Arnhem

But not all the omens were good. When machine-gunner Andy Milbourne got to his rendezvous point in a wood, the kettle was on for a brew-up. He’d been tasked to bring the tea and now, to his horror – ‘my dismay and undying shame’, as he described it later – he realized he had left his haversack crammed with tea and sugar with his discarded parachute. ‘Bloody well go and get it,’ his mates roared when he told them. ‘Sheepishly, I turned and retraced my steps. I hadn’t gone far when a burst of machine-gun fire made me dive for cover. Hot lead raised spouts in the earth around me.’ Clearly not all the Germans around the drop zone had been dealt with. ‘I wormed deeper into the ground, cursing like mad at my predicament. Tea, the most important thing to the British Tommy. I swore that if I got away from those bullets, I would never drink tea again.’ He was pinned down for what seemed like an age. He could not see his attackers, only the bullets pitter-patter around whenever he tried to move. When another gun opened on him, he simply threw caution to the wind and ran for the cover of the trees. Tea forgotten, his section was moving out. ‘Where the hell have you been?’ an irritated sergeant demanded to know. Didn’t he know there was a war on?

At the now almost empty landing zone, Ron Kent heard shooting in the distance. ‘What opposition there was must have woken up to the fact that they had Sunday-afternoon visitors,’ he surmised. He wasn’t worried. A few crews remained, struggling to offload jeeps, trailers and light artillery from gliders that had landed awkwardly, but otherwise ‘our job was done. Everyone and everything was moving eastward towards Wolfheze, en route for Arnhem.’ He and his men set off for their own company rendezvous a mile away. ‘We left behind our parachutes, and already the villagers from Heelsum were out collecting them. One enterprising soul had a horse-drawn cart out and was stacking it high with rolled-up chutes. I have no doubt that a great many Dutch girls were wearing silk and nylon underwear that winter.’

For those Dutch girls, the prospect of silk next to their skin was a minor luxury compared with the pleasure they felt at what was happening before their very eyes. From her bedroom window in Oosterbeek, Anje van Maanen could now see German soldiers taking to their heels in full retreat. She caught sight of the monocled army commander Field Marshal Walter Model in the back of his car fleeing for his life. She recognized him by the wide red stripes down his grey trousers and the red flashes of rank on his uniform. He had recently set himself up with his headquarters staff at the Tafelberg Hotel in Oosterbeek to plot the defence of Germany’s borders against the oncoming Allies, far enough away from the front line, or so he believed, for them to carry out their planning undisturbed. The news of the landings shattered his Sunday lunch at the hotel. His first reaction was that this was a commando raid to capture him. In reality, the Market Garden planners did not even know he was there. As he fled to safety, it became clear from the numbers involved that something much bigger was under way. Anje watched his convoy of staff cars accelerate out of Oosterbeek and race off down the road towards Arnhem. ‘We wave a cheerful goodbye to them. Terribly happy never to see them again …’

By mid-afternoon, Oosterbeek seemed pretty well a German-free zone, though Anje, peeping out of the window, could see a soldier sitting in a neighbour’s garden hiding behind a bush, a gun in his hand. ‘He doesn’t move. Perhaps he is dead.’ The tension of waiting and not knowing for sure that this really was liberation was almost unbearable. Friends rang from Wolfheze. Yes, they were free ‘and smoking the Players cigarettes and eating the chocolate the Tommies gave us’. A few hours later, another call, this time from within Oosterbeek itself, with the same message. ‘They’re coming our way too. We hear the shooting getting nearer and nearer, and we are very excited.’ But as night began to fall they were still waiting. Desperate for information, they decided to risk the street and go to the house of a neighbour they knew had a clandestine radio. ‘We hear shots nearby and move carefully, one by one, dressed in dark clothes because we know both sides, the Germans and the English, will fire at anything they see or hear. On the neighbour’s wireless the announcer talks about parachute landings at Eindhoven and Nijmegen, but there is no mention of Arnhem.’ This made her anxious. ‘So is it not true? Are the Tommies not coming after all?’ Prince Bernhard’s sonorous voice was now coming from the loudspeaker with another call to his countrymen to stay calm, ‘and then, all of a sudden, there is more news. Landings at Arnhem are confirmed! The Wilhelmus rings out from the radio and we are all deeply moved. We have a drink and raise our glasses to victory.’