Arnhem

A good number of those brave men were still having to call on their reserves of strength and willpower. Not everyone had escaped across the river or gone into captivity. There were an unknown number of airborne men on the loose and in hiding in that German-held area of woods, heaths and farmland north of the Lower Rhine. This was the postscript to the Battle of Arnhem: the continuing fight to survive and stay free long after it was over. They would trickle back to their own lines over the next weeks, some individually, others in groups organized by the Dutch Resistance. Some would lie low, protected by brave local families but in constant danger of discovery or betrayal, for more than six months, and not get home until the Netherlands was finally liberated and the war was very nearly over. The hundreds who made their way home in the months after Arnhem knew that they owed their survival and their salvation to the Dutch. Glider pilot Alan Kettley not only escaped – first from a moving train heading into Germany and then across the Waal to his own lines – he also went back on undercover missions to help others to come out. But he felt his bravery was eclipsed by the courage of the Dutch underground movement. ‘If any of us had been captured, it was a POW camp. But for the Dutch it meant they and their families would be shot and their houses burnt down. The Dutch resistance, the Dutch civilians, were the real heroes.’

But so too were the evaders, and every one of them had an incredible story to tell. The first to get home was Major Eric Mackay, who had fought so determinedly to hold the school building at the Arnhem bridge until forced to surrender. His escape was surprisingly easy, even though it was from inside Germany. His captors had quickly spirited him away with the remnants of his company to a transit camp south-east of Arnhem and just over the border in the town of Emmrich. He dropped out of a window and on to a street. With three others, he hiked back over the Dutch border and made for the Rhine, where they stole a small boat. ‘It had no rudder and just one oar but once we got into mid stream there was a good current running.’ They came to the major fork in the river, where the right channel became the Lower Rhine and flowed towards Arnhem and the left-hand one was the Waal and would take them to Nijmegen. The river was so wide here they almost got lost as well as nearly run down by a massive barge. Then Mackay saw the familiar shape of a large bridge ahead. Was it Arnhem? Had they taken a wrong turn and been swept back to where they started? To his relief, it was the Nijmegen bridge they were approaching, all too recently secured by the Allies. He heard a voice say, ‘Halt! Who goes there?’ and he knew he had made it. He had been so quick he was back behind his own lines even before the evacuation from Oosterbeek was ordered, let alone carried out.

For others, however, getting home was proving much harder. Major Tony Hibbert, another of the heroes of the fighting at the bridge, had been captured hiding in a coal shed in the wreckage of Arnhem and was on board an open 3-tonner lorry and en route to Germany when he grabbed his chance to escape. ‘There were thirty of us, mostly officers, crammed in with two old Luftwaffe guards armed with pistols and rifles. There was a third guard with a Schmeisser sitting on the front mudguard. We continued giving V-signs to the Dutch as well as the odd German, and every time we did this the corporal on the mudguard lost his temper and stopped the lorry to tell us he’d shoot us if we did it again. But we carried on, because every time we stopped it took some time for the lorry to build up speed again. That was our opportunity.’ He jumped over the side. ‘I hit the road hard and there was lots of blood, but nothing seemed broken.’

There was pandemonium. A fellow escaper was downed by the corporal’s machine gun as he climbed over a wall, but Hibbert had luck on his side and was away. ‘I made a dash for the nearest side-turning, zigzagging to avoid the bullets, and crashed straight through a wooden fence. Then I zipped through half a dozen gardens and decided to go to ground. I covered myself with logs in a small garden hut and listened to the weapons still firing in the streets and the shouts of the search party.’ He would discover much later that his escape had been costly. ‘The corporal with the Schmeisser had completely lost his head and turned his gun on the back of the lorry, killing Tony Cotterill [a British war reporter] and another, and wounding eight more. He was threatening to kill the others when a German officer who was passing managed to get matters under control. It’s something that’s been very much on my conscience ever since.’