Arnhem

In his sector, glider pilot Dick Ennis was indulging in that fantasy too, imagining in his head the arrival of the Second Army. ‘We had visions of the relief reaching us. We saw ourselves running towards the tanks, cheering, kissing them, climbing all over them. We would joke with the tank crews about them keeping us waiting.’ Such thoughts were a triumph of hope over experience, because the previous twenty-four hours had been horrific. Sniped at, bombarded with ‘Moaning Minnies’, constantly ducking shrapnel while still trying to keep an eye above the parapet for signs of an enemy attack – that was life in a foxhole on the Oosterbeek perimeter. When that attack came, it was a closely grouped frontal assault, designed to sweep them aside. ‘We saw a continuous line of field grey advancing straight upon us and gave them our all. Phrases learnt at battle school were running through my head – “You will kill the Boche. You will kill the Boche.” We did. We killed them. But still they came on, until they were close enough to exchange grenades. The air was thick with curses, bullets and smoke. Will they break? Will they break?’ And, this time, the enemy did, faltering first, then pulling back but firing all the while. ‘There was a lull, then they were on us again with an assault as furious as the first.’ Ennis had no idea how any of his side survived that second attack, but, slowly, the enemy once more withdrew.

The cost in casualties was high. A third onslaught would overwhelm them. Ennis and the men around him made the manoeuvre that was being repeated along much of the perimeter: they withdrew to a new line of dug-in defences further back. They barely made it. ‘We moved our wounded back under cover of fire, and then, just as the rest of us prepared to move, Jerry attacked again. They literally chased us into our new defences and were firing into our backs as we ran. We reached our new line and jumped into foxholes, which were already occupied. With us out of the way, the occupiers of those foxholes had a clear view before them. They now knew that everyone in front of them was a German and they set to in tremendous style and repelled this attack.’

The problem was that each time the enemy were halted, they re-grouped and came again, as relentlessly and as strongly as before. In their foxholes, the British soldiers could now tell when an attack was about to be launched. ‘We’d hear the German NCOs screaming at their men,’ Ennis recalled. ‘This would go on for some time and would then be followed by a few “Sieg Heil”s. When the “Sieg Heil”s were over, the attack would commence. As the enemy carried out this procedure before each assault, we were able to prepare a reception for him.’ But, standing against this tide, cold, wet and hungry British troops were in danger of losing heart, the more so when it became clear that their plight was not fully appreciated in the outside world. In a lull after his unit’s hand-to-hand combat with enemy infiltrators who got within a yard or two of their trenches, Jo Johanson managed to get his wireless set going and tuned in to the BBC. He was furious at what he heard, and perplexed. ‘Someone was talking about Holland and saying, once we had it, it would be an easy matter to go straight through to Berlin.’ The complacency riled him. ‘It was all too obvious to me from where I was standing that we did not have it.’ The BBC voice went on to say that the 1st Airborne were ‘surrounded but undismayed’. It was such a glib phrase that he switched off. Undismayed? He sat for a while and pondered unhappily what the commentator was really trying to say.

Then, however, he and thousands of others on the Oosterbeek perimeter got the encouragement they needed, with the sudden realization that they were not alone after all. Help was coming. Dick Ennis remembered hearing the sound of aircraft, ‘and I looked up to see the sky black with transport planes bringing our first airborne supplies.’ Running out of food and ammunition, the men cheered and cheered at this blessed relief. Here was a cause for renewed optimism. ‘But our cheers,’ Ennis recalled, ‘mingled with the thump of enemy ack-ack being thrown up to meet them. The barrage was of a ferocity that I have never before experienced.’ Up in the skies, a new chapter in Arnhem’s brave tale was being written.

7. ‘He was Engaged on a Very Important Airborne Mission’