Arnhem

One of the luckiest crossings was made by Denis Longmate, one of that small band of Dorsets who had made it over from the south bank the night before and not fallen straight into enemy hands. He had got to Oosterbeek and taken up a defensive position inside the perimeter, only to be ordered out in the general evacuation. He’d been very fortunate to survive that first crossing. It seemed tempting providence to make the return trip so soon after. Back down at the river bank, he was climbing into a rescue boat when he slipped and fell in the river. He thought he was a goner. Those on board were pushing off from the side, desperate to get away as the evacuation stretched on towards dawn and the odds of the Germans crashing in to stop it increased. He gripped the side of the boat, ‘hanging on for dear life’, but they were about to leave him struggling – drowning – in the water when a sergeant took charge. ‘We’re not going till you’re on,’ he said, and made the men pull Longmate on board. ‘I was in the water for seconds but it felt like a lifetime. I thought I was going to be left behind, to be shot or taken prisoner. It was such a relief to get on board. I bless that sergeant.’

On the other side, Longmate was overwhelmed by a sense of desolation. All around him, Airborne were meeting up with mates, reunited, happy to be alive. But there was no sign of any other Dorsets. ‘As I walked down that road away from the river, the very same one I’d come down twenty-four hours earlier, I thought I was the only man of my regiment left. All the rest must have died. There was just me. I went into the old barn where we’d rested up on the way out. Nothing there, not a soul. I felt myself wondering if I was actually dead.’ But he was alive and, as he now discovered, not alone. ‘I got to the building in Driel that had been our company headquarters and went in. There was a glow of candlelight at the bottom of the stairs, faces, and a cheer went up. “It’s Den! Good old Den! Well done!” There were about fifteen of them and though we were tired, cold and wet, we all had one thing in common – we had returned in one piece.’ A Dorset officer, a young lieutenant they all knew, came to address them. He was injured, his arm was in a sling, but he was going back over the river to help complete the evacuation. He asked for volunteers to go with him. No one stepped forward, no one said a word. ‘I don’t blame you,’ he said as he left. ‘You’ve done your bit.’

But others were going back, among them Robert Talbot Watkins, the Methodist chaplain of 1 Para. He had done much of his work in the battle with the wounded and the dying, particularly at the casualty station in Kate ter Horst’s house. When the evacuation was ordered, Urquhart had instructed – sensibly – that the wounded and the medics attending them would have to stay behind. No stretchers – the same order as there had been in the latter stages at Dunkirk. Nor would those being left behind be told in advance. But, since his casualty station was close to the river – half a mile at most – Watkins argued that the walking wounded should be given a chance as long as they did not slow down the able-bodied. This was agreed. With the evacuation just about to begin, he quietly broke the news to the medics in his casualty station and asked them to choose who should go.

‘I specified that they should be men who physically had a chance of making it and who had enough reserves of spirit to be able to endure a trip which I expected to be opposed. They would have to be assembled and ready to move without fuss at 11.30 p.m. on the dot.’ His ‘flock’ were there right on time, standing in the rain, some thirty of them. ‘I was a bit taken aback by many of them. They looked such wrecks. There were even men with chest wounds, unable to hold themselves erect. I explained the plan. They would be divided into two sections, each in the charge of an orderly. They would move down the taped route. They would obey all orders. They would claim no privileges and were to claim no help from fit men or hinder the evacuation of fit men.’ He warned them to expect to encounter fighting and that they might be safer staying where they were rather than trying to leave. ‘I asked if anyone wished not to take the risk, but not one changed his mind.’