Arnhem

It came in on the afternoon of Monday 18 September, hours later than planned because fog over the airfields in England delayed take-off. As he finally boarded his plane, sapper Arthur Ayers, a plasterer by trade before the war but now a parachutist, was, as he freely admitted, ‘raring to go’. The last time he had been in Europe was at the time of Dunkirk; he had managed to escape in one of the very last boats home. Going back four years later completed the circle from defeat to what seemed certain to be victory. As he peeped out of the window at the sea below, he got the jitters. ‘What the hell was I doing here, waiting to jump into enemy-occupied territory? I must be mad to have joined the paratroopers. Why did I? Was it the glamour of the red beret and the blue wings insignia? Was it the sense of adventure or the challenge of the unknown?’ If so, all too quickly the ‘unknown’ was staring him in the face, and it wasn’t nice.

Unlike the ‘piece of cake’ first lift, when the Germans had been taken by surprise and put up little anti-aircraft fire, now the flak gunners on the ground were all action. Black puffs of smoke filled the sky. As Ayers stood by the door of his Dakota for the run-in, he wondered, ‘My God, how can they miss us?’ He could see other aircraft in the formation, and one was suddenly lit up by a bright flash. ‘It seemed to shudder then banked slowly away. Yellow flames and dirty black smoke trailed from one of the engines as it turned in a half-circle, then with horrible inevitability spiralled earthwards. It dropped out of my vision and I felt sick inside, imagining all too clearly the scene inside – the trapped paratroopers waiting like ourselves for the order to jump. Even if they had the presence of mind to jettison themselves, it would be of no avail because they would be too close to the ground.’ Another aircraft came into view, with both engines alight, and he counted five jumpers before the plane erupted in a sheet of flame. ‘I stared in disbelief as bits of flaming aircraft and small black objects’ – men – ‘started to fall to the ground. I felt a desperate urgency to get out of this flying death-trap, and I could see from their strained faces that the others in my stick had the same desire.’ The moment the green light flashed, they were out.

Meanwhile, down on the ground, sapper Jo Johanson was relieved to see the mass of Dakotas overhead at last. He was part of the force held back from the advance on Arnhem to protect the drop zones to the west of the town. When the planes were late and the skies remained ominously empty, a terrible thought had passed through his mind that perhaps they had all been shot down or forced to turn back. He considered an optimistic possibility – that Monty’s army had already made it to the Arnhem bridge and the second lift had been cancelled as unnecessary – but on second thoughts, ‘this seemed too good to be true.’⁴ As the weather-delayed armada winged its way over and the parachutes began to fall like dandelion seeds in the wind, he found himself taking fire from a substantial enemy force hidden in the woods around the heather-topped DZ. Clouds of white smoke were billowing, punctuated by the bright flashes of the recognition flares sent up by the British ground party.

Ayers drifted down, enjoying those few fleeting seconds of tranquillity beneath the canopy that were every paratrooper’s special experience. ‘The silence was broken by the sound of automatic weapons below. Little red lights were flying up towards me and strange sighing noises going past in the air. It was enemy tracer bullets. They were trying to pick us off as we floated down. I heard a scream nearby and saw a paratrooper, falling parallel with me, clutching his stomach. He had a pained, surprised look on his face and I realized he’d been hit. A shudder went through my body. That could have been me.’ As he neared the ground, he felt every German gun around was trained on him.

And then he was down. A clumsy landing, falling on his back, striking his head heavily on the ground, lying there dazed. He grabbed for his kitbag and his Sten gun. It was useless, the barrel bent into a U by the impact with the ground. This was not good, especially when he got to his feet and surveyed the chaos and the menace of the landing zone. Instead of the soft scent of heather, ‘a heavy pall of smoke hung over us and I could smell the acrid tang of cordite and burning vegetation.’ He was in enemy-occupied territory – and unarmed. ‘The sound of rifle fire and the staccato burst of an automatic weapon echoed across the heath.’ As he looked for his RV, his rendezvous point, he saw dark figures advancing towards him. ‘Friend or foe? I had no idea.’ Then he recognized the familiar green camouflage smocks of the British paratrooper. ‘It’s all right,’ one of them called out. ‘He’s one of ours.’ The implication was that there were plenty of theirs on and around the landing zone that day.