Arnhem

Fires from burning German vehicles which had tried to escape across the bridge lit up the night. Abandoned guns littered the road, and the men of the strike force took great cheer from this visible proof of their triumph. ‘We felt pleased with ourselves,’ Sims said, ‘for we had dropped many miles behind the enemy lines, fought our way into a large town and captured the northern end of our main objective, the road bridge.’ Para Major Tony Hibbert acknowledged feeling ‘pretty cocky. We’d achieved the first part of our operation order in taking the bridge. Now all we had to do was hold it for forty-eight hours.’³ It was to be a task easier said than done.

What the paras held – and that precariously – was, in fact, not the actual bridge but the tiniest slice of Arnhem at its northern end. Even at its greatest extent, it was the size of just a dozen football pitches and in the end would shrink to the equivalent of barely one. From their various vantage points, Frost’s men covered the approach road to the bridge and a few streets around it, but the span itself was a lethal no-man’s land. The other end was resolutely in German hands, as was the rest of the city. As backmarkers from the strike force continued to arrive, they had to fight their way through enemy lines. Ted Mordecai hugged walls and crawled in the gutter to reach the archway under the road ramp. ‘Lead was flying all over the place and we couldn’t make out who was firing at whom. The sound of shot and shell was deafening.’ He wasn’t supposed to be here in the heat of battle. An ordnance man, his role on the Arnhem mission was a logistical one, rooting out petrol supplies and commandeering vehicles, but he was ordered to forget about that now. Foraging could wait; every hand was needed for fighting. His platoon scurried across a road to a large house and banged on the door for entry. After a long delay, it was opened by a Dutchman. The soldiers apologized for having to occupy his home and advised him to leave with his family while he still could. ‘He fetched his wife and small daughter from the cellar, packed a small suitcase and they left, walking down the middle of the street away from the bridge. I thought to myself, “I hope they don’t get shot by the Germans.” I also wondered where on earth they could go.’ As he watched the civilians trudge away, the house came under mortar fire.

By now, Ron Brooker had been at the bridge for some time and was guarding brigade headquarters, which had been set up in a large building on the near side of the road ramp. An orderly recalled how beautifully furnished the house was, with shelves of books and a fine china tea service laid out on a table. (A sergeant-major, sensitive to the need not to upset the owners, threatened retribution on anyone who damaged the china. Later, when things hotted up, he was seen to sweep it all away when the table was urgently needed for a barricade.) The entrance was through a gateway into a courtyard and Brooker positioned his jeep in the gateway with his Vickers machine gun pointing out. He was chatting to a comrade about home, family, football – anything to distract them from the present situation – when a lorry came meandering slowly down the road. It was full of German troops and it looked as if the driver, far from leading an attack, had taken a wrong turn in the confusion. But Brooker was taking no chances. He opened fire – the first time he had pulled the trigger since arriving in the Netherlands – and brought it to a halt. The driver and passengers were dead, but what was a shock to him was what they were wearing: the uniforms of SS panzer troops. ‘Until then we’d thought we were up against old men and boys. We didn’t expect crack front-line troops and tanks, and we’d got nothing to fight them with.’

Brooker was then ordered to the top of the building, where, in a large attic room, Frost, Major Gough and other officers were planning their defence strategy. A window looked out over the ramp, but to see the actual bridge meant climbing on to a chair and peering through one of two dormer windows. Brooker stood at the larger window, his rifle at the ready. There was a radio operator in the room too, but, amid mounting frustration among the officers, he couldn’t get through to anyone else in the brigade to find out where they were or what was happening. In a neighbouring building, Major Hibbert was having the same problem, despite antennae sticking out of every window. ‘My first job was to inform Division that we were on the bridge. But not one of our wirelesses could pick up the faintest whisper from anyone in northern Europe except John Frost, who was all of 50 yards away.’