Arnhem

There were lulls in the fighting as the enemy, forced back to its side of the bridge, re-grouped. The bridge itself was now completely blocked by burning vehicles, so there would be no more attempts to cross, for now. Mackay counted his casualties. ‘They were comparatively light. We were doing well.’ Then mortars crashed into the school and, when he stopped to listen, Mackay could hear that the orders to fire them were coming from the other side of the ramp in English! ‘We were being mortared by our own side. Leaning out of the nearest window, I gave vent to some fruity language at the top of my voice. The mortaring stopped.’ His men then let loose with a loud chorus of their ‘Whoa Mahomet!’ war cry, which was taken up by inmates in all the para-held houses around the bridge. Ted Mordecai heard it in the house he was occupying and went out on to the veranda to wave his green silk recognition scarf. ‘The air was ringing with the sound. Morale leapt. Throughout the succeeding days this cry was the only means of telling which buildings were still being held. It was one thing the Germans, with all their cleverness, could not imitate.’

In truth, though, the situation in the school was critical. The men had had little to eat apart from biscuits and boiled sweets since breakfast back in England before take-off. The water was cut off, so they were thirsty too. But when Mackay managed to get through to Frost on the radio, he assured the colonel that ‘we were quite happy and could hold out till the following dawn. He said this would not be necessary as help was very near. XXX Corps was only 5 miles south of us, and the rest of our division was battling its way into the town one and a half miles to the west. This news was passed on to the men, which pleased them.’ Whether they believed it – and whether it was true (it was not) – was another matter. ‘We could hear heavy gunfire away to the south, but still no relief.’

In the White House, James Sims and his men were told that XXX Corps’ earliest estimated time of arrival was now midday on Tuesday, twenty-four hours away. ‘What had gone wrong? Evidently things were not going quite as planned with the relieving army. But could we hold out that long?’ Certainly not without water, the only source of which, Sims discovered, was a tap in the middle of the backyard. He would have to brave the bullets flying overhead to get to it, which he did, heaving himself along the ground until he was underneath it and could reach up to turn it on. He filled two mess tins and made his way back, pushing the tins in front of him. The riflemen and engineers watching cheered as he made it to the door.

Meanwhile, on the far side of the road ramp, the battle beneath the bridge started up again. This time the enemy had got into a house opposite the school and was pouring in machine-gun fire on the stairs, the only means of moving between floors. Once again, Mackay resorted to guile. One Bren was fired by remote control, while the others eliminated the enemy posts as they fired back. ‘After three and a half hours of this we had succeeded in clearing the houses opposite.’ But he was running short of fit men and no longer had enough to man all the rooms on the ground floor. So, planning for the night that was fast approaching, he withdrew to just two rooms as a stronghold. Outside lay the crashed German half-tracks, almost certainly with rations, weapons and ammo inside. ‘I determined to take out a patrol and recover all this booty.’ But renewed machine-gun and mortar fire kept them pinned down and a German flame-thrower deliberately destroyed the half-track Sims had had his eyes on. Desperate for ammunition, he sent his corporal across the battlefield to the headquarters building for more supplies.

There, Brooker and three others loaded up with bandoliers and boxes and accompanied the corporal back. They sidled out of the building, dashed for the gate, hugged a wall before crossing the road and scuttling through the tunnel under the ramp. Then there were 300 yards of open land to the school under a hail of bullets. ‘How we managed it I just don’t know.’ As they arrived and unloaded the ammo, the school came under renewed attack as the Germans made a concerted effort to win back all the buildings on that side of the ramp. Someone pushed a Sten into Brooker’s hands, ‘and I was back on the active list. The Germans had got inside and we were fighting them face to face, close-quarter killing with bullet and bayonet.’ Running out of ammo for his machine gun, he picked up a fallen rifle and bayonet and went to work. ‘It was brutal. They were coming through the windows, through the door, everywhere. There were so many you couldn’t count them. You just do what you have to do. Thrust with a bayonet, shoot, whatever is required, until we pushed them out. I don’t know how we survived against such odds, but we did.’ It was all over in ten minutes.