Arnhem

Ayers waxed lyrical and philosophical at the sight of them. ‘For some the trials and tribulations of this world were nearly over, as their heartbeats slowly fade away and they sink into their last sleep. For them a white stone in a war cemetery will mark their last resting place. The others, some maimed for life, will, eventually, return to the country they fought for and probably be forgotten after a few years. Such is war.’ He imagined their bewilderment at having come to this. ‘Inspired by their leaders and forgetting the reason and cause for their actions, they go into battle intent on killing their fellow men, but the shine is dulled when a bullet rips into their bodies and they feel their life-blood seeping through their fingers. As they lie in the mud, they have time to think, to ask themselves what they are doing there.’ It was the soldier’s lament from time immemorial, and the truth was that there were thousands echoing it at that moment, on both sides. Perhaps the compassion that welled up in Ayers was a presentiment that, pretty soon, he would face the same fate as them.

Twenty-three-year-old trainee solicitor Peter Clarke was also dug in on that northern flank, and his mind too was mulling over the nature of war, now that, rifle in hand, he was in the very thick of it. He was strongly religious, with a deep Christian belief, and felt torn between that and his desire to do his bit to defeat the evils of Nazism. With pals from his bible class, he had enlisted to train as a medic and was eventually posted to work on ambulances at an RAF station in Kent. He had always wanted to fly and the only thing that had stopped him applying to the RAF in the first instance was that his mother thought it too dangerous, ‘and in those days we took notice of what our mothers said.’ He also stretched his conscience into convincing himself that ‘there was a difference between using a rifle, which might be against my Christian belief, and flying a fighter, which would be killing from a distance.’ The lure of the air got the better of him and he applied to switch from medic to aircrew. It was a particularly brave decision, because he of all people knew the risks – he’d picked up the remnants of airmen who crashed on landing or take-off. He was accepted by the RAF for pilot training but then diverted by the army to the Glider Pilot Regiment. Thus he had come to a thicket at the edge of a wood on the outskirts of Oosterbeek and the personal decision of what to do with that rifle he was carrying. ‘I didn’t want to kill anybody, and certainly not to bayonet anybody.’

In their small sector, he and his unit were not well armed. ‘We had mainly rifles and a few Sten guns, but nothing of any significance apart from one paratrooper with a Vickers gun, which he used with tremendously good effect when some light German armour came towards us. He saw off this attack with gusto.’ ‘Gusto’ was what Clarke found it hard to summon up. ‘When it appeared necessary, I fired my rifle in certain directions, across this large field in front of us and into the woods, but I was not conscious of hitting anybody.’ He remembered the whole experience in the slit trench as like being in a ‘tiny little world’ of his own, the precise details of which time and trauma have erased from his memory. ‘We were in that trench with no idea about what was going on 50 yards away. Not a clue; you are just there on your own amidst this warfare, this battle.’ Unusually for men in such tight spots, he couldn’t even recall the name of the man beside him in that slit trench, though he thought he was probably a glider pilot like him. But he knew what got him through an ordeal that was to last a week. ‘I had a pocket bible with me and I read the 91st Psalm.’ Its words were comfort. ‘The Lord is my refuge and my fortress. In Him will I trust.’ Its resonance with his situation was unmistakable. ‘Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night; nor for the arrow that flieth by day; nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness; nor for the destruction that wasteth at noonday.’ His faith would not let him down. ‘A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand; but it shall not come nigh thee … For He shall give His angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways. They shall bear thee up in their hands, lest thou dash thy foot against a stone …With long life will I satisfy Him, and show Him my salvation.’