Arnhem

For many of the men at the bridge at this time, the suspicion that had always nagged away at the back of their minds – that XXX Corps was never going to arrive – was turning into a certainty. Not for the first time, the sound of tanks’ tracks on the bridge brought a moment of joy that the relieving column was here. Every time, the reality was more German tanks, which inched forward cautiously, though their commanders might have been braver if they had realized, as Sims did, that ‘by now we had nothing with which to oppose them except a few hand grenades.’ He was, for the first time, downhearted. ‘The great thrust by the Second Army to join up with us had failed. We had had it, and we felt bitter and betrayed.’ A silence of men contemplating no future settled over the group, broken by the 19-year-old Sims wondering out loud ‘what it’s going to be like to die’. ‘Don’t know, kid,’ a veteran replied with a grin. ‘Never tried it.’ Sims lay stretched out on a couch near a window, pointing his rifle out at the smoke and fire beyond. His chin rested on the butt and his helmet was tilted over his eyes. ‘I was terrified of being blinded.’ His hand dipped into a ‘liberated’ box of chocolate liqueurs and the silky touch of the packaging set his mind racing. ‘I wondered if my fingers would ever feel the soft skin of a girl again. As I munched the rich Dutch chocolates, I thought of the seeming inevitability of death when, at just nineteen, I had seen so very little of life.’

Years later, in his memoirs of Arnhem, he would write movingly about the nobility of the comrades around him as their lives hung by a thread. ‘It was as though they grew in stature and all the small, irritating quirks of character disappeared. Ennobled in some strange way by this physical and spiritual auto-da-fé, each man appeared more concerned for his neighbour than for himself. All seemed prepared for the end and ready to face it. The word “surrender” was not mentioned and I doubt if it was even thought of.’

That night, in the school on the far side of the ramp, a weary Mackay was also taking stock as he stared out at flames from burning houses mingling with a pall of smoke to create an eerie sense of doom. He knew how close he and his men had just come to defeat, saved only when two rampaging Tigers opted to withdraw rather than press home their advantage. ‘They left not a moment too soon. Two more shots would have finished us.’ He considered taking the fight to the enemy, leading out a patrol to sneak up on tanks parked up for the night and blowing them up with improvised bombs. Discretion won the argument in his head. ‘We remained in our positions on the first floor.’ His defensive situation was not so bad, he convinced himself. The breaches made by shells from the Tigers gave him and his men plenty of holes to shoot through, while the light from the burning buildings illuminated the no-man’s land outside so no one could sneak up on them. ‘We could hold our own,’ he concluded. What worried him most was the condition of his men. He totted up his casualties – out of his original fifty men, four were dead and twenty-seven wounded. Only nineteen were fighting fit, and they were beginning to show signs of fatigue. He issued Benzedrine pills. The stimulants were not a total success. ‘Some men got double vision and others saw things that were non-existent’ – though whether the imaginary horrors in their heads could be worse than the real ones around them must be debatable. ‘We stood by all night, but were not attacked. There were one or two skirmishes as German patrols tried to get by. These were suitably dealt with.’ The real problem was that ‘no one could afford to go to sleep as we were few in numbers. So ended the third day.’

But in the darkness of that night, it was hard to see much hope, if any. ‘We knew our situation was hopeless,’ admitted a paratrooper in the headquarters building.¹ ‘The whole of the battalion was under ceaseless fire. Supplies of everything were extremely low, casualties continued to mount and we were desperately in need of relief. Paratroopers, once so full of optimism, were being driven out of one position after another with machine-like German proficiency. But, totally weary and most in pain, we fought on.’ Tomorrow would show, however, that ‘courage alone was not enough.’