Arnhem

Whispered orders sent his men scuttling to every window, grenades ready, the pins out. ‘On a signal, they were dropped on the heads below, followed instantly by bursts from all our six Brens and fourteen Stens. Disdaining cover, the boys stood up on the windowsills, firing from the hip. The night dissolved into a hideous din as the heavy crash of the Brens mixed with the high-pitched rattle of the Stens, the cries of wounded men and the sharp explosions of grenades. Swelling above it all was our triumphant war-cry, “Whoa Mahomet!” It was all over in minutes, leaving a carpet of field-grey round the house.’ It was 3 a.m. That should keep them quiet until the morning, Mackay told himself with a sense of satisfaction as he went to see his casualties. One had fifteen bullets through the chest and was dying. Another had a stomach wound, often the worst kind and untreatable, but Mackay reckoned that, luckily, no vital organs had been hit. ‘I shoved a plug in it.’ The rest of the casualties were mainly suffering from shock and fatigue. ‘I had plenty of morphia and kept them all well doped.’ He could have done with some himself as a medical orderly tried to extract the sharp piece of shrapnel that was painfully pinning his boot to his foot but failed. He radioed a message to Frost, updating the colonel on his current fighting strength and assuring him that ‘we are all happy and holding our own.’

The order came back to hold on at all costs. XXX Corps was closing in and relief was imminent, Mackay was assured. The real situation, however, was very different. In the far distance, Model’s forces were fatally slowing the advance of the rescue column from the Belgian border while, on the outskirts of Arnhem, the reinforcements from the landing zones were blocked, bogged down and fighting for their own survival in field, forest and street skirmishes. Meanwhile, the men at the bridge were surrounded, isolated and in desperate straits. In odd moments when their radios were picking up signals, they could hear the BBC reporting that everything at Arnhem was going to plan. Some hope, they thought.

5. Stopped in Their Tracks

The advance units under Frost that had managed to reach the bridge desperately needed to be reinforced by the bulk of their comrades, who were still battling against growing opposition to make their way into the town from the landing sites. Quietly and in single file, Reg Curtis and his company of paratroopers crept into a square on the western edge of Arnhem in the darkness just before dawn and were met by eager and excited members of the Dutch Resistance. There were whispered greetings and discussions as the young civilians, proudly displaying their orange armbands, pointed out the quickest way to the bridge. They could be there soon, the young men said, backing up the battalion that had already made it. But the outskirts were as near as Curtis and any other of those relief columns ever got to the object of their mission. The bridge would remain out of reach. Among the houses and along the roads, the Germans had been busy, preparing gun emplacements, taking up vantage points, posting snipers, concealing tanks. ‘Machine-gunners shattered the peace of the early morning. I darted for cover in a neatly laid-out garden of a nearby house. I went around the back and fired at two Germans in the shrubbery.’ In no time, a prolonged pitched battle was in progress. ‘Lunchtime passed but no one stopped for a snack.’

The British troops inched their way forward, taking casualties with each step. ‘In every direction I could see the motionless forms of our men cut short in their tracks.’ This was street fighting of the toughest kind, with a violent encounter at every turn. In one mad dash, Curtis chased some Germans into a house, slung in a grenade and dashed through the door to finish them off with his Sten. ‘Then, as we belted to the back of the house, I tripped over a broken fence and went sprawling. Scrambling up, I heard a whine and dived for cover by a low wall. Wham! A mortar bomb landed so close I felt the draught.’ On he went. ‘Snipers took pot-shots at us as we dodged and weaved through gardens and back yards. I came towards a factory near the river, from which murderous mortar and machine-gun fire was coming. Throwing myself to the ground, I finally came to a stop.’