Arnhem

For one group of men, the battle now developing was a particular challenge. The glider pilots had done their ferrying job and done it well. But unlike the airmen who flew the tugs or the transporters that offloaded the parachute troops, they did not have the luxury of turning round and cruising home to a beer and a sing-song in the pub. They were grounded alongside the troops they had carried, and with a new job to do. They were trained to be soldiers as well as pilots: ‘We were flying infantrymen,’ as 27-year-old Alan Kettley put it. He had been called up as a soldier back in 1940 and, in the aftermath of the Battle of Britain, applied to the RAF. He passed the tests, was told he was too old to be a pilot but could be a navigator, ‘and I thought, “Great,” and waited and waited and never heard another word. I discovered my CO didn’t want to lose me so had blocked my transfer.’ But flying was in his blood so, when in 1942 appeals were made for men to train as glider pilots, he volunteered and was accepted. ‘In the run-up to Arnhem we didn’t think how tough it was going to be or how bad it was going to get. I thought, “We’ll get there, hold the area and then XXX Corps will arrive. Four or five days, that was it.”’ So, after expertly landing his glider, he reported for general duties. ‘You’re on the ground, you’re in enemy territory, but nothing to worry about. You go from a glider pilot to a fighting soldier but that’s what we were trained to do. And as I had been in the infantry I knew about rifles, Bren guns, Sten guns, mortars and so on. Everything was going perfectly as far as I was concerned. Our orders were to defend the landing zone until the next day, then to make for the bridge with the trailer and the ammunition.’ As he settled down for the night on the edge of the landing zone, he was relaxed. ‘I had no idea how things were going to change over the coming days!’

Peter Clarke joined his group of glider pilots at their rendezvous point at a school building near the end of the field where they’d landed. Outside, some fellows were lolling under trees, just as if they were on leave and waiting for the pub to open. They were elated at their success so far, but their buzz of chatter was overlaid with some anxiety. They could hear gunfire, ‘and when you first hear gunshots and mortar you suddenly realize where you are and the danger you might be in.’ He wasn’t too concerned, still confident that the bridge would be taken in no time ‘and then we would move back to England ready for the next operation. We’d be out of there within a few days.’ He was relaxed about doing his bit as an auxiliary soldier. ‘If you had an infantry background, as I did, you were prepared for this sort of thing. I’d learned to shoot on a Lee Enfield.’ But there were – as he later came to realize – big gaps in his training. ‘I hadn’t done any actual infantry exercises and never been taught how to go on patrol. Nor had I been briefed on what to do if I was captured.’ Before becoming a pilot, he had been a medic. This, though he didn’t know it yet, was the experience that would stand him and his comrades in the greatest stead in the days ahead.

Of the glider pilots, Major Ian Toler was more wary than most, but then he had the burden of command. ‘It is all too quiet,’ he noted after landing, ‘ominously so.’ He got his men to dig in and showed the way so vigorously with his spade that his hand came up in blisters. He logged his casualties. Four men missing and two wounded. ‘They were unlucky enough to land within a few yards of an enemy machine gun, which opened up, killing some and wounding others before it was liquidated.’ That night he took the advice of an infantry officer and piled up more earth around his trench. He slept fitfully and then, when he stood his watch, heard spasmodic gunfire coming from the direction of Arnhem. Another of the men on sentry duty recalled the ‘fearsome’ whine of ‘Moaning Minnie’ mortars in the distance. But the next morning, the weather clear and sunny and after a breakfast of porridge, meat tablets and biscuits from his ration pack, the major felt better. ‘Everyone is strolling about and it is just like an exercise, only we see the padre burying one of our men who has died in the night. Perhaps this is the real thing after all.’