are gay. We almost forget the war. It is jolly nice.’

But then there was another German attack and she took to her heels, rushing back down to the cellar. ‘Very cowardly and silly, but I can’t help it.’ Courage, though, is being afraid and doing the right thing regardless. Having a doctor as a father, Anje had enough knowledge of looking after patients to be able to help, and once again she steeled herself to do so. ‘Back upstairs I wander through the rooms being used as wards. You don’t hear any complaints at all.’ She found it impossible to be dispassionate in treating both sides equally. She had no doubt who was to blame for all the carnage and sorrow around her. ‘I see some soldiers carrying away a dead German. His body leaves a wide smear of blood on the white marble floor. He was a sniper and he was killed when he tried to creep inside the Tafelberg. They killed him and I am glad.’ Even men of God found it hard to be as compassionate as their calling expected them to be in these circumstances. An airborne padre alarmed himself by how bloodthirsty he became, just as pleased as the next man when Germans were being killed. ‘How soon one loses all sense of the grace of peace and Christian charity when in the thick of a battle.’¹

Anje’s anti-German passion was understandable. Others around her, she discovered, were experiencing equally intense emotions, but of a different sort. A Dutch nurse was caught having sex with a British soldier under a blanket – not that shocking given the desperate circumstances with death around every corner. But there was hell to pay. ‘Daddy is furious and he sacks the girl. I don’t know what has happened to the boy. But I wonder whether they have gone mad. Fancy them making love in a hell like this. They must be mentally disturbed.’ Yet it was not so hard to understand and condone such an affirmation of life in what was becoming a charnel house. The British officer in charge sensibly took no action against the soldier, excusing his behaviour as ‘an emotional release’.² And she herself admitted to ‘mild flirting’ with Stan and Ken as a distraction from the horror of war. ‘We would chat and joke. They were lovely people.’ These were fleeting moments, and time was running out fast as conditions deteriorated. The shells kept flying in, and one of the makeshift theatres was hit. ‘The ceiling has come down and Daddy says they won’t be able to amputate any more. All is hopeless. I go to the kitchen. Everything is filthy, the water is disgusting and very scarce anyhow. We have almost none left. So no food, no gas, no electricity and now no water. And no hope. The mood is sinking.’