Arnhem

He released himself, slipping away from a column of British prisoners as they were forced by the Germans to march away from the advancing Allied front. He stayed hidden and was liberated by American troops. There was no chance to telegram to say he was coming home. ‘He just arrived in the middle of the night,’ Lola recalled. It was a low-key reunion, as so many were. Returning prisoners and their loved ones could be like strangers, made awkward rather than emotional by long absence. ‘I asked if he wanted anything and he said yes, a tin of condensed milk! He wanted to spoon it out and eat it straight away. He looked like a skeleton – about 7 stone. We were just so relieved to have him back.’ For Arthur, the moment had huge significance. ‘Walking back into the arms of my wife signalled the end of the war’ – and of the Arnhem operation – ‘for me. I got back on with my life. I don’t think I was affected by what I’d seen and done. I just did my duty, as everybody else was doing.’

Ron Brooker hobbled home from his eight months as a prisoner after being shot in a failed escape attempt. There was a disappointment awaiting him. ‘I’d had a girlfriend from the time I was at school, and though I’d never even kissed her, she was my girlfriend. While I was a prisoner I’d been working out how much money I was saving and that I’d be able to buy a bed, furniture, crockery, things like that. I was planning for the future. After I got home I went round to her house and I said, “Look, Joan, I’m not messing about, I’m hoping to get married,” and she said, “So am I, I’m getting married tomorrow.” And she did. She married a Canadian soldier!’ But, that setback apart, getting home and being reunited with his family was marvellous. ‘My mum was over the moon, and it was all really an emotional reunion because Dad was home on leave too. All of the brothers survived the war.’ As for the Arnhem experience, however hard it had been, however many mates he had lost, however many horrors he had witnessed, ‘they were some of the happiest days of my life. I still think it was all well worth doing. I’m proud of my contribution. The best times of my life but, obviously, some of the saddest and frightening times as well. But I wouldn’t have missed Arnhem for the world.’

For Dutch civilians caught up in the battle, Arnhem would also be a highlight of their lives, and unforgettable in more ways than one. Nurse Heleen Kernkamp’s daughter, Marga, remembered being out walking with her mother many years afterwards when some planes flew low overhead. ‘She ran for cover behind a wall.’ Survivors like her rarely talked about their experiences, but Heleen wrote hers down as a way, daughter Marga explained, ‘to get rid of them from her soul’. It was only when Marga read her mother’s account that she grasped the enormity of what the older woman had seen and done. ‘She was a hero, and we, her children, never knew it. When I read her diary, I did not even recognize her. I saw that what she did among all that suffering and death was incredible. As a nurse, she was needed, and she thrived on that. It was a crazy, dangerous time, an incredible challenge that she passed with flying colours. But she never had the chance to live on the edge like that again. Arnhem was her high point. She never bettered it. She went on to become a well-known writer and translator and won awards for her work, but she never felt she achieved again what she achieved at Arnhem, and I think she regretted that.’