Arnhem

Though there were isolated cases of brutality and even some incidents of cold-blooded murder, generally the Germans treated their Arnhem captives with great respect, a nod of admiration for the fight they had put up. But for some of the captured, the defiance and pride they wanted to exhibit was inevitably hampered by a sense of shame at their defeat. It was the common lot of prisoners of war. The underlying mood in stalags and oflags was always disappointment and regret, and the escape planning, digging and scheming a means of countering the incipient depression. The German soldier who told Ron Brooker, in that time-honoured phrase, that ‘For you the war is over,’ added, ‘and you’re the lucky one,’ for being spared from any more front-line fighting. Brooker was glad to have survived, but ‘I didn’t feel lucky, no I bloody didn’t,’ he recalled. ‘I felt ashamed that I’d given up, that I’d let the side down, even though I knew there was nothing more we could have done.’ As for what came next, ‘we were in limbo; the future was very uncertain.’ That immediate future included a glass of schnapps – ‘I didn’t know what it was at the time; I was a brown-ale man’ – and a desultory interview by a German officer who seemed to know more about the paras than they did themselves. He got name, rank and number, as prescribed, but already knew their regiments, date of enlistment, and so on. He was more interested to discover their views on Winston Churchill.

When it came at last to leaving Arnhem, Brooker, like others, was shocked by the sight of the battlefield they now trudged through, in stunned silence. ‘The damage to the buildings we had fought in was unbelievable. Just piles of bricks and rubble. Most of the German dead had already been gathered but ours still lay where they had fallen, and there were many of them. Thankfully, some had been covered in ground sheets, blankets, sheets and even coloured curtains by the few remaining Dutch civilians in the area. Hardly a sound came from our group, and I know we were all thinking of comrades we were leaving behind.’ Ahead, railway trucks awaited them in a siding, and they were herded inside for a nightmare journey. That weekend – barely a week after the whole operation had begun – he passed through the gates of prisoner-of-war camp Stalag 12A.

Back home in Brighton, his mother, totally unaware of his whereabouts, was writing her latest letter to him. ‘Just hoping this will find you safe and well,’ she began, though she must have had an inkling that he might not be. Had he seen in the papers that men with five years’ service were getting a 14 shillings a week pay rise, she wondered, and then corrected herself. ‘It was rather silly of me to ask if you had seen the papers, as we know something of the time you have had from the wireless.’ Like most mothers then, she reined in her fears, masking her anxieties in the comfort of platitudes. ‘All our thoughts and prayers are with you, Ron, and we hope to see you again soon.’ Life went on. She’d run into Ron’s girlfriend, Joan. To everyone’s delight, the blackout had just been lifted, and his brother Bobby was thrilled to see the street lights burning at night again. ‘It gives some hope of this terrible war ending.’ She looked forward to his return. ‘Your bed is made up and ready for you and the key is on the gramophone in the window. Write as soon as possible, Ron, or better still just walk in.’ It would be a while before she got the War Office letter that he was ‘in German hands, location unknown’, and eight months before he was through the door of home again.

For all that, to this day Ron Brooker looks back on Arnhem with huge fondness and fierce pride. ‘I wouldn’t have missed it for the world. They were some of the saddest and most frightening times of my life but also the greatest and the best. I still think it was all well worth doing.’ A sergeant-major who fought at the bridge and went with Brooker into captivity echoed this self-belief. ‘Whatever went wrong or whatever the strategic outcome,’ he wrote after the war, ‘from our point of view, we had not failed. Our objective had been to capture and hold Arnhem Bridge until the arrival of link-up troops twenty-four hours later. We held it for four horrific days. I am proud to have been there and to have fought side by side with men of courage and determination, so many of whom did not come back.’¹