Arnhem

But could the end be delayed much longer? Mordecai and his comrades took to changing their positions, dashing backwards and forwards across a street, trying to outwit the enemy gunners. ‘On one of these runs Jerry changed his order of fire and dropped two in succession at the same place. Four of us dashed through the hole in the wall into the orchard and, just as we arrived, so did a shell. It exploded right in front of us and the three chaps in front of me went flying into the air. I ducked my head to one side just as the blast reached me. I felt a blow on my face and across my right eye, like being hit with a stick. It lifted me off my feet and knocked me flat out. When I came round I couldn’t see anything. I crawled over the ground to try and find cover and eventually found a slit trench up against the wall. I flopped in on top of another chap lying on the bottom.’ Mordecai’s active resistance was over. And not just his. ‘The shelling kept up all night, and I heard no reply from any of our chaps at all. Perhaps they were lying low. Either that or there weren’t any left.’ Which, sadly, was the truth of it.

He held out until the next day, Thursday. When dawn broke that morning, it was very quiet in Arnhem, uncannily so compared with the last three mornings of constant shellfire. His left eye was working, but with the right all he could see was a blinding glare. ‘The chap under me stirred, but we both stayed in the trench until it got lighter.’ A German voice carried across to them with an invitation: ‘Come on out, Tommy, and you will be treated all right. Come out and surrender.’ Mordecai’s companion had had enough. He climbed up out of the trench, scrambled through a hole in the wall and out into the street with his arms in the air. Mordecai stood up and looked around him as best he could with one eye. An unexploded shell was teetering on the top of the trench, and he manoeuvred past it. ‘I took stock of the situation. I was blinded in one eye. I had a Sten gun but no ammunition. I was out of cigarettes and water.’ But he was still reluctant to take that step that would mean certain capture and possible death. He saw a fellow para – one he knew – rise from a hole in the ground and come limping towards him. This man too had decided to pack it in and, waving his handkerchief, stepped out into the street. Mordecai waited and watched. This man’s fate would decide his own. If the Germans harmed him, then Mordecai had decided he would make one last desperate break for freedom in a jeep that had been abandoned in the orchard, though he didn’t expect to get far. Meanwhile, he kept his eyes on his comrade as the man limped up the street to where the Germans were standing. ‘I saw them take him away around a corner. I waited for a while, but couldn’t hear any shooting.’ That made up his mind. He too was going to surrender. He broke down his Bren and Sten guns and hurled the pieces in different directions so they were unusable. ‘Then I took a white towel out of my small pack, took a deep breath and walked up the street with my arms in the air.’

An enemy officer searched him, then handed him a bottle of wine to drink from. ‘It tasted good!’ He was taken to join others who had surrendered, mainly wounded, and they were marched away to a British-manned casualty clearing post in the town hall. ‘One of our doctors looked at my eye but said that he couldn’t do much. He gave me eye drops and a black patch to put on.’ The next day he was among the walking wounded who filed on to trucks and were ferried towards the German border. ‘The back of the truck was open and I was sitting near the end. I considered jumping out but the truck was travelling too fast and I decided against it.’ He would have to see out the war behind barbed wire.