Arnhem

In this increasingly chaotic situation, reliable battlefield information was hard to come by. With almost all the radios down because of technical malfunctions and problems of range, did anyone have a clear overall picture? Almost certainly not. Practically speaking, the Arnhem bridge was now a separate and increasingly desperate battle of its own. But beyond the city limits there were many soldiers in the dark about what was happening and, while most of those who had tried and failed to get to the bridge were now in a fighting retreat through the town’s suburbs and outskirts and heading back to Oosterbeek, there were others still making valiant attempts to get through to the main objective. Glider pilot Alan Kettley was one of them. He had come in on the second lift and was with his squadron near the church at Oosterbeek when his commander’s frustrations got the better of him. All communications had broken down and no one had any idea what was happening up ahead. The commander sent Kettley on a one-man mission to get to the bridge and report back. The staff sergeant set off on foot, a lonely figure trudging down what was now an empty road to Arnhem. There was virtually no opposition. If it was all as easy as this he would soon be able to whistle up reinforcements.

That was until he got to the outskirts of the main town, ‘and suddenly some bugger’s shooting at me.’ It was a shock – ‘a wake-up call’ – because, in his pre-war life as a stock clerk for Sainsbury’s and in four and a half years of military service, he’d never had someone trying to kill him. ‘I knew it wasn’t personal but I didn’t like being a target.’ He dived behind the wall of someone’s front garden to get out of the sniper’s way. Then he worked his way round the enemy positions as best he could, ‘and continued my way forward towards the bridge’. But heavy machine-gun fire stopped his progress. There was a road he had to cross but, every time he tried, he was met by bursts of fire. He had to face up to it – the bridge was out of reach, a conclusion that was confirmed when half a dozen jeeps and trailers came crawling towards him with wounded men hanging off the backs. One told him, just in case he missed the signs, that it was ‘hell at the bridge’; they’d had to get out and he’d be wise to do the same.

By now it wasn’t just snipers who were blocking the way into the town. When glider pilot Eric Webbley had ‘another bash’ at getting through to the bridge, he was to be faced with the weapon the infantry most feared – tanks. He was at a crossroads next to a park where a large number of British soldiers were installed and trying to fight back. Anti-tank guns were lined up to blast the enemy positions and the troops lined up to follow in with a rifle and bayonet charge. ‘Suddenly a Jerry Tiger nosed its way around the corner at the end of the street. A cry of “Tanks!” went up and folk began to move to cover.’ One of the guns roared and spat out a shell meant for the Tiger. But, as Webbley wrote sarcastically in his memoirs, ‘The gods who sit up above and watch all these things must have decided that the odds against us weren’t great enough.’ From nowhere, a British jeep accidentally backed into the line of fire and took the full impact. ‘Both the jeep and the gun blew up and the blast hurled people right and left. Pieces of stone and metal ripped past us and ugly red patches showed up all over the road. Everyone began to panic and move back.’ And then, as if enough damage had not been self-inflicted, the Tiger opened up. ‘Once again the air was filled with flying stones and the groans and cries of the fellows who’d been hit.’ What staggered Webbley was the speed at which a carefully planned attack had turned into complete chaos. Sniping from top-floor windows and a strafing from some passing German fighter planes completed the ‘bloody shambles’.

Morale was shattered as well as bodies. There was still one anti-tank gun operational, and Webbley deployed it for the next time the Tiger might appear. He was, he admitted, ‘utterly scared’ as he crouched against a tiny hedge and waited. He could do with some back-up and discovered that there were thirty or so troopers sheltering in a nearby building. His plea for help was turned down flat. They were shell-shocked and immovable. ‘An officer told us that nothing would shift the fellows at that moment and the best thing we could do would be to look after our own necks.’ He and his mates stood their ground for a while, taking a few pot shots at enemy snipers, then they were ordered to retire. ‘We regretted having to pull back. It meant leaving ground we had fought for. But we were so terribly small a force in the face of much greater numbers. This turned out to be our last attempt to break through to Arnhem.’