Arnhem

The next morning was Tuesday 26 September, and he awoke to a bright, clear dawn, feeling better. ‘But immediately I could sense there was something different. What was it? Then I realized that it was unnaturally quiet.’ Pare heaved himself up and went to join the regimental sergeant-major, who was standing by a window space. ‘Hello, Padre,’ the RSM said. ‘Heard the news?’ ‘No,’ replied Pare, looking out and seeing a group of German soldiers lolling casually in the road outside. ‘What news?’ ‘They’ve gone!’ said the RSM. ‘Who’s gone?’ ‘The Division, or what was left of them.’ ‘The Division! But surely all that noise last night was the Second Army crossing?’ ‘Afraid not, sir. Look for yourself. We are prisoners now. I don’t know why, but the Army hasn’t crossed over to us and our chaps have had to retreat to them instead.’

A stunned Pare shook his head in disbelief. ‘I can’t believe it either,’ said the RSM bitterly, ‘but it’s true. They’ve gone. I never thought this could happen.’ He shrugged his shoulders. Market Garden, the mission to end the war by Christmas and for which nearly 1,500 brave men gave their lives, had collapsed into a seven-letter word that until now had probably never crossed the mind of a single 1st Airborne soldier: retreat. How had it happened? What exactly had gone on in the last twenty-four hours?

13. Pulling Out

The dwindling British contingent inside the Oosterbeek perimeter was unconvinced by the local legend of the little Dutch boy who plugged a leaking dyke with his finger and saved his country from flood. They were discovering that stopping up the gaps in your defences was next to impossible against overwhelming forces. In those last days of resistance, the Germans probed relentlessly for weaknesses. When they found one, they pushed through it. Defenders had to be diverted from one weak wall to shore up an even weaker one. Tanks broke through in the north of the enclave and were marauding around inside the defences until reinforcements from the southern perimeter forced them back. For now. As one para officer put it, ‘Our position was only partially restored. We were all right but we felt a bit draughty.’¹ Sapper Arthur Ayers was blunter. ‘Our position looks hopeless. It is a week ago that we parachuted in here. It seems like a year now.’ Waking from sleep, in that split second of uncertainty before his brain kicked in, he had forgotten where he was. ‘Then I saw a hand hanging in front of my eyes. I reached out and touched it. It was dead cold. I crawled out from underneath the table where I’d been sleeping, to find a young paratrooper lying on top. He was naked from the waist up, a thick bandage around his chest. The centre of the bandage was bright red with his blood while his face was deathly white and his eyes shut. I felt sick.’

There seemed a new urgency to the German onslaught. For days they had chipped away, knowing they had time on their side against a weakening force of paras whose ammunition, supplies and manpower were running out. Now, with concerted mortar and machine-gun fire from three sides and massive King Tiger tanks loaded with incendiary shells on the move, it seemed as if they wanted to speed up the result by slicing the oblong enclave in two, right through the middle, and then strangling each half. Resistance was fierce from howitzers and the few remaining anti-tank guns. The para officer was amazed at the men’s fighting spirit, even now. ‘From as little as 50 yards, the guns were firing over open sights at these enormous enemy tanks. One by one our guns were knocked off, but they did enough damage to slow down the rampage. PIATs, gammon bombs, anything and everything, were used against those big brutes. As effective as anything was the hidden infantryman lying in wait with a howitzer to knock off their tracks.’ The well-directed fire from XXX Corps’ heavy artillery – ‘beginning to get really busy in our support at last’ – also helped repulse the attack. The German tanks pulled back; the British had held their ground. ‘But we were left in a pretty sorry state.’ The buildings in which the paras were holding out took a terrible pasting. The perimeter, defenders were forced to acknowledge, was ‘doomed’.