Arnhem

Expectation of those reinforcements could all too easily morph into overzealous – and dangerous – outbreaks of optimism. In the schoolhouse, one of two remaining British-held strongholds on the far side of the road ramp, Major Eric Mackay was fighting off a German infantry assault on one wall when an exultant cry went up from the other end of the building. ‘We’re all right!’ came a loud and gleeful shout. ‘A couple of Churchills’ – British tanks – ‘are outside!’ Could it be true? Had XXX Corps broken through, finally made it? Mackay dashed through the building – to find himself staring at German Mark IIIs. The air must have turned blue as ‘I held a short course in tank recognition.’ At that time, the enemy tanks were concentrating their firepower on the other para-occupied building in the area. As German soldiers followed in on foot behind the tanks, Mackay’s men caught them in crossfire. The tanks swivelled menacingly, turning their attention to the school, and the defenders inside could do nothing but keep their heads down until the barrage of shells was over. But when advancing German infantry appeared again, the paras popped back up to pick them off with their rifles. The battle lasted five hours, at the end of which the neighbouring house was lost, ‘in spite of all our efforts’.

Although the overall flow of the battle was decisively in one direction, there was plenty of ebb, too, as every inch of headway was fiercely fought over. German soldiers who had set up positions in a building next to the school came under such intense fire from Mackay and his men that they came out under a white flag. He refused to accept their surrender and sent them back. ‘We could take no prisoners, as we had no food or water,’ he explained, ‘so we told them to get back in there and fight it out. This they did. Soon they tried to make a break, and were eliminated.’ It was a small victory but good for morale at a time when the odds against the occupiers were lengthening. ‘Tanks were coming up in relays from the waterfront. The next-door house was gone, as was the one on the opposite side. The only other position besides ourselves was holding out with difficulty.’ At midday, Mackay radioed battalion commander Frost with a revised situation report. If attacks continued on this scale, he told the colonel, he no longer thought he could last another night. Frost’s reply was unequivocal: he must hold on at all cost.

That cost was fearful already, and rising all the time. When the German tanks took a break – for lunch, perhaps, the laconic Mackay imagined – heavy mortar took over so that, as one soldier put it, ‘the very air seemed to wail and sigh with the number of projectiles passing through it.’ A shell came through the roof of Mackay’s command post, killing one man where he stood and wounding all the others. Meanwhile, the Germans had reclaimed the house whose occupiers had tried to surrender and were pouring a hail of bullets into the side of the school so that movement between floors was impossible. The advantage was firmly with the attackers. For the Airborne, defending what they held was about to become even more desperate.

There was no respite on the nearside of the road ramp either. In brigade headquarters, Ron Brooker’s spirits spiralled upwards on a rumour that back-up elements of 1st Airborne had broken through from the direction of the drop zones – ‘There’s hope in sight, a chance we might actually make it through’ – then spiralled downwards when it turned out not to be true and instead the building came under renewed attack. Snipers kept the defenders pinned down while SS troops stormed the walls and windows. ‘It took close contact, hard fighting to hold them out,’ he noted, but he was being modest. In fact, contact couldn’t get any closer than this toe-to-toe warfare as the two sides slugged it out. Casualties were heavy on both sides. ‘We were tired, hungry, exhausted, injured. We suffered from lack of food, water and sleep. Because we were running out of ammunition, we were under new orders to fire our weapons only when there was a reasonable chance of hitting a target. Our basement area was packed with wounded men, most of them too badly hurt to carry a weapon. All walking wounded had returned to the fight, many of them to be hit again, sometimes with a fatal wound. Everybody knew it was the endgame. But we still had our chests out and our heads up.’ There was a moment of relief when a Messerschmitt pilot mistimed his strafing run and crashed into the church spire, from which one of his own side had been sniping and causing havoc. Both pilot and sniper were killed. Two in one! ‘There was plenty of cheering when that happened.’