Arnhem

The odds were moving against a successful mission with almost every development. The bulk of the airborne forces advancing on Arnhem were being driven back. The second lift bringing reinforcements had been ambushed. With an advance party of Polish troops and light armour coming in gliders, Ron Kent’s reconnaissance platoon was dispatched to try to defend the landing zone in the hotly contested area north of Oosterbeek.¹² Once they disembarked, Kent was also to pass on orders that, instead of making its way to Arnhem, his platoon should head for Oosterbeek. Messerschmitts gave them trouble again, strafing their defensive positions in the woods around the LZ. When the noise stopped and he looked up, leaves, twigs and even whole branches littered the ground. Protecting the incoming planes was going to be virtually impossible, if they ever got here. They were late, ‘damn gliders’. Finally, they appeared overhead, ‘long and broad-winged Horsas, moving in the air like graceful black swans’, in Kent’s view. A hail of flak went up to greet them and they were suddenly swans no more but sitting ducks. The Messerschmitts were having a field day too, and observers on the ground watched in horror as one glider was hit by cannon-fire on its approach and broke apart ‘like a matchbox’.¹³ A jeep, a gun and people fell out, looking like toys as they tumbled through the air.

Kent was helpless as German mortars and machine guns raked the landing zone. ‘As the gliders came into land, some crashed into one another as pilots, riddled by bullets or hit by flak, lost control. Some made beautiful landings, only to be cut to pieces on the ground.’ Their thin plywood walls were no protection. ‘I saw one literally torn in two on landing. Few of the men inside survived and those who did emerged staggering and collapsed immediately after.’

Kent left the safety of his position, ran out into the open field and dashed from plane to plane, trying to help. ‘From the body of one poor Pole, I snatched a fighting knife and used it to hack my way into a glider that was riddled like a sieve with bullet holes. But no one emerged.’ He went to the next glider and the one after that, all the way down the line. Stunned troops were scrambling out, and he pointed them towards cover. As he got closer to the woods he came under fire himself from Germans hidden in the trees. ‘I turned and fired a burst of Sten-gun fire in the general direction from which I was being shot at, then, wheeling, crouching and zig-zagging, I hared my way back to the platoon position across half a mile of ploughed land. Thank God I was fit.’ The chaos on the landing site was such that, in one corner, British soldiers mistook Poles running for cover for Germans and opened fire on them. Panicked Poles fired back at British soldiers helping to unload gliders.

That wasn’t the end of it. Kent’s platoon was now under attack from German infantry moving through the trees towards them, under the cover of smoke. ‘Glider pilots and Poles were crammed inside our perimeter, and one or two fell, shot where they stood. They had expected nothing like this and seemed to take time grasping the situation. I imagined I would too if I’d been dumped into this turmoil just two and a half hours after leaving England. They had not yet learned to keep close to the ground as we had.’ The Germans were still coming on through the woods, closing in. ‘We could hear their voices as they tried to infiltrate through the woods. I caught sight of an officer with white piping on his epaulettes, chivvying his men on. He was 25 yards away. I squinted down the sights of my Sten gun and squeezed the trigger. He went down, and our Bren-gunner cut the rest of the party to pieces as they tried to rush across the open ground to get behind us.’ But this could only be a temporary reprieve. More Germans appeared. The paras’ position was hopeless. ‘We fell back.’