Arnhem

He slipped into a dream that became a nightmare, a twilight zone where he saw the faces of comrades he knew were dead. ‘They seemed to be calling to me, “Thought you’d never get here. What took you so long? You’re safe now.”’ A terrified Sims woke to find a medic shaking him. ‘You OK, matey? Blimey, you weren’t half creating.’ He was hauled out of the vault to the main cellar, over the bodies of the delirious officer and the faceless man, both now dead. He was grateful to be back in the land of the living. But for how long? Through the walls, the dull boom of big guns could be heard from outside. Inside, masonry fell, covering the casualties in dust. Eventually, the helpless Sims realized, ‘this building too will collapse, and then what will become of us?’ He didn’t rate his chances much, ‘wounded, losing blood and in a building already ablaze’. ‘Any sign of the army?’ he asked the orderly. ‘No, mate,’ the fellow replied. ‘Looks like we’ve had it.’

But no one gave the appearance of being defeated. Wounded paras joked, cussed and shouted among themselves as they were passed information on the state of the fighting from those upstairs still manning the ramparts. ‘As far as we knew, this was the last building we held, and it was already on fire. Food, water and ammunition were nearly all gone. But no one complained, and the only moans came from the seriously wounded in great pain. There was no talk of surrender. We still clung to the hope of an eleventh-hour miracle, trusting that our sacrifice was not to be in vain.’

Above, the desperate fight went on, as Sims saw when he dragged himself up the stairs to use the WC. He left the cellar, now so tightly packed with around three hundred bodies that the orderlies had almost no room to step between them. A Tiger tank was at the front door and control of the yard outside was constantly changing hands as the Germans wormed their way in, only to be repulsed. He marvelled that defenders he passed were still firing out of holes in the wall or through shattered windows. ‘They turned and grinned at me, shouting encouragement and making ribald jokes at my expense. I noticed several paratroopers counting their rounds of ammo. One man had just a clip of five bullets left.’ He overheard an officer talking earnestly into a radio and repeating the message over and over again: ‘Our position is desperate. Please hurry.’

Returning to the cellar, Sims had no alternative but to lie with the wounded, and wait for whatever fate had in store. ‘By 4 p.m. it was obvious that our position was hopeless. We could hear the crackle of burning wood upstairs and it was becoming painful to breathe because of the dense smoke. Something had to be done if they were not to be suffocated or burnt to death.’ Upstairs, the crucial command decision was taken to request a ceasefire so that the wounded, packed like sardines in the cellar, could be evacuated. ‘We asked the Germans for a two-hour truce and assistance to get them out,’ Major Hibbert recalled. The Germans signalled their agreement but didn’t back off and instead used the lull in the fighting to gain ground and infiltrate the yard again. A tougher decision was called for. The fit and any of the wounded who could walk would make a break for it. The rest would have to stay put and face as best they could whatever lay in store for them.

It was, in truth, the only option left. ‘The whole area was ablaze and we no longer dominated it,’ Hibbert said. ‘We were down to around a hundred unwounded and walking wounded, with about five rounds of ammunition per head. We knew the Division was fighting 5 miles to the west [in and around Oosterbeek] and I felt we could be of more use back with them. I formed the survivors into patrols of ten men and an officer, with orders to return to the Divisional perimeter.’

As one of those who would be left behind, Sims felt sure it was the only sensible course of action, though some in the cellar were very perturbed. They were aware of the order Hitler had made in 1942 that commandos caught behind the lines were to be summarily executed, and feared, not unreasonably, that the same treatment would be meted out to red-beret forces. ‘In their panic,’ Sims recalled, ‘they tried to drag themselves upstairs, sobbing that they had been abandoned. What they were forgetting was that their own commanding officer, Frost, was wounded too and lying among them.’