Arnhem

A dispatcher had no control over his own destiny. His life was in the hands of fate and the flight deck, as 21-year-old Geoff Gamgee was to discover. A clerk in civilian life, he opted to be a driver when he was called up. His postings were all at home, until the 1st Airborne was formed, ‘and I ended up in a maroon beret’. After service as a driver in Italy, he volunteered for air dispatch. He knew it involved flying over enemy territory, but ‘I tried not to think about being shot down or crashing.’ Arnhem was his first trip. ‘We knew very little about the operation – as RASC we didn’t get much information at all. I knew we were to drop supplies but I had no idea about the state of the battle.’ Or even where precisely they were going. He remembered going over ‘a dull, dreary-looking sea’, 300 feet above the water, followed by ‘land mostly flooded except for houses and trees’. Then the flak began. ‘You could see the black puffs around the aircraft and occasionally feel a shudder when one came a bit close.’¹²

Nearing the DZ, the dispatchers opened the trapdoor and stood by for the signal to push the panniers out one by one as quickly as possible. ‘We watched the ’chutes below us developing.’ Time to go home. ‘It was then that we ran into trouble. The ack-ack was coming up pretty hot and thick and holes were appearing in the sides and floor of the plane – and there’s nothing you can do about that.’ Suddenly, a pipe was severed and oil was gushing out over the floor. One engine was hit and cut out and, shortly afterwards, a second engine went. ‘With just two engines, the pilot could not make height. He told us to prepare for a crash landing. ‘That was a bit of a shock. We’d had no instruction or briefing about crash-landing! He told us to lie down and brace ourselves against something on the fuselage. We lay on the floor with our arms folded at the back of our heads and hoped for the best!’

The landing was a series of horrendous bumps and skids. ‘I felt myself being dragged forward as the plane scraped over the ground. Earth was spraying up all around us and coming in through the broken nose. At last we came to a standstill and there was hush for a few seconds before we all scrambled to our feet and got out as quickly as we could in case the plane caught fire. Cows were grazing in the field. After what we’d just been through, it was surreal.’ What was horrifyingly real, though, was the realization that they were behind enemy lines. ‘There could be Germans behind every tree. I had this sudden fear of coming face to face with them and being captured.’ That was not what he had signed up for.

The RAF crew set about destroying maps and documents as figures began to appear across the fields – ‘young people in clogs, waving handkerchiefs and shouting, and others in typical Dutch country dress, all running towards us. They stared at us, and we at them.’ Gamgee managed to ask – in broken French, of all languages, though they were in the Netherlands – whether there were Germans around, and was told they were a mile or so away in one direction. But in the other direction, they were assured, were the Allied lines. ‘We made it clear in which direction we wanted to go!’ The Dutch villagers provided a car and they set off – eight Englishmen and two Dutchmen all crammed in the same vehicle – to cheers from the villagers. ‘They regarded us as liberators and heroes, but we never felt like that. They were so excited to see us and thought the war had come to an end. But it hadn’t. They were putting their lives at risk by helping us and I really admired them for that.’

The car took them through the German lines to Grave, now in the hands of American paratroopers after the success of their part in Market Garden, and from there they were taken to Eindhoven. On the way they ran into what all those trapped in Arnhem, paratroopers and Dutch citizens alike, had for so long been desperate to see – the trucks, tanks and armoured cars of the advancing British Second Army. They were way behind schedule and still with a long way to go. It had taken longer than expected for the Americans to clear the bridges in their sectors. Every foot of the road had to be fought for against unexpectedly fierce and concentrated enemy opposition. Indeed, as Gamgee and the rest of the downed crew approached a particular village, they were flagged down by a military policeman and told that a German counter-attack was in progress. Enemy tanks were concealed in a wood and attempting to destroy a road bridge in the village and delay the advance on Arnhem even more. Only when this skirmish was over could they proceed.