Arnhem

Chapter 4: ‘Are We on Overtime Now?’

1 Projector Infantry Anti-Tank.

2 Or ‘Woah Mohammed!’, as some paras recalled the cry.

3 Private memoir from www.paradata.org.uk

4 Lt. Pat Barnett. Private memoir. Airborne Assault, Imperial War Museum, Duxford.

5 Major Eric Mackay. Private memoir. Airborne Assault, Imperial War Museum, Duxford.

Chapter 5: Stopped in Their Tracks

1 Private memoir. Airborne Assault, Imperial War Museum, Duxford.

2 The story of the Tafelberg field hospital is told in fuller detail in Chapter 12.

3 Robert Quayle. Private memoir. Airborne Assault, Imperial War Museum, Duxford.

4 Private memoir. Provided by Steve McLoughlin, 4th Parachute Squadron RE website.

5 Private memoir. Airborne Assault, Imperial War Museum, Duxford.

6 4th Para Squadron Royal Engineers, Official War Diaries.

7 Major Daniel Webber. Private memoir. Airborne Assault, Imperial War Museum, Duxford.

8 Capture at Arnhem, by Harry Roberts, Windrush Press, 1999.

9 Private memoir. The authors are grateful to his nephew John Merry for providing a copy.

10 Private memoir. ‘The Further Side of the Arnhem Bridge.’ Provided by David Brook of the Glider Pilot Regiment Association.

11 The badly wounded Roberts subsequently went into captivity when the field hospital he was in was taken over by the Germans. He survived his time in a prisoner-of-war camp and returned home relatively unscathed.

12 The main body of Polish paratroopers should have been arriving, too, but they were grounded by bad weather in eastern England. Their armour was on gliders that took off on schedule from airfields further south, where the weather was better. See Chapter 11.

13 Quoted in Poles Apart, by George Cholewczynski. Greenhill Books, 1993.

Chapter 6: ‘If You Knows a Better ’Ole’

1 It was so well known that it was the basis of a stage play and two comic films, one starring Syd Chaplin.

Chapter 7: ‘He was Engaged on a Very Important Airborne Mission’

1 JN interview, 2010.

2 Major Powell, quoted in Green On!, by Arie-Jan van Hees (see note 8 below). Despite the hilarity of the moment, the major thought there was method in this apparent madness. He wrote: ‘The content of supply drops had to be pre-packed to a standard formula with everything that might be wanted in the course of a battle. Red berets were a valuable psychological weapon, and the Boche had learned to hate the sight of them. Everyone dropped with his beret tucked into a pocket, but some were lost. Probably only the one container of berets was included in the whole supply drop and it was just our luck to happen on it.’

3 They were members of the Royal Army Service Corps.

4 The details of KG374’s last flight are recorded in comprehensive investigations by i) Karel Margry in After the Battle magazine, number 96, published in 1997, and ii) Phil Rodgers in ‘An Arnhem Survivor’ in Britain at War magazine, September 2008. The authors are indebted to these writers for being allowed to draw on their exemplary work.

5 Now rarely used, it was a shortened version of ‘Lord love me’.

6 According to the squadron operations log, though other sources claim half the load was ammunition.

7 Flight-Lieutenant Stanley Lee, quoted in Karel Margry, op. cit.

8 The authors are indebted to Arie-Jan van Hees, who compiled many of these accounts in his excellent book Green On! A Detailed Survey of the British Parachute Re-supply Sorties during Operation Market Garden 18–25 September 1944. Private publication. ISBN 90–806808–2–6.

9 He would later become a general.

10 JN interview, 2010.

11 Van Hees, op. cit.

12 JN interview, 2010.

13 The smart London suburb where he was born.

14 His story is taken from his memoirs (Six of the Best. Robson Books, 1984), as reproduced in Van Hees, op. cit.

15 What effect this had on the German prisoners, who, as we have seen, were corralled there, is unknown.

Chapter 8: At the Bridge – A Desperate Battle for Survival

1 Anon., I Was There. Airborne Assault, Imperial War Museum, Duxford.

Chapter 9: Hands in the Air … But Heads Held High

1 Anon., I Was There. Airborne Assault, Imperial War Museum, Duxford.

Chapter 10: In the Mood … to Fight until We Drop

1 This is an amalgamation of slightly different versions by Ennis and Webbley.

2 Private memoir. Airborne Assault, Imperial War Museum, Duxford.

3 Major Ian Toler.

4 To the British, it was known as Ovaltine.

Chapter 11: A Long, Long Way from Warsaw

1 Private memoir and JN interview, 2010. The authors are grateful to Kazic Szmid’s son, Andrzej, for providing his father’s life story.

2 Some sources put the number of Poles deported to Siberia at 1.7 million, of whom only 400,000 are thought to have survived.

3 All in all, 115,000 Poles left the Soviet Union in this way, according to Polish sources.