Arnhem

Miraculously, he caught up with them. Red Cross cars were making their way past the long line of evacuees and she spotted the familiar faces of people from the Tafelberg. ‘I wave my hands and they wave too. I look desperately for him. The last one has almost gone past when I catch sight of him in it. I scream like a madman and start to run. I get to him and hug and kiss him. He has driven past mines, been bombed and shot at, but he has made it, and all the patients too. We have never been so poor and never so rich. We have lost our village, our home and all things in it. But we have each other and we are alive. How happy we are. It really is a miracle he is with us and we are terribly grateful.’

The sounds of the battle still going on back at Oosterbeek began to recede as the miles went by and they neared Apeldoorn and safety. They stopped on high ground and looked back. In the distance, ‘the sky is coloured red, the blood of many brave Airbornes who gave their lives for us. They always thought of us in this terrible week while we fought together against an enormous enemy, a great friendship is born, a tie which pulls us together. We will never forget those brave heroes. They may have lost the battle but, morally, they won it.’

The Schoonoord was virtually the last of the British field hospitals still operating with any degree of independence in Oosterbeek, even if it had German ambulances arriving to take away the most serious cases. George Pare picked his way around its crowded wards, fielding the same questions time and again: ‘How’s it going out there, Padre? Are the boys still sticking to it? When will we be relieved?’ As a man of God he may have wanted to be truthful, but he couldn’t crush the spirits of his questioners. ‘I always gave optimistic but inaccurate replies,’ he noted later. The wounded continued to flood in and, while the urgent cases were quickly transferred, the majority stayed, many of them desperately ill. Despite the numbers leaving, ‘we never seemed to have any floor space,’ he noted. The Germans behaved well, ‘bringing us water, for which we were thankful. There was no interference with the medical work.’ The once spick-and-span hotel was reduced to a terrible mess, but it continued to function as a hospital, Pare declared proudly.

It was a frightening situation, nonetheless, and the padre found himself trembling from time to time. ‘That didn’t matter as long as I could keep up the pretence of not being too worried. But the doctors had to retain absolutely steady hands and focused minds as their skilled fingers sought to bring back life to the nerves and sinews of damaged bodies. I could not praise these doctors and orderlies highly enough. Their cheerfulness – as well as that of the patients – was a continuous source of wonder to me.’ Cheerfulness tipped over into unwarranted optimism. The growing crescendo of artillery noise from outside led to wild rumours among men in complete ignorance of what was happening beyond their walls and unaware that the relief operation they still clung on to in their minds was petering out. Some of the rumours were wonderfully elaborate – that, because, as everyone now knew, the bridge at Arnhem had been lost, Second Army sappers were at that very moment racing for the Lower Rhine to throw a Bailey bridge across just to the south of Oosterbeek. To fevered and desperate brains, such schemes seemed more than plausible – they were fact. ‘We thought the legendary relieving force was almost upon us,’ Pare recalled. ‘We believed our liberators were even now on the other side of the river.’

And indeed some were, though they had then failed to cross in numbers that might make a difference. But eager imaginations conjured up British tanks giving Jerry hell, which was simply not true, because there wasn’t any British armour within 10 miles. And while the idea of XXX Corps’ big guns in action might be comforting, they were also life-threatening to friend and foe alike. Patients were moved away from the walls and windows and cautioned to lie flat on the floor at all times as lumps of plaster fell from the ceiling, along with cascades of glass splinters. ‘But we were immensely cheered, believing that this was indeed the Second Army on its way, crossing the river even now. In the morning, we told ourselves, we would be free.’

That night, after settling the men down, the dog-tired and flagging padre was just about awake enough to see two figures in airborne smocks make their way into the Schoonoord from the inferno of shelling outside and seek out the commanding officer. ‘I couldn’t make out what they said, but I heard him wish them God-speed, and they left.’ The hazy incident in the flickering candlelight passed from his mind as he fell into a deep sleep.