Arnhem

At this point, command of the entire operation was becoming an issue of serious concern, and not wholly because of faulty communications. The British end of Garden was theoretically being run by the commander of the Airborne Corps, the aloof and upper-crust Lieutenant-General Frederick ‘Boy’ Browning. Guards-trained as well as a qualified glider pilot, he was better known generally for being the impossibly handsome husband of best-selling novelist Daphne du Maurier, whose Rebecca and Frenchman’s Creek were huge cinema hits in wartime Britain. In military circles he was renowned for introducing the Sandhurst tradition in which the adjutant rode his horse up the steps and in through the college doors after the cadets’ passing-out parade. He chose to set up his tactical headquarters near Nijmegen and dropped in there by glider, alongside the US 82nd Airborne Division, with his headquarters staff of two hundred. This in itself was unwise – the thirty-eight gliders needed to get them there might have been more usefully employed ferrying extra fighting men into Arnhem. But even more of a problem was that, a dozen miles distant from the action at Arnhem and with almost zero radio contact, he was hardly ever in touch with the brigades it was his job to direct.

Meanwhile, his commander on the ground, Roy Urquhart, had gone missing. He had set up his divisional headquarters close to the Wolfheze landing zone and then, frustrated by the radio problems and anxious to keep the advance moving, jumped into a jeep to hare frantically around his various battalions and squadrons to gee them along. He was in such a hurry that he took no protection squad with him and was helpless when, on the outskirts of Arnhem, he ran into the enemy. Forced to take shelter in a civilian house surrounded by German soldiers, he hid in the attic and was out of contact with his staff officers for a day and a half. What’s more, his designated number two was wounded and also out of action. Twin crises of command and communication were a military man’s worst nightmare, but this was the scenario now unfolding.

At the bridge, Frost, desperate not only to report his position but also to establish what was going on, sent out a four-man patrol to try to make contact with the other columns supposedly on their way from the drop zone. Brooker, one of the four, had difficulty just getting out on to the street, because the yard was in the firing line of German snipers perched high on a nearby church. Once outside, they ducked through the darkening streets until they came to a square. Peering round a corner, they could see German infantry assembling and digging in. Of their own reinforcements, there was not a glimmer. Unable to go any further, the patrol made its way back to HQ, ‘having achieved nothing’. Other forays proved equally unproductive. Frost sent out a thirty-man platoon to forage for a boat, cross the Rhine and come up on the bridge from the other side. ‘We set off along the bank but couldn’t find a boat,’ its leader, Lieutenant Pat Barnett, recalled.⁴ After a gun battle with the enemy, they withdrew. More attempts to rush the bridge and seize a foothold on the other bank were repulsed and incurred heavy casualties. No one, it was rapidly becoming clear, was going anywhere. As a day of enterprise, courage and shifting fortunes came to an end, the paras at the bridge dug in while the Germans called for reinforcements to winkle them out. A stalemate had been reached, for now.

Sims took up position on a large, grassed traffic island in the middle of a five-way road junction between the road ramp and the river. He set about digging mortar pits and slit trenches in the sandy soil. This would be the first line of defence for the houses and warehouses behind, most now occupied by various British platoons and turned into strongholds. He moaned that it was tiring work, and did they really have to go so deep? His mate, digging alongside, told him to get on with it: ‘Two or three hours from now and it won’t seem half deep enough.’ All around, parachutists were making similar burrows for themselves in the earth, like a colony of sexton beetles, Sims thought. Finally, he settled into his hole, took out some army fruitcake from his pack and munched on it. It was dry but good and very welcome. ‘Up on the bridge itself, vehicles were still burning. One was an ammunition lorry and, every now and again, it shuddered as the fire reached another box of bullets or shells and they exploded in a fantastic firework display.’ Sims started to doze off. ‘It was like drifting into sleep after a particularly good Bonfire Night when the last squibs are being thrown on a dying fire.’