Arnhem

Yet, a greater sense of order was beginning to prevail around the perimeter as, at divisional headquarters in the Hartenstein, Urquhart – returned from his lengthy escapade and enforced isolation in the Arnhem suburbs – took a grip. The Arnhem bridge, he knew, was lost, but Oosterbeek was still a useful bridgehead on the far side of the Rhine. Should XXX Corps and the Second Army ever get here – and that was still everyone’s fervent belief – then what remained of 1st Airborne could be well placed to assist them across by some other means. A crossing by boat might be possible. Bailey bridges could be hurried forward. In his eyes, this was not a mission to be given up on. To hold his ground, he had a depleted force of some 3,600 fighting men to defend what, to begin with, was 3 miles of perimeter. Roughly a third of them were infantry – largely from the para battalions and the King’s Own Scottish Borderers – a quarter were glider pilots and the rest were artillery, sappers, and so on. He ordered his brigadiers to take charge of individual sectors of the line and to consolidate it where necessary.

Increasingly, the lines of defence were redrawn and tightened into a smaller and smaller area. Some withdrawals were orderly. Ennis and the men around him were warned in advance and, in the dark of night, they fell back, trying not to make a sound. ‘We stealthily moved through the wood in single file, and out on to a road. We went along the grass verge for about one and a half miles, then back into the wood to dig in at a new position. The digging could not be done in silence, and we must have made a terrific noise hacking at tree roots and scraping into the earth. The enemy could not fail to have heard us, but we saw nothing of them, neither did we hear anything. It took all night to dig ourselves in properly because, weakened through lack of food, we had to have frequent rests. But two hours before dawn the job was completed and we thankfully took up our new posts.’

Other withdrawals were retreats dictated by the advancing, probing enemy as defenders were forced out of the positions they held or the houses they occupied. Glider pilot Alan Kettley was up in the attic when a shell from a tank came through the roof. ‘It took everything away from under my feet and I fell down through three floors. Luckily, all I got were bruises and cuts, but it was a damned lucky escape.’ He retreated with his men to another house and next day was bombed out of that one too. A fellow pilot was an inspiration – though also, as it turned out, a danger. Though wounded in both legs and an arm, he kept up a cheerful banter. He couldn’t fight, so he tackled the Germans with Bing Crosby records, which he played incessantly and loudly on a wind-up player in the direction of the enemy, who were just a few hundred yards away. ‘We were right in the front bloody line and he put it on full blast, and I can only assume the Germans don’t like Bing Crosby, because the next thing you know there’s a Tiger tank at the front door!’ The big gun fired, silencing Bing and blasting Kettley out of the house. The experience was pretty traumatic. ‘Unless you have experienced being shot at by a Tiger tank, no words can tell you how absolutely terrifying it is,’ he recalled. ‘The ground shakes and the noise is louder than anything you can possibly imagine. Bricks and slate fall for what seems like an eternity. I was terrified, I won’t deny it.’

The blast tumbled him down stairs and into a shallow slit trench. From there, he guided a badly wounded lieutenant, the flesh on his left arm stripped down to the bone by machine-gun fire, to a first-aid post. As he did so, he had no choice but to ignore the shelling around him. ‘We were in a built-up area and it was not easy trying to get over garden fences and through doors. But getting help for him was my sole objective.’ When he got there, he was shocked by the number of bodies piled up outside. As he stared, one of them, he was certain, moved. ‘There was a chap on top of the pile lying face downwards, and his left hand came up and he scratched his nose.’ Kettley alerted the medics to have another look at the man, and they took him back inside, though it seems he did not survive. The image, though, lived on in Kettley’s head. ‘I don’t know who he was or which unit he was from but the memory of his hand moving caused me nightmares for ten years. I would wake screaming. I can see it now, clearly. It was terrible.’